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Expelled Secretary geneneral of Cosatu Zwlinzima Vavi seems to have changed his tune from defending African National Congress with every fibre of his being to badgering it at every given opportunity. Just months prior to 2014 general election, Vavi had become Mmusi Maimane's carbon copy in moaning about Nkandla, e-tolls, Marikana, Hlaoli Motsoeneng and defending the independence of Public Protector's independence.
Lately, Vavi's modus operandi is nothing different to how Maimane goes around doing his business and how he rose to popularity within DA ranks. Like Maimane, Vavi has developed paranoia against Jacob Zuma and is very critical about political cronyism within ANC as if it never existed under Thabo Mbeki. He had followed in Zille and Maimane's trend of running the organisation via Twitter and making pronouncements without consulting national leadership. Vavi is always readily available for any platform that is intent on lambasting Zuma and tripartite alliance.
Given DA's tendency of scavenging on lost and lonely souls - Vavi fits a profile of DA's next prey. They've done it before with Patricia De Lille who was Secretary General of Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and an ardent proponent of Africanist socialism. After forming independent Democrats, she was lured into DA and was quickly inducted into Federal-Liberalism. Dr Mamphela Ramphela also fell for the same predatory claws only to back-off at the eleventh hour. This despite modelling her ideology on Black Consciousness with a flair of populist idealism. Without a stable political home and practically out of alliance structure, I bet Vavi would fall for DA leadership if a persuasive pitch is made to him. It would be a win-win situation where DA would tame a militant labour force through Vavi and infiltrate traditional ANC support base, while Vavi would be thrown back into political centre stage. Hellen Zille was once prepared to vacate DA leadership position to make way for Ramphela- surely Maimane could also do the same for Vavi.
Though speaking at different platforms addressing diverse audiences, Maimane and Vavi share the same vocabulary. Vavi has joined the chorus of democratic accountability and is always on full throttle criticizing ANC government from loadshedding to Gupta -gate. This is undoubtedly DA's language. He has always been part of the Secretariat forum of the alliance where most government policies and programmes where adopted. Vavi has been there when the "perceived rot" was fermenting. Suddenly he has adopted a prim donna character and accuses the alliance of ineptocracy and institutionalised corruption .All the more reason why I'm convinced that former Cosatu SG and the good pastor sing from the same hymn sheet. Zwelinzima Vavi's speeches are punctuated by Nkandla 'e-tolls and Aurora mines. If this does not make him an ideal candidate for DA's federal leadership, the nothing will.
Except for his radical stance on labour-brokers and sporadic Leninist- Cabralist sentimentalism, Vavi's blood is more blue than red. He's currently not a leader of any political formation but, is afforded media coverage to echo DA's harangue against Jacob Zuma and ANC government. The same man who presented Zuma as a hereo to the working-class after Polokwane 2007, is now spewing vitriol against ANC. The only predicament standing in Vavi's way to federal leadership is his sex scandal and his guardian (Jim). Other than that, he's on the same wave-length as the bleu brigade and he's most likely to be roped in as DA leader.
