Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin, 30 October 2025 #Cosatu@40 #Cosatu40thAnniversary
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY #Cosatu’s Just Transition Global South Exchange 2025 adopts a Declaration at Boksburg… #JustTransition #Cosatu scheduled to hold its 40th Anniversary at Dobsonville, Soweto on December 6 #Cosatu@40 #Cosatu40thAnniversary #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
30 October 2025
“Build Working Class Unity for Economic Liberation towards Socialism”
Organize at every workplace and demand respect for labour rights Now!
Defend Jobs Now!
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- COSATU to host lectures in the lead up to 40th anniversary
- South Africa
- Parliament signs Barcelona Declaration on Tuberculosis
- SACP welcomes United Nations resolution on United States blockade Against Cuba
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- Court ruling reinstates retrenched workers at ArcelorMittal South Africa
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
Keynote Address by President of COSATU, Zingiswa Losi, at the COSATU Global South Exchange 2025
Zingiswa Losi, COSATU President, October 27, 2025
Introduction
Comrades, friends, delegates, and leaders of the working class, I bring you revolutionary greetings from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the workers of South Africa.
It is an honour to open the 2025 Global South Exchange on Just Transition, promoting Labour Led Climate Action: Advancing a Just Transition for the Global South.
We meet in Ekurhuleni, the industrial heart of South Africa at a time when the world stands at a crossroads. The fight for climate justice has become the fight for the soul of our economies, our communities, and our planet.
The Climate Emergency and the Global South Reality
Comrades, the Global South is not facing a future threat, we are already living through the devastating consequences of climate change. From the coastal erosion in Mozambique and Senegal, to droughts in Namibia and Kenya, to floods in KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape, the lives and livelihoods of millions of workers are under siege.
Entire communities have been displaced, informal settlements washed away, and small-scale farmers left destitute. Our ports, roads, and water systems which are the heart of our economies are strained beyond capacity.
Yet, it is the working class, specifically women and youth in the Global South, who suffer most, even though we contribute least to global emissions.
The same economic systems that looted our minerals, our land, and our labour now seek to loot our energy and gain further profit through “green investments”. While they wish to benefit from our resources – our energy and our labour – we are expected to bear the costs.
But we say, clearly and firmly, that the capitalism cannot use the concept of the “Just Transition” to advance a new form of green colonialism. It must not be allowed to trap us into higher levels of debt and unsustainable dependence. Instead, we must contest this space and advance a Transition – that will indeed be Just.
Our struggle for a Just Transition must ensure that we restructure economies and power relations to ensure that they put people before profit, and justice before exploitation.
The Global South Exchange, 2024 to 2025
When we gathered at the 2024 Global South Exchange, we made history. We contributed to building a united front of workers, unions, and allies from across Africa, Latin America, and Asia and we spoke in unison with one voice.
We declared that climate justice is inseparable from economic justice.
We affirmed that a Just Transition must be worker led, socially inclusive, and grounded in solidarity. And comrades, seen tangible progress:
1. The 2024 GSE Declaration was adopted, calling for public ownership of energy, job guarantees, and social protection as pillars of a just transition.
2. Our advocacy influenced COP29 outcomes, ensuring that worker participation and social dialogue were integrated into the Just Transition Work Programme.
3. COSATU and its allies shaped national debates, particularly on South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), to push for transparency, community benefit, and climate finance that is developmental in nature.
4. We began to redefine climate finance, not as charity, but as a matter of historical and social justice.
While we still have a hard and long struggle ahead of us to achieve our goals, we remain resolute. We are confident that when the Global South organises collectively, we can shift the balance of power.
Deepening the Transition
In 2025, our task is to turn those declarations into implementation. Across the world, powerful actors are moving fast to claim the “green economy.” But without the leadership of labour and communities, this transition will only reproduce old inequalities in new colours. That is why this Exchange must deepen our agenda. We must:
· Protect existing jobs and create new, decent, unionised jobs in renewables, transport, water, the care economy and sustainable manufacturing.
· Advance energy democracy for workers and communities – we must have a say in how energy is produced, priced, and distributed.
· Demand fair and unconditional climate finance, with grants not loans, reparations not debts.
· Embed social protection so that every worker impacted by transition has income support, retraining, and access to services.
· Advance social protection so that communities impacted by transition have income support and there is investment in local economic development.
· Promote gender and youth justice – women workers and young people must be central to the green economy – they must not be left behind.
These are not just demands they are commitments we will carry forward to COP30 in Belém, Brazil in November 2025.
South Africa’s Experience: Lessons from the JETP
Here at home, our experience with the Just Energy Transition Partnership, has been instructive.
Yes, it has opened doors for financing renewable projects.
However, it has also exposed the risks of debt driven, top-down approaches that ignore the realities of workers and communities.
While COSATU rejected the first iteration of the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JETIP), we come with solutions and insist that the JETP must:
· Prioritise decent work and local industrialisation
· Expand electricity access for the millions still excluded,
· Ensure transparency and accountability in the use of climate funds, and
· Protect public ownership of energy systems.
The Just Transition must not enrich consultants and private investors while workers lose their livelihoods. It must build a new economy rooted in equality and sustainability.
The Road to Belém
Comrades, as we move toward COP30 in Brazil, the world will look to the Global South to lead with courage and unity. This Exchange will finalise a Unified Labour Position, that will be from the trade unions across Africa, Latin America, and Asia outlining our five key commitments for COP30:
1. We demand a Global Labour Just Transition Framework which makes the ILO Guidelines on Just Transition and the UNFCCC Work Programme binding, enforceable, and accountable to workers.
· We demand Debt Free Climate Finance with a $100 billion annual commitment – primarily through grants – that is public, predictable, and accessible, with direct financing for worker led projects.
· We demand Energy Democracy and Public Ownership and commit to continue rejecting privatisation and campaigning for public renewable energy systems with access for all.
· We demand that decent work, skills for the future and social protection are built into all national plans, with specific attention on gender and youth responsive employment strategies.
· We commit to advancing Global South Solidarity, coordinating research and advocacy, and strengthening our campaigns ahead of COP30 and beyond.
Our deliberations over the next 3 days will chart our way forward, intensify our struggle and deepen our commitment. We will capture this in a declaration on the last day that includes our stance on how we advance a Just Transition, our demands to take to COP30 and our plan of action to strengthen progressive alliances and advance our struggle.
In ending, I must emphasise that the Just Transition is not about carbon targets it is about people’s lives, livelihoods, and dignity. It is not about charity – it is about reparation and justice. We must build our own progressive and radical Just Transition that is South led, and Africa led, worker driven, globally united and serves the needs of the working class.
Let this 2025 Exchange mark the beginning of a new phase of labour leadership, where we move from declarations to transformation, from advocacy to implementation, and from solidarity to power.
As we say in COSATU, no worker must be left behind. No community ignored. Global South must never be silenced. Let us march together to COP30 not to plead, but to lead. Let us march forward collectively, to demand a new world that serves people and the planet, not neo-colonial overlords and profit.
I declare this GSE 2025 officially opened.
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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:
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
Parliament signs Barcelona Declaration on Tuberculosis
29 Oct 2025
The Speaker of the National Assembly, Ms Thoko Didiza, signed the Barcelona Declaration on Tuberculosis (TB), marking South Africa’s formal commitment to a renewed global parliamentary movement to eradicate TB within a generation. The declaration was co-signed by the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, during a special signing ceremony held in Parliament yesterday.
In her address at the ceremony, the Speaker reaffirmed Parliament’s leadership role in championing the fight against TB, noting that “tuberculosis remains a health challenge globally despite it being a treatable disease. In order to raise the level of awareness, parliamentarians across the globe decided to become a voice that mobilises society on the need for churning the disease by advocating for better investments by government in addressing the diseases.”
She further highlighted Parliament’s commitment to “mounting popular campaigns that highlight the importance of treating the disease and also complying with treatment with those who have the disease.”
The signing ceremony coincided with the official launch of the South African TB Parliamentary Caucus, held in the presence of parliamentary peers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), including the Chairpersons of Health Portfolio Committees from Lesotho and Zambia, who attended to demonstrate regional solidarity. The event also followed a Ministerial Statement in the National Assembly, presented by the Minister of Health, outlining government’s ongoing fight against the TB scourge.
The Barcelona Declaration, first adopted by international parliamentarians, recognises that TB has killed more people than any other infectious disease in human history and continues to claim 1.5 million lives annually.
It calls for the disease to be treated as a global political priority, demanding accelerated progress, investment in research, and equitable access to diagnosis and treatment for all.
The Declaration commits signatories to:
Urge governments to increase investments in TB prevention, diagnosis, and treatment
Promote affordable and accessible healthcare for all TB patients
Support research and innovation for new TB drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines
Integrate care for co-infections such as HIV and diabetes
Mobilise community and civil society participation to combat stigma and ensure treatment adherence
By signing the Declaration, Parliament of South Africa joins a global parliamentary caucus that collaborates with the World Health Organisation (WHO), Global Fund, Stop TB Partnership, UNAIDS, and other multilateral organisations to end the TB epidemic within a generation.
The Speaker emphasised that today’s ceremony symbolises Parliament’s renewed commitment to health equity and global solidarity. “The Speaker and Members during the debate in the National Assembly highlighted the need for activism by Members of Parliament on this matter and encouraged the TB Parliamentary Caucus to be a champion towards eradicating TB in our country and globally,” she said.
She added that the declaration represents both a national commitment and a continental responsibility, reaffirming that South Africa’s Parliament will remain a strong advocate for universal health access, regional collaboration, and community mobilisation against TB.
Enquiries:
Parliament Spokesperson
Moloto Mothapo
Issued by Parliament of South Africa
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SACP welcomes United Nations resolution on United States blockade Against Cuba
Mbulelo Mandlana, SACP Head of Media, Communications and Information, 30 October 2025
The South African Communist Party (SACP) welcomes the resounding United Nations resolution calling upon the imperialist United States government to unconditionally lift its illegal and criminal blockade on Cuba.
On 29 October 2025, the United Nations General Assembly once again voted overwhelmingly against the United States’ blockade towards Cuba. This marks the 33rd consecutive time the United Nations has expressed a strong opposition to the United States government’s economic blockade against Cuba.
The resolution expressed a clear statement that the United States’ actions against Cuba constitute injustice and persecution. This sentiment has been reiterated 32 times previously. The United States’ actions have been widely condemned as immoral and contrary to the principles of multilateralism, national sovereignty, and a rules-based international order.
The historical justifications for the United States’ actions are lacking in moral substance and are rooted in an unapologetic imperialist imposition of one country’s will over another. This approach disregards the humanity of the Cuban people and relegates them to a subhuman status.
The United States policy towards Cuba is underpinned by a supremacist belief that originated during the colonisation of South America by European governments. While the majority of countries in the Americas have abandoned colonial mentality in their relations with South America, the United States maintains a position of violent suppression of South America in general and Cuba in particular. This repression has led to increased economic challenges for Cuba, placing its people in increasingly difficult economic and social conditions.
We commend and align ourselves with the people of the world who continue to affirm the right to self-determination and sovereignty for the Cuban people. We also commend the progressive governments across the world who have stood with Cuba during these challenging times.
It must be stated, however, that the international law framework, as it is built, permits aggressor nations of the West to act without any accountability. It allows the United Nations General Assembly and other structures of the United Nations to vote and take decisions that are ultimately unenforceable. To that end, the effectiveness of the international conventions is grossly limited. The SACP thus continues to call for important reforms of the multilateral system in order to prevent impunity by the United States and other imperialist countries.
We urge the government of South Africa to deepen its relations with Cuba on various fronts. This collaboration will drive shared development for both countries and contribute to the prosperity of the Cuban people.
We remain steadfast in our opposition to imperialism and its actions towards Cuba. The fact that the United States and apartheid Israeli regime are leading a desperate tiny minority of countries that oppose the granting of full rights to Cuba reflects the backwardness of the imperialist policy as opposed to the unquestionable standing of Cuba and its exemplary cause.
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY,
FOUNDED IN 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA.
Media, Communications & Information Department | MCID
International-Solidarity
Court ruling reinstates retrenched workers at ArcelorMittal South Africa
29 October, 2025
The South African Labour Court has stopped the retrenchment of over 3,500 workers at ArcelorMittal South Africa (AMSA) and called for fresh consultations with the union.
The retrenchments will affect over 3500 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs along the value chain. AMSA attributes the retrenchments to high energy costs, cheap imports, and logistics challenges on transportation.
The long steel making company issued a retrenchment notice for workers at its operations in Newcastle and Vereeniging in January this year but before consultations were concluded the AMSA retrenched workers on October 21. This prompted the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), which is the majority union at the company, to apply for an urgent interdict at the Labour Court to protect the interests of the workers.
The Labour Court order, issued on 27 October, ruled in favour of NUMSA, an affiliate of IndustriALL Global Union, stating that AMSA must follow a fair process by engaging with the union in negotiations over the retrenchments, and to start fair consultations within 10 days. The court said all dismissed workers must be reinstated and paid for the period they were retrenched. Further, ArcelorMittal is not allowed to dismiss any workers at its Newcastle and Vereeniging operations based on the January Section 189 notice which informed workers of the employer’s intention to retrench. The court ruled that AMSA must issue a new notice.
On the retrenchments, NUMSA said it wants “meaningful joint-consensus seeking consultations” on the closure of the operations.
“This latest victory is another example of NUMSA consistently fighting for workers and their families and provides an opportunity to possibly look at alternatives to retrenchment,”
said Irvin Jim, NUMSA general secretary.
NUMSA argued that it is dishonest for AMSA to be receiving financial bailouts from the state-owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) while retrenching workers at the same time. NUMSA has also picketed at the IDC offices in Johannesburg in February demanding urgent action to stop the retrenchments.
Paule France Ndessomin, IndustriALL regional secretary for Sub Saharan Africa said:
“AMSA must always consult with the union and negotiate in good faith. It is unfair on workers to be dismissed when negotiations are still taking place.”
South Africa is the continent’s largest steel producer, accounting for over 10 per cent of continental steel production.
______________________________
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