Taking COSATU Today Forward Special Bulletin, 15 May 2026
Norman Mampane
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COSATU TODAY COSATU Call Center Contacts: 010 002 2590 #Cosatu wishes #SAMATU National Congress successful deliberations #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
15 May 2026
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Contents
- Workers Parliament: Back to Basics!
- POPCRU wishes SAMATU well on the occasion of its National Elective Congress
- South Africa
- COSATU on the Gauteng Treasury funding crisis and the failure of departments to spend public funds
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- Give workers a vision and they will help with solutions
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics #ClassWar
POPCRU wishes SAMATU well on the occasion of its National Elective Congress
Richard Mamabolo, POPCRU National Spokesperson, 15 May 2026
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) conveys its revolutionary greetings and unwavering message of solidarity to the South African Medical Association Trade Union (SAMATU) on the occasion of its Elective Congress taking place from 15–17 May 2026 under the theme: “Striving for Excellence in Healthcare by Empowering Doctors.”
As POPCRU, we recognise this Congress as a significant platform that brings together progressive healthcare professionals committed to advancing the dignity of workers, defending quality public healthcare, and strengthening the role of doctors within the broader struggle for a just and equitable society.
At a time when South Africa continues to grapple with deep socio-economic inequalities, collapsing public infrastructure, staff shortages, burnout amongst frontline workers, and increasing pressure on the healthcare system, the role of organised labour within the medical fraternity becomes even more critical. The empowerment of doctors cannot be separated from the broader struggle to build a capable, people-centred, and developmental state that prioritises the wellbeing of both workers and communities.
Your chosen theme correctly identifies that excellence in healthcare is impossible without empowering those who stand at the forefront of saving lives daily. Doctors, like all workers in the public service, require decent working conditions, adequate resources, professional respect, fair remuneration, and safe working environments in order to effectively serve the people of our country.
POPCRU further acknowledges the sacrifices made by healthcare workers over the years, particularly under difficult conditions characterised by austerity measures, budgetary constraints, infrastructure decay, and growing demands on the public healthcare sector. Despite these challenges, healthcare professionals continue to demonstrate resilience, commitment, and patriotism in service of the people.
As a union representing workers within the criminal justice cluster, POPCRU understands the interconnectedness between healthcare, social justice, community safety, and human dignity. A healthy society is fundamental to social stability, development, and the advancement of democratic gains.
We therefore wish the SAMATU Elective Congress fruitful deliberations, robust engagements, and successful outcomes that will strengthen the unity, organisational capacity, and progressive mandate of the union moving forward.
May this Congress emerge with renewed leadership, renewed energy, and renewed determination to continue championing the rights of healthcare workers while advancing accessible and quality healthcare for all.
An injury to one is an injury to all.
Issued by the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU)
South Africa #ClassSolidarity
COSATU on the Gauteng Treasury funding crisis and the failure of departments to spend public funds
Louisah Moepeng Modikwe, COSATU Gauteng Provincial Secretary, 15 May 2026
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in Gauteng is deeply concerned by reports that the Gauteng Provincial Treasury is locked in urgent negotiations to prevent National Treasury from freezing R1.9 billion in provincial funding amid mounting debt owed to municipalities and widespread financial mismanagement across departments.
This crisis comes at a time when working-class communities across Gauteng are facing collapsing public infrastructure, overcrowded hospitals and clinics, housing backlogs, deteriorating schools, water and sanitation failures, rising unemployment and worsening poverty. It is therefore unacceptable that while communities suffer daily, several provincial departments failed to spend billions allocated for service delivery.
The Federation is outraged that approximately R1.4 billion in conditional grant funding meant for essential public services remained unspent while residents continue to experience severe hardships. This failure represents not merely administrative incompetence, but a direct betrayal of the people of Gauteng, particularly the poor and the working class who depend on public services for survival.
COSATU notes with serious concern the significant underspending by key departments including Health, Human Settlements, Education, Community Safety and Agriculture. These are not luxury portfolios. They are departments central to improving the lives of workers, the unemployed, pensioners, women and youth.
The Federation believes that continued underspending and poor financial controls point to deeper governance failures, weak consequence management, lack of planning and the inability of some departments to implement programmes effectively.
At the same time, municipalities are drowning in debt, service delivery protests are escalating, and suppliers and workers face uncertainty because of delayed payments.
COSATU therefore calls for immediate accountability from all MECs and Heads of Departments responsible for non-spending and financial mismanagement. It cannot be business as usual while public resources meant to uplift communities are returned unspent or lost through inefficiency.
The Federation demands full disclosure of all departments and officials responsible for underspending and financial failures. Consequence management against MECs, HoDs and senior officials who fail to spend allocated budgets while communities suffer without services must be initiated.
Stronger financial oversight and monitoring mechanisms to ensure that public funds are spent efficiently, transparently and within prescribed timelines are urgently required. Accelerated infrastructure delivery in schools, hospitals, clinics, roads and housing projects to address the massive service delivery backlog facing Gauteng residents.
COSATU further warns that ordinary workers and communities must not be punished for failures caused by poor governance and incompetence. Any freezing of funds will worsen already fragile service delivery conditions and deepen social and economic hardships across the province.
The Federation will continue to demand clean governance, effective spending of public resources and accountability from all public representatives and officials entrusted with serving the people.
Issued by COSATU Gauteng
International-Solidarity
Give workers a vision and they will help with solutions
13 May, 2026
In communities where workers are calculating whether their wages will cover transport costs and food prices, abstract climate narratives fall flat. What workers respond to is a concrete vision of something better, not a warning about calamity.
That is the central argument coming from the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU), whose organizers are grappling with a question that global policy forums rarely answer. Specifically, how do you make a Just Transition relevant to workers who have never of heard the term? Simon Eppel, SACTWU research director who was in the room when the Just Transition manifesto for the textile and garment supply chain was launched, knows the gap between policy and factory floor.
“The Just Transition stuff right now is like preaching. You’ve got to do something about climate change. But there’s no incentive for workers to take the risk. Give them an incentive,”
he says.
The problem with reskilling in an economy without jobs
The Just Transition manifesto calls for reskilling and redeployment as central pillars of a Just Transition. SACTWU broadly supports these demands. However, they raise a critical challenge that is often overlooked in global policy discussions: reskilling only works where there are jobs to reskill into.
“Traditionally the most prominent part of the Just Transition concept is about reskilling and replacing workers. And that works in an economy of full employment. It just doesn’t work as well in the Global South,” Simon Eppel explains.
In South Africa, unemployment is among the highest in the world. Therefore, asking workers to accept job losses on the promise of future opportunities is asking them to gamble with their livelihoods. SACTWU’s argument is to broaden the Just Transition vision beyond jobs. They want to include giving workers a stake in the assets required for decarbonization and sustainable production.
“Poverty is not only income-related. It is also asset-related. In a future of economic, climate, technology shocks and more we need to think about how to make workers more resilient, including by having assets that earn workers incomes, not only jobs.”
A practical vision: workers as co-owners
SACTWU is already developing models. The union is building an education programme that starts with problems workers already understand, like coal-fired boilers in textile factories that damage their health. Then it aims to build toward collective solutions.
“You start with the coal-fired boiler. Workers breathe that in every day. You make the link between their health, their community and the broader climate challenge. Then you come with solutions,”
Simon Eppel says.
One such solution involves replacing coal boilers with solar thermal technology, dramatically reducing fuel consumption. But crucially, SACTWU argues that workers should benefit not only from this change, but from owning a share of it.
“Why is the union movement not conceiving models where workers are enabled to buy machines, the boss rents it from them and they earn a nominal rent every month? This model could be marketed to European buyers as sourcing from factories who practice sustainable green growth,” Simon Eppel challenges.
This is a vision the union believes workers could get behind. Not sacrifice, but shared opportunity.
What the Global South needs from the Global North
South Africa’s retail-textile value chain moves at a different pace from Europe’s. Local retailers are not yet demanding sustainable fibres or circular production models. This means the market pressure driving transition elsewhere simply does not exist here yet. But SACTWU is clear that this cannot be an excuse to wait.
“Left to its own devices, our local system will push us slowly. If we want to take advantage of the opportunities, we must push the system to move faster,” Simon Eppel says.
To do that, the Global South needs three things from the Global North: recognition that different contexts require different pathways, affordable financing and more crucially long-term purchase commitments from global buyers.
“If buyers say, we’ll give you orders, not for six months, but a three-year commitment and here is money and exposure to technology then factories can make the changes. That is what you need to build businesses and jobs and to enable the transition,”
he adds.
Without that demand signal from Northern buyers, even willing factories cannot justify the investment in green technology.
Moving from defence to offence
Historically, unions have been defensive by nature, protecting what exists. It is a shift that Simon Eppel, who has spent years working with garment workers on the Cape Flats, believes unions cannot afford to avoid.
“You can’t purely be defensive. You need to be offensive too. If we simply defend against risks, the nature and direction of change will be defined for us and we will lose the chance to shape the future as different from the present. To be offensive, you need an alternative world you are putting forward,”
he explains.
That means experimenting, sharing what works across unions globally and being willing to take risks even when the outcome is uncertain. SACTWU is now raising funds for an education and pilot project programme and identifying factories where new models could be tested.
A transition that works for everyone
The Just Transition manifesto sets out bold demands for brands, employers and governments. SACTWU supports the direction but insists that unless those demands are grounded in the lived reality of workers in the Global South, they risk remaining exactly that: demands on paper.
“You don’t have to learn basic human behaviour and human need. You just need to think about workers as people rather than as policy,”
he says.
For SACTWU, a Just Transition is not a compliance exercise or a green marketing opportunity. Instead, it is a chance to build a new relationship between workers, technology and ownership. This is one where the people who make our clothes also have a stake in the future of the industry that depends on them.
______________________________
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