So Cosatu is holding the ANC government to decisions the party took at Polokwane to re-emphasise pro-poor and pro-worker policies.

So Cosatu is holding the ANC government to decisions the party took at Polokwane to re-emphasise pro-poor and pro-worker policies.

Good, that's what we expect from the labour federation.

Problem is that only now is Cosatu getting around to appointing expert panels to flesh out these proposals.

Opposing help for the desperately poor and for struggling workers would be like opposing motherhood and apple pie. But the devil is in the detail, exactly what Vavi and company have so far failed to provide.

A rapidly developing economy such as South Africa's operates within a complex web of intertwined dynamics and perceptions.

We need to milk the economy as much as we can to foster development and raise the living standards of the dirt-poor majority.

But we must also create conditions that lure hard-eyed capitalists to invest their money here and keep our economy bubbling.

Governments spend money they raise by taxes. The better the economy, the more tax money they have to spend.

If the pain of taxes rises too high the investors set up shop elsewhere: meaning the government has killed the goose that lays the golden egg.

We hope the Cosatu experts can soon add hard facts to the federation's often airy-fairy proposals.