Africa's top labour federation Cosatu threatened on Thursday to sever its long-standing alliance with the ruling African National Congress and widen a state workers' strike next week to key industries. Thousands of striking state workers held marches in major cities nationwide calling on the government to meet their wage demands. About 1.3 million unionized employees have walked out in the standoff, shutting schools and cutting off medical treatment at hospitals. “The alliance is again dysfunctional,” Cosatu Secretary-General Zwelinzima Vavi said in a statement. “The centre cannot hold.” The comments were one of the strongest signals to date that organized labor, which helped President Jacob Zuma ascend to the presidency, may be ready to cut, or change, a relationship with the ANC that was forged in their struggle to end apartheid. The state workers' strike has had no major impact on rand and bond trading but market players said worries would mount if it extended into September and other labor groups joined in. Jasson Urbach, an economist with the Free Market Foundation, estimated the work stoppage was costing the economy 1.084 billion rand ($147.8 million) a day. Cosatu said it filed 7-day strike notices on Thursday so that all its 2 million members could join the state workers in a strike they said would also target the mining and manufacturing sectors, a step which could grind the country to a halt. Some analysts believe South Africa could ultimately benefit from a split between the ANC and Cosatu because it would allow the government to ditch union-friendly policies and reform a rigid labor market, criticized for restricting investment and driving up production costs. But not all are convinced that the long-time partners will abandon each other, despite growing acrimony. “The reality of each of these factions is that it is very difficult for them to break with their ally, however tenuous that relationship is,” said Mark Schroeder, a specialist on Africa for global intelligence company Stratfor. The leader of the ANC's Youth League Julius Malema fired what amounted to a warning shot at Zuma.
