The recent public outburst by former Cosatu general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, lamenting about corruption and apologising to former president Thabo Mbeki, points to a man who is desperate and undependable.

We have heard it all before; what a sorry man he is over this or that issue.

Vavi, pictured, treats leadership issues as public relations problems.

He has convinced himself that he can easily cure his moral defects, leadership shortcomings and misjudgments with public apologies.

His utterances and actions of late reveal a man who does not have a backbone and who cannot be trusted.

He is unmasking himself as a brave but not-at-all smart leader.

It is very opportunistic, firstly, for him to credit himself for having removed Mbeki when it was the decision of Cosatu to campaign against what we felt as workers was a president who was on an offensive against the working class.

We, as workers, never campaigned against Mbeki because of personal grudges but because we had policy differences with him and we were waging a battle of ideas.

The fact that Vavi does not understand that, or is choosing not to remember, does not augur well for a man with such elastic ambitions.

So, he has now forgotten about the fight against GEAR policies, yet he left Cosatu because he still believed that the NDP is equivalent to GEAR. How convenient.

If the campaign to defend President Jacob Zuma during his persecution between 2005 and 2007 became a personal crusade for Vavi to an extent that he hated Mbeki, not his policies, then he was advancing his own agenda.

In fact, we constantly warned him as workers that the personalisation of politics was very dangerous, but he was too immature and bigheaded to listen and learn.

This failed former ANC-president wannabe, Vavi, is locating himself as a voice of reason because his elastic ambitions were stillborn and political naivety was exposed.

In less than a decade, he has gone from killing for Zuma to apologising to Mbeki; from leading a powerful workers' federation to being a pitiful and an unmandated spokesman of a faction.

This is no accident because he developed delusions of grandeur, lost himself in wishful thinking and was ultimately consumed by his ambitions.

Some of us are not surprised by this public spectacle of penitence because history has taught us that all reactionaries and populists have an attitude to power that is of both a servile and vicarious adoration.

Ultimately, once that disappoints them, it breeds resentment and, as a way out, they always try to mobilise resentment against those in power.

Vavi is not an angel either on matters of corruption and moral virtuosity.

He has lost that moral high ground and legitimacy that was given him by workers, who supported him with the hope he was on their side.

He has now proved that he was on his own political adventure but was riding on the back of the workers.

Amilcar Cabral said: "We must practise revolutionary democracy in every aspect of our party life.

"Every responsible member must have the courage of his responsibilities, exacting from others a proper respect for his work and properly respecting the work of others.

"Hide nothing from the masses of our people.

"Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories."

Vavi is claiming easy victories but we want to warn him that leadership offers no easy options.

The country is crying out for real leadership and not image-makers and unctuous salesmen.

He will have to do much better than that to fool the people, and the workers in particular.

lMonyela is Gauteng chairman of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union