Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin, 4 May 2026 #CosatuMayDay2026
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY COSATU Call Center Contacts: 010 002 2590 #COSATU salutes all organisers, shopstewards, worker leaders for delivering successful 12 #InternationalWorkersDay rallies on May 1 #Hegemony #ClassSolidarity#ClassWar #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
4 May 2026
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
Organize at every workplace and demand respect for labour rights Now!
Defend Jobs Now!
Join COSATU NOW!
Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- COSATU KwaZulu-Natal statement on a successful May Day celebration
- South Africa
- COSATU supports Supreme Court findings on the Compensation Fund
- More must be done to cushion workers and the economy from the massive fuel price hikes
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- May Day: Wisdom workers of the world, unite, inspire, lead!
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
COSATU KwaZulu-Natal statement on a successful May Day celebration
Edwin Mkhize, COSATU KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Secretary, 04 May 2026
The Congress of South African Trade Unions in KwaZulu-Natal (COSATU KZN) extends its sincere appreciation to all workers, our members, the masses of our people, leadership of our Affiliates, and our Alliance partners for their overwhelming support and participation in the 2026 May Day Celebration Rally. The massive turnout and militant spirit demonstrated at the rally reaffirm the enduring strength, unity, and consciousness of the working class in our province.
May Day is not, and must never be reduced to, an ordinary public holiday. It is a historic day born out of struggle, sacrifice, and bloodshed by generations of workers who fought for dignity, fair labour standards, and social justice. We carry a responsibility to defend and advance these hard-won gains. To honour the heroes and heroines of our movement, we must continuously deepen our revolutionary consciousness and advance the National Democratic Revolution.
The success of this year’s May Day Rally did not happen in isolation. It is the product of sustained organisational work and mass mobilisation undertaken by COSATU and its Affiliates across the province over recent months. As part of our build-up programme, we convened Local Shop Stewards Councils and Clustered Shop Stewards Councils to strengthen workplace organisation and worker unity. We intensified workplace visits and led a Listening Campaign to directly engage workers on their lived realities, challenges, and expectations.
We engaged key institutions such as the CCMA to strengthen worker protection mechanisms and actively participated in initiatives aimed at skills development and up-skilling through the Human Resource Development Council. COSATU KZN also played a leading role in interventions to address retrenchments, unemployment, and economic stagnation, including our participation in the recent KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Job Summit.
In defence of workers, we led and supported pickets and demonstrations against exploitation and injustice, including struggles of unpaid municipal workers in iMpendle Municipality, opposition to increases in GEMS medical aid contributions, and resistance against unfair aspects of the tax regime administered by SARS. These actions affirm that COSATU remains a fighting federation, rooted in the daily struggles of workers.
As we enter Workers’ Month, our programme intensifies. We send a clear and uncompromising message to employers: respect workers’ rights, comply with labour laws, and end all forms of exploitation. The levels of non-compliance with key legislation such as the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act, Skills Development Act (SDA), and immigration regulations are unacceptable.
COSATU KZN, together with its Affiliates, Locals and relevant stakeholders, will roll out a programme of unannounced workplace visits and inspections to confront these violations. We will not hesitate to meet exploitative employers at their doorsteps. Workers cannot continue to be subjected to unsafe conditions, unfair labour practices, and blatant disregard for the law.
We further call upon all workers to exercise and defend their right to organise and join trade unions. Unionisation remains one of the most effective tools to protect workers against exploitation. Evidence consistently shows that conditions of work, wages, and protections are significantly better in unionised workplaces. No worker should ever be forced to choose between employment and their constitutional right to union membership. COSATU will defend this right without compromise.
We also take this opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate the participation of government leaders and public representatives who emerged from the very struggles of the working class. Their presence reflects a continued connection to the historic mission of advancing workers’ interests. We commend our Alliance partners, the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP), the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO), and all formations of the Mass Democratic Movement, for their role in mobilising and supporting this year’s May Day activities.
The unity of the Alliance remains a critical pillar in advancing the struggle of the working class and driving forward a transformative socio-economic agenda.
As COSATU KZN, we call upon all our structures, Affiliates, and members to actively participate in the programmes of Workers’ Month. This is not a ceremonial period, but a month of intensified struggle, organisation, and mobilisation. Together, we must build stronger unions, defend workers’ rights, and advance the struggle for a just, equitable, and inclusive society.
The struggle continues.
Issued by COSATU KwaZulu Natal
South Africa #ClassSolidarity
COSATU supports Supreme Court findings on the Compensation Fund
Matthew Parks, COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator, 04 May 2026
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) supports the Supreme Court’s findings on the dire state of the Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Fund and the urgent need for an external investigation into its extremely depressing state of affairs.
Workers struggle to receive compensation due to them for injuries incurred at the workplace. Families battle to access funds due when their loved ones die at work. Employers experience endless administrative challenges when registering their employees.
This is exactly the same shameful state of affairs at the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) where workers spend days queuing at the Labour Centres to access their benefits and often wait months and even years to receive them.
For far too long workers have had to deal with this terrible state of affairs with no hope in sight. COSATU has repeatedly called for urgent interventions on this burning matter at Nedlac and with government since 2020.
COSATU fully endorses the Supreme Court’s damning findings on the state of the Compensation Fund and the urgent need for an independent enquiry into its many crises.
This must be extended to the equally chaotic UIF. It must not only lead to recommendations on what needs to be done to fix these workers’ insurance funds, but most importantly to their overhauling, cleansing and modernising.
The Federation will be pushing that the Department of Employment and Labour urgently action this progressive finding by the Supreme Court.
Issued by COSATU
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More must be done to cushion workers and the economy from the massive fuel price hikes
Matthew Parks, COSATU Parliamentary Coordinator, 04 May 2026
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is deeply concerned about the impact of the massive increase in fuel prices of over R3 for petrol, R4 for paraffin, R5 for gas and R6 for diesel per litre.
This is on top of April’s already alarming hikes in fuel prices.
This is a painful blow that millions of struggling workers and commuters, and an already stagnant economy stuck at anemic 1% growth simply cannot afford.
Government’s extended fuel levy relief of R3 and R3.93 per litre of petrol and diesel for May and June is a welcome step forward, but more relief will be needed.
We fear that workers, society and the economy will not cope with the planned reduction in the fuel levy relief by half in June and its phasing out in July if international oil and fuel prices continue to remain high and rise. Oil and fuel supplies and prices may also take some time to return to pre-war levels even once the war ends. We are deeply concerned that no relief has been found for the huge increase in paraffin prices.
Diesel is critical for the public and private transport that workers depend upon as is paraffin for millions of working-class families. Workers who are already drowning in debt, supporting up to seven relatives each and spending an average of 40% of their meagre wages on transport; will not be able to continue to survive such painful petrol, diesel, gas and paraffin price hikes.
The most important source of relief for workers, society and the economy, is to maintain the fuel levy relief whilst oil and fuel prices remain high. This is the most impactful and cost-effective solution to this global crisis.
Additional relief should be sought by making public transport more affordable to commuters.
If the cause of this global economic crisis, the Middle East war drags on and inflation rises, additional interventions should be put in place, in particular adjusting social and the SRD grants for inflation, delivering food parcels to social grant recipients, putting in place measures to protect food from inflation with targeted support for agriculture and Transnet, and engaging Eskom on measures to reduce the price of electricity.
The Reserve Bank must spare society further pain by not increasing the repo rate as this source of inflation is external and not domestic driven and workers’ meagre wages must be protected from further bleeding.
The private sector must contribute towards an economic and social relief package, commit to ending retrenchments and providing loan and insurance payment holidays for struggling consumers. Government, with the support of public and private financial institutions must put in place a bold stimulus package to kickstart an under-siege economy.
COSATU will continue to engage government on a package of bold, progressive and decisive measures to cushion workers, the poor and the economy from this global crisis.
Issued by COSATU
International-Solidarity
May Day: Wisdom workers of the world, unite, inspire, lead!
Democracy Leading the profession, 30 April 2026
We are Education International. We are over 33 million teachers and education workers across 180 countries and territories. We educate the world.
In our classrooms, in our schools and universities, in our communities, we stand together for public education, for our profession, for people and planet.
This May Day and every day, we are rising up against billionaires who see our labour as a “tax” on their productivity, who exploit and avoid paying their fair share in a spiral of endless greed.
We are rising up against authoritarians and oligarchs who want to rig our democracies and starve our education systems and public services in order to lock billions of people into cycles of poverty and powerlessness.
We are rising up against arms dealers and warmongers who have bottomless budgets for wanton destruction with no accountability to international law and no respect for human life and dignity.
We are rising up against AI tech companies who seek to addict our children to their products in order to raise customers instead of critical thinkers. We resist all attempts to replace the student-teacher relationship—the foundation of education and civilisation for millennia—with transactional, sycophantic, anthropomorphic chatbots that monopolise our attention, feed on our knowledge without our permission, monetize our own creative work and sell it back to us as progress.
We are rising against fossil fuel monopolies that harm our planet and work to undermine efforts to build a green and sustainable future for all.
We are the organised wisdom workers and we are mobilising across communities to educate and inspire a different future.
This May Day, we call on people everywhere to rise with us. Unplug, reach out, connect!
We must open our eyes and recognise our individual struggle in the shared struggle that binds all of humanity together.
We must stand in solidarity and choose each other with all our strength and all our courage.
We must choose humanity, dignity, love, and equality not as empty slogans but as our shared future.
The global education union movement will continue to be a beacon, a shield, and a formidable force that resists and rises up for our students and our communities all around the globe.
Now. Wisdom workers of the world, unite, inspire, lead!
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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