This is not a sign of a happy political marriage:

“The main concern of the committee centres on signs that we may be drifting towards dictatorship. This appears in the use of state institutions… in narrow factional fights,” [Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi] said.

“We see it in the use of sections of the media to assassinate the character of individuals through off-the-record briefings and the leaking of sensitive information in the hands of those charged to investigate crimes.”

Other symptoms included the intimidation of journalists by senior party officials as well as the general stifling of debate and closing of democratic space.

“We may be on our way to a Zimbabwe crisis in the long run. This is exactly how that started.”

In some ways, Vavi has a point. I agree that the politicisation of state security organs such as the NIA by Zuma acolytes is an extremely dangerous trend. (Although I’m not sure if that’s what he meant.) But that Zimbabwe comment is highly disingenuous. While Cosatu deserves credit for consistently opposing the organised lunacy of Mugabe’s regime, the unpleasant reality is that many of Mugabe’s policies are, in essence, things that Cosatu favours: overriding protection on private property to affect large-scale wealth redistribution, loosening up the money supply, etc.

Cosatu likes to pretend that everything wrong with Zimbabwe is due to Mugabe being a bad man. In reality, he’s just a fairly conventional left-wing populist whose policies failed miserably, and is now doing everything he can to hold on to power regardless. In the process, the socialist project has admittedly been somewhat perverted, with redistributed property going straight into political patronage networks rather than being used to help the poor. But the lesson is still relevant: if we want to avoid ending up like Zimbabwe, the biggest danger we face is the success of populist groups like Cosatu.