THE important people at Cosatu will forgive us for lacking the same understanding of politics that they do. Perhaps if they communicated in better and clearer terms we would not be as ignorant as they deem us.
THE important people at Cosatu will forgive us for lacking the same understanding of politics that they do. Perhaps if they communicated in better and clearer terms we would not be as ignorant as they deem us.
We cannot help but remember Cosatu and the left as a whole accusing the Thabo Mbeki administration of excluding them from important policy matters.
They complained that under Mbeki the state pursued policies that favoured capital and marginalised labour.
They listed what they saw as the folly of inflation targeting among the Mbeki era ills.
This week the trade union confederation took us to task for a headline that suggested they believed that the current head of state differed little from his predecessor. They told us they had not used those words.
They did not have to.
Under the new administration they themselves said the left had been kept in the dark about what the president would say in his State of the Nation Address. They said they had to wait, like the rest of us, to hear what the Minister of Finance had to say in his budget speech. When he revealed his hand he said inflation targeting would continue as policy.
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi says the latest budget is no more than "old wine in new bottles".
This is no comment on whether this administration is better or worse than the previous one.
It is an expression of wonder at why this powerful movement of the workers does not have the courage of its convictions and say what it really means.
Show some real guts
THE important people at Cosatu will forgive us for lacking the same understanding of politics that they do. Perhaps if they communicated in better and clearer terms we would not be as ignorant as they deem us.
THE important people at Cosatu will forgive us for lacking the same understanding of politics that they do. Perhaps if they communicated in better and clearer terms we would not be as ignorant as they deem us.
We cannot help but remember Cosatu and the left as a whole accusing the Thabo Mbeki administration of excluding them from important policy matters.
They complained that under Mbeki the state pursued policies that favoured capital and marginalised labour.
They listed what they saw as the folly of inflation targeting among the Mbeki era ills.
This week the trade union confederation took us to task for a headline that suggested they believed that the current head of state differed little from his predecessor. They told us they had not used those words.
They did not have to.
Under the new administration they themselves said the left had been kept in the dark about what the president would say in his State of the Nation Address. They said they had to wait, like the rest of us, to hear what the Minister of Finance had to say in his budget speech. When he revealed his hand he said inflation targeting would continue as policy.
Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi says the latest budget is no more than "old wine in new bottles".
This is no comment on whether this administration is better or worse than the previous one.
It is an expression of wonder at why this powerful movement of the workers does not have the courage of its convictions and say what it really means.
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