Taking COSATU Today Forward, 7 February 2025
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY #Back2Basics #ClassStruggle “Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism” #Back2Basics #JoinCOSATUNow #ClassConsciousness |
Taking COSATU Today Forward
‘Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense’-Maoo
Our side of the story
7 February 2025
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- COSATU ambivalent to Tiger Brands’ agreement to cover medical expenses of some listeriosis victims
- South Africa
- COSATU Reaction Statement: 2025 State of the Nation Address
- NEHAWU on the state of the Nation Address with the expectation of a bleak Budget Speech ahead
- SACP Free State Provincial Executive Committee Statement
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- Zambia launches “Go Public! Fund Education” campaign to address critical challenges in education
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
COSATU ambivalent to Tiger Brands’ agreement to cover medical expenses of some listeriosis victims
Zanele Sabela, COSATU National Spokesperson, 6 February 2025
While the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes Tiger Brands’ announcement to make advance payments to the first cohort of claimants who suffered irreparable damage from the deadly listeriosis outbreak in 2017, the Federation is baffled by the company’s refusal to take full responsibility for the callosal damage caused by the disease. Legal representatives of the food manufacturer and those of the claimants agreed that the company would provide compensation, though interim, by covering medical expenses incurred by some of the victims.
Around a thousand people were infected with the disease and 216 reportedly died after consuming products packaged by Tiger Brands. It’s been a lengthy eight years since the disastrous event, yet families who lost loved ones and those who have had to endure medical complications still bear the brunt of the company’s alleged recklessness. Among the claimants are parents whose children suffered neurological defects caused by the consumption of certain products by mothers during their pregnancies. The class action has not been resolved because, according to Tiger Brands, ‘liability has not been determined.” Who then is liable when it was the very same company that packaged the food items, distributed them to various retailers across the country and later recalled them as the number of patients accumulated.
The distribution of food unfit for consumption must be treated with the sternness it deserves. One life lost is one too many.
As the country experienced unfortunate countless deaths from food poisoning over the past year, informal shop owners as well as major food manufacturers have a responsibility to account for their products. Far worse are the likes of Tiger Brands currently enjoying billions of rands in profits derived from loyal customers but delay the victims’ deserved justice.
COSATU calls for speedy and full compensation for all the claimants. It cannot be easy for them battling to mitigate the harm from the disease. The eight years of delaying tactics from the food items producer do not bring any comfort to their current circumstances.
The Federation further calls for greater health and safety enforcement laws to compel accountability processes in the production of consumable goods. Spending eight years to establish liability and assessment of compensation does not translate to justice.
Issued by COSATU
COSATU Reaction Statement: 2025 State of the Nation Address
Matthew Parks, COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator, 6 February 2025
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) notes President Cyril Ramaphosa and government led by the African National Congress’ 2025 State of the Nation Address (SONA). We welcome its progressive commitments and applaud improvements made but remain deeply concerned about the pace of implementation.
The working class and society face numerous crises, in particular our 41.9% unemployment rate, entrenched poverty and inequality, paltry economic growth, endemic crime and corruption, struggling public and municipal service and embattled State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs).
We applaud the tireless work done to rebuild Eskom that has seen us overcome loadshedding. Eskom and our electricity infrastructure remain fragile and need continuous investments to bring on board new generation, transmission and distribution capacity. These must be anchored upon Eskom as our publicly owned utility and most strategic economic asset.
Progress made stabilising Transnet and Metro Rail has brought much needed relief to the economy. We urge government to accelerate efforts to rebuild Transnet and improve its performance, including debt relief to free capital to modernise our ports and rail network as well as law enforcement support to tackle cable theft.
An efficient Transnet will unlock the mining, manufacturing and agricultural sectors and create thousands of jobs. A reliable Metro Rail will help 10 million commuters reach work and other destinations safely and boost the urban economy.
We are deeply disappointed that no new plans are being put in place to secure and rebuild Denel, SABC, the Post Office and Postbank. These SOEs have the potential to once again play leading roles in their sectors but they require support from the state, including the pressing need for Treasury to release the agreed to financial relief for the Post Office.
The outstanding work done by Home Affairs’ staff shows the inherent potential of the state and its contribution to unlocking investment and stimulating growth. It must not only be applauded but supported with the filling of critical frontline vacancies, paying workers a living wage and investing in the infrastructure capacity of the state.
Government must abandon short-sighted and dangerous austerity budget cuts and provide essential services, in particular healthcare, education, policing, courts, transport amongst others; the resources they need to provide the quality public services the working class and economy depend upon. This is key as we move to roll out the National Health Insurance and ensure all South Africans have access to education, healthcare, social security, municipal services and land.
The state of local government is extremely worrying with increasing numbers in serious financial trouble and many no longer paying staff salaries, pensions and other payments or able to provide municipal services. We support the President’s call for urgent engagements on a new municipal funding model and a shift towards District Development Models.
The R943 billion allocated for infrastructure investments over the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework is key to stimulating the economy. We remain worried by the pace of investments and the construction mafia hindering many badly needed projects.
Specialised law enforcement must be deployed to break these gangs and syndicates.
With 12 million South Africans unable to find jobs, public employment programmes, in particular the Presidential Employment Stimulus must be drastically expanded to accommodate at least 2 million participants by April and 4 million by November 2025.
The days of cutting expenditure for these critical programmes must end. Engagements need to urgently take place at Nedlac on an overhaul of these programmes to ensure none pay below the National Minimum Wage, that TVET Colleges are roped in to help provide the skills, training and experience needed for their participants to find permanent work. These must include internships and artisan programmes across the private sector.
COSATU welcomes government’s commitment to transforming the Special Relief of Dispensation Grant into the long sought Basic Income Grant. All eligible persons must be enabled to access it. Its participants must be supported to access skills, training and employment opportunities.
We remain distressed by the insufficient funding allocated for SMME and industrial financing. We cannot stimulate the 3% plus growth we need to defeat unemployment with the current amounts of financing. We welcome the commitment for a new mass industrial financing programme. It must unlock resources from the fiscus, developmental finance institutions, banks and investment funds and be anchored upon supporting local procurement.
COSATU stands firmly with the President and government in defence of South Africa’s sovereignty and values.
No country will be allowed to dictate to the people of South Africa their path. We are a robust and noisy democracy, but we will not tolerate any attempts to intimidate us. South Africa’s values are reflected in our foreign policy anchored upon the principles of peace and justice, solidarity and development, non-alignment and African unity.
We bear the painful scars of apartheid, colonialism and genocide and stand with all nations experiencing such tyranny, including the Palestinian people.
We will continue to support government’s efforts to develop strong relationships with all nations. This must be accompanied by ramped up support to boost exports and diversify trade with not only key trading partners in America, Europe, China, Japan and India but in particular Southern Africa and Africa, where our destiny lays.
Government must ensure that the South African National Defence Force has the resources it requires to fulfil its peacekeeping missions across the African continent, including the necessary political support to ensure that often intractable conflicts such as those in the Democratic Republic of Congo are resolved at the negotiations table.
We welcome the President’s inclusive call for a National Dialogue coordinated by Nedlac. It must be premised upon the progressive values of the Constitution and vision of the Freedom Charter.
The Federation stands ready to participate in and drive this much needed dialogue.
Whilst many of the SONA’s commitments are welcome, they need to be resourced and not walked back by the pending 2025/26 Budget. They need to be implemented by government with Parliament holding all Members of the Executive and departments, municipalities, entities and SOEs accountable.
South Africa is a nation of immense potential, but we need government to act with the decisiveness that our many burning crises demand. The patience of workers and society is not unlimited.
The working class deserves a better life. We dare not let them down.
Issued by COSATU
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NEHAWU on the state of the Nation Address with the expectation of a bleak Budget Speech ahead
Zola Saphetha, NEHAWU General Secretary, February 07, 2025
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] notes the presentation of the State of the Nation Address (SONA), presented on Thursday, 06 February 2025, by the President of the Republic of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa.
The SONA was the first of the Seventh Administration and lays out a policy trajectory of the state, which is headed by the coalition of the African National Congress, Democratic Alliance and other minor political parties.
NEHAWU would also like to use this opportunity to extend its condolences to members of the South African National Defence Force who tragically lost their lives recently in deployment to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We express our solidarity with the people of the DRC, especially the working class and rural poor, some of whom are super-exploited by transnational mining capital, including the artisanal mining communities in which child-labour is often involved, who are at the mercy of various banditry gangs.
It is an outraged that the extraction of the conflict 3Ts minerals in the eastern regions of the DRC, namely Tin, Tantalum and Tungsten which are required for the advanced technologies is through the most backward and barbaric practices involving the criminal collusions amongst the Congolese elites, rogue commercial channels through Rwanda and other corporations in Asia, Arab Gulf states and the West.
We affirm the President’s position on ensuring that our political and economic sovereignty is not undermined and threatened. The sacrosanctity of our sovereignty and Constitutional Democracy, which barely withstood state capture, still faces serious subversive acts and propaganda from fringe right-wing organisations who have a direct line to the White House.
These latest affronts to our progressive policies, be it on: Palestine, the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act, National Health Insurance and the Expropriation Act, requires the state to withstand attempts to erode the will and mandate of our people and our policy positions.
We therefore call for vigilance and steadfastness in defending both our progressive domestic and international policies.
The first SONA of the Seventh Administration also took place in the context of the seventieth anniversary of the Freedom Charter, yet millions of South Africans still face immense challenges related to war-like unemployment and poverty rates and the socio-economic conditions in general.
Whilst we welcome the marginal advances in the various jobs funds, youth unemployment remains at crisis levels. We therefore call on the state to prioritise the filling of available and critical vacancies in the public sector.
Our municipalities are in a state of collapse and there has been an annually increasing disinvestment in public infrastructure and in filling vital public service vacancies. This requires the state’s immediate intervention. The President’s insistence therefore, on a new District or Local Government Model has been repeated on numerous occasions with little impact being experienced and felt on the ground. We therefore look forward to interacting with the White Paper on Human Settlements and in making our input on the new municipal funding model mentioned by the President. Unfortunately, the President and the state’s commitments to government spending on infrastructure through incentivising the private sector participation (the Presidential Infrastructure Fund) rings hollow.
NEHAWU wishes to condemn the recent misinformation around the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act peddled by the known mendacious newsrooms. These utterances have clearly influenced the SONA address, considering the President’s meek remarks on the implementation of NHI. We no longer want to hear about preparatory steps, while over fifty-six thousand people die of tuberculosis annually. We want to see the President act decisively in promulgating the Act into law and ensuring full implementation of NHI, as guided by Section 57 of the NHI Act. We once again reiterate that the state’s current macroeconomic and fiscal policy continues to directly undermine the implementation of NHI.
We note the President’s remarks in ensuring that the energy transition is kept at a pace at which we can control. However, NEHAWU again demands that the state re-assess the illogical insistence of accepting a commitment of R13 billion, dollar denominated loans from the International Partnership Group to fund the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP). This is done within the context of National Treasury chasing a deficit and slashing budgets to vital public services.
We would also like to use this opportunity to congratulate the Matriculants of 2024 for record-breaking academic results, the highest pass rate and highest rate of bachelor passes in our thirty years of democracy. Whilst this milestone is incredible at the time when basic education faces a concerning crisis with only 50% of the current matric cohort of 2024 entering and completing their matric and the other 50% dropping out or not completing their senior certificate. We are also eagerly awaiting further feedback to our requests for an update on proposals by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) on funding models for the “missing-middle”.
The President unfortunately missed an opportunity to detail plans to rectify the unconstitutional behaviour of National Treasury, South African Social Services Agency (SASSA) and the Department of Social Services as a result of the outcomes of the Pretoria High Court decisions related to the budgeting, mismanagement and dispensing of Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grants.
The court’s scathing rebuke of the state in mistreating millions of vulnerable South Africans through ridiculous regulations - restricting over eight million potential beneficiaries and warning National Treasury of dangerous overreach in placing a budgetary curb on beneficiaries should have been addressed. What concerns NEHAWU is that the very department that the High Court has found to have failed the most vulnerable in our society, is now appealing the court judgement.
Our expectations for SONA 2025 were overshadowed by the geopolitical and domestic polycrises facing workers and the poor. For our members and the communities we serve, we aim our focus towards the Budget Speech in order to have a thorough assessment of what the remainder of the Seventh Administration will look like.
END
Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat.
International-Solidarity
Zambia launches “Go Public! Fund Education” campaign to address critical challenges in education
Standards and working conditions Leading the profession Go public! Fund education, 6 February 2025
To boost public education in the country, Zambia has officially launched the Education International (EI) “Go Public! Fund Education” campaign in Lusaka. This initiative, led by Education International Africa (EIA), aims to address the critical challenges facing the national public education system and ensure that every child has access to quality learning environments. Zambia joins 24 other African nations in this movement, seeking to mobilize support for increased investment in education.
Call for increased funding in education
During the launch, EIA Director Dr. Dennis Sinyolo commended the Zambian government for considerable progress made in the education sector. Notably, the introduction of free education from early childhood to grade 12 and the recruitment of over 40,000 teachers in the past three years were highlighted as significant achievements. These efforts align with Sustainable Development Goal 4 advocating for inclusive and equitable quality education for all.
Dr. Sinyolo, however, warned that significant challenges remain, including a shortage of qualified teachers and inadequate funding, which currently accounts for only 14.5% of the national budget below the recommended benchmark of 20%.
Dr. Sinyolo urged the Zambian government to increase its education funding to at least 20% of the national budget or 6% of GDP. This increase would facilitate the recruitment of more teachers, improve school infrastructure, and provide necessary educational resources. He also called on the international community, particularly the G20, to address debt relief for Zambia and other African nations to unlock additional resources for public services.
The campaign underscores the necessity of a well-funded public education system where every child is taught by qualified and supported teachers in safe, well-resourced classrooms. As Zambia embraces this crucial initiative, the hope is to catalyze significant investment in education.
Public authorities’ commitment to quality public education
The Minister of Education, Hon. Douglas Syakalima, emphasized the campaign's importance in improving the quality of public education. He reiterated the government's commitment to ensuring that every child has access to high-quality educational resources and opportunities.
Mr. Harry Kamboni, the Honourable Member of Parliament for Kalomo Central and Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee in charge of Education, highlighted the importance of collective advocacy for increased funding in the education sector. He acknowledged that while progress has been made, much more is needed to meet the growing demands of the education system.
Collaborative union efforts
The three Education International member organizations – the Basic Education Teachers Union of Zambia (BETUZ), the Secondary School Teachers’ Union of Zambia (SESTUZ), and Zambia National Union of Teachers (ZNUT) – worked together to bring the campaign's goals forward, emphasizing the critical need for greater investment in public education. United in their efforts, these unions represented the unified voice of Zambian educators and underscored the campaign's significance in advocating for quality education and equitable resources.
Supportive education stakeholders’ voices
The launch also included remarks from various stakeholders, including representatives from the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions, Action Aid, and other civil society organizations within the education sector. All clearly reaffirmed that education is a public good and a fundamental equalizer of opportunities.
As Zambia embarks on this pivotal campaign, the collective aim is to ensure that every child enrolled in a Zambian school has access to quality education, ultimately fostering a brighter future for the country.
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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