Taking COSATU Today Forward, 16 February 2026 #NoToGEMSMemberContributionIncrease
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY #Cosatu affiliates in the public service reject #GEMS unaffordable member’s contribution increase…. #ClassSolidarity #Cosatu40 #SACTU70 #ClassStruggle “Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism” #Back2Basics #JoinCOSATUNow #ClassConsciousness |
Taking COSATU Today Forward
‘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
16 February 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!
-
NEIL AGGETT LABOUR STUDIES UNIT (NALSU) scheduled to host a book launch
South Africa - COSATU Public Service Unions on GEMS Increases
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- SACP welcomes and commends Russia's energy intervention in Cuba
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
NEIL
AGGETT LABOUR STUDIES UNIT (NALSU) scheduled to host a book launch
Labour Studies Seminar Series, Rhodes University, South Africa
Book launch: Henry Dee, Militant Migrants: Clements Kadalie, the ICU and the Mass Movement of Black Workers in Southern Africa, 1896-1951
4PM (SAST), Thursday 19 February: Eden Grove seminar room 3, Rhodes University; & via Zoom (details below).
THE BOOK: Malawian-born Clements Kadalie exploded on the global stage as head of the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union of Africa (ICU). A massive popular movement founded in Cape Town in 1919, it also spread into Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia
and Zimbabwe. In the 1920s, the ICU completely overshadowed the nationalist and communist parties, organising perhaps 250,000 workers and labour tenants. Kadalie, a famed orator, journalist and organiser, electrified huge meetings with his calls for economic
freedom and all-in mass organisation. Praised as the most important black worker leader in the world at the time, he was championed by figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Tom Mann, and George Padmore.
Henry Dee's Militant Migrants, based on extensive research, is the first full biography of Kadalie. It examines his evolving ideas, African impact and global importance, unprecedented successes, inescapable failures, and complicated personal life. Kadalie won
wage gains and improved conditions, through strikes, campaigns and lobbying, alarming colonial states. Yet his ICU was marked by contradictions, and imploded into autocratic leadership, corruption, factionalism, and bitterness. Kadalie's story illuminates
the period in which his star rose: the Malawian diaspora and immigrant politics, class struggles and transnational organising, and battles over gender, citizenship, nation and respectability; and is also a tale of a man's fall from popular hero into alcoholism,
a broken family, and ruined reputation.
SPEAKER: Henry Dee is a research fellow at Northumbria University, UK, and a historian of empire, labour and migration in the early 20th century. Widely published, he co-edited (with David Johnson),'I See You': The Industrial and Commercial Workers'
Union of Africa, 1919-1930 a collection of primary sources (HiPSA, His biography of African labour leader Clements Kadalie, Militant Migrants ,was published by Liverpool University Press in November 2025. Henry's latest research compares trade unions across
Southern Africa, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, and their engagement with the politics of migration in the late British empire.
ONLINE: Register in advance at https://tinyurl.com/yacwxt9m
(you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining).
HOSTS: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research and workers' education, has a democratic, non-sectarian, non-aligned and pluralist practice, and active relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations.
We are named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail after enduring brutality and torture.
MORE: https://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu
Kind regards,
Valance
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South Africa #ClassSolidarity
COSATU Public Service Unions on GEMS Increases
Simon Hlungwani, COSATU Joint Mandating Committee Convener, 14 February 2026
The public service unions affiliated to COSATU — DENOSA, NEHAWU, SADTU, POPCRU, SAMATU, PAWUSA and SAEPU are united and outraged by the decision of the Government Employees Medical Scheme (GEMS) to impose a 9.8%-member contribution increase for 2026.
This high member contribution follows a 13.4% increase imposed by GEMS in 2025 which was equally rejected. Our members from January 2026 will pay 9.8% which GEMS says it will revise down to 9.5 from 1 April 2026. Accumulatively, the increase amounts to a 23.2% over two years.
At the same time:
- Public servants received only 5.5% salary increase in 2025/26 and in 2026/27 increase might even be below 5%.
- Government subsidy increases are only 4.5% (Jan–March 2026) and 0.5% from April 2026
It is puzzling that GEMS went ahead to increase the member contribution despite the advice by the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) on a proposed average member contribution increase of 3.3% for 2026 as reasonable. The Medical aid costs are rising far above wages and inflation and this represent a real wage erosion and a direct attack on workers’ take-home pay.
GEMS Has Abandoned Its Mandate
GEMS was created through PSCBC Resolution 1 of 2006 to provide affordable medical cover for public servants, especially lower- and middle-income workers. It was meant to promote social solidarity — not operate like a commercial business. In addition, the Medical Schemes Act mandates the Board of Trustees and Principal Officers to act in the best interests of beneficiaries with care, diligence, and in good faith. The conduct of the GEMS board of trustees and the decisions they take is inconsistent with this mandate.
According to the Council of Medical Schemes of 2023, the Board of Trustees of GEMS were the highest earning in the industry of medical schemes. In the same period, they got paid millions of Rands after holding 52 meetings, including strategic planning and workshops. This is shocking when compared to earnings of other Boards of Trustees of in 2023 which held only seven meetings
Serious Governance Concerns
GEMS was created by parties in the PSCBC but because of how the Board of Trustees are elected it is now dominated by private individuals and less Worker represented. This creates serious governance and administrative challenges as both the Trustees and the Executives act as if they run their own private business, not in the beneficiaries’ interests. This is demonstrated by the intransigence displayed to labour in all our engagements with the Executives and Trustees.
We are deeply concerned about:
- Weak accountability and poor consequence management
- Costly outsourcing of administration and managed care
- High executive and board remuneration
- Leadership instability
- Ignoring labour’s anti-fraud and cost-saving proposals
- Failure to redesign benefits to protect lower-income members
- Tanzanite members being excluded from private healthcare despite paying contributions
Instead of fixing internal problems, GEMS passes the bill to workers. Workers are paying for governance failures they did not create.
Attack on Collective Bargaining
The unilateral implementation of the increase undermines the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) and weakens collective bargaining.
Engagements with the Board have produced no results. This reflects arrogance and contempt for organised labour.
Our fight is not only about medical aid increases — it is about defending collective bargaining and protecting workers’ rights.
Programme of Action
Since all the engagements with GEMS failed to yield positive results, we have decided to act by mobilising members across the public service and those working with communities affected by this ridiculous increases imposed by GEMS. In this regard we are going to roll out programme of action as follows:
Lunch Hour Demonstrations: 24 February 2026
Ø Lunch hour demonstrations in the nearest identified GEMS offices in all provinces. The demonstrations will also take place in workplaces where there are no GEMS offices in close proximity to also bring our concerns to the attention of the employers.
📢Day of Action: 26 February 2026
Ø National Day of Action at GEMS Head Offices, Pretoria.
Our Central Demands
- Immediate withdrawal of the 9.8%
- A full forensic audit into governance, finances and procurement
- Review of outsourcing contracts and high-cost drivers
- Alignment of executive pay with public service norms
- Implementation of labour’s anti-fraud proposals
- Review of the GEMS funding and operating model
- Genuine engagement with Labour at the PSCBC
- Review the appointment process of Board of Trustees
- Removal of the Principal Officer and implicated executives
If GEMS continues to deviate from its founding purpose, we will review PSCBC Resolution 1 of 2006 and explore alternatives that allow public servants freedom of medical scheme choice with government subsidy.
Public servants are suffocating under the cost-of-living crisis.
We will not allow GEMS to throttle workers’ hard-earned wages.
GEMS exists because of workers — and it must serve workers.
We are united. We are mobilised. And we will fight until justice is done.
END
For information and comment, contact:
Simon Hlungwani, JMC Convener
Mobile: 082 328 9635
Itumeleng Molatlhegi, Joint Mandating Committee Coordinator
Mobile: 071 680 5494
International-Solidarity
SACP welcomes and commends Russia's energy intervention in Cuba
Mbulelo Mandlana, SACP Head of Media, Communications and Information, 15 February 2026
The South African Communist Party (SACP) has noted and commented on the ongoing energy crisis in Cuba as caused by the US economic asphyxiation of Cuba through an over 60-year-long illegal economic blockade and the most recent fuel blockade.
The recent denial of Cuba’s access to fuel resources from the international market has caused a humanitarian catastrophe for the Cuban people and manifests the inhumane and criminal nature of the US regime. The SACP has condemned these actions for what they are: criminal, cruel and inhumane.
It is against this background that we welcome the intervention by Russia in assisting the Cuban people with oil resources. The recently announced oil shipments to Cuba by the Russian Federation can only bring relief to the Cuban people.
In an era of US intimidation towards those who help Cuba, the actions of the Russian Federation show courage rooted in solidarity.
We continue to condemn US imperialist aggression in Venezuela and Cuba and call for the release of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady, Cilia Flores.
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY,
FOUNDED IN 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA.
Media, Communications & Information Department | MCID
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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