Taking COSATU Today Forward, 1 October 2025 #Cosatu@40 #Cosatu40thAnniversary
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY #Cosatu40Anniversary celebration events are taking place in provinces…. #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
1 October 2025
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) is disturbed and perturbed by the recent allegations of sexual relations, harassment, and victimisation by some teachers in our province
- COSATU to host lectures in the lead up to 40th anniversary
- South Africa
- COSATU General Secretary Solly Phetoe – Remarks: COSATU Western Cape 40th Anniversary Build Up Event
- COSATU mourns the passing of Nathi Mthethwa
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- COSATU remains confident that government will secure a positive trade agreement with the United States
- Collective union action in defence of collegial governance
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) is disturbed and perturbed by the recent allegations of sexual relations, harassment, and victimisation by some teachers in our province
Ntame Malibongwe, SADTU KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Secretary, 30 September 2025
As a union of professionals and custodians of all children under our care, we are bound by the Code of Conduct, Professional Ethics as enshrined in SACE, signed Collective Agreements and all laws governing and protecting our children.
We wish to reiterate our position of condemning any such heinous and unprofessional acts while calling on the Department of Education to follow all due legal processes to act against perpetrators of such conduct.
We call on all teachers in general and our members in particular, to uphold their loco parentis status and protect all children as they would like their own biological children to be taught and protected.
We regret the pain caused to the majority of teachers by the isolated but barbaric actions of few individuals, who find themselves to be amongst us in schools.
We call on stakeholders and the entire society to work together with SADTU to defeat this scourge of unethical and unbecoming conduct.
All schools should be safe havens for all children.
ISSUED BY: SADTU EC Provincial Secretariat
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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:
Free State
Date:
3 October
Topic: COSATU and the International Struggle
Main Speaker: Gerald Twala, COSATU Deputy General Secretary
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
COSATU General Secretary Solly Phetoe – Remarks: COSATU Western Cape 40th Anniversary Build Up Event
Solly Phetoe, COSATU General Secretary, September 30, 2025
Leadership of the Federation and our Alliance Partners, the ANC and the SACP present,
Shop stewards, organisers and members of the Federation of Oscar Mpetha and Nana Abrahams,
It is a pleasure to be here today with the foot soldiers of COSATU and our Affiliates. We have the privilege to be with one of our important veterans, comrade Connie September, a daughter of Cape Town and a former leader of SACTWU and COSATU.
This federation was formed in 1985 on the shores of eThekwini Durban on the 1st of December, through a merger of 33 unions representing about four hundred and fifty thousand (450 000) workers.
The primary agenda was to unite workers against apartheid and thousand against any form of exploitation, to champion a nonracial and non sexist principles in society under the leadership of our founding president Elijah Barayi.
COSATU played a critical role in filling the political vacuum when all political formations where banned, and advanced the needed political and economic resistance at the height of apartheid regime.
This Federation fought tirelessly against the tyranny of apartheid and to this can attest to that fearless struggles of workers.
Workers remains steadfast under the banner of COSATU, we are the biggest with more than 1,5 million workers.
Our recent Central Committee held two weeks ago remains the living testimony to the commitment of advancing the founding agenda of our revolution since 1985.
The CC has charged us to continue the dreams of many workers, below.
To better the lives of many who are still earning low wages,
To wage a struggle from a minimum wage to a Living Wage.
To improve the working conditions and ensure that third party payments are adhered to by the employers.
To confront austere budget and protect collective bargaining across all sectors of tge economy.
To hold those in power accountable against any atrocities towards workers.
The CC was resolute that COSATU must be a campaigning Federation.
COSATU remains the beacon of light to a hopeless worker who is a victim of unfair labour practice.
To a worker whose voice is not heard even when they cry to their voice, that worker in factory who is not paid equal like his colleagues.
That worker who has a dispute and needs representation.
The CC has charged each of us to advance workers interests, to put workers’ issues first before anything.
Focus areas from the Central Committee.
Comrades, while the CC dealt with many areas on political and international, the address will focus mainly on organisational and socio economic issues.
The CC called for Strengthening of COSATU engines
There is a need for strong organisational engines to drive programmes of the Federation and to ensure that the CEC commissions are well resourced with dedicated administrative and technical capacity.
Building COSATU engines also requires the building of provinces and locals.
Ensuring Implementation of Resolutions is a Collective Responsibilities.
Affiliates must take ownership of implementation of COSATU resolutions and campaigns.
COSATU must conduct an annual audit of Affiliates, provinces and locals to ensure that challenges are addressed proactively and to provide targeted support.
Recognising Private Sector Challenges and Strengthening Affiliates
It is important to note that the unions that are in organisational crisis and not in good standing are private sector unions.
We need for solidarity between public and private sector unions and that better resourced unions must support unions with limited resource, including through twinning unions.
The Federation must have the political will to intervene where affiliates are not complying with constitutional requirements.
While COSATU affiliates have autonomy, where there are serious challenges, COSATU must intervene to protect the interests of workers.
A Campaigning Federation
The Commission emphasised the need to strengthen and intensify its priority campaigns while building an overarching campaign on the demand for A Living Wage which should emphasise that the national minimum wage is only a minimum, highlighting the cost-of-living crisis and social wage demands.
Worker Education and Shop steward Training Worker education must prioritised.
Shop steward training and induction programmes are essential to building strong workplace organisation.
Socio economic matters.
Today is a moment to reflect on the challenges facing our members and the working class, the victories we have won as this Federation and the battles and it will be celebration we must continue to fight.
We are gathered here as workers face some of the most difficult times in recent memory. We are battling a 42.9% unemployment rate and a youth unemployment rate of 72%.
The economy has been struggling to exceed 1% annual growth since 2008.
Poverty and inequality remain the lived experiences of working class and rural communities. Drugs, gangsterism, gender-based violence and other forms of crime remain a threat to our people from Paarl East to Khayelitsha.
We are witnessing many companies retrenching workers from Goodyear in Uitenhage to Mercedes Benz in East London.
Glencore has been closing smelters leaving thousands unemployed due to the high costs of electricity.
We fear we may lose jobs on the citrus farms from Ceres to Citrusdal as well as manufacturing jobs from Malmesbury to Cape Town as a result of the 30% tariffs imposed on South African exports to the United States.
We are witnessing deep shifts in the economy with increasing numbers of workers outsourced to labour brokers who defy all our labour laws or workers simply being told they are now self-employed by bosses who seek to undermine our hard-won gains, including the right to collective bargaining.
Today in a hotel or a supermarket, you may find the staff are mostly provided by labour brokers.
At our financial investment firms, pension and insurance companies, many of the staff are told they now work on commission and are no longer permanent.
Since COVID-19 we have seen the growth of Uber drivers and other e-platform workers who are forced to work long hours hoping to earn enough to feed themselves.
The Western Cape is the heart of the film industry in the country, yet we see actors’ rights to paid leave, unemployment and injury on duty insurance or the right to collective bargaining undermined by local and foreign employers.
Key to growing the economy, creating decent jobs, tackling poverty and inequality, and defeating crime and corruption, is to fix the state.
Working class communities and the economy depend on a capacitated and well-run state that can provide the frontline services society depends upon from our schools to our hospitals, from paved roads to running water, from an efficient home affairs to police officers in our communities.
The state cannot deliver these with austerity budget cuts that threaten to collapse public services.
Home Affairs cannot escape long queues for IDs and birth certificates, if it has a 60% vacancy rate.
Police cannot win the war against crime if their vehicles do not work.
SARS has shown the path to rebuilding the state by appointing competent management, filling critical vacancies, investing in the institution’s infrastructure and removing corrupt elements.
Today, SARS is delivering its mandate.
Eskom too has shown the state can and must be rebuilt.
Whilst much remains to be done to upgrade Eskom’s generation capacity and to tackle corruption and cable theft and ensure that all consumers pay and it moves to reduce the unaffordable price of electricity, we must commend the workers of Eskom and our municipalities for ending the crisis of load shedding that threatened the survival of the economy.
Similarly, we are beginning to see signs of recovery at Transnet and Metro Rail.
We must, however, raise our deep concerns about the state of local government where many municipalities now routinely fail to pay staff or their pension funds or provide communities and businesses basic services. Government needs to move much faster to stabilise and rebuild local government.
We will be heading towards local elections in just over a month. In addition to fixing the state and growing the economy and creating jobs, we must be united as the Alliance.
If we are divided and not focusing on serving the working class, then we will be defeated in the local elections and the DA, and all the other reactionary parties will take power.
We need the ANC to intensify its renewal campaign, to cleanse itself of factions and corruption and to focus on leading government and ensuring that the gains we have won since 1994 are defended and extended.
We need the SACP to be strengthened and enabled to fulfill its role as the vanguard of the working class, to support the Federation to organise the unorganised and ensure the Alliance remains biased towards the working class and the leader of all progressive forces.
The recent Central Committee of COSATU took a decision for the Federation to call an urgent meeting of the Alliance to ensure that as we head towards the local elections that we are united, we are one, the modalities of how the Alliance will contest, and win are resolved and finalised.
What we cannot allow is for the Alliance to be divided.
The Central Committee spoke to the need to ensure that Affiliates are strong and united.
That they are focused on recruiting workers, servicing members, educating shop stewards and leading working class struggles on the ground.
We have much to help those Affiliates that are struggling, in particular CWU and CEPPWAWU.
As we head towards COSATU’s National Congress in a year we must ensure that these and all other Affiliates are in good standing and that our membership is growing and returning back to the 2 million mark.
We have been mandated to engage with those who left COSATU, to return home to the Federation of Elijah Barayi and Dora Tamana.
We must leave our comfort zones and go and recruit and organise workers in our call centres, our malls and restaurants, our farms and hotels.
Thousands of vulnerable workers work at these places.
They are exploited and abused yet the only time they see us is when go there to eat or sleep or shop.
On the 7th of October we will be holding our National Day of Action in support of the International Day of Decent Work.
It is critical that we hear from the Provincial Leadership of COSATU and our Affiliates here today what are their plans to paint Cape Town and other towns and workplaces red on that day.
On the 6th of December, COSATU will be hosting its 40th anniversary celebrations at Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto.
What are our plans to ensure that we not only have comrades from the Western Cape attending it but also have similar build-up events in our factories, our schools, our electricity plants and our farms.
It is only a strong and well organised COSATU that can liberate workers.
It is COSATU that has shown time and again it is the only weapon that workers have to defend themselves and drive working class struggles.
It was COSATU in the 1980s that organised the most exploited workers and broke the back of the apartheid regime with the 1987 mine workers’ strike.
It was a strong and revolutionary COSATU with the UDF, the ANC and the SACP that ensured 1994 happened and that today we have a non-racial, non-sexist constitutional democracy.
It was a formidable COSATU that ensured Parliament led by the ANC adopted our progressive labour laws that protect the rights of millions of workers today.
It was a militant and strategic COSATU that put in the National Minimum Wage raising the wages of 6 million workers, that released R65 billion from the UIF to help 5.7 million workers feed their families during COVID-19, that drove the Two Pot Pension Reforms that have put over R60 billion into the pockets of more than 3.5 million workers to date and helped Parliament to pass the National Health Insurance Act providing a path towards universal healthcare.
Our critics are quick to say: COSATU is dead, let us show them that COSATU lives, COSATU leads.
A reminder to all of you, that workers are very important to all of us including to our unions or organizations, just like what JB Marks said in one of the documents that ' without peoples politics, there can be no people’s army, without workers struggle, there can be no strong unions, without people’s army, there can be no people’s war.'
Comrades, thank you for being here today, for all that you have done to build COSATU in the Western Cape and for all that you will continue to do to make the generations of Ray Alexander, Lizzy Phike, Membathisi Mdladlana and Randall Van Der Heever proud.
Amandla!
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COSATU mourns the passing of Nathi Mthethwa
Zanele Sabela, COSATU National Spokesperson, 30 September 2025
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is saddened by news of the passing of South Africa’s Ambassador to France, Comrade Nkosinathi Emmanuel Mthethwa.
The Federation sends its heartfelt condolences to the Mthethwa family, his friends and colleagues, and to the entire nation. Mthethwa served the country diligently as minister in two portfolios, first as Minister of Police from 2008 to 2014 and then as Minister of Arts and Culture from 2014 to 2023.
A devoted member of the African National Congress, Comrade Nathi rose through the ranks of the ANC Youth League from regional secretary of the Southern Natal branch to Secretary of Organising. He joined the National Assembly in 2002 and was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee and National Working Committee in December 2007, serving on both until December 2022.
Those who worked closely with him as Chief Whip of the Majority Party in the National Assembly described him as hard working.
Born in KwaZulu Natal on 23 January 1967, he studied community development at the University of Natal and later added a certificate in mining engineering from the University of Johannesburg to his credentials along with a certificate in communications and leadership from Rhodes University.
A little-known fact is that Mthethwa was a shop steward for former COSATU affiliate, Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) and it is through his activism in the union that he came across the then banned ANC.
The ANC and Alliance are poorer today, having lost a dedicated soldier of Comrade Nathi’s stature.
Issued by COSATU
International-Solidarity
COSATU remains confident that government will secure a positive trade agreement with the United States
Matthew Parks, COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator, 30 September 2025
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) remains confident that the South African government will secure a positive and mutually beneficial trade agreement with the United States (US). We are heartened by the progress being made in negotiations between the two governments and the tireless efforts of the Presidency and the Departments of Trade, Industry and Competition; International Relations and Cooperation; and Agriculture to ensure that any new trade agreement defends and boosts South African jobs and industries and affirms our constitutionally mandated transformation journey.
We appreciate that these negotiations are ongoing and cover a large amount of issues that will take further time to resolve and conclude. Complex and often contradictory issues must be balanced to ensure that South African jobs, value chains and interests are protected. Short cuts must be avoided, and South Africa’s long-term economic and trading interests must be secured.
COSATU remains deeply concerned about the painful impact that the expiry of the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) and the imposition of a 30% tariff on South African exports to the US will have on jobs. This uncertainty is a matter of great concern and anxiety for thousands of affected workers and their families. We simply cannot afford any further job losses in an economy battling a 42.9% unemployment rate and that has barely been growing at 1% per annum for the last two decades. We cannot afford to see citrus farms in Limpopo and the Western Cape, clothing factories in Cape Town or motor manufacturing plants in the Eastern Cape, Gauteng or KwaZulu-Natal close and their workers condemned to unemployment and poverty.
It is critical that government expedite interventions to put in place measures to cushion affected workers, businesses and sectors from the painful consequences of the expiry of AGOA and the coming into effect of the 30% tariff on South African exports to the US. This package of support needs to include tax relief, industrial incentives and subsidies, as well as fixing the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s Temporary Employment Relief Scheme. Government must move with speed to ensure that this relief flows with speed to workers and companies impacted by this trade turmoil. Workers and businesses need money, not PowerPoints.
It is equally important that government continue its progressive efforts to expand markets for South African exports, particularly with major economies in Europe, Asia and especially the Southern African region and the African continent through the African Continental Free Trade Area.
COSATU will continue to offer its full support to government’s critical work in this regard and work closely with Organised Business to ensure that South African jobs, businesses and value chains are secured.
Issued by COSATU
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Collective union action in defence of collegial governance
Standards and working conditionsFuture of work in educationHigher education and research, 30 September 2025written by: Sinéad Kennedy
Interview with Dr Sinéad Kennedy, member of the branch committee of the Irish Federation of University Teachers at Maynooth University
This testimony was collected as part of the research project entitled “In the eye of the storm: Higher education in an age of crises” conducted by Howard Stevenson, Maria Antonietta Vega Castillo, Melanie Bhend, and Vasiliki-Eleni Selechopoulou for Education International. The research report and executive summary are available here.
Worlds of Education: How did collegial governance come under attack at Maynooth University?
In 2023 staff at Maynooth University were informed that staff representation on the university’s governing authority would be based on selection, rather than election, thus removing any elected staff representatives from the university’s principal governance body.
There had already been concerns because the university had been involved in making a significant number of new management appointments at a senior level. These appointments had inserted a new managerial tier between the President and staff representative bodies such as Faculty and Academic Council. We already felt that staff representation was being diminished, but we were given no notice of any changes to governance arrangements prior to the announcement of the removal of elected representatives and their replacement by appointees.
Worlds of Education: What was the reaction of university staff?
Staff were initially surprised by the announcement, but this quickly turned to anger. On a point of principle, the removal of elected representatives was an attack on democracy in the university and on our right to elect our own representatives. On a practical level, the proposed changes undermined genuine transparency by ensuring that the key body responsible for ensuring the accountability of the university’s senior management was appointed by the same senior management. We viewed this as poor governance with insufficient scrutiny of senior management.
Worlds of Education: What was the role of the union branch in mobilising staff?
Staff opposition to the changes quickly began to form, and this coalesced around the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) branch. The union was the natural vehicle for staff to articulate their concerns. The union branch has an effective structure – an organising structure. The branch has the ability to organise across faculties and also to make connections with other unions who are representing different types of staff. We could present a unified response from the staff – but it wasn’t too difficult because there was strong unity from staff across the university.
As the obvious vehicle for articulating staff grievances, the union branch set about engaging with members and representing member views to the university’s management. Despite coinciding with a holiday period, we organised a branch meeting that was extremely well attended. It was very clear that union members were opposed to the changes. We sought meetings with the management, but we were also able to increase pressure by organising a petition and drawing interest from the media. As awareness of the issues spread, our union branch received messages of support and solidarity from around the world.
Worlds of Education: What were the results of the campaign?
As pressure grew, the management’s response was to offer a compromise involving a mix of elected and selected staff on the governing authority, but this was roundly rejected by staff. Staff maintained a united position, and the union was able to give expression to this unity. As a result, the university eventually announced that staff representatives would all be elected. This was a complete reversal of its original proposal.
Worlds of Education: What did this victory mean for your union branch and for democracy at Maynooth?
The experience at Maynooth University provides an important example of how a union can act as a pole for staff grievances, that otherwise may struggle to be articulated with such clarity. Staff anger was undoubtedly already there – and would have found expression in some form. However, it is not clear whether this would have been able to achieve the same decisive outcome without union organisation.
As a result, the union attracted increased member involvement, and more effective inputs into a collective agreement being negotiated at the time. The negotiations for the collective agreement were certainly helped by this struggle – because management could see what we could do. Involvement in the governing authority elections had much higher levels of participation and engagement, in part thanks to a union-organised husting of candidates. Candidates were clearly much more sensitised to the need to ensure institutional transparency and accountability and are now well placed to defend collegial governance from future threats. Ironically, institutional democracy appears to have been revitalised as a direct consequence of managerial efforts to suppress it.
Worlds of Education: How did your experience at Maynooth University influence the work of union branches in other universities?
Nationally, the Maynooth experience raised the profile of higher education governance issues among IFUT’s members and more widely. There is some evidence that other universities considering the same changes to governance structures decided not to proceed after our successful campaign at Maynooth.
As a national union, IFUT has organised a series of member seminars on collegial governance and academic freedom and is exploring providing training to IFUT members who may be members of governing authorities. Awareness of the issues has been raised considerably, as has awareness of the value of collective union action.
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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