The collapse of Cosatu’s R12 million, 15th National Congress at the Gallagher Convention Centre this week – the first such breakdown in the federation’s nearly 40-year history – has laid bare deep divisions within South Africa’s organised labour movement.
While the official explanation for the halting of the congress related to the issue of delegate credentials, analysts said the dispute pointed to a battle over ideology and personal interests amid the sharp divisions within the tripartite alliance.
Attempting to explain what brought the federation’s conference to its knees, Chris Hani Institute executive director Sithembiso Bhengu said the question of whether a faction inside Cosatu deliberately collapsed the congress to draw closer to the ANC and gain access to state resources could be answered with both yes and no.
“There could be a number of reasons, including probably the issues... but also some of them include the fact that even though they are working class, probably in their own political, ideological orientation, they are more nationalist than they are what we would call working class-oriented or Marxist or pro-Marxist,” he said.
Speculation was rife this week that factional battles between the ANC and the SA Communist Party (SACP) were at the centre of the collapse of the much-anticipated conference.
However, that was dismissed during Wednesday’s media briefing by incumbent president Zingiswa Losi and first deputy president Mike Shingange, who is seen as a front-runner to succeed her.
The pair denied political interference led to the congress’s collapse, attributing it instead to a failure to meet quorum after some unions refused to submit their delegate credentials. Losi is expected to reconvene another gathering within a month.
Shingange, who is perceived to be aligned to the SACP, had his eligibility to contest for positions questioned after his union, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), suspended him days before the conference.
Shingange, who also serves as Nehawu president, went to the Labour Court to overturn his union’s decision to prohibit him from running, and the court cleared him to stand.
Losi, by contrast, is seen as being aligned to the ANC. It, therefore, remains to be seen whether Cosatu’s next conference will resolve to back the ANC or the SACP in the upcoming elections.
The fallout comes at a time when the tripartite alliance between the ANC, SACP and Cosatu is under severe pressure, with the SACP, angered by the ANC’s alliance with centre-right parties in the Government of National Unity (GNU).
The communist party has thus decided to contest the November 4 local government elections independently, ending 30 years of electoral support for the ANC.
Political analyst and acting deputy dean of research and postgraduate studies at the University of the Free State, Professor Sethulego Matebesi, said questions about material incentives such as tenders, board seats and political promotion as driving union leaders’ close proximity to the ANC were harder to answer.
“I frame them with caveats rather than hard facts. For example, the ANC’s broader deployment strategy, placing loyalists in key institutions, has long intersected with Cosatu leadership contests,” he said.
“Union posts are seen as stepping stones to parliamentary seats, board appointments, and executive roles. Therefore, there are clear material and career incentives that explain why some union leaders resist a clean break from the ANC, even when ideological dissatisfaction is high.”
The ANC-SACP fracture, Matebesi said, manifested in the congress when the federation failed to agree on basic procedures.
He said Cosatu’s position on who to support between the ANC and SACP ahead of the 2026 local government elections will depend on who becomes the president and how power is balanced in Cosatu’s Central Executive Committee.
On whether the ANC can still rely on Cosatu to mobilise voters, Matebesi said: “The ANC’s request that dual SACP/ANC members declare their SACP allegiance was described as an ‘anti-communist political move.’ This direct competition, rather than one in which one endorses the other, is the clearest sign that the ANC can no longer assume Cosatu’s mobilising capacity will flow automatically to it.”
Professor Ntwanano Mathebula from the University of Johannesburg’s School of Public Management, Governance and Public Policy, said the ANC’s strategy of drawing union members into Cabinet seems to have “fallen out of fashion”, and that it is time the ANC does its own groundwork. This is evident, he said, in how prominent union leaders go quiet once they enter government.
“And we can see the ANC using this as a strategy to become a bigger partner. And this, of course, results in the drifting of these relationships,” Mathebula said.
“So the Cosatu conference, if it’s going to happen, whatever outcomes that it’s going to yield is the one that will mean more divisions within the alliance itself, and the devastating consequences being that of the ANC post-local government elections.”
He described this week’s events at the Cosatu congress as a post-mortem of the organisation, particularly in the context of the tripartite alliance, where there has been a shift in the balance of power.
According to Mathebula, the main issue behind the conference’s collapse was internal infighting, driven by leadership disputes over who should be eligible to stand for positions. He predicted that the tripartite alliance is set to become more fractured, with deeper divisions within Cosatu and its affiliated unions after the elections.
rapula.moatshe@nationalmg.co.za