Morning Star.png South Africa: COSATU brushes off legal bid to rejoin by cast-out NUMSA James Tweedie, The Morning Star, London, 11 May 2015 South African trade union federation COSATU dismissed yesterday attempts to sow disunity in its ranks through a court challenge by expelled National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). NUMSA's attempt to force COSATU to readmit it to the federation was thrown out of court on Tuesday, with the renegade union ordered to pay costs. COSATU welcomed the judgement and lamented the time spent defending the federation's constitution and democratic decisions. "We regret being taken to the court and we characterise that as wastage of workers' resources and time to do workers' activities," it said in a statement. NUMSA was expelled last year after it refused to stop poaching members from other COSATU affiliates NUM, CEPPWAWU and SATAWU, which organise mining, industrial and transport workers respectively. Its membership grew by 100,000 between 2010 to 2014, while the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), formerly the country's biggest union and behind the formation of COSATU in 1985, lost 42,000 members, some to its offshoot rival AMCU. NUMSA also supports former COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, who was sacked in April over a slew of transgressions and has himself resorted to the courts to fight his political battles. Both are hoping to use the COSATU Special National Congress on July 14 to reinstate Mr Vavi and vote out other COSATU office bearers, including president Sdumo Dlamini. But in an apparent threat to form a rival federation, Mr Vavi said on Tuesday that "a new federation will be born" if NUMSA is excluded from the congress. Last week Mr Vavi and NUMSA general secretary Irvin Jim welcomed the surprise election of David Sipunzi as NUM general secretary, beating incumbent Frans Baleni by just nine votes. Delegates also voted to support Mr Vavi's expulsion, to oppose attempts to run COSATU through the courts and to make NUMSA's readmission dependent upon its acceptance of the federation's "one industry, one union" principle. The NUM also welcomed the affiliation to COSATU of NUMSA breakaway the Liberated Metalworkers Union of South Africa. But in a TV interview on Monday, Mr Sipunzi surprisingly claimed that his members wanted Mr Vavi and NUMSA back in the COSATU fold. COSATU spokesman Norman Mampane told the Morning Star that the federation reiterated its congratulations to the new NUM leadership and noted the collective resolutions of its congress last week. NUMSA held a rival press conference yesterday, along with eight small COSATU affiliates that support it. In a lengthy statement, the Nine Plus group accused COSATU of selling out the working class to a "corrupt" ANC government. From: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-761b-South-Africa-COSATU-brushes-off-le gal-bid-to-rejoin-by-cast-out-NUMSA#.VXkCy_mqqko -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
