The ANC has underplayed disagreements with its partners in the tripartite alliance over the Government of National Unity saying it’s part of a culture debate.
Secretary General Fikile Mbalula briefed the media on Monday in Johannesburg following a meeting with the leadership of NEHAWU over offensive comments made by the party’s KwaZulu-Natal secretary Bheki Mtolo who has since been ordered to apologise unconditionally to the influential union.
Mbalula called on ANC members and alliance partners to catch on arguing the country has gotten over uncertainty about GNU and has moved on.
“Why are we stuck on this issue when the country has long moved on? The country has moved. South Africans have accepted the GNU and everything is going well, the country is stable, the economy is growing, we are attracting,” said Mbalula of criticism of the GNU by the SACP and Cosatu.
Mbalula said the ANC respects the right of its alliance partners to differ with the party but called for restraint saying “labels” created an impression of chaos in the alliance.
“We don’t need an apology from Mapaila his ideas and views is something you fight for and debate but if you are convinced otherwise you accept. So there’s no crisis in the alliance, we don’t mind criticism but labels are something else. You see now the young communist league says I have diarrhoea when I speak, imagine now I have to be respected but you are there calling me names. We should not disagree like enemies,” said Mbalula.
Mbalula said following a meeting with a Nehawu delegation led by its president Mike Shingange who is also Cosatu’s Second Deputy President, the ANC KwaZulu-Natal Bheki Mtolo would apologise to the union and in turn it would withdraw a R 2 million lawsuit against him and Nehawu.
Shingange dismissed media reports that some members of the public sector union in KZN were eager to dump the ANC in favour of Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto Wesizwe Party.
Shingange said there’s no such debate in the union about such a move.
“You would see that some of the branches that those individuals claim to represent have already wrote letters distancing themselves from them. They’re not leaders of Nehawu. You can hear even in their reference to districts and we don’t have those things,” said Shingange who added it would not be surprising for a few individuals in the union to be drawn to MKP.