Cosatu lambastes ANC over Reserve Bank decision

Cosatu has come out with guns blazing, lambasting its ally the ANC for its “disappointing” decision to withdraw its motion that the South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) should become a public-owned entity.

Yesterday, the ANC in parliament announced it was withdrawing the motion, which was supposed to be debated, a move that some attributed to bowing to a threat by rating agency Moody’s to downgrade the country should the ANC go ahead with the bank’s nationalisation.

ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu yesterday said the withdrawal of the motion was to allow for greater consultation in the ANC and with key stakeholders.

But Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla fired a salvo at the ruling party, accusing it of backtracking on its own national conference resolutions. At that conference last December, a resolution was passed which required that the Sarb should be changed from a partly privately owned to a state-owned bank.

“This is disappointing. It is another situation where the ANC backtracks on its resolutions. They are retreating again from implementing a national conference instruction as they did in Polokwane and Mangaung,” Pamla said.

He said the ANC had fallen into a trap that the current Sarb mandate should solely be inflation targeting when other banks internationally had included job creation as part of their mandates.

“We are worried that the Bank is not as independent as it proclaims but is beholden to the finance capital to the detriment of manufacturing, agriculture and even SMMEs. The other sectors are not benefiting from these rigid economic policies,” Pamla said.

The Bank describes its primary purpose as to achieve and maintain price stability in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth in South Africa.

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