Taking COSATU Today Forward, 13 February 2026 #CosatuRedFridays
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY Today, it’s #CosatuRedFridays #ClassSolidarity #Cosatu40 #SACTU70 #ClassStruggle “Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism” #Back2Basics #JoinCOSATUNow #ClassConsciousness |
Taking COSATU Today Forward
‘Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense’-Maoo
Our side of the story
13 February 2026
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- Media Statement: COSATU Misleading Public on R3.8 Billion Rescue for South African Post Office
- SAMWU cautiously welcomes administration of Matlosana Local Municipality
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NEIL AGGETT LABOUR STUDIES UNIT (NALSU) scheduled to host a book launch
South Africa - COSATU welcomes President Cyril Ramaphosa's State of the Nation Address' progressive commitments
- NEHAWU notes the 2026 presentation of the State of the Nation Address
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- Empowering African trade unions, enforcing rights with human rights due diligence
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
Media Statement: COSATU Misleading Public on R3.8 Billion Rescue for South African Post Office
Parliament, Wednesday, 11 February 2026
The Chairperson of the Select Committee on Economic Development and Trade, Ms Sonja Boshoff, has sounded a warning alarm about misleading utterance that R3.8 Billion had been committed to bailout the South African Post Office (SAPO).
Ms Boshoff said she remained acutely concerned about the future of the SAPO and the livelihoods of its remaining employees. “This is nothing but a COSATU-ploy to twist the President's arm and an entirely unnecessary distraction ahead of the State of the Nation Address. It is incorrect to suggest that the Department of Finance, the National Treasury, is withholding funds that were promised or approved. Repeating such claims risks misleading workers and the public and creates expectations that are not supported by law or fact.”
She added: “The absence of a credible, implementable turnaround plan, together with prolonged business rescue processes that have focused on closures and retrenchments rather than operational recovery, has materially weakened the SAPO’s financial and operation position.”
Media reported on Tuesday that the COSATU was seeking a government meeting on an allegedly promised R3.8 billion rescue fund for the SAPO. Ms Boshoff said it was incumbent on her to correct the misinformation around the alleged promised funding or bailout to SAPO, an entity upon which her committee played oversight.
She vowed to continue to ensure that the committee exercised oversight over the performance and decisions of the SAPO’s Business Rescue Practitioners; the role of the shareholder department; National Treasury’s fiscal position; and the protection of workers within a lawful and sustainable framework.
“All stakeholders are urged to engage responsibly and accurately. Sustainable solutions cannot be built on funding assumptions that were never approved, committed, or appropriated. The National Treasury has been explicit in its engagements with Parliament, that there exists no legally binding commitment of R3.8 billion was ever made to SAPO,” said Ms Boshoff.
“The figure of R3.8 billion originates from assumptions and proposals contained in the SAPO’s Business Rescue Plan. Treasury has further clarified that, in law, public funds can only be released once they have been formally appropriated through the budget process. No such appropriation exists in respect of the R3.8 billion cited.”
Ms Boshoff said a position that has been consistently maintained by National Treasury officials and legal advisers in parliamentary oversight processes is that National Treasury is not legally obliged to transfer this amount, and no such payment commitment has been made.
“This reflects the Minister of Finance’s constitutional responsibility to safeguard the fiscus and ensure that all expenditure complies with legal, fiscal and governance requirements. What has occurred is limited interim support, including short-term relief funding provided through departmental mechanisms; and partial UIF-TERS payments, which were conditional, time-bound, and subject to compliance.
“These measures do not constitute, and were never intended to constitute, a R3.8 billion commitment,” concluded Ms Boshoff.
ISSUED BY THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMUNICATION SERVICES ON BEHALF OF THE CHAIRPERSON OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND TRADE, MS SONJA BOSHOFF.
For media enquiries, please contact the committee’s Media Officer:
Name: Sibongile Maputi (Mr)
Cell: 081 052 6060
E-mail: sma...@parliament.gov.za
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SAMWU cautiously welcomes administration of Matlosana Local Municipality
Vincent Diphoko, SAMWU North West Provincial Secretary, 12 February 2026
The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) in the North West Province notes and cautiously welcome the decision of the African National Congress (ANC) Provincial Leadership to direct its deployees to intervene in the City of Matlosana Local Municipality and to place the municipality under administration in terms of Section 139(1)(b) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996.
This intervention comes after a prolonged period of governance paralysis, financial collapse and administrative decay. SAMWU aligns itself with the position articulated by COSATU North West, which correctly identifies that the crisis in Matlosana has not been accidental, but the result of sustained failures in leadership, weak consequence management, financial mismanagement and the erosion of institutional accountability.The continued deterioration of service delivery, coupled with administrative instability, has fundamentally undermined the constitutional values of transparency, accountability and responsiveness.
The intervention is both lawful and necessary. Section 139 of the Constitution empowers provincial government to act where a municipality cannot or does not fulfil its executive obligations. Furthermore, Section 154 places a duty on national and provincial government to support and strengthen municipalities to manage their own affairs. The situation in Matlosana clearly meets the threshold for such action.
Municipal workers have been the primary victims of the collapse in governance at Matlosana. The failure to pay salaries for several months and the non-payment of pension fund contributions for over fourteen months constitute a gross violation of labour rights and statutory obligations.
These failures are in direct contravention of Section 34 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, Section 13A of the Pension Funds Act and Section 23 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to fair labour practices. Withholding pension contributions not only violates the law but places workers’ long-term financial security in jeopardy, it is a betrayal of workers’ trust and dignity. SAMWU therefore expects the intervention team to prioritise the immediate regularisation of all outstanding salaries, pension contributions and statutory deductions. Workers cannot continue to subsidise incompetence through their own suffering.
We further note with serious concern the allegations of fraud and corruption levelled against the former Chief Financial Officer, including the alleged irregular payment of public funds for goods not delivered.
We welcome confirmation that the intervention team has been empowered to implement the findings of the Section 106 investigation in terms of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act 32 of 2000. Consequence management must be decisive, impartial and visible. It must not be diluted by political protectionism or factional considerations. This is required not only by Section 195 of the Constitution, which sets out the basic values and principles governing public administration. Failure to act decisively will only deepen public mistrust and reinforce perceptions of impunity.
While SAMWU supports the intervention, we caution that administration alone will not restore public confidence. The ANC must simultaneously undertake meaningful political renewal and rebuild trust with workers and communities who have endured persistent governance failures. The organisation’s own constitutional objectives on democratic governance and accountability require that it leads by example, acts decisively against corruption and ensures that deployees serve the people, not factional or personal interests.
If renewal is not felt at ground level, interventions risk becoming temporary technical exercises rather than transformative political corrections.
As SAMWU, we will closely monitor the work of the intervention team, while also engaging with the provincial and municipal management to ensure full compliance with labour laws. Additionally, we will want to ensure that salaries and benefits of employees are paid on time and in full.
Issued by SAMWU North West Province
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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 President Cyril Ramaphosa's State of the Nation Address' progressive commitments
Matthew Parks, COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator, 12 February 2026
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address’ progressive commitments. Whilst appreciating the many dire socio-economic challenges facing society and the working class, in particular, there are important green shoots that have been achieved in the past few years as part of the African National Congress led government’s renewal efforts.
COSATU applauds the tireless efforts of the workers at Eskom and our municipalities who have ensured that we have turned the tide on the once debilitating loadshedding that threatened to collapse the economy. Interventions to ensure electricity becomes affordable for consumers and the economy must be expedited, including tackling Eskom and municipal financial leakages and moving all customers to prepaid billing.
The stabilisation and recovery of Transnet and Metro Rail over the past few years have provided welcome relief for thousands of jobs in the mining, manufacturing and agricultural sectors as well as offering a fast, safe and cheap means of transport for workers in our cities. More must be done to restore our railway network and ports to their full capacity. The mining rights application system’s overhaul must be rolled out this year to mobilise badly needed investment and jobs in this industrial backbone of the economy.
We remain deeply concerned by the state of key State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), in particular Denel, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the Post Office and Postbank. They require competent management and the deployment of progressive turnaround plans with the necessary support from the state. Best wishes are not a plan. Their executives must deliver or be replaced by those who can.
The state of local government is extremely worrying with 70% experiencing financial distress, municipal services deteriorating in both rural towns and cities, and many routinely failing to pay staff salaries and third-party deductions. An aggressive set of interventions is urgently needed to stabilise and capacitate embattled municipalities, including the finalisation of the White Paper and a new municipal financing model.
An urgent plan of action is needed to tackle the water and sanitation crisis affecting many communities. This needs to include fixing and investing in water infrastructure, conservation, and recycling. This cannot be left to municipalities alone. The developmental finance institutions (DFIs) must be enlisted to help address the water infrastructure backlog.
The levels of crime, in particular violent and gender-based, corruption, infrastructure sabotage, gangs and syndicates are unacceptable and must be met with the full force of the state. It requires, as done so successfully during COVID-19, a bold plan led by the President, mobilising every possible public and private resource, and enlisting the support of society. The South African Police Service, National Prosecuting Authority, the Judiciary and the South African National Defence Force must be provided with the necessary overhauling and cleansing, decisive leadership, personnel, resources and political will. This must include cleaning up public procurement. We will not attract the investment needed to grow the economy and create jobs unless we win this war. Nor should society be expected to tolerate such levels of criminality.
Government must drive a bold stimulus package from the fiscus, DFIs and the private sector to make capital accessible and affordable for SMMEs, infrastructure, industrial and export sectors to drive economic growth to the 3% plus needed to tackle unemployment. We cannot afford to continue to limp along 1% growth nor normalise 42.4% unemployment. Local procurement and labour must be at the heart of this drive. Efforts to expand trade opportunities and protect local industries and jobs must be accelerated.
The Presidential Employment Stimulus has provided invaluable skills, experience, confidence and a minimum wage to millions of young people. It must be ramped up to at least 1 million participants by 1 April and 2 million by November 2026. Tackling unemployment must be our singular national priority. The SRD Grants must be made accessible to all unemployed persons, raised to the Food Poverty Line and its participants included in skills training programmes and job opportunities. The pathway to universal healthcare through the rolling out of the National Health Insurance must be defended and laid.
COSATU commends the outstanding achievements of the employees of the South African Revenue Service (SARS) who have not only cleansed this key state institution of the demons of state capture and corruption but ensured that it has raised tax compliance from 61% to 67% over the past few years. SARS must be given the resources and mandate to raise tax compliance to 75% by 2029 and thus generating R200 billion in taxes owed to the state and needed to enable it to fulfill its constitutional, transformational and developmental mandate.
Whilst appreciating the important strides made by President Ramaphosa’s administrations to undo the damage inflicted during the decade of state capture and corruption and that the full benefits of these turnarounds are still to be felt, it is critical that government move with much greater speed to ensure their full implementation. It is equally fundamental that the 2026/27 Budget speak to these commitments and ensure that the public services, local government as well as SOEs are well resourced and capacitated to deliver the services that the working class, society and the economy depend upon.
The President and Parliament must hold the executive and administration accountable at all levels to deliver upon these promises to the nation and that those who cannot honour these obligations, be replaced. COSATU will work closely with and hold accountable our partners in the Tripartite Alliance and Nedlac, government and Parliament to ensure these commitments are actioned.
Issued by COSATU
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NEHAWU notes the 2026 presentation of the State of the Nation Address
Zola Saphetha, NEHAWU General Secretary, February 13, 2026
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] takes note of the presentation of the State of the Nation Address (SONA), yesterday, Thursday 12th February 2026, by the President of the Republic of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa.
This R7 million spectacle sees parliamentarians clothed in luxury brands and designer labels descend on the National Assembly, honourable members who have also recently received a 4% increase in their annual income. SONA has also become a platform for carefully crafted rhetoric and unrealistic target setting.
It takes place roughly a year-and-half after the 2024 National and Provincial Government elections which saw a negotiated shift and the formation of the so-called Government of National Unity (GNU).
SONA was also presented under the expectation that the content would be influenced and underscored by the African National Congress Lekgotla, which took place in January 2026.
The SONA convenes during a period of momentous geopolitical shifts, in which unipolar power is decreasing and a multipolar world order replacing it. These shifts have provoked the full barbarity of the West, in particular the White House. Through devastating tariff impositions, undermining sovereignty, through military actions, fascist brow-beating in the streets of Minneapolis and attempts to literally starve the Cuban people into submission - the unhinged nature of the American administration is now visible for all to see. We therefore welcome the President’s comments on issues of international importance and solidarity.
At home, we remain in a flux of economic stagnancy and social decay. Despite a marginal increase in the GDP of the 4th quarter of 2025 and a stronger Rand, conditions on the ground affecting workers and our communities are worsening. The President’s utterance about the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant lifting people out of poverty is incorrect.
Approximately 30.3 million South Africans (55.5% of the population) live in poverty, as defined by the national upper-bound poverty line. Of this, a total of 13.8 million people (25% of the population) experience food poverty. Unemployment, in particular of the youth, requires urgent state intervention. The President failed to use this opportunity to relay the annual fear of SRD recipients on the security and future of the grant, despite his promises. The reconfiguration of the SRD grant or, “Job Seekers” grant is a policy adopted through the Democratic Alliance. The President continues on an annual basis to renege on commitments of expanding the grant into universal income guarantee.
The African National Congress January 2026 Lekgotla, convened under the theme “A year of decisive action to fix local government, accelerate economic transformation, create jobs, deepen social justice and renew the Movement.”
Unfortunately, the President’s presentation does not resonate with the outcomes of the January Lekgotla, which committed to implementing a Local Government Action Plan (LGAP), which included a comprehensive Service Delivery Acceleration Framework anchored in the District Development Model (DDM) and resourced through a “One District, One Plan”. Over and above these interventions, the ANC Lekgotla further resolved to deploy rapid-response technical teams to priority municipalities, and institute weekly monitoring of delivery performance. Priority workstreams include water reticulation, road rehabilitation, energy network stability, clean towns and cities, human settlements delivery, climate-resilient infrastructure and local job creation.
Most of our municipalities are crumbling and now face incremental and dangerous climatic disasters, floods and fires, yet the President has not considered a state-led intervention to safeguard our communities and establish a comprehensive climate resilient local government system.
NEHAWU therefore urges the President to include this critical aspect in the developing White Paper on Local Government. In many of our communities, there are rising levels of malnutrition amongst infants (what the President referred to as ‘stunting’), increases in primary school drop-outs and high levels of child-headed households. Our youth from working class communities, rural and urban, matriculate under difficult conditions, we recognise the great achievement of record high matriculations (88%), however over 100 thousand matric graduates of the 2025 academic year cannot find placement in an institution of higher learning, with many that do spending a week or more sleeping on the streets. NEHAWU notes the President’s pronouncement of deploying SANDF personnel to Gauteng and the Western Cape to assist SAPS in tackling crime, violence and gangsterism. This is a measure that may curb criminal activities in our communities in the short-term, but does not address the root socio-economic and psycho-social conditions that nurture illegal and criminal activities.
Over the past year, government has been fixated with its Neoliberal reforms of creating a free market in what are public goods in which the state is rightly entitled to maintain its monopoly in order to fulfil the constitutional obligations, that are absolutely outside the narrow profit logic of the structural reforms. Thus, there has been paralysis informed by a delusion of private sector efficiency, hence we are now facing a water crisis whilst the related National Water Resource Infrastructure Agency is nowhere to be seen “unlocking much greater investment in water projects”. NEHAWU therefore challenges the logic of privatisation through Operation Vulindlela (now in Phase 2), in the context our unemployment crisis.
Key amongst our concerns of the SONA 2026 are the numerous commitments and pronouncements that the President has not adequately accounted for. During the 2025 SONA, the President pronounced that “Government will spend more than R940 billion on infrastructure over the next three years.” Of this amount approximately R375 billion was to be spent by state owned companies. What we were presented with is the complete privatisation of the remaining public entities through concessionary private sector deals in the rail, port, electricity and water sectors.
The endless task-teams and endless commitments to mobilising resources to address the water crises are the same pronouncements made in 2025.
In 2025, the President laid out an envisioned Infrastructure Fund which promised twelve blended finance projects worth nearly R38 billion, this plan was approved in 2024, covering water and sanitation, student accommodation, transport, health and energy, yet the President skirted these prior commitments.
During the 2025 SONA, the President committed to the establishment of the first phase of a single electronic health record, preparatory work to establish Ministerial Advisory Committees on health technologies and health care benefits, and an accreditation framework for health service providers. This commitment has been left unaccounted for.
In this regard, NEHAWU acknowledges that a number of hospitals are under construction or undergoing revitalisation, these include: Limpopo Central Hospital and the Siloam District Hospital in Limpopo, the Dihlabeng Regional Hospital in Free State, the Bambisana District Hospital and Zithulele District Hospital in Eastern Cape, and the Bophelong Psychiatric Hospital in North West, our concern however is that the National Department of Health does not have a properly funded and effective System Strengthening programme aligned to the framework of the WHO’s building blocks. NEHAWU welcomes the commitment to the revitalization of Academic Hospitals across the country, but with caution. The President has indicated that all of the above commitments will ultimately be determined by the presentation and outline in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), which takes place later this year.
Our concern is that SONA is dislocated from many of the realties faced by workers and our communities. The commitments contained in the 2026 SONA must be tested with the 2025 commitments.
The establishment of endless commissions and bloated task teams will not solve the current challenges, what is required is political will and logical and developmental resourcing. The presentation of the MTBPS will therefore put the numerous commitments and promises of the President to test.
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Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat.
International-Solidarity
Empowering African trade unions, enforcing rights with human rights due diligence
12 February, 2026
Human rights due diligence (HRDD) is fast emerging as a key organizing instrument for trade unions across Africa, particularly those operating in global value chains that stretch from Global North consumers to Global South extractive frontiers. A roundtable held on 9 February on the margins of the Mining Indaba in Cape Town brought unions together with the Competence Centre for Human Rights Due Diligence (CCHRDD) to explore how organized labour might capitalise on this framework.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the imperative for HRDD is especially acute given the region’s outsized role in supplying minerals critical to the energy transition, electronics and renewable energy industries. The continent holds major reserves of cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese and nickel whose demand has surged amid decarbonisation efforts worldwide. Yet extraction remains beset by entrenched human-rights risks: forced community displacements, violations of workers and human rights, environmental degradation, adverse health effects on local populations and in some instances, ties to conflict financing or organized crime.
HRDD draws its foundation from the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), endorsed in 2011, which impose on companies a responsibility to respect human rights via ongoing processes of identification, prevention, mitigation and remediation of adverse impacts. Sector-specific guidance, notably the OECD’s Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas, has proved influential for tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold in conflict zones such as Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The mining landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa presents a mixed picture. Large-scale operations often controlled by multinationals from China, Europe, Canada and elsewhere face persistent criticism over inadequate community consultation, water and soil pollution, hazardous working conditions, poverty-level wages, gender-based violence and harassment, and suppression of union activity, including breaches of freedom of association and collective bargaining. Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), prevalent in countries such as the DRC, Ghana, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, worsens these vulnerabilities with child labour, toxic mercury exposure and exploitation by criminal networks.
Data from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s Transition Minerals Tracker underscore the scale of the problem. For example, between 2010 and 2024, it recorded 178 human-rights and environmental abuses linked to transition minerals in Africa which is more than 20 per cent of the global total of 835 cases. The DRC alone accounted for over half of Africa’s allegations, mostly at cobalt and copper sites.
Unions, including IndustriALL Global Union affiliates in the DRC, Zambia and Zimbabwe, are pressing hard for rigorous HRDD implementation. Their advocacy emphasises scrutiny of corporate disclosures, risk mapping and the adoption of national action plans on business and human rights still absent in most African countries. They call for binding rules to secure fair-trade terms, greater local beneficiation, living wages and environmental stewardship.
Recent regulatory shifts are reshaping HRDD. The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), now in force, mandates HRDD for large companies operating in or exporting to the EU, including human-rights and environmental impacts throughout value chains. This compels mining firms and their Sub-Saharan suppliers to strengthen processes, undertake audits and offer remediation or face exclusion from the European market. Complementary EU measures on batteries, deforestation and conflict minerals add further layers of scrutiny to African-sourced minerals.
However, challenges remain formidable: weak governance, corruption, limited enforcement capacity and opaque supply chains all impede effective due diligence. In high-risk settings such as conflict zones or informal gold sectors in Zimbabwe, HRDD frequently falls short of eradicating harms.
At the roundtable, Kelly Fay Rodriguez of the CCHRDD announced the launch of a dedicated project in the DRC, Zambia and Zimbabwe to support mine workers in critical minerals value chains. The initiative aims to ensure that emerging international due-diligence laws and trade policies deliver gains for labour rights, with particular focus on freedom of association and collective bargaining.
Established in 2025 by UNI Global Union, IndustriALL Global Union, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Germany’s DGB trade-union confederation, the CCHRDD exists to harness HRDD frameworks in ways that reinforce workers’ rights especially the enabling rights of union organization and bargaining across global value chains.
The meeting closed on a note of cautious optimism: HRDD offers mining companies a tool for risk mitigation while presenting unions and host societies with leverage for more inclusive development.
As Glen Mpufane, IndustriALL’s mining director, put it:
“Effective implementation of HRDD supported by stronger national frameworks, active union engagement, and international accountability is essential if mineral wealth is to translate into genuine economic progress rather than perpetuating patterns of extraction without equitable returns.”
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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