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Article: The new apartheid: South Africa's trade unions loudly oppose the Government's sell-off of basic services. But the ANC isn't listening, warns Patrick Bond.
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- April 1, 2003
- Author:
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THERE has always been a rift between the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on privatization. But it deepened substantially in January when the Government decided to sell the state telephone company, Telkom, under the rubric of 'black economic empowerment'.
A great deal is at stake here because the probably inevitable departure of Cosatu and the SA Communist Party from the ANC-led alliance will occur over ideological differences--such as whether basic services should be operated on a for-profit basis. Cosatu won a minor victory early in the new year when some railroad privatizations were halted by ...