Taking COSATU Today Forward, 14 October 2025 #Cosatu@40 #Cosatu40thAnniversary
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY #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
14 October 2025
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
Organize at every workplace and demand respect for labour rights Now!
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Join COSATU NOW!
Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- All-Africa Trade Union Virtual Forum Energy Poverty, “Mission 300” and the Fight to Reclaim & Restore Public Energy Systems
- COSATU to host lectures in the lead up to 40th anniversary
- South Africa
- NEHAWU statement on the launch of Public Service Delivery Campaign focusing on public healthcare system in the Eastern Cape
- SACP rejects compradorial policymaking and its neo-liberal paradigm
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- SACP condemns United States aggression against Venezuela, denounces Nobel Peace Prize on a sworn apartheid Israel supporter, an imperialist coup agent in Venezuela against a democratically elected government
- Gaza: ITUC welcomes ceasefire and urges full implementation as a critical step towards lasting peace under international law
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
All-Africa Trade Union Virtual Forum Energy Poverty, “Mission 300” and the Fight to Reclaim & Restore Public Energy Systems
13 October 2025
Please join us for a virtual meeting of African unions and their allies on:
October 22nd, 2025. Time: 13:00 Lome, Togo/14:00 Tunisia/15:00 Johannesburg, South Africa. Find your local time here.
Anyone that wants to attend must please register. All registrants will receive a zoom link. REGISTER HERE!
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/VpEYufYwSAK3aoP-5TJnpQ
Interpretation: to be confirmed! Dependent on the need and resources required.
Why This Meeting?
In early August 2025, the Africa Region of the ITUC convened an 80-person convening in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that committed to lead broad-based effort to Reclaim & Restore public energy systems.
Consistent with this commitment, national centres, affiliated unions, representatives of Global Union Federations and other allies are invited to join us for a discussion on the recently released “Mission 300” electrification proposal from the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank.
Informed by existing anti-privatisation struggles and campaigns being waged by unions in several countries on the continent, the meeting will consider ways to develop a unified response to Mission 300 and its push for further privatisation.
Attached please find the invitation to the meeting and ensure that you register so as to receive the link for the meeting. Here is the link to information on Mission 300 and the latest push to privatise public energy systems in Africa: “Mission 300” electrification proposal.
This meeting is co-hosted by the African Regional Organisation of the International Trade Union Confederation, Public Services International and Trade Unions for Energy Democracy.
Kind Regards
Suraya Jawoodeen
on behalf of the TUED team
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COSATU to host lectures in the lead up to 40th 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 40th 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 40th 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:
Mpumalanga
Date:
16 October
Venue: Ikhethelo Secondary School, Bethal
Topic: Gert Sibande Potato Boycott
Main Speaker: Duncan Luvuno, COSATU 2nd Deputy President
Province:
Northern Cape
Date:
30 October
Topic: COSATU and the Liberation Movement
Main Speaker: Solly Phetoe, COSATU General Secretary
Province:
North-West
Date:
19 November
Topic: Strengthening Industrial Unions to build a militant COSATU
Main Speaker: Duncan Luvuno, COSATU 2nd Deputy President
Province:
Eastern Cape
Date:
20 November
Topic: COSATU and the Reconfiguration of the Alliance
Main Speaker: Mike Shingange, COSATU 1st Deputy President
Province:
Gauteng
Date:
21 November
Topic: COSATU and the Mass Democratic Movement
Main Speaker: Zingiswa Losi, COSATU President
Issued by COSATU
NEHAWU statement on the launch of Public Service Delivery Campaign focusing on public healthcare system in the Eastern Cape
Zola Saphetha, NEHAWU General Secretary, October 13, 2025
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] has called this media briefing to communicate to our members, workers and the public about resuscitating of our National Public Service Delivery Campaign focusing on Public Healthcare System Nationally with specific focus in the Eastern Cape in particular Nelson Mandela Health District.
The resuscitation occurs against the background of a damning report by the Public Protector on the state of healthcare in particular Nelson Mandela Bay with a central focus on Dora Nginza Regional Hospital.
The state of healthcare system in the Nelson Mandela Health District is confronted by insurmountable challenges which range from corruption, maladministration, nepotism, staff shortages, dilapidated healthcare infrastructure, shortage of medicines and food for patients.
The Public Protector initiated an investigation into the state of affairs at Dora Nginza Regional Hospital but broadly the province, following reports that pregnant women, awaiting admission for critical caesarean section surgeries were forced to sleep on the floor and chairs at the hospital.
Indeed, the Public Protector conducted her investigation and made findings upon completion of the investigation. The findings are damning about state of healthcare system in the province especially Nelson Mandela Bay, which is confronted by systematic failures in the provision of basic health services, including neglect of patients, prolonged waiting times, and compromised healthcare delivery.
The report by the Public Protector does not shock nor surprise us as NEHAWU, as we have long made a conclusion that the healthcare services in the province are in a dire state that require urgent attention. As far back in 2020, at the peak of COVID-19, the union produced as fact-finding report following after our National Office Bearers had visited health institutions across the country.
The fact-finding report had highlighted that across various institution there was lack of compliance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act, shortage of staff, poor and broken management system, dysfunctional district health system and poor infrastructure and poor adherence to National Core Standards.
The report was submitted to the National Department of Health, Provincial Health Departments, Office of the President, Alliance partners and also the International Labour Organisation and the World Health Organisation. However, much of what had been highlighted in the report has not been addressed.
Infact, the situation has worsened to a point whereby there are failures in the provision of basic health services to an extent that pregnant women are forced to sleep on chairs awaiting services.
This continuous failure by the Department of Health especially in this province in addressing challenges confronting the healthcare system is appalling.
Indeed, the department has demonstrated beyond any reason doubt that it does not value nor care about the healthcare system and this is evident by the deplorable state of healthcare in this province.
It is totally unacceptable that the department has neglected its duty of ensuring that the people receive quality healthcare services. How does the department explain what is currently unfolding with the state of health services in Nelson Mandela Metropolitan?
As NEHAWU, we have on numerous occasions called on the department of health to urgently attend to the collapsing Public Healthcare System, however our calls have fallen on deaf ears.
The situation highlights the crisis of governance and management that is very acute across the health sector in the province, and this requires urgent intervention before a catastrophe occurs.
The situation in hospitals, healthcare centres, clinics and medical depot in Nelson Mandela Health District is appalling and compromises provision of quality healthcare services to thousands of people across the health district as the system is characterised by maladministration, nepotism, etc.
Currently, as we convene this media briefing, those directed by the Public Protector have not complied with the recommended remedial actions by the Public Protector, which include amongst others:
• Implementation Plan for the establishment or conversion of Empilweni TB Hospital to a District Hospital in the Nelson Mandela Health District.
• A detailed report/plan, which includes timelines, indicating how the critical shortage of both medical and non-clinical staff within the health facility will be addressed.
• A detailed report/plan, which includes timelines, indicating when the kitchen and laundry of Dora Nginza Regional Hospital will be relocated according to the Revitalisation of Infrastructure Project for which funds have been made available by the Department, including procurement of new equipment.
• Recruitment process for the vacant position of non-clinical staff at the Dora Nginza Regional Hospital is finalised.
• A report/ plan which includes dates and timelines on how the provision of security inside the wards will be addressed.
As such, the union has ventured into this programme to ensure that the remedial actions are implemented without fail as directed by the Public Protector report.
In this regard, the union has written to the Minister of Health, MEC of Health and the Head of Department seeking accountability on how they have complied with the remedial actions.
Equally, we will be visiting workplaces across the health district as part of our campaign to ensure that there is compliance and safe working conditions in these institutions.
In our view, this is a battle worth fighting for, the union will not tire without ensuring that such legally binding recommendations are implemented and that communities receives necessary quality healthcare services.
Furthermore, the union is contemplating to write to the Public Protector express its intentions to enforce the implementation of remedial action as we view the non-compliance as tantamount to contempt of Public Protector’s legally binding remedial actions.
NEHAWU as revolutionary and transformative red-union, is embarking on this campaign with an intention to achieve improved quality service to our people in order to better their lives particularly, the working class and the poor as well as contributing to the building of a capable and developmental state that intervenes to societal needs.
This campaign is inspired by the union’s orientation, amidst the prevailing worsening living conditions of our people and poor service triggered by the neo-liberal policy of austerity, to build public service cadre that places the interests of society, the working class in particular at the centre of the service given its strategic location at the point of service.
This campaign will necessitate the government to urgently address the challenges confronting health in the province.
Indeed, the public service delivery campaign is a tool at the disposal of the union to transform the public healthcare system for the benefit of our people.
On Friday 17th October, we will resuscitate our national public service delivery campaign with a march to submit a memorandum of demands to address the challenges confronting healthcare in the province.
END
Issued by NEHAWU
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SACP rejects compradorial policymaking and its neo-liberal paradigm
Mbulelo Mandlana, SACP Head of Media, Communications and Information, 12 October 2025
Except for references by some to a leaked document, we have not seen the government strategy called Growth and Inclusion (GAIN), nor have we been consulted at any stage in its formulation.
We will therefore produce a critique of GAIN once it has been made publicly available.
However, given emerging references to GAIN, including by the ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa during his remarks on 6 October 2025 when he closed its National Executive Committee meeting, it is crucial to highlight our observations at this stage.
In outlining the key economic policy decisions of the meeting, Ramaphosa said, “These interventions are intended to support government’s proposed implementation plan on growth and inclusion [GAIN], and which informs the Annual Performance Plans of various government departments”. Save for stating outright that there was also no Alliance consultation, we will address those interventions separately in due course, except for those that are either similar or the same as the approaches or the measures we shall critique in this statement.
“Growth through inclusion”?
Since we do not have a copy of GAIN, we shall base our critique in advance on the working paper titled “Growth Through Inclusion in South Africa”. The paper was produced and first published by the Growth Lab associated with the Centre for International Development at Harvard University in the United States in November 2023.
The Growth Lab, especially its leading figure, has exerted disproportionate influence on the South African government’s economic policy choices since the 2000s, including through concepts such as “binding constraints”. It is in this context that neo-liberal macro-economic conservatism took hold once neo-liberalism was embedded in our policy space through the imposition of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy in 1996. After GEAR’s underpinning assumptions were entrenched, under the notion “fundamentals are in place”, supply-side or sectoral factors identified as “binding constraints”, but never the neo-liberal macro-economic policy path, have solely been blamed for South Africa’s economic failures. This distortion and subordination of economic policy must end.
If it is the commissioned source or the founding template of what the government now refers to as the GAIN strategy, the paper produced following a visit to South Africa by members of the foreign-based group, perhaps with an evergreen contract designed in ways that give it legitimacy, represents the privatisation of policymaking itself. The paper is drafted in a way that seeks to dictate the direction of South Africa’s economy and development path. It could as well form the latest iteration of the base template on which the policymaking compradors, those who act as transmission belts for foreign-determined policy directions, anchor their stifling of what should be democratic policymaking. This undermines the legislated principle of consensus-seeking consultation that underpins institutions such as the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC). Particularly, it is labour and community constituencies who are more undermined by both the approach followed and the class content it produces.
Rather than promoting inclusion, the compradorial policymaking approach excludes and undermines homegrown research and institutional capability, especially progressive South African researchers, academics and institutions such as public universities, research bodies and their research programmes, to name but a few. This trend seems to be a new practice in academic neo-colonialism dressed as technical expertise. The working class needs to build maximum unity to oppose all forms of the surrender of national sovereignty, including the handing over of public policymaking to foreign actors under the false guise of expertise and inclusion.
In substantive terms, beneath the paper’s polished economics language lies the reproduction of a familiar neo-liberal script. Its core arguments of “growth through inclusion”, “growth and inclusion”, “binding constraints” and “comparative advantage” may appear attractive at first sight, but upon closer scrutiny they emerge as recycled or co-opted notions designed in pursuit of neo-liberal paradigm maintenance.
Meanwhile, under GEAR, and other neo-liberal policies that followed, South Africa suffered a crisis of mass unemployment, to which we shall return, together with widening inequality and persistent high rates of poverty. The promise of shared prosperity through both distribution and redistribution was betrayed by the very logic of the market-driven model the paper seeks to further entrench.
The evidence is undeniable. Workers’ share of income from production and trade, including services, has fallen steadily or at least stagnated while corporate income, including profits, rents and dividends for capitalist bosses, has soared. The pay of their chief executives is obscenely high as well, a stark contrast to the misery endured by the working class under the exploitative wages system.
The workers’ share of GDP, once above 55 per cent, has dropped below 45 per cent, signalling a decisive shift in favour of the capitalist bosses, followed by their executives. More than half the population lives in poverty. These are not the results of individual mismanagement or wrongdoing in governance only, but the predictable outcomes of a system built on racialised, gendered and spatialised economic exploitation, private profit-driven accumulation and dispossession. It is capitalism at work!
The paper misidentifies the cause of South Africa’s stagnation by placing sole blame on “collapsing state capacity” and “spatial exclusion”. These are effects, not the principal causes. Beyond the long history of colonial and apartheid dispossession and oppression, the underlying cause is in the class inequality-based capitalist system itself and its neo-liberal policy regime. This has, of course, been compounded by state capture and other forms of corruption, including those driven by foreign-determined policy directions. Decades of commitment to privatisation agendas, including outsourcing, deregulation and fiscal austerity have deliberately weakened the state and empowered private capital.
The erosion of state capacity was by no means an accident. It was designed through neo-liberal policy choices that subordinated the state to dominant capitalist market forces. The paper seeks to deepen the subordination by promoting micro-economic liberalisation and profit-driven “private participation” and competition in sectors such as electricity, ports, rail, water and telecommunications, in the ultimate analysis, systematically eroding state participation in the economy instead of driving its inclusion, strengthening, expansion and diversification for the benefit of the people as a whole. The paper seeks to hand over these public assets to exploitation by private profiteers under the false banner of efficiency and inclusion.
As the SACP has long warned, privatisation today extends far beyond the sale of state assets or state-owned enterprises. It includes outsourcing, deregulation and micro-economic liberalisation as its strategies in favour of profit-driven private competition and exploitation within network sectors such as electricity generation, rail, ports, water and the high radio-frequency spectrum – which has been auctioned off to the highest bidders. In the end, this systematically drives affected state-owned enterprises into a path of a further decline, having historically deprived them of adequate recapitalisation through austerity in macro-fiscal policy. The paper frames the recapitalisation of state-owned enterprises as “bailouts” and “counterproductive”, portraying necessary investment or capital expansion under state ownership as a problem rather than a solution.
Its ideological posture seeks to entrench the domination of profit-driven interests over essential network infrastructure that should serve the people through thriving public utilities and state-owned enterprises, as opposed to governance decay, mismanagement, state capture, and other forms of corruption and destruction by the neo-liberal policy paradigm. The paper’s vision of “inclusion” is essentially the inclusion of private capital into spaces once reserved for, and according to the Freedom Charter which must be under public ownership and democratic control as part of monopoly industries. It is the inclusion of the few at the expense of the many.
If the South African government were to adopt the paper or integrate its neo-liberal ideas into the founding template of what it calls the GAIN strategy, it would mark a new low in the surrender of national sovereignty. It would be a disgrace and a betrayal of South African researchers, academics, workers and the principle of democratic, consensus-seeking consultation in policymaking, among others at NEDLAC. It would signify the deliberate submission of our sovereign policy space to foreign-determined directions or individuals who have no accountability to the South African people. This would amount to endorsing dependency and further dismantling the opportunity to build the state’s own research and planning capacity.
One of the paper’s most glaring weaknesses is its blind faith in the failed neo-liberal macro-economic framework that has governed South Africa for nearly three decades. It sees nothing wrong with the macro-fiscal and monetary policies that have strangled growth, starved the public sector of investment, entrenched unemployment and sustained high levels of poverty. The paper celebrates “fiscal discipline” when South Africa requires fiscal transformation. It defends austerity, implemented under fiscal consolidation, by framing the necessity for state-owned enterprises recapitalisation as “bailouts”, even as public infrastructure, as we have seen in electricity and rail networks, crumbled and essential services, in sectors such as healthcare, nearly collapsed, further eroding state capacity.
The paper does not challenge private ownership of the means of production. It does not call for democratic control of the economy. It offers no path to equitable distribution and to redistribute wealth or power. Instead, it proposes to “fix” inequality by expanding markets, to “empower” society, with the capitalist class framed as if it is society, by privatising the state or converting it into a field of profit making by competing sections of capital. This is a promise to achieve “growth” by capitalist market-led “inclusion”, including by inviting more profit-seeking and commodification into public life. It is the same ideology that has, in no small measure, contributed to deindustrialisation in South Africa’s manufacturing base, weakened labour and left millions unemployed.
True development will not come from foreign-determined policy directions and associated compradorial policymaking. It will come from deepening our national democratic policy sovereignty and a radical structural transformation of South Africa’s political economy to achieve the Freedom Charter’s economic goals. This will require a decisive break with neo-liberal orthodoxy.
The state must lead in rebuilding the productive economy, reviving manufacturing and expanding public works to serve as the skills development training space and absorb the unemployed on a decent work basis.
Fiscal policy must direct resources towards infrastructure, skills development and strategic industries, especially domestic manufacturing and related value chains development, diversification and expansion, as well as agrarian transformation, including agro-processing, and the rising digital economy, to mention but a few.
Neo-liberal macro-economic paradigm maintenance
The macro-economic section of the paper is about a rigid adherence to the neo-liberal paradigm that has dominated South Africa’s policy landscape since GEAR in 1996. Ironically, evidence shows that it is under no other but this policy regime that South Africa has seen the rise of and dismally failed to overcome macro-economic problems such as the unemployment crisis.
The central claim that South Africa’s economic slowdown is “not due to macro-economic problems or external shocks” but rather to “persistent and worsening domestic supply-side constraints” only is deeply flawed and ideologically loaded. This argument is designed to absolve and maintain the neo-liberal macro-economic policy paradigm under which South Africa has also seen continued deindustrialisation, widening inequality, persistent high levels of poverty and a social reproduction crisis, most of all affecting the working class.
For example, the lowest unemployment rate in South Africa, measured by the narrow definition that excludes discouraged work seekers, was 16.5 per cent in 1995. After the adoption of the neo-liberal GEAR strategy in 1996, the official unemployment rate climbed above 20 per cent and entered a structural crisis that has since deepened.
Today unemployment by the narrow definition is 33.2 per cent, affecting 8.4 million active work seekers. By the expanded definition, which includes discouraged work seekers, unemployment is far higher, at approximately 43 per cent, affecting 12.6 million active and discouraged work seekers combined.
In terms of national groups, unemployment is the worst for black African men and women. By the expanded definition, it is 43 per cent for black African men and 51.4 per cent for black African women, the most affected by both race and gender. Highlighting the structural character of the crisis, the proportion of workers affected by long-term unemployment is 76.6 per cent.
It is inconceivable that a crisis of this magnitude could be resolved through supply-side measures alone. Even more unacceptable are measures that undermine or seek to roll back state participation in the economy under the guise of inclusion while promoting competition between profit-driven interests in sectors where state participation should, in line with the Freedom Charter, serve as the mainstay.
The capitalist class, the social group often referred to in terms of economic ownership and control whenever the term private sector or private sector competition is used, is always a tiny minority. Any talk of inclusion framed from the perspective of competition among the members of this class will always target the economic exploitation of the masses of workers and serve as their active exclusion from economic ownership and control.
The paper’s treatment of the macro-economic policy space is narrow and devoid of a critique of the problematic capitalist system and its social relations of production. This flawed approach presents macro-fiscal and monetary policy as neutral instruments of “stability”. In reality, we have seen how these are used to serve class interests by curtailing public spending through austerity under fiscal consolidation and the guise of “fiscal discipline”, suppressing wages and prioritising the returns of finance capital over the needs of the working class, the majority of the people, and productive sectors.
The paper’s attack on wages, describing them as higher than expected by blaming wage increases for constraining the reduction of government spending, reflects active support for neo-liberal austerity and suppression of workers’ remuneration in favour of the agenda by the class forces that expected lower wage settlements, manipulation and undermining of collective bargaining. The paper does not say who expected wage increases to be lower than the settlements reached. Surely, it cannot be workers, broadly the working class, but capitalist bosses and their economists and agents in and outside the state. The attack on workers’ income is a class position.
The paper’s assertion that fiscal stimuli is counterproductive because of negative multipliers reverses causality. The fiscal challenges did not cause stagnation. Stagnation was the direct result of restrictive macro-fiscal and monetary policies that combined austerity or fiscal consolidation with high real interest rates that strangled investment and employment. Also, by treating the cost of capital as an external constraint that can only be managed through austerity, the paper denies the state its developmental role.
A high-interest rate regime and interest rate hikes that the paper uncritically embraces when it refers to the role that the South African Reserve Bank has played, especially in implementing the narrow policy of inflation targeting, directly undermines productive investment. Ironically, in the United States it is a mandate for the Federal Reserve, their central bank if you like, to ensure long-term moderate interest rates and to conduct monetary policy in a way that favours maximum sustainable employment. This makes sense because when the cost of borrowing becomes exorbitant, a significant number of small and medium enterprises, co-operatives and even large industrial firms are unable or find it difficult to expand productive capacity, which has been the case in South Africa.
The results include weak investment, factory closures, retrenchments and continued deindustrialisation. These are the very conditions that perpetuate unemployment and poverty and curtail the national fiscus. The paper’s silence on this mechanism highlights its ideological bias. It treats monetary policy as sacred and beyond question, even as its conduct undermines productive capacity potential and contributes to the factors that have caused and worsened macro-economic problems such as South Africa’s unemployment crisis.
The depiction of fiscal policy as a mere compensatory instrument designed to alleviate exclusion through transfers rather than transform the productive structure of the economy reveals a deep-rooted adherence to the neo-liberal model. Instead of calling for expansionary public investment to rebuild industry, infrastructure and employment, the paper insists on fiscal consolidation. This has been used to drive austerity. It is neo-liberal ideological paradigm maintenance presented in technocratic language to defend the status quo in the name of “growth through inclusion” or “growth and inclusion (GAIN)”
It is also problematic intellectually to attribute South Africa’s stagnation solely to collapsing state capacity and spatial exclusion while excluding macro-economic policy itself from scrutiny. The state’s capacity crisis is not independent of the macro-economic policy that has, for nearly three decades, constrained public investment, reduced developmental spending and made the state reliant on private capital for many roles. This is not a failure of governance only.
It is the predictable outcome of a policy framework that subordinates the public sector to the dictates of private profit interests and, broadly, the capitalist market. It is, for example, under the macro-fiscal framework promoted by the neo-liberal agenda that there were recruitment moratoriums imposed across all spheres of the government, affecting almost every department and public institution, including clinics, hospitals, schools and colleges, creating a massive vacuum of unfilled vacancies and thus weakening the state’s capacity to fulfil its mandate. In the police and other law enforcement authorities, austerity budgeting or fiscal consolidation has weakened the capacity to combat crime amid a rapidly growing population. This has contributed to high levels of crime.
What is required is a change in the macro-economic framework and sectoral, provincial and local economic development measures that will drive broad-based industrialisation and large-scale employment creation. The anti-Freedom Charter attack on state participation in the economy, in favour of competition by private profit interests facilitated through micro-economic liberalisation, privatisation and outsourcing, commonly referred to as structural reforms, including those targeting network infrastructure, can never be adopted by any revolutionary movement worth its salt. In any case, no revolutionary movement can serve as a transmission belt for foreign-determined policy directions, ignoring the voice of the masses of the working class and poor or stifling democratic policymaking.
The transformation needed must include a decisive break with the orthodoxy of fiscal austerity and restrictive monetary policy. Financial resources must be directed towards broad-based industrialisation, mass employment and broader social transformation.
The Reserve Bank’s core mandate must explicitly include broad-based industrialisation and maximum sustainable employment for South Africa to overcome the unemployment crisis and guarantee the Freedom Charter’s right of all to work in practice.
South Africa’s future lies in the hands of its people, not foreign-determined policy directions such as neo-liberalism. It lies in democratic planning and a revolutionary transformation of society in favour of the majority of the people, being the working class.
A
genuine response to the unemployment catastrophe demands a radical shift in macro-economic policy. This must involve expansionary fiscal intervention, low and developmental interest rates, and the decisive mobilisation of public and social investment to build
a truly inclusive and productive people’s economy. Anything less represents the continuation of failure.
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY
FOUNDED IN 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA.
Media, Communications & Information Department | MCID
International-Solidarity
SACP condemns United States aggression against Venezuela, denounces Nobel Peace Prize on a sworn apartheid Israel supporter, an imperialist coup agent in Venezuela against a democratically elected government
Mbulelo Mandlana, SACP Head of Media, Communications and Information, 11 October 2025
The South African Communist Party (SACP) condemns the military aggression perpetrated by the United States against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The US military attack on Venezuela is a clear violation of international law and an act of war which threatens Venezuela’s peace and security. It is accompanied by a propaganda and disinformation campaign.
The direct threat to Venezuela’s right to sovereignty and self-determination is marked by a growing deployment of military forces closer to the coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean. The imperialist US has deployed over 10,000 military personnel, fighter planes, missile destroyers and missile cruisers, assault troops, assets used in special operations and covert missions, and even a nuclear submarine. This is an arrogant violation of the United Nations Charter, in terms of which member states must refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. The United Nations Organisation was founded upon deep reflection on the bitter lessons of the first and second world wars.
The SACP strongly calls for the unconditional withdrawal of United States military forces from the territories bordering Venezuela and the full compliance of the United States with international laws and regulations. We reiterate our rejection of the United States’ impunity and its violation of the Latin America and Caribbean States Proclamation, which declares South America and the Caribbean a Zone of Peace.
We are calling upon all people worldwide to reject the United States war policy and work towards peace and solidarity.
The United States’ assault on Venezuela is now emboldened by the unwarranted bestowing of the Nobel Peace Prize on a sworn apartheid Israel supporter, Maria Corina Machadoa, one of the leaders of the Venezuelan opposition which advocates for a coup against the democratically elected government of Venezuela. She was part of the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew a democratically elected president, Comrade Hugo Chavez, and has since gained support from the United States regime in her pursuit to undermine the democratic sovereignty of the Venezuelan people.
Maria Corina Machadoa is a documented devotee of apartheid Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom she has invited to militarily overthrow the democratically elected Venezuelan government. Following her hero, Donald Trump, she has pledged to move Venezuela’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if Netanyahu helps her to gain political power in Venezuela. Her political party, Vente Venezuela, signed co-operation agreements with Netanyahu’s Likud Party, pledging to strengthen relations between Israel and Venezuela.
The unwarranted decision to bestow Maria Corina Machadoa the Nobel Peace Prize has in this case discredited this prize by turning it into an instrument for the imperialist agenda of regime change and coups against a democratically elected government.
In its ethnic cleansing campaign, the apartheid Israeli regime has slaughtered over 67,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the past 24 months, over 70 per cent of whom are women, children and elderly. The death toll is expected to rise steeply as at least 10,000 people are unaccounted for as they remain buried under the rubble. On 16 September, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry condemned Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a genocide.
The SACP reaffirms its solidarity with the people of Palestine in their fight for liberation from apartheid Israel. As the SACP, we reiterate our call for the prosecution of the perpetrators of the genocide in Palestine.
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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Gaza: ITUC welcomes ceasefire and urges full implementation as a critical step towards lasting peace under international law
9 October 2025
The ITUC joins unions in Palestine and Israel in welcoming the US-, Qatar-, Egypt- and Türkiye-brokered ceasefire agreement as a crucial first diplomatic step towards peace. AFP
This agreement offers a meaningful yet fragile opening, with Israel withdrawing from large parts of Gaza and Hamas releasing all living hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and detainees, as part of a mutual ceasefire.
After two years of horrendous attacks and escalating conflict, this accord could help to end the spiralling violence in the region.
“On both sides of any conflict, you find workers and their families suffering the consequences. The violence must now end once and for all.”ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle
“We call for immediate and full implementation of the terms of the ceasefire agreement and for continued negotiations to secure a permanent ceasefire and a comprehensive settlement of the conflict.”
Trade unions around the world, including our Israeli and Palestinian affiliates, share a vision of a comprehensive peace between Israel and Palestine, based on the coexistence, in conditions of common security, of two sovereign, independent and viable states. This must include the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 338 and 242, which recognise the 1967 borders, and an end to the occupation and dismantling of illegal settlements and blockades in the West Bank. The current diplomatic peace process, starting with this ceasefire, is an important step towards this shared goal.
The ITUC, therefore, calls for the immediate and full implementation of the terms of the agreement and calls on the international community to convene a comprehensive international peace conference towards this end, ensuring:
A full and immediate permanent ceasefire, with Israeli forces withdrawing immediately from all occupied areas and Hamas ending attacks against Israel.
Strong international guarantees to prevent any return to violence and to ensure security for both Israelis and Palestinians. This should include the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force with the UN human and labour rights system monitoring compliance with international law.
Unfettered, sustained humanitarian access, with an end to all blockades and restrictions on essential goods, fuel, medical supplies, reconstruction materials and services.
Full involvement of the Palestinian people in further negotiations through a process consistent with international law, including UN resolutions on self-determination, statehood and a just settlement of the refugee problem. Any governance or interim oversight should be time-limited, transparent and subject to democratic legitimacy under Palestinian mechanisms. A transitional government cannot exclude the Palestinian Authority, especially considering its commitment to organise democratic elections.
Full respect for international law, including independent investigations, accountability and compensation for violations committed by all parties.
Economic development and reconstruction plans developed with social partners that guarantee access to decent work, respect for human and trade union rights, social protection for all, and the restoration of a free press and access for independent journalists.
The ITUC calls on donors, states, regional organisations and international financial and aid institutions to tie all assistance and political support to the observance of international law, human rights and labour standards, including credible accountability mechanisms and Palestinian institutional capacity building. This is essential for the Palestinian people to shape their own future.
Luc Triangle added: “Only a just peace will last, not one based on coercion. Only peace built on mutual respect and understanding can endure. This starts with mutual recognition. The future of peace in the region is in the hands of the people from Israel and Palestine.
“The ITUC remains ready to mobilise the global trade union movement in solidarity with Palestinian and Israeli workers and will continue to facilitate dialogue between trade unions on both sides to support reconstruction frameworks rooted in rights, reconciliation and social justice.”
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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