Once again a Cosatu congress has announced that the trade union federation needs to rethink its relationship with the governing ANC. This call has become monotonous.

There has hardly been a gathering of SA’s largest trade union formation that has not announced that it had misgivings against the ANC since the party ditched the reconstruction and development programme and replaced it with the growth, reconstruction and development programme (Gear) in 1996 – two years into the democratic era...