Taking COSATU Today Forward, 13 November 2025 #Cosatu@40 #Cosatu4othAnniversary

[Norman Mampane]

 

COSATU TODAY #Cosatu launches #VioletSeboniBrigade to mobilise communities in Soweto for #Cosatu40thAnniversary #COP30noBrasil#JustTransition #Cosatu scheduled to hold its 40th Anniversary at Dobsonville, Soweto on December 6 #Cosatu@40 #Cosatu40thAnniversary #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

13 November 2025

“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!

• Applications for media accreditation to cover COSATU 40^th Anniversary rally officially opened

• COSATU to host lectures in the lead up to 40^th anniversary

• South Africa
• NEHAWU statement on the 2025 MTBPS
• SAMWU calls off strike Sol Plaatje strike following LLF Agreement
• International-Workers’ Solidarity!
• South Africa will not be divided by foreign misinformation

Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics  

Applications for media accreditation to cover COSATU 40^th Anniversary rally officially opened

Zanele Sabela, COSATU National Spokesperson,10 November 2025

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) invites all members of the media to apply for accreditation to attend and cover the Federation’s historic 40^th Anniversary rally. This momentous event is scheduled to take place on 6 December at Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto.

COSATU was launched on 1 December 1985, at the height of the struggle against apartheid. Its formation brought together 33 competing unions and federations that were opposed to apartheid but committed to a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa. 

Alliance partners, local and international guests have been invited to celebrate 40 years of this vibrant movement advancing, defending and protecting the interests and rights of workers and the working class in South Africa and beyond. 

Applications for accreditation may be submitted to mam...@cosatu.org.za or non...@cosatu.org.za with the following details:

Name:
Surname:
ID number: 
Media House/Address:
Contact number/email: 

Alternatively, an application form can be completed via this link:

COSATU 40th Anniversary Media Accreditation Application Form – Fill out form

Issued by COSATU

Zanele Sabela (National Spokesperson)

Mobile:  079 287 5788 / 077 600 6639

Email: zan...@cosatu.org.za

____________________

COSATU to host lectures in the lead up to 40^th anniversary

Zanele Sabela, COSATU National Spokesperson, 25 September 2025

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is set the host a series of lectures in the lead up to its 40^th anniversary celebration at Dobsonville Stadium on 6 December.

 

The culmination of four years of unity talks, COSATU came into being on 1 December 1985, and brought together 33 competing unions and federations opposed to apartheid and whose common goal was to bring about a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society.

 

The Federation has been at the forefront of advancing, defending and protecting the interests and rights of workers since, and has led in the formation of the country’s progressive labour laws including workers’ rights to form trade unions, collective bargaining and to strike, minimum conditions of service, National Minimum Wage, etc.

 

From its vehement resistance of apartheid to the ushering in of the democratic dispensation and improving the economic and social wellbeing of the working class 31 years post democracy, COSATU has stood the test of time.

 

In the lead up to its 40^th anniversary in December, the Federation will host a variety of activities starting with a series of lectures by its National Office Bearers.

 

The lectures will tackle diverse subjects from COSATU’s pivotal role in gender struggles to the strike that broke the back of industry-wide exploitative labour practices as far back as 1959.  

 

Province: North-West
Date: 19 November

Topic: Strengthening Industrial Unions to build a militant COSATU        

Main Speaker: Mike Shingange, COSATU 1st Deputy President

Province: Eastern Cape
Date: 20 November

Topic: COSATU and the Reconfiguration of the Alliance      

Main Speaker: Duncan Luvuno, COSATU 2nd Deputy President

Province: Gauteng
Date: 21 November

Topic: COSATU and the Mass Democratic Movement 

Main Speaker: Zingiswa Losi, COSATU President 

 

Issued by COSATU

South Africa

NEHAWU statement on the 2025 MTBPS

Zola Saphetha, NEHAWU General Secretary, November 12, 2025

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] notes the 2025 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement [MTBPS] as presented today in Parliament by the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, in conjunction with the tabling of the Division of Revenue Amendment Bill, Adjustment Appropriation Bill, Taxation Laws Amendment Bill and the Tax Administration Laws Amendment Bill.

The 2025 MTBPS is presented against the background of the persistent socioeconomic stagnation, underlined by the forecasted economic growth rate of 1.4% in 2025, on the back of an insignificant economic growth at an annual average rate of 0.7% over the past decade of sustained austerity measures.

Hence, overall unemployment rate remains elevated at a crisis proportion of about 12 million people or 43% of the workforce, more than two-thirds of whom are the country’s young people.

The current National Minimum Wage of R4,986 is below the basic household food basket estimated at R5,405 (which obviously excludes other basic household necessaries), which underlines the fact that the prevalent vast scale of poverty also impinges on the working people. The poor working people are additional to the estimated 30.4 million people who live on less than R1,634 per person per month (the upper-bound poverty line). So these are some of the acute socioeconomic realities that characterize the current concrete context against which the 2025 MTBPS was presented, and unfortunately on which there was a deafening silence in the minister’s statement.

Macroeconomic Policy

NEHAWU rejects the Treasury’s fiscal stance of growing the primary fiscal surplus, when it knows that the past decade of sustained budgetary cuts have devastated the capacity and capability of the public sector, including the provision of public services to the working class and rural poor, whilst seeking to draw additional spending through the dollar-denominated World Bank loans, of which this year alone amount to over R40 billion.

We note the announcement of a major policy shift in terms of the monetary policy, from an inflation-target range of between 3% and 6%, to a new inflation target of 3%, with “a 1% tolerance band”. This is accompanied by an announcement of the consideration of options for a formal fiscal anchor.

To begin with, as NEHAWU we have vehemently rejected any policy of inflation-targeting which is not balanced with the utilization of the monetary policy in pursuing the targeting of employment creation and economic growth rate.

Clearly, the introduction of an even lower and rigid inflation-target, which would be accompanied by a “formal” fiscal anchor policy, emphatically underlines the overall doubling-down with contractionary Neoliberal macroeconomic and overall Neoliberal economic policies, including the opening up of public infrastructure domains for private ownership by the seventh administration.

The envisaged introduction of a formal fiscal anchor is designed to consolidate the Treasury’s supremacy over Parliament by restricting its scope when considering the proposed budgets. On the one hand the Treasury announces this new inflation target without publishing any empirical studies supporting the merits of this new target and allowing for public comment, whilst on the other hand it disturbingly states that there are “short-term fiscal costs of a lower target, which include a lower nominal GDP and revenue growth”, which is an open admission of the contractionary nature of this new target. This can only spell future austerity measures and contractionary budgets.

NEHAWU shall continue to agitate against and oppose the consolidation of this Neoliberal state, and we hope that Parliament would once again stand up to the arrogant Treasury’s imposition of these policies that do not even carry the 2024 ANC’s electoral mandate, as it did with regard to the imposition of the VAT increase this year.

Public Service

 

NEHAWU notes with concern that the Treasury is now stating that "any future wage agreements beyond 2027/28 will have to be aligned with inflation.” In the first place, we have rejected the current public service wage agreement which merely keeps wage adjustments along the average annual inflation rate.

Indeed, we consider this throwaway statement in the 2025 MTBPS as part of the continuing anti-collective bargaining posture that started during the sixth administration, in which public servants were openly mugged R40 billion out of their pockets in 2021 alone.

This formal policy of seeking to align public service wage agreements with inflation rate appears to be part of the existing compensation spending anchor of keeping the public service wage bill below a third of the consolidated budget. Indeed, it smacks of another attempt to undermine collecting bargaining by linking it to inflation rate. Beyond our 13^th Congress in 2026, we shall gear our organisation to sustain the fight and win against these continuing attacks on collective bargaining beyond 2027/28. 

NEHAWU is extremely concerned that National Treasury is using the Targeted and Responsible Savings (TARS) initiative to further dismantle the public service and to restrict the social grant beneficiaries even more. Across the public service, there are vast number of vacancies which undermines the capacity of the public service in providing adequate services to the public, as during the past 10 years of self-defeating austerity measures these services have deteriorated.

We cannot permit National Treasury to invent yet another misleading acronym as a guise for underfunding public services and not filling vital vacancies. Many of the “non-performing programmes” are undermined by the under-staffing and lack of adequate resources due to austerity measures. Currently, there are 31,811 educator and 27,523 healthcare worker in unfilled vacancies, yet the Treasury continues with the Early Retirement Scheme, which unfortunately encourages the exodus of the most experienced and skilled public service personnel.

Social Protection

Whilst we welcome the extension of the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant (SRD Grant) by another financial year, the fact that the Treasury states that it is working on “proposals to link the working age population to skills development and employment programmes” represents a disgraceful avoidance of the ANC’s own mandate to establish a universal Basic Income Grant and the adoption of the discredited “job-seekers grant” of the Democratic Alliance. We consider this policy as an attempt to further reduce the beneficiaries of the SRD Grant, since the Treasury knows that in the current environment of deep-seated structural unemployment there are no employment opportunities for jobseekers, and such a scheme typically comes with financially wasteful and burdensome administrative bureaucracy to verify the job-seeking efforts of the unemployed.

 

We reject the "scaling down” of the Public Transport Network Grant (PTNG), which provides funding to selected municipalities for public transport infrastructure and the indirect costs of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) services. The aim of this grant is to support the development of integrated, accessible, and affordable municipal public transport networks.

Public transport subsidies have been part of the budgetary items targeted for cuts over the past decade, which has contributed to the escalation of transport spending in working class households, in addition to the explosion of the costs of electricity by 68% and water by 50% over the last five years. 

Post-school Education

NEHAWU notes that the Treasury continues with its policy of seeking to scale down allocations to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). Despite the record National Senior Certificate (NSC) pass rate in 2025, the Treasury still allowed for massive shortfall of more than R12 billion for both universities and TVET colleges in the year 2025, amidst about R14 billion indebtedness of the NSFAS.

With regard to grants to universities, we note the fact that they have not been growing significantly to meet the growing demand, amidst the crises of accommodation and physical spaces for learning.

The budget for university education increased from R91.7 billion in 2024, to R96 billion in 2025 – and now it is planned to be at R100.4 billion in the 2026 academic year. In the current academic year, there has already been a R1.4 billion deficits on the budgets of universities as a cumulative effect of the rolling austerity measures of the past years.

The funds allocated for PSET will only grow by 4.6% over the medium term, which is not sufficient for the growing demand for higher learning. Without really increased investment, these shortfalls will continue to limit access for the poor and working class students, deepening social exclusion and undermining youth development.

Healthcare

Public healthcare is provisionally allocated R20.8 billion to cover compensation and essential services. This funding will facilitate the employment of 800 doctors who have finished their community service, safeguard about 4 700 health posts and address shortages in medical goods, services and accruals. All of these additional allocations are welcomed although this is at a reduce baseline due to past budgetary cuts in healthcare.

An additional R1.4 billion is earmarked for the construction of Siloam Hospital and the implementation of public-private partnership health technology at Tygerberg Hospital. We reject this Tygerberg Hospital public-private partnership. Nonetheless, we welcome the allocation of over R560 million to cover the shortfall in support of provincial HIV/ TB health services.

 

As NEHAWU we hold that any future announcement on the abolishment of the medical tax expenditure subsidies must be phased, beginning with top 10% in the income distribution and the wealthy. Together with the retirement insurance subsidies, these subsidies are discriminatory relics of the Apartheid system – in this case of healthcare they exclude the 84% majority of our people who have no access of private health insurance.

These resources, which would anyway be part of the mixed sources to fund the creation of the National Health Insurance must be ring-fenced for the upgrade of healthcare infrastructure, medical equipment and procurement of medicine and more importantly for the employment of clinical personnel and support staff in public hospitals and clinics. 

END

Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat.

__________________

SAMWU calls off strike Sol Plaatje strike following LLF Agreement

Pieter Demas, SAMWU Northern Cape Provincial Secretary, 12 November 2025

The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) in the Northern Cape province confirms that the municipal strike scheduled to commence on 12 November 2025 has been officially called off following a decisive victory for workers' rights reached this afternoon.

Our battle was fought on the principle of dignity. Municipal workers demanded justice for the non-implementation of a critical Local Labour Forum (LLF) resolution from May 2025, a resolution promising the absorption of 497 long-serving contract workers. When our members sought answers on Monday morning in a peaceful demonstration, their legitimate protest was met not with dialogue, but with the brutal force of the police, resulting in the deplorable arrest of one of our comrades. Only through the swift intervention of the SAMWU legal team was our member released on warning.

The special session of the Local Labour Forum, attended by SAMWU Provincial and Regional leadership, IMATU, Council and Management representatives, and crucially, the Executive Mayor, Ms. Babarah Barlett, concluded with a major breakthrough.

The agreement reached this afternoon is an affirmation of the power of organised labour, it guarantees the permanent absorption, in phases, of the 497 employees who have dedicated years of their lives to the service of the municipality.

Furthermore, the meeting has agreed to regular, constructive engagements between management and organised labour, laying the foundation for labour stability and respectful relations going forward.

SAMWU strongly condemns the police brutality witnessed on Monday. We stand firmly with our member who suffered at the hands of those sworn to protect, and we demand that the South African Police Service takes full and immediate responsibility for its unwarranted assault on a harmless municipal worker.

The SAMWU will not rest until this hard-won victory is fully realised. We will continuously monitor the implementation of this agreement and have called on the Human Resources Sub-Committee to verify the list of affected employees to ensure every single contract worker receives the justice they are owed.

This outcome is a testament to the courage and solidarity of the municipal workers of Sol Plaatje. We fought, and we won!

Issued by SAMWU Northern Cape

International-Solidarity   

South Africa will not be divided by foreign misinformation

Nomusa Cembi , SADTU Media Officer, 13 November 2025

The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) strongly condemns the false and inflammatory claims made by U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio alleging that Afrikaners are victims of genocide in South Africa.

These statements are not only factually baseless, but they are also a dangerous attempt to distort South Africa’s democratic reality and sow racial division at a time when our nation is working tirelessly to build unity, justice, and equality.

SADTU views these claims as:

• Politically opportunistic and designed to stoke racial fear and division for foreign political gain.

• Diplomatically irresponsible intended to undermine South Africa’s sovereignty and nonracial democracy on the eve of the G20 Summit.

• Morally offensive and trivializing the real, historical meaning of genocide.

We stand in solidarity with all South Africans—Black, White, Coloured, and Indian, who reject racism in all its forms. Our Constitution enshrines equality, dignity, and non-racialism. SADTU remains committed to building a just, inclusive society where no group is vilified or falsely portrayed as victim or perpetrator for political expediency.

We call on international leaders to engage with South Africa through facts, not fear. Let us not allow misinformation to derail the hard-won gains of our democracy.

No Genocide. No Persecution. No Place for White Supremacy.

South Africa’s Constitution guarantees the rights and dignity of all its people — Black, White, Coloured, and Indian. The notion of a racial genocide against Afrikaners is a fabrication rooted in white supremacist propaganda, not in truth. It insults the memory of real genocides and undermines the lived experiences of communities who have endured systemic violence.

SADTU calls on all South Africans to reject this narrative with moral clarity and patriotic resolve. We must not allow foreign actors to weaponize misinformation for political gain.

A Call for Unity and Vigilance

We urge South Africans to:

• Stand together against racism, bigotry, and attempts to divide us.

• Defend our democracy from external manipulation and internal regression.

• Educate with truth and resist the spread of hate speech disguised as concern.

SADTU reaffirms its commitment to non-racialism, social justice, and the protection of all communities. We will continue to mobilize educators, learners, and citizens to build a South Africa that is inclusive, transparent, and free from the shadows of apartheid ideology.

Let us unite, not in fear, but in courage. Let us defeat white supremacy, not with silence, but with solidarity.

ISSUED BY: SADTU Secretariat

______________________________

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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