COSATU and SANCO in KZN held their first ever bilateral in the province, yesterday the 29 of June 2010 at the COSATU Provincial Offices.  The meeting was mainly attended by the Provincial Office Bearers (POB’s) of both organizations.  The meeting acknowledged that it was just the start of our interaction and therefore it had focus in the main on the framework for future interactions.  The meeting did deliberate and agreed on the following issues to mention the few:

 

The meeting agreed that COSATU and SANCO remain the only popular forces of civil society in the country with a clear progressive agenda.  Whilst acknowledging the different sectoral roles we play in society, the two organizations do accept and appreciate that such roles are dialectically linked to each other and require co-operation amongst ourselves.  SANCO in particular had its fair share of some serious challenges which had a potential to put her on route to liquidation but because of visionary leadership with her ranks such an agenda failed.  It is therefore in that context that the revival of this giant civic movement requires that a progressive trade union federation like COSATU plays an active role in this revival process.  We have therefore agreed to ensure that we co-operate in the utilization of our resources i.e assist in finding proper accommodation for SANCO, ensure that there is enough operational infrastructure for the civic movement to perform its expected revolutionary duty within society and our communities at large.

 

The meeting agreed that as the two organizations will in future act in union on joint organizational programmes.  Amongst those will be the Anti-Corruption campaign, service delivery campaign, recruitment campaign as well as the campaign against job losses, unemployment and electricity tariff hikes.  The two organizations further committed themselves to the campaign for a decisive victory of the African National Congress in the upcoming local government elections.  Both COSATU and SANCO acknowledged that the pillar for the success of all the above campaign is for us to deal a decisive blow to the pandemic disease of HIV/AIDS is our primary enemy and a war we cannot afford to lose but rather a must win on our part.  We have further agreed to ensure that there is a close co-operation on matters of economic development.

 

 

We have agreed that there is a need to be a follow-up meeting of this nature with broader representation of both our organizations.  The Secretariat was therefore tasked to work out such mechanism.  Both organizations acknowledged and respect the independence of one another and view interactions of this nature not as an erosion of such a long standing principle.