Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin, 15 June 2026 #CosatuNationalActionAgainstCostofLiving

[Norman Mampane]

 

COSATU TODAY COSATU Call Center Contacts: 010 002 2590 #COSATU set to launch the Cost of Living Campaign this month, on the 19th June… #NationaActionAgainstCostOfLiving #ILC2026 #ClassWar #Cosatu40 #SACTU70 #ClassStruggle “Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism” #Back2Basics #JoinCOSATUNow #ClassConsciousness

Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin

‘Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense’-Maoo

 

Our side of the story

15 June 2026

“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”

Organize at every workplace and demand respect for labour rights Now!

Defend Jobs Now!

Join COSATU NOW!

 

Contents                      

• Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!

• Media Alert: South Africa’s Trade Union Federations to brief media on migration crisis, UIF and Compensation Fund criminality and dysfunction
• NUM Youth Structure in the Free State to lead anti-drug march in Welkom

• NEHAWU to convene its 13^th National Congress  

• South Africa
• COSATU Youth Day Statement
• NEHAWU Statement on the 50^th Anniversary of June 16
• COSATU encourages IDC to expedite a turnaround plan for Mozal 
• International-Workers’ Solidarity!
• Feminism: not only a women’s issue

Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics #ClassWar  

Media Alert: South Africa’s Trade Union Federations to brief media on migration crisis, UIF and Compensation Fund criminality and dysfunction

 

15 June 2026

 

Organised Labour at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC), comprising COSATU, FEDUSA, SAFTU and NACTU, invites members of the media to a briefing on Wednesday, 17 June 2026, to address two urgent national matters affecting workers, communities and the country’s social stability.

 

The briefing will outline Organised Labour’s position on the growing tensions around migration and illegal immigration in South Africa.

 

Organised Labour will also address the worsening crisis at the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the Compensation Fund. The federations will set out their demands for decisive action to restore the integrity, capacity and accountability of these critical social security institutions.

 

Details of the media briefing are as follows:

 

Date: Wednesday, 17 June 2026

Time: 10:00

Venue: NEDLAC, 14A Jellicoe Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg

 

Members of the media are invited to attend and cover the briefing.

 

Issued jointly by: COSATU, FEDUSA, SAFTU and NACTU

 

For RSVP and enquiries:

Zanele Sabela

Cosatu Spokesperson

079 287 5788/077 600 6639

 

Betty Moleya

FEDUSA Media and Communications

063 736 5533

 

Newton Masuku

SAFTU National Spokesperson

066 168 2157

 

Lehlogonolo Digashu

NACTU

083 538 1270

_________________

NUM Youth Structure in the Free State to lead anti-drug march in Welkom

Khanyisile Njingani, NUM Free State Region Youth Structure Secretary, 15 June 2026

WELKOM – The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) Youth Structure in the Free State, alongside progressive youth formations, will tomorrow morning, 16 June 2026, march against the devastating drug epidemic destroying the lives of young people in our communities.

Coinciding with the commemoration of the brave youth of 1976, the march serves as a fierce stand against drug trafficking, which exacerbates already crippling levels of youth unemployment, poverty, and crime.

The march will commence at 09:00 from Ok Manny’s Cycle and proceed to the Janhofmeyer Police Station, where a memorandum of demands will be handed over to the South African Police Service (SAPS) leadership at 11:30.

The NUM Youth Structure demands immediate, decisive action from law enforcement to eradicate drug syndicates. The core demands in the memorandum include:

•            Targeted Law Enforcement: The immediate identification, arrest, and prosecution of drug lords and distributors operating within our communities.

•            Increased Visibility: Enhanced police patrols and intelligence-led operations in notorious drug hot spots, specifically:

◦            Mooi Street (near Giovanni’s)

◦            Local Salons

◦            The Don Club

◦            Specific houses across Thabong and Bronville

•            Community Mobilisation: Genuine engagement with youth structures and community organisations to establish robust, preventative anti-drug programmes.

•            Accountability: Regular, transparent feedback sessions provided by SAPS to the community regarding progress made in combating drug-related crimes.

The future of this generation cannot be sacrificed to criminal elements. As we honour the legacy of Tsietsi Mashinini and the 1976 generation, we reaffirm our commitment to reclaiming our streets and building safe, healthy, and drug-free communities.

Members of the media are invited to attend and cover the march.

________________

NEHAWU to convene its 13^th National Congress  

Lwazi Nkolonzi, NEHAWU National Spokesperson, June 08, 2026

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] will hold its 13th National Congress at the Birchwood Hotel & Conference Centre in Boksburg from the 26th to 29th of June 2026. 

The congress is convened under the theme “Advance Workplace Organisation to Defend Collective Bargaining, Heighten Class Consciousness and Advance Internationalism".

The congress will serve as a critical platform to deliberate and develop concrete responses to key international, national political and socio-economic matters as well as organisational matters affecting our members and the working class in general.

The congress will receive addresses from the African National Congress [ANC], South African Communist Party [SACP], Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU], World Federation of Trade Unions [WFTU] and Trade Union International Public Service & Allied [TUI – PS&A].

The congress will be attended by more than 750 delegates drawn from all structures of the union and other fraternal organizations from South Africa and Internationally.

Members of the media are hereby invited to apply for accreditation to cover the 13^th National Congress.

The following information should be included in the application: Full name, Media House, and contact details.

The deadline for accreditation applications is Friday 19^th June 2026.

The application for accreditation should be sent to the following email: lwa...@nehawu.org.za

Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat

For further information, please contact: Lwazi Nkolonzi (National Spokesperson) at 081 558 2335 or email: lwa...@nehawu.org.za

Visit NEHAWU website: www.nehawu.org.za        

South Africa #ClassSolidarity

COSATU Youth Day Statement

Nonzuzo Dlamini, COSATU Communication Officer, 15 June 2026

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) commemorates Youth Day with a heavy heart as millions of South Africans honour the sacrifices of the class of 1976. It is both admiration and despair that this day evokes, as we remember the loss of life, juxtaposed to their bravery at the face of apartheid. The day is also a painful reminder of the disparity between the envisaged future of the youth of 1976 and the lived realities of their peers five decades later.

The country remains forever indebted to their courageous spirit. They stooped against oppression and died for their freedom. Being a young person today comes with an injustice of its kind. Upon completion of matric, school leavers enter higher education in hopes of eventually progressing to an economic environment fit to absorb them.

For more than a decade, the economy has been performing at an unimpressive pace, failing to reach the 3% growth rate urgently needed to resolve the agony of the inability to participate in the labour market.

The staggering youth unemployment rate is a ticking time bomb. Nearly half of young people between the ages of 15–34 are jobless. Over 60 percent of the youngest demographic aged between 15–24 are unemployed. This volatility requires pressing national intervention which exceeds the current programmes on offer.

COSATU reiterates the importance of linking skills development to sustainable job creation. The country's primary crisis is an economy that fails to absorb graduates.  Both government and the private sector have the responsibility of expanding training programmes that provide massive public employment opportunities, practical skills, entrepreneurship support and permanent job creation.

This is critical in rescuing the millions of qualified young people locked out of employment opportunities.

Amplifying government programmes that lead to decent, permanent employment should be paired with a people-centered approach. Austerity measures cripple the public sector workforce. Unfilled vacancies put strain on personnel, yet skilled graduates are reduced to the reeling statistics of a national unemployment crisis.

Satisfactory commemorations of Youth Day aren’t glorified promises. They are detectable interventions of development, economic inclusion and education.

The youth of today deserve a future envisioned by their counterparts-a future free from the chains of unemployment and poverty.  

Issued by COSATU

_______________________

NEHAWU Statement on the 50^th Anniversary of June 16

Zola Saphetha, NEHAWU General Secretary, June 15, 2026

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] joins millions of South Africans in commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the SOWETO Uprising of 1976.

In commemorating this historic day, NEHAWU salutes the generation of 1976 for their unwavering commitment to the liberation of their country. We pay homage to the gallant martyrs of our national struggle for liberation, who selflessly sacrificed their lives for a democratic South Africa.

In paying homage to the students’ uprising that erupted in SOWETO and spread to other parts of the country from the 16th June 1976 onwards, we should not consider that tragic historical moment in isolation. A meaningful understanding of June 16 is not one that is narrowly focused on a specific day in that year’s calendar, as it was part of the broader reawakening of the masses of our people and growing defiant consciousness amongst the broader black masses after more than a decade of sustained draconian repression during the 1960s.

Indeed, we must honour this day in its proper historical context of the trajectory of our national liberation struggle, in which the revolts of the 1970s and 1980s were preceded by the lull and repression of the 1960s, at the time when the Afrikaner regime was gearing itself to complete its project of total domination and replacement of the historical English hegemony. During the crushing repression of the 1960s, the economy was rapidly industrialising which turbo-charged the rise of Afrikaner capital. Whereas towards the end of the 1970s and during the 1980s, the Apartheid regime ran into a decade-long period of stagnation which was worsened by the international intensification of sanctions.

So contextually, even those gallant students who reignited the internal flames of the struggle through their SOWETO Student Representative Council, led by their brave young leaders such as Tsietsi Mashinini, Seth Mazibuko, Murphy Morobe, Kgotso Seatlholo and Sechaba Montsitsi, rose up to resist the imposition of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction, without knowing that their actions were actually launching a new phase of the downward and crumbling trajectory of settler-colonialism on the one hand and the intensification of the trajectory of the national liberation struggle, on the other hand.

The Afrikaners had already politically dislodged the English and had made advances in claiming their stake within the commanding heights of South African capitalism through state-led interventions, including the sustained socioeconomic programmes to uplift poor Afrikaners on the back of the expansive forceful seizure of land in the countryside and forceful removals and displacements in urban areas.

This includes the semi-slavery conditions of the super-exploitation of black workers especially on the farms, and the technical modernisation of their own language and building their own universities. Therefore, the imposition of Afrikaans intended as the exclusive medium of instruction in education was part of a larger project of extending it to the rest of the society or in other walks of life. Thus, it represented the drive to complete the project of asserting Afrikaner hegemony, whereby the oppressed black people would be forced to switch from the English indoctrination as part of their psychological oppression in the process of the consolidation of Colonialism of a Special Type.

So, the blood and lives of over 700 young people who were murdered on that day in 1976 were not in vain, as that marked a downward turning point and a reversal of the Afrikaner project of hegemonizing South African capitalism when the regime withdrew the policy of imposing Afrikaans as the medium of instruction.

The 50^th Anniversary occurs against the background of recorded high levels of unemployment, extreme poverty and social inequality. According to Statistics South Africa, youth unemployment for those between the age 15 – 24 stands at 60.9% and for those aged 25-34 is at 40.6%. This is an abnormal situation in a country where the youth constitute the majority of the population. This situation requires more than ever before that young people from all walks of life stand united and fight for their place in society just like the generation of 1976.

The youth should use this day to send an unambiguous message to government and business community that they should create jobs and must be provided with opportunities to meaningfully participate in the economy. The youth must demand concrete interventions geared towards youth development and empowerment through education and training, learnerships and internships and also creating space for youth entrepreneurship.

Equally, young people should use youth day to intensify the fight for young people to have access to higher education. Young people must wage a struggle for the government to fully implement without any delay free tertiary education.

Lastly, this 50^th Anniversary should be used to concretely provide solutions that will help address the challenges of youth unemployment, poverty, hunger and other problems that confronting young people in the country.

END

Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat.

_____________________

COSATU encourages IDC to expedite a turnaround plan for Mozal 

Matthew Parks, COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator, 15 June 2026

 

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) encourages the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) to expedite a potential turnaround plan for Mozal, the aluminum smelter in Matola, Mozambique. 

 

Mozal with a majority ownership by IDC and South 32 and a minority stake by the Mozambican government, employs 5 000 workers directly in Mozambique and up to 25 000 indirectly in the value chains there and in South Africa. 

 

Mozal has been mothballed due to the drought in Mozambique affecting its main source of electricity from the Cahora Bassa Dam and an increasingly unaffordable electricity tariff regime with Eskom.  Its closure not only threatens 30 000 direct and indirect jobs in both countries but is also a key component of beneficiation for aluminum and South Africa’s mining industry. 

 

Such a loss presents a devastating blow neither nation can afford when battling already dangerously high unemployment levels.

Mozal is a positive example of the bilateral partnership between our sister nations by creating interdependent value chains, investments and jobs for both nations.  South Africa has a vested stake in Mozambique’s development, more so given the pressures of regional migration.  Our future will forever be intertwined with the wellbeing of Mozambique, and our past is one of shared struggle and blood, including the devastation inflicted upon it for its heroic and selfless support for South Africa’s liberation.

 

We are heartened by the IDC’s call for proposals for potential turnaround plans for Mozal, including a new ownership structure and investment partners. 

 

It is critical that such proposals including engaging Eskom and Mozambique’s government on a new electricity tariff and supply structure that could enable its reopening and successful turnaround.

 

COSATU will continue to engage with the Presidency, and the Departments for Trade, Industry and Competition; Electricity and Energy, Mineral and Petroleum Resources, Eskom and the IDC on such a package and to ensure that it is prioritised and finalised as a matter of the highest urgency. 

 

We simply cannot afford to lose such a strategic asset for both nations.

 

Issued by COSATU

International-Solidarity   

Feminism: not only a women’s issue
15 June, 2026

IndustriALL Global Union's women's committee held its first meeting of the new committee in Geneva on 10 June. It elected two new co-chairs and adopted a global road map for 2026–2029 to implement the feminist resolution endorsed at the Sydney Congress.
There is a particular kind of energy that fills a room when people know they are part of something historic. That energy was alive in Geneva. The new committee gathered for the first time since Sydney, ready to build, not just talk.
Six months ago, IndustriALL said the word out loud: feminism. Not as a footnote. Not as a secondary objective. As the central political framework of the entire organization. Geneva was where the promise of Sydney met the road map for delivery.
“What we have adopted in Sydney does not remain on paper,”
said Christine Olivier, IndustriALL assistant general secretary.
“It must be seen and felt in our unions, in our workplaces and in the lives of our women. We have a mandate, a strong resolution, a clear road map and now we must deliver.”
The committee elected two new co-chairs.
Regina Nambahu, from the Mine Workers Union of Namibia, has been a union member since 21 years old with 17 years in the mining industry.
“When women lead, unions grow stronger. As co-chair, I will unite women’s leadership behind a feminist agenda, so every woman worker is heard, respected and empowered. Together, we make change.”
Nicole Fears, human rights director from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in North America and a 32-year union member, added:
“I start with people. To build stronger workplaces and unions, we must understand what pulls us apart and what brings us together. My work builds relationships across differences and creates cultures of belonging where everyone has dignity, voice and value.”
Their election was more than procedural. It was a declaration.
A gender-transformative agenda that belongs to everyone
Women will not carry this transformation alone. The feminist resolution is not optional, it belongs to every affiliate, every structure and every leader, in every region of the world.
To ensure women’s structures do not carry implementation alone, the committee proposed regional road maps endorsed by regional Executive Committees. Both the secretariat and affiliates must take clear action.
The road map places pay equity at its core, recognizing the gender pay gap not as a statistic but as a reflection of deep-rooted structural inequality.
It puts care work firmly on the trade union agenda, demanding its recognition as a universal human right.
It also addresses occupational health and safety, human rights due diligence and just transition. Without tackling discriminatory norms and unequal power relations, the transformations reshaping work will exclude women. Underlying all of this is the urgent fight against a rising tide of masculinism.
What a gender-transformative approach means
The movement faces one of its most urgent battles: leaving no women behind. Joint research by IndustriALL Global and industriAll European Trade Union paints a stark picture. Across green and digital transitions, the figures project women will gain 23 million fewer jobs than men.
In Bangladesh’s garment sector, women’s share of the workforce has dropped from 80 to 56 per cent in three decades, partly driven by new technology. Across Asia, discriminatory stereotypes push women out of automation-created roles.
Lack of confidence and cultural norms that label technical work as male hold many women workers back from upskilling.
Gender-transformative human rights due diligence is key to closing gender gaps in supply chains. Mine operators in Botswana do not design protective clothing for pregnant bodies. Women’s voices remain absent from bargaining tables. IndustriALL is developing guidelines to embed gender equality into its work with multinational corporations.
While the women’s committee advances its agenda, ILO negotiations in Geneva have been long and tough with the US and Argentina rejecting even the terms gender and every gender related issue. The case for trade union leadership has never been clearer.
Young women teach the room
If there was a single moment that captured the soul of the day, it came when young women took the floor. Mentees from IndustriALL’s mentoring projects in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia stood up and did something quietly groundbreaking. They taught and led. These mentees issued demands to a room of experienced trade union leaders and the room listened.
They named it without hesitation: being invited into spaces for the photograph but excluded from decisions; being held back by imposter syndrome; watching unions carry gender commitments in policy documents and nowhere else.
“Decisions are made by those who sit at the table,” one mentee said. “When women are not present in leadership structures, our priorities are overlooked. This is not a women’s issue. It is a collective bargaining issue. If we want stronger unions, we need stronger women’s participation.”
Bringing men in
The day closed with one of its most important conversations. IndustriALL general secretary, Atle Høie, spoke with an honesty the room will not forget.
“Ten years ago, I had no clue what a gender-transformative agenda was,”
he said.
“Eventually it gets quite logical. If you don’t attack the root causes, you will never solve the problem.”
Change needs more than passion. It needs direction, accountability and the courage to demand that everyone, not just women, carries the weight of change. The road map exists. The mandate is clear. Now every affiliate, every structure and every leader must decide whether they will carry it.

______________________________

Norman Mampane (Shopsteward Editor)

Congress of South African Trade Unions

110 Jorissen Cnr Simmonds Street, Braamfontein, 2017

P.O.Box 1019, Johannesburg, 2000, South Africa

Tel: +27 11 339-4911 Direct line: 010 219-1348

 

 

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