We await Zuma’s call on the booing

Workers’ Day will go down as a day African National Congress President Jacob Zuma will want to quickly forget, as cracks in the ANC-led tripartite alliance widened considerably.

At a rally in Bloemfontein in the Free State on Monday the president was booed and prevented from making a speech by Cosatu members. If that was not embarrassing enough, the event was eventually called off following clashes between Zuma’s backers and their opponents.

It’s the first time an ANC president has been prevented from speaking at a Cosatu Workers’ Day event.

Alliance members agreed that the “embarrassing collapse” of the national Workers’ Day event should serve as a final wake-up call that all was not well in the country and something needed to be done about it urgently.

Last month Cosatu said they no longer believed Zuma was the right person to lead the ANC and country, and called for him to step down. In the lead-up to the event, Cosatu’s largest unions – the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) and SA Democratic Teachers Union – had insisted Zuma should not attend the event.

He should have heeded their calls. The chaos from Monday shows that all is not well with the tripartite alliance.

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South African Communist Party (SACP) leader Blade Nzimande said the divided alliance was “sad, really sad”.

“We should see this as the ultimate wake-up call because if we don’t arrest this, we will be judged harshly as the generation of leaders who allowed the alliance to collapse,” said Nzimande.

“But we are still going to discuss this matter properly.”

Zuma was not the only member of the ANC top six to receive a hostile reception.

ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte was booed and silenced in Limpopo, while ANC chairperson Baleka Mbete, addressing crowds in KwaZulu-Natal, was also jeered.

Monday’s actions from the backbone of his party’s support – the working class – will hit Zuma hard. It will be interesting to see how he responds.

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