The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) says it is still unhappy that there hasn't been an alliance council meeting and it has given the African National Congress (ANC) an ultimatum for demands that must be met before the 2019 general elections.

This, despite President Cyril Ramaphosa meeting with the federation on Tuesday, May 22, to discuss issues which should be on the agenda when the ANC and its allies hold an alliance summit.

Cosatu was expressing some of its frustrations with both the ANC and its government at a media briefing it held on Thursday, following a three-day central executive committee (CEC) meeting.

"It's now May, five months after the [ANC's] Nasrec [elective] conference. We are yet to have this political council meeting. Of course the secretariat of the alliance is working on the date around that but, as a federation, we continue to express a concern that a meeting has not taken place five months after Nasrec," Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini said.

The alliance council meeting, seen as crucial by some of the ANC's alliance partners, was never successfully held.

This, as tension brewed between former president Jacob Zuma, and allies, Cosatu, the South African Communist Party and South African National Civic Organisation.

Cosatu, which actively campaigned for Ramaphosa to succeed Zuma, had been part of a call for the ANC to recall its former president, expressing a loss of confidence in his abilities to lead the country.

Dlamini acknowledged that Ramaphosa showed commitment to the meeting when he told journalists that they had agreed on the set of issues which will be discussed.

"It is going to happen now, we know. The date we will still work on," said Dlamini.

Cosatu, which previously resolved to campaign for the ANC in all elections, set out four issues it wanted addressed before South Africans went to the polls.

These include; an acceleration in the implementation of ANC policies, a shift in the macroeconomic policy framework to be in line with ANC resolutions, firmness and decisiveness in dealing with ill-discipline and corruption in government and the repositioning of the ANC and the government to provide political and moral leadership.

The federation also hit out at the government for several failures, including the February budget speech of former finance minister Malusi Gigaba.

"The CEC reiterated its frustration with the slow pace of transformation of the ownership and control of the South African economy. This last budget was the best budget that big business could buy," Cosatu deputy general secretary Solly Phetoe read from a statement.

The organisation also focused some of its wrath on the private sector, saying that not enough was done to deal with corruption in that sector.

"We are extremely unhappy by the lack of political will to investigate and prosecute private sector corruption. We have raised the matter sharply with President Cyril Ramaphosa in our meeting," read Phetoe.

"We want decisive action against Steinhoff senior executives, KPMG managers and Tiger Brands management who are implicated in corruption. The private sector is also fully responsible for the mess that the country finds itself in," he added.