Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin, 16 February 2026
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 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
16 February 2026
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
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NEIL AGGETT LABOUR STUDIES UNIT (NALSU) scheduled to host a book launch
South Africa - COSATU welcomes clarification on the appointment of 10 000 additional labour inspectors
- NEHAWU Western Cape Dips its banner for Dr. Diana Ferrus
- Initial response to the State of the Nation Address
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- India: 300 million workers mobilize
- Venezuela: Trade union leaders released but freedom of association and social dialogue must be respected
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 welcomes clarification on the appointment of 10 000 additional labour inspectors
Matthew Parks, COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator, 16 February 2026
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes clarification provided by the Department of Employment and Labour on the appointment of the 10 000 additional labour inspectors.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) committed government to hiring 10 000 permanent labour inspectors this year to boost the existing 2 300 inspectors. This is in addition to the 20 000 interns employed as inspectors through the Presidential Employment Stimulus on two-year contracts.
These two timely interventions by the African National Congress led government will have a massive impact in helping to ensure all workers, in particular the vulnerable and unorganised, enjoy their full labour rights and protections. The current 2 300 inspectors is simply inadequate for an economy with more than 17.1 million workers.
It is critical that the Department of Employment and Labour move with speed to recruit, appoint, train and deploy these inspectors. They need to work hand in hand with Organised Labour and prioritise high risk sectors notorious for abusing employees and undermining labour laws, in particular farm, domestic, construction, hospitality, security, cleaning and transport workers.
This is a progressive step forward to ensuring that the days of construction workers being made to risk life and limb unprotected, municipal workers robbed of their salaries, security guards pickpocketed of their pension funds and domestic workers sexually harassed by their employers come to an end.
The ramping up of the number of labour inspectors from 1 400 in 2020 to the soon to be 12 300 permanent and 20 000 contract inspectors validates COSATU’s continuous engagements on this burning matter with government. It shows the value of having a government led by the ANC and the need to invest in and capacitate the state to deliver public services and enforce the rule of law, including labour rights.
COSATU will continue to engage with the Department and Minister for Employment and Labour, Ms. N. Meth, on this important development to ensure its speedy implementation.
Issued by COSATU
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NEHAWU Western Cape Dips its banner for Dr. Diana Ferrus
Baxolise Mali, NEHAWU Western Cape Provincial Secretary, February 13, 2026
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] in the Western Cape dips its banner for Dr Diana Ferrus, a former member and activist of the union at the University of the Western Cape [UWC]. Many have acknowledged the huge cultural contributions Comrade Ferrus made as a writer and poet. We want to acknowledge the role she played as a trade union activist in the higher education sector.
She joined the University as a student at the height of repression of the apartheid state in 1973. The university was forced to close, in that same year, due to student protests. She would not be able to return as a full-time student due to her financial constraints.
Comrade Ferrus would return to the university many years later as a part-time student and then as a full-time employee. Working as an administrator in the Department of Industrial Psychology, she not only provided valuable support and mentorship to students but also formed part of the early group of employees at the university who established the trade union. The first attempt at unionization of the workers at UWC was under the auspices of the Workers Union which would later become NEHAWU.
These early members of NEHAWU in the higher education sector were among the first to tackle the question of institutional transformation. They led the struggles with the student movement on democratizing governance structures of the institutions and were faced with the challenges of increasing access for educationally and financially disadvantaged students.
Under the auspices of the former Vice-Chancellor, Prof Jakes Gerwel, UWC openly challenged the apartheid system of higher education, when it declared the university as the “Intellectual Home of the Left”. NEHAWU UWC members with students fought the apartheid state under this banner. Comrades like Ferrus who were committed union members of the Academic Support Constituency, attended all union meetings, joined all the picket lines and marched for transformation.
The higher education sector in NEHAWU became a force to reckon with through committed union members like Comrade Ferrus. The sector provided leadership to the union at many different levels. We owe it to these comrades to continue to build strong NEHAWU branches to advance the struggle of the transformation of higher education.
Rest in power Comrade Ferrus, you have left us your legacy to build upon and we will do so with the same commitment that you and others like you built the higher education branches of NEHAWU.
END
Issued by NEHAWU Western Cape Secretariat
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Initial response to the State of the Nation Address
Mbulelo Mandlana, SACP Head of Media, Communications and Information, 14 February 2026
The economic policy thrust of the State of the Nation Address delivered on Thursday, 12 February 2026, by President Cyril Ramaphosa reflected the same economic thinking as the one since the “structural reforms” were adopted in 2019. These reforms followed the neo-liberal prescriptions promoted by the imperialist-dominated Washington-based International Monetary Fund and World Bank and the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. They are designed to promote privatisation through liberalisation and competition for profit maximisation by insinuating private wealth accumulation interests into targeted network infrastructure sectors that were previously under state control and operations by state-owned enterprises such as Eskom, Transnet and Prasa.
What is called “Operation Vulindlela” is, in reality, the full steam implementation of such policy reforms. The United States-based GrowthLab project, associated with National Treasury policy procurement for many years, has been promoting the same agenda under the notion of addressing “binding constraints”. Its recent advocacy of this agenda appears in “Growth Through Inclusion in South Africa”. This template led to the government’s “Growth and Inclusion”. The neo-liberal economic policy thinking did not originate within the state. It originated from private wealth accumulation interests seeking to expand their fields of accumulation. They have pushed it intransigently and subsequently embedded it in dominant state policy thinking as part of their corporate state capture manoeuvres. Its purpose is to open up the state, particularly targeted infrastructure network sectors, and convert them into fields for private wealth accumulation. In short and simple terms, it is part of the new forms of privatisation and state capture.
The South African Communist Party (SACP) calls on the working class to build the widest possible programmatic unity to confront neo-liberalism in all its forms, including austerity. To this end, the SACP will continue to strengthen its efforts to build a popular Left front and a powerful, socialist movement of workers and poor. Immediate steps being taken at the moment include the convening of the Conference of the Left.
The SACP gives credit where credit is due while firmly critical of other aspects, such as neo-liberalism. When addressing the nation, President Cyril Ramaphosa started by recognising the role of women in our liberation struggle. The SACP welcomes this recognition, which deserves a more prominent place in our country’s recorded history. Arts and culture, including, but not limited to, publications, performing arts, fine arts, libraries and museums, and, equally important, education at all levels, can play a key role in giving the recognition of the role played by women in our liberation struggle the prominent place that it deserves in our history. This must also form part and parcel of our struggle for gender equality, the struggle to end capitalist and other forms of patriarchy and its relations.
The SACP welcomes the deployment of the military to support the police in combating crime in areas such as Gauteng and the Western Cape. Crime is the second focus in the State of the Nation Address, following the recognition of the role played by women in our liberation struggle. Nevertheless, in turning his attention to crime, the President should have recognised it as part of the capitalist system crises already afflicting our country and not just as a threat. Whether the measures he announced, important as some are, will address the crisis as urgently as is desperately required, or, at best, bring it to an end remains to be seen. This is because in his observations, the President did not go to the root of the matter: how the capitalist system has generated the crisis. He has not taken the nation into his confidence as to what, according to the government’s theory, is the root cause of crime and its systematic and structural drivers and its unabated crisis-high levels across the country.
While the President focused on organised crime, criminality in general causes sleepless nights in almost every community across the country, among others through drugs, theft, robbery, housebreaking, murder and social and infrastructure destruction and decay, all unabated. The key question that the President could have addressed is how South Africa got to this point while it has the state, including law enforcement authorities and the criminal justice system. Beyond this, fighting crime, including corruption, requires a multipronged approach that also recognises that part of its basis is the prevailing economic system, structure and social relations.
While it is important to improve supply chain management in the public sector and the state in general, problems will remain because of the privatisation of state functions. This includes unnecessary outsourcing and the tenderisation of privatised functions to the “highest bidders” in embedded corruption terms. We have seen how the privatisation of the security of public infrastructure, as in rail, and the privatisation of functions such as electricity distribution network repairs have encouraged destructive competition among beneficiary tender lords. This has engendered sabotage by some of them in order to be awarded the associated tenders.
Corruption and crime, along with the austerity policies advanced by the National Treasury, have left many communities and South Africa as a whole weaker than before. This has also undermined the capacity of national defence, as highlighted by at least two senior defence leaders, and has contributed to setbacks in peacekeeping efforts on our continent.
Corruption in tenders and chronic failure in the water sector, including in communities such as Giyani that the President has referred to, have directly contributed to the water crisis. The Giyani bulk water project, which the President did not mention while referring to this as one of the areas affected by the water crisis, now costs more than R4 billion. It was launched in 2014 to supply water to 55 villages. Progress in it has been crippled by corrupt procurement and tender practices, among others. What began as a R90 million project was inflated into far more than that in multibillion-rand terms through acts of corruption, governance failures and mismanagement, with private interests, the so-called service providers, feeding off taxpayers’ money in pursuit of self-enrichment.
Investigations by the Special Investigating Unit in that project exposed unlawful contracts, with multi-millions paid for infrastructure that failed to provide a reliable supply of safe drinking water for the affected working-class communities. Simply replacing “service providers” in such projects will neither recover the stolen resources nor undo the hardship inflicted on affected communities. The corruption-prone tender system must be scrapped, and those responsible, including former ministers, must be held to account if they committed wrongdoing or benefitted, either directly or indirectly. The national water crisis intervention must prioritise this action.
In the electricity distribution network, the more breakdowns that occur, the more job cards are allocated to the private interests awarded tenders for repairs. Their accumulation regime depends, among other things, on the destruction that generates the job cards they receive. Therefore, the higher the number of breakdowns, the more infrastructure destruction and sabotage become part and parcel of the political economy of the tenders they have been awarded and the job cards they are allocated. In water, the same dynamic has led to infrastructure sabotage by sections of those who are then appointed as suppliers through water tankers.
Often, the resulting crisis has been used as a pretext to introduce other “private service providers” and competition for profit maximisation by the private interests in the affected network infrastructure: it appears it is by design. Bringing about privatisation, including through liberalisation, is the direction of neo-liberal structural reforms. Also, there is something fundamentally flawed in a state where even courts of law, police stations, government offices and state properties are guarded by private security interests, and fake forensic investigators are engaged by public establishments.
Improving regulatory administration, without in-sourcing all unnecessarily outsourced functions, might have some impact, but it will not address the root causes of the problem. Therefore, the SACP reiterates its call for the in-sourcing of all functions that the government or broadly the state can and should perform on its own: this is one of the commitments from various Alliance-endorsed manifestos that have not been implemented, eroding trust and contributing to the electoral decline that emerged. In-sourcing also requires building internal state capacity at every level, ensuring discipline and decisive consequence management. Corrupt tender interests, their political benefactors and neo-liberal agents have actively worked against in-sourcing. Hence, it has largely remained an unimplemented manifesto commitment.
South Africa has experienced long-term, stagnantly low economic growth under conditions of extreme inequality. We are not out of this situation, and the de-industrialisation that the neo-liberal playbook has not only failed to stop and replace with industrialisation but has in fact sustained. From 2015 to 2024, the economy grew at an average rate of less than 1 per cent, at about 0.76 per cent to 1 per cent a year. The fragile and, for that matter, fractional recovery in 2024, following the decline of peak load shedding, is not something to celebrate without breaking it down in class terms.
The class disaggregation of growth distribution must show how much accrues to workers as their share of total national income and how much is captured by private capitalist profit interests. The prevailing policy trajectory, now including “Operation Vulindlela”, favours private capitalist accumulation, while the workers’ share of total national income has sharply declined. Unemployment affects between 10 million and 12.5 million workers under the expanded definition, and poverty remains at crisis levels. Both unemployment and poverty, along with inequality, continue to severely impact the working class.
According to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey, nearly one in three people willing and able to work are without employment. This narrow definition understates the depth of the crisis, however. As just highlighted, when discouraged work seekers and others marginally attached to economic activity are included, the expanded measure of unemployment rises to approximately 42.4 per cent. This broader measure exposes the systemic inability of the South African capitalist economy to absorb unemployed workers into socially necessary and remunerative work.
The existence of millions of discouraged work seekers reflects structural exclusion created by the dynamics of capitalist accumulation, not individual failure. The President did not address this directly, even while correctly noting that unemployment remains far too high. Private wealth accumulation interests continue to pursue gains through strategies that suppress workers’ share of income, including retrenchments.
The SACP calls for the turnaround and diversification of the state-owned enterprise sector and the public economy more broadly. This must prioritise the development of thriving public utilities, rather than the neo-liberal structural reforms that open the state to profit-making exploitation by private capital. More than 70 years after its adoption, and 31 years into the democratic dispensation following our hard-won April 1994 breakthrough, the economic clauses of the Freedom Charter must be realised in tangible progress that can be celebrated.
The Freedom Charter demands state ownership of all monopoly industry on behalf of the people as a whole, not the opposite dictated by neo-liberal reforms. People-as-a-whole ownership is essential to ensure that the revenue generated serves national transformation and development imperatives, delivering a better life for all, rather than enriching a tiny minority. The Freedom Charter must guide practice, including in infrastructure development and critical networks such as rail, ports, water, roads and high radio-frequency spectrum sectors.
In education, the correct focus on early childhood development must be matched by greater investment in the school system, the recruitment of properly qualified teachers and the provision of quality learning and teaching materials so that education meets the needs of our people for a better life.
While the improved average matric pass rate has been welcome, the quality of outcomes remains a serious problem. Many learners have been steered away from subjects such as mathematics, science, engineering, technology and accounting. This has resulted from pressure on schools by upper education authorities and competition between schools, districts and provinces to achieve high average pass rates under severe capacity constraints to produce passes in the subjects from which learners are steered away. Schools therefore prioritise “easy passes” rather than building real critical competence, with learners deliberately diverted from subjects considered to be demanding, to the detriment of their future and that of our country.
As a result, many learners pass with subject combinations that are misaligned with the critical skills and qualification requirements of the economy and post-school education and high-value innovation, research and development. A significant proportion of the learners then joins the growing mass of young people who are not in employment, education or training. Instead of uncritical celebration, there must be investment in the key subjects from which learners are being pushed out so that the country can perform at a higher level and in pursuit of scientific and technological advances and sovereignty in strategic fields. The number of good-quality bachelor passes, followed by good-quality diploma passes, must far exceed that of higher certificate passes as a reflection of quality.
The post-school education and training system, including technical and vocational education and training colleges and universities, is overwhelmed by the number of learners and workers seeking to obtain qualifications or further their education and training. South Africa requires more public colleges and universities and high-performing sector education and training authorities so that no learner or worker is excluded or locked out.
Some years ago, a commitment was made in a State of the Nation Address to establish a university of science and technology in Ekurhuleni. It still does not exist. Promises to expand post-school education and training must not repeat the pattern of unfulfilled announcements made in a State of the Nation Address and then quietly abandoned, as has happened in the case of that promised and never established science and technology university in every subsequent State of the Nation Address up to the one delivered on Thursday.
In the healthcare sector, the state of many public hospitals and clinics and their resourcing leaves much to be desired. Long queues and waiting lists are the order of the day, and some patients die while waiting for care. The President has not outlined any serious plans to address this crisis or to push forward with the implementation of the National Health Insurance to fulfil the promise of quality healthcare for all. The conditions many of our people face in public hospitals discourage many from seeking admission. Public primary and other healthcare clinics also require urgent attention.
ISSUED
BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY,
FOUNDED IN 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA.
Media, Communications & Information Department | MCID
International-Solidarity
India: 300 million workers mobilize
300 million workers took to the streets in India on 12 February 2026.
16 February, 2026
Trade unions across India delivered a powerful display of collective strength on 12 February 2026, as a nationwide general strike brought vast sections of the country to a standstill. Called by the Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions, the strike was a clear rejection of anti-worker policies and the Indian government’s continued refusal to engage in social dialogue.
According to preliminary union assessments, over 300 million workers, farmers and other sections of the people took part in strike actions and mass mobilisations across more than 600 districts. From coal mines to public offices, workers across formal and informal sectors stopped work in solidarity. Markets closed in many regions, public transport was at a standstill and industrial areas witnessed large union-led processions. Notably, women workers from various unorganized sectors were seen at the forefront, while students and youth joined protests demanding jobs and public education.
This massive action is the latest escalation in a long-running struggle against the four labour codes, pushed through Parliament without consultation, without convening the Indian Labour Conference and in open disregard of international labour standards. Trade unions have now organized six nationwide general strikes since the codes were introduced, because of the government repeatedly ignoring workers’ demands. Unions warn that the codes weaken collective bargaining, restrict the right to strike, push nearly 70 per cent of factories outside labour law coverage, and strip millions of workers of occupational safety, social security, and wage protections.
Frustrations with the legal developments have further intensified since the release of the Draft Labour Policy Shram Shakti Niti 2025, which unions say openly seeks to centralize power, and recast the state as a facilitator for employers rather than a guarantor of workers’ rights.
Affiliated unions of IndustriALL played an active role in the mobilization, with workers from manufacturing, mining, energy, textiles and related sectors joining the nationwide action. Although each union brought forward sector-specific concerns, there was clear convergence around demands for job security, fair wages, social protection and in defence of collective bargaining rights.
Sanjay Vadhavkar, general secretary of Steel, Metal & Engineering Workers’ Federation of India and IndustriALL executive committee member said:
“The government cannot continue to ignore the collective voice of the working population. We are demanding dignity, job security and the recognition of health, safety and social protection as fundamental rights. Any development model that sidelines workers’ welfare is neither sustainable nor just. We will continue to struggle until our demands are met, including the immediate withdrawal of anti-worker labour reforms and the establishment of meaningful dialogue with trade unions and workers.”
Sanjay Singh, general secretary of Indian National Electricity Workers Federation and IndustriALL executive committee member stated:
“The message from workers is clear: stop dismantling labour protections. Job security, safe workplaces and social protection are workers’ rights, not concessions to be granted at the government’s convenience. We will continue to fight for the repeal of the four Labour Codes, the restoration of MGNREGA, the revival of the Old Pension Scheme and the full implementation of our genuine demands.”
Kemal Özkan, assistant general secretary of IndustriALL, said:
“The power of this strike lies in the unity and determination of India’s working class. IndustriALL stands in full solidarity with Indian unions and workers. The demands raised by unions in India reflect core international labour standards, including freedom of association, collective bargaining, social protection and safe working conditions, rights that must be respected and upheld by the government.”
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Venezuela: Trade union leaders released but freedom of association and social dialogue must be respected
15 February 2026
The ITUC welcomes the release of Venezuelan trade union leaders José Elías Torres, William Lizardo and José Luis Subero, who were arbitrarily detained as part of an ongoing repression against independent labour activists in Venezuela.
Their release marks a significant moment for Venezuelan workers and the defence of internationally recognised trade union rights.
The ITUC has consistently condemned the arbitrary detention of union leaders and has called on the Venezuelan authorities to respect protected fundamental rights, including freedom of association (ILO Conventions No. 87) and the right to organise (ILO Conventions No. 98).
The ILO’s Governing Body has repeatedly urged the Government of Venezuela to implement the recommendations of the its Commission of Inquiry and to engage fully with the ILO’s supervisory mechanisms, including through sustained tripartite dialogue and cooperation with workers’ organisations.
“Today’s news brings hope not only to the families and colleagues of those freed, but to all Venezuelan workers and trade unionists who strive for rights to be respected in their workplaces,” ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle
“We welcome the release of José Elías Torres, William Lizardo and José Luis Subero, and call on Venezuelan authorities to ensure that trade union rights are upheld without exception. We urge the Government to continue working closely with the International Labour Organization and social partners to fully implement the its Governing Body’s recommendations. Freedom of association and the right to organise are fundamental, universal rights that cannot be subject to political repression.”
The ITUC supports for the ILO’s ongoing engagement with the Government of Venezuela to implement the agreed plan of action and to bring national law and practice into full conformity with international labour standards.
The Governing Body has emphasised the importance of continued cooperation with the ILO Office, employers and workers’ organisations to restore effective social dialogue and to address concerns related to labour rights and civic space.
The ITUC stands in solidarity with Venezuelan workers and their organisations in the pursuit of social justice, democratic rights, and meaningful social dialogue.
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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