Taking COSATU Today Forward, 7 July 2026
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY COSATU Call Center Contacts: 010 002 2590 #SAMWU leads a National Action against maladministration, corruption, austerity measures, undermining of collective agreements in the municipal sector on Thursday, in Tshwane… #NationaActionAgainstCostOfLiving Campaign continues… #ClassWar #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
7 July 2026
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- Media Invite to the SAMWU National Day of Action
- South Africa
- COSATU welcomes arrest of Ubuntu Mayor for contravening Pension Fund Act
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
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What I am still learning, and why that matters
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics #ClassWar
Media Invite to the SAMWU National Day of Action
Papikie Mohale, SAMWU National Media Officer, 3 July 2026
The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) invites members of the media to cover its National Day of Action, which will take place on 9 July 2026 in Tshwane.
The march is expected to be attended by tens of thousands of municipal and water sector workers from across all nine provinces, as SAMWU takes to the streets in defence of workers, collective bargaining and public services.
SAMWU members and workers will gather at the Old Putco Depot in Marabastad, Tshwane, from where they will march to the National Treasury offices to deliver a Memorandum of Demands addressed to National Treasury, COGTA, SALGA and the Department of Water and Sanitation.
The march will raise critical issues affecting workers in municipalities and the water sector, including the underfunding of local government, National Treasury interference, the implementation of collective agreements, the City of Johannesburg PFA, the Wage Curve, Business Units, non-payment of salaries and benefits, outsourcing, consultants, load reduction, water boards and the victimisation of workers and shop stewards.
Details of the march are as follows:
Date:
9 July 2026
Gathering Point: Old Putco Depot, Marabastad, Tshwane
Time: From 9am
Destination: National Treasury offices
Purpose: Delivery of Memorandum of Demands to National Treasury, COGTA, SALGA and the Department of Water and Sanitation
Members of the media are invited to attend and cover the march by confirming attendance with Cde Papikie Mohale on 076 795 8670 or via email on pap...@samwu.org.za.
Issued by SAMWU Secretariat
Papikie Mohale
National Media Officer
076 795 8670
South Africa #ClassSolidarity
COSATU welcomes arrest of Ubuntu Mayor for contravening Pension Fund Act
Zanele Sabela, COSATU Spokesperson, 6 July 2026
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes the arrest of Northern Cape’s Ubuntu Local Municipality Mayor, Cheryl Jantjies, in relation to contravening the Pension Funds Act as well as the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA).
Jantjies was in office in the period between February 2020 to September 2025, during which Municipal Manager, Synthia Levona Itumeleng and Chief Financial Officer, Randile Jacobs Shuping, allegedly withheld/delayed third-party payments deducted from municipal workers’ salaries. This included workers’ contributions to the Consolidated Retirement Pension Fund.
The delayed payments attracted interest, which was never paid despite repeated reminders. The outstanding interest eventually accumulated to a R200 000. The debt was recently reduced to R100 000, but the horse had already bolted, because according to Section 13A of the Pension Funds Act, employers must pay over pension fund contributions in full to the fund within seven days after the end of the month.
As the accounting officer, Jantjies is responsible for overseeing the proper running of the municipality, and as this happened under her watch, she has also contravened the MFMA.
Jantjies appeared briefly in the Richmond Magistrates Court on Friday shortly after her arrest by the Hawks’ Serious Commercial Crime Investigation team. She was granted bail of R2 000 and will be back in court on 20 August, where she will be joined by Itumeleng and Shuping.
COSATU is pleased that issue of withheld pension fund contributions is finally receiving the attention it deserves and that perpetrators are being brought to book. In September 2025, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) put the number of employers who default on paying over workers’ pension fund contributions at 15 521, jeopardising the financial futures of almost 600 000 workers.
Municipalities were among the top three defaulting sectors along with private security and the automotive sector. Worse still, in some municipalities workers go for months on end without even receiving their salaries.
Withheld pension fund contributions and salaries are among the grievances COSATU’s militant Affiliate, South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) will be highlighting during its National Day of Action on Thursday, 9 July, when it will march to National Treasury offices in Tshwane.
The Federation stands 100% in solidarity with SAMWU and will take to the street to support its Affiliate and municipal workers who have borne the brunt of the worst treatment by employers.
Issued by COSATU
International-Solidarity
What I am still learning, and why that matters
7 July, 2026
"I am not sure I fully understand intersectionality in practice. And I think it is worth saying so publicly, because I suspect I am not alone," writes
general secretary Atle Høie.
I want to be honest about something.
At a recent Women’s Committee meeting, I said openly that there are concepts and ideas in the Committee debate I am not sure I fully understand. Intersectionality is one of them. Not the word, I know what it means in theory. But the practice is a different
question. How does it change the way we organize? What should it look like in a collective agreement? How do we take a concept that makes sense in a meeting room in Geneva and make it real for a union in Zimbabwe, in Indonesia, in Norway?
I have not yet worked that out. And I think it is worth saying so publicly, because I suspect I am not alone.
From understanding to doing
When the concept of a transformative agenda was first explained to me, several years ago, I found the underlying logic obvious. If you want to solve a problem, you deal with the root causes. That is not a radical idea. It is just good unionism.
Intersectionality follows the same logic. Workers are not just workers. They are women, migrants, people of colour, older workers, young workers in precarious contracts. Their experience of the workplace is shaped by all of these things at once, not one at
a time. A union that only sees one dimension of who its members are will miss the barriers that matter most to those members. It will bargain for things that look good on paper but leave the most exposed members behind.
When you put it that way, it is not complicated. The logic is there.
But logic and practice are not the same thing. And what I have come to understand, through the work of the Women’s Committee over many years and through the Congress in Sydney last November, is that the distance between understanding something and actually
doing it differently is where the real work lives. That is the step most of us have not yet taken.
Five steps, not one
When I think about where we are as an organization, I think about it in stages.
Getting this understood within our small secretariat in Geneva was one step. Getting it understood by our Executive Committee was another. Getting a Congress of over 1,000 delegates to vote for a feminist resolution, unanimously, was a third. Each of those
steps required real work, real conversation and real time.
But the fifth step, getting our 530 affiliates around the world to understand not just what the resolution says but what it actually means for how they organize and bargain and represent their members, that is the biggest step of all. And we have not taken
it yet.
I do not say that as a criticism. I say it as an honest assessment of where we are and what remains to be done. If you went to many of our affiliates today and asked two simple questions, what does this resolution mean in theory, and how are you going to implement
it in practice, I think the answers would make clear that we have a long way to go. Some affiliates are not yet sure. Some are not yet willing. Most are somewhere in between, trying to understand what this requires of them in their specific context, with their
specific membership, in their specific country.
That is the work ahead of us.
The hardest cases
It is easy to talk about gender equality and intersectionality in a well-resourced union in a country where women are already present in leadership, already heard and already strong. Those conversations are still necessary, but they are not the hardest ones.
The hardest cases are the unions that are still fighting for basic recognition. The mine workers union in a country where conditions are dangerous and pay is minimal, where the union is spending every unit of energy it has just trying to win one more small
benefit for its members. How do you ask that union to also think about intersectionality? How do you make the case that this is not an additional burden but an asset?
The answer, I think, is the same one that applies everywhere: a united workforce is a stronger workforce. If women in your industry do not feel seen by your union, they will not join it. If they do not join it, your bargaining power is weaker. It is not complicated.
But making that argument land, in a context where survival feels more immediate than inclusion, is genuinely difficult. That is a challenge I am still working through, and I do not have a complete answer.
What allyship actually requires
I hear the word allyship often. I use it myself. But I have been thinking about what it actually means, beyond voting yes at a congress.
The most important thing, I think, is time. A trade union leader’s agenda is packed. There is always something more urgent, always another crisis, always another negotiation. If you want to be a genuine ally, you have to decide that understanding this is worth
putting something else aside for. If you do not make that decision, you are not really an ally. You are just someone who votes the right way.
Allyship begins with wanting to understand. Not just accepting the resolution, but sitting down and asking: what does this mean for the specific union I lead, in the specific place I work, with the specific members I represent? What would change if I actually
took this seriously?
I do not think enough of us have asked that question yet. I include myself in that.
What the Women’s Committee has built
The feminist resolution did not come from the top. It came through the Women’s Committee, through years of work by women who understand from their own experience what is at stake. These are women who have come up through struggle. Who have fought their way
into structures that were not built for them. Who know, better than anyone, what is needed and why.
They put this on the agenda because they know the cost of leaving it off. And they have been patient with those of us who have been slower to understand.
That patience is not unlimited. Nor should it be.
A note on privilege
There is something I have to acknowledge. I come to this conversation from a position of considerable privilege. I am a white man from Norway, a country where workers’ rights are strong, where women are present in leadership and where the conditions a man like
me would work in are among the best in the world. That shapes what I find obvious and what I find difficult to see. It means I have to work harder to understand barriers that have never been mine. That is not an excuse. It is a reason to listen more carefully.
Where I am now
I understand intersectionality. I believe in the feminist resolution. I am committed to the work.
But I am also honest enough to say that I am still working out what that commitment requires of me in practice, day by day. I am still in conversation, with colleagues, with the Women’s Committee, with myself, about how these concepts should actually change
what we do.
I think that is the right place to be. Not satisfied. Not finished. Still asking the question.
What I know is this: the unions that will be strongest in ten years are the ones that understand their membership fully, in all its complexity, and organize from that knowledge. The resolution we adopted in Sydney is not a document. It is a direction. And the
work of moving in that direction, seriously, practically, at every level of our organization, is just beginning.
I am committed to that work. And I am still learning how to do 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