Dissecting ANC's hostile response to Cosatu-sponsored civil society conference

It is not uncommon these days to hear people bemoaning the fact that the United Democratic Front (UDF) was disbanded after the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1990.

The UDF was launched at the height of the struggle against apartheid in the 1980s and became an internal mass political movement of unrivalled importance and effectiveness since the banning of the ANC in 1960. Soon after the launch of the UDF, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) was formed in 1985. Cosatu was seen as the reincarnation of the exiled South African Congress of Trade Unions, an ally of both the ANC and the South African Communist Party. It is for this reason that some of the hottest debates before and after the launch of Cosatu revolved around whether the labour federation should be part of the tripartite alliance or not. These debates were shaped by the fact that Cosatu was then, as it is today, not an ideologically homogeneous body. It consisted of, besides others, elements from the Congress tradition, the so-called workerists, who believed in the separation of politics from labour issues, and sections of the ultraleft that were hostile to the SACP and the idea of an alliance with the ANC.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• ANC
• Cosatu
• civil society
• United Democratic Front
• African National Congress
• UDF
• Creamer Media
• Polity
• Aubrey Matshiqi