UNION POLITICS
NUM insists workers take priority over allegiances
The push by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) for a Cyril Ramaphosa presidency will not compromise its stance on workers’ rights, the union’s general secretary David Sipunzi said on Tuesday. The NUM was the first organisation among alliance and ANC structures to throw its weight behind Ramaphosa ahead of the ANC elective conference in December 2017. Ramaphosa was the first secretary of the NUM and was among its founding leaders. But in the past six months, the NUM has taken on a decidedly anti-ANC stance. It threatened to withdraw its support for the ANC in the 2019 election shortly after Ramaphosa was sworn in as president of SA when the government signed agreements with 27 independent power producers. "We were the first trade union to say Ramaphosa for president and we still maintain that, but we also have not forgotten that Ramaphosa is now the president of the country.
"After all, Ramaphosa is mostly under the influence of business rather than the workers because in ...
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