Johannesburg - Trade union federation Cosatu has become the latest alliance partner of the ANC to warn the governing party it is in danger of losing the 2024 national and provincial elections.
Addressing delegates at the SACP national congress under way at the Birchwood Hotel and OR Tambo Conference Centre in Ekurhuleni, Cosatu president Zingisa Losi said the ANC needed to be cleansed and the tripartite alliance rebuilt.
“We cannot afford to see the ANC deteriorate further. The ANC needs the party (SACP) and Cosatu to help cleanse it of its demons, corruption, factionalism and hooliganism,” she said.
Losi, also a member of the ANC’s national executive committee, warned that should attempts to rebuild the governing party fail, there was a real danger that it could lose the 2024 elections.
“An ANC that fails to secure 51% (of the vote) will struggle to form a coalition with opposition parties determined to destroy the alliance, and reverse the many gains we have secured since 1994. This will be a devastating blow to the working class,” she said.
Losi also backed former president Thabo Mbeki’s assertion that while unity is paramount in the ANC, it cannot be with those involved in criminality.
”Former president Mbeki is correct. There can be no unity with criminals. Those who have broken the law must go to prison, no matter their status in life.
“In fact, the failure of the the National Prosecuting Authority, the SAPS and the judiciary to ensure that the most senior criminals among us go to jail is exactly why the nation, the movement and the workers are in these crises,” she said.
The SACP has also indicated that the ANC’s future electoral prospects are uncertain, with a strong possibility of it achieving less than 50% in 2024.
In the Free State, the SACP also stated the ANC was too flat-footed, structurally weak and poorly resourced, as well as too disorganised to mount a commendable election campaign in last year’s local government elections.
The ANC has admitted that current trajectories and modelling exercises project that it would dip below 50% in the 2024 national elections for the first time since 1994.