Toe the line or join the Shikotas, Manuel told

The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) say finance minister, Trevor Manuel, and Reserve Bank governor, Tito Mboweni, must toe the line on economic policy or ship out of the ANC.

This was the call from Numsa's General-Secretary, Irvin Jim, at a press briefing in Johannesburg on Wednesday where the union labelled Manuel and Mboweni as the main people behind "narrow" economic policies they blame for keeping people trapped in poverty.

"I respect Trevor (Manuel) as a member of the ANC and that he still has a contribution to make with his experience. But the time to pursue neo-liberal macroeconomic policies is over.

"Those individuals who still want to pursue that particular agenda should join the Shikotas," said Jim.

The Numsa official said the union wanted the interests of the people to count more, rather than those of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or Davos.

"We can still be part of those institutions, but we need to hegemonise the interests of the people first. The time has come to put on the agenda the genuine aspirations of our people. We must be firm on that in these elections," said Jim.

He took great "exception" to recent comments by Manuel when that any talk of a shift to the Left after the 2009 elections would be "tantamount" to abusing workers and poor people, as this would give them the false hope that the government could create jobs.

"We find Trevor Manuel's thinking extremely strange, especially in the light of what the United States, the European and Asian governments have done to bail out capitalists.

"At a global level, we find it impossible to understand why Manuel thinks similar actions cannot be taken to bail out billions of workers and poor people, who need a very small fraction of the huge amounts of money the governments of capitalist countries are making available to already rich people to continue to make money.

"Why does Trevor think it is morally and economically right to throw massive sums of money to save banks from collapsing, but it is impossible and foolish to spend less money to create real wealth and real jobs for the unemployed workers and poor?" Jim asked.

He said Numsa questioned why Manuel continued to be "fanatical" about a capitalist system abandoned by its inventors.

"South Africa is an abnormal country in which millions starve every day, not because there is no wealth and the possibility to employ everyone, but because people like Trevor Manuel continue to preach and practise a failed capitalist ideology," said Jim.

Cosatu General-Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, agreed, saying people should stop putting pressure on ANC president Jacob Zuma about whether there would be any shifts in policy after the elections.

"Economic policies shifted at Polokwane and all loyal members will have to implement those policies and that includes the finance minister," said Vavi.

He made it clear that Cosatu was targeting the country's retirement funds to subsidise social investment projects and that the policy of inflation targeting - which Manuel has described as a necessary anchor for an economy in rough seas - would also be reviewed.

Meanwhile, Democratic Alliance finance spokesperson Kobus Marais on Wednesday warned that the ANC and its alliance partners should not toy with the country's prudent economic policies - especially after the country's credit outlook was downgraded from "stable" to "negative" by international ratings agency, Fitch.