Taking COSATU Today Forward, 13 March 2026 #CosatuRedFridays
Norman Mampane
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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
13 March 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!
- NUM KwaZulu-Natal Region to march against ESKOM privatisation and the erosion of workers' rights
- DITSELA Siyakhuluma Seminar coming next week
- South Africa
- POPCRU supports the NUM on defending Eskom, workers’ jobs and South Africa’s energy sovereignty
- International-Workers’ Solidarity!
- 5 ways to make gender transformation at work a reality
Workers’ Parliament-Back2Basics
NUM KwaZulu-Natal Region to march against ESKOM privatisation and the erosion of workers' rights
Khuleh Ntuli, NUM KwaZulu-Natal Acting Regional Secretary, 12 March 2026
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) KwaZulu-Natal Region, joined by a broad coalition of progressive community formations, religious leaders, and civil society, will lead a march to Eskom New Germany in Pinetown on Saturday, 14 March 2026.
The march serves as a decisive rejection of the neoliberal unbundling of Eskom and a demand for state entities to stop abandoning the working class in favour of private interests.
Eskom must remain in the hands of the state. The generation, distribution and transmission of electricity as a basic need cannot be outsourced to individuals who have no Constitutional obligation to provide basic needs. Electricity is not a commodity but a basic need.
We remain vehemently opposed to the back door privatisation of the state entities including Eskom.
We also reject the insulting 6 % wage increase currently offered by Eskom. The dedication and commitment of our members in turning around Eskom is being insulted.
The NUM views the unbundling of Eskom—specifically the privatisation of its transmission component—as a direct assault on the poor. This move will inevitably lead to massive job losses, skyrocketing electricity tariffs, and the enrichment of a few at the expense of the majority
The details of the march are as follows:
Starting time: 9 am
Assembly Point: Eskom New Germany, Pinetown - Durban
Keynote Address: Phillip Vilakazi, NUM President
For more detailed information, please contact:
Khuleh Ntuli, NUM KwaZulu-Natal Acting Regional Secretary, 078 478 3877
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) 7 Rissik Street, Cnr Frederick, Johannesburg Tel: 011 377 2000 Web: www.num.org.za Twitter: @Num_Media Facebook: National Union of Mineworkers
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DITSELA Siyakhuluma Seminar coming next week
Poverty
and inequality remain some of the most pressing challenges in South Africa today. While many efforts have been made to address these issues, millions of people still struggle with unemployment, limited opportunities, and unequal access to resources.
This raises an important question: Do we share a common vision for how to tackle poverty and inequality? While many agree that change is needed, there are often different views about the causes of these challenges and the solutions required.
This Siyakhuluma Seminar creates a space for open dialogue; to reflect on these realities, share perspectives, and explore whether a shared vision for a more just and equal society is possible.
Dear Comrades,
You’re cordially invited to DITSELA’s Siyakhuluma Seminar.
Topic: Poverty & Inequality- Is There a Shared Vision?
Date: 20th March 2026
Time: 11H00AM- 13H00PM
Venue: ZOOM
https://ditsela-org-za.zoom.us/j/94297799087?pwd=dftAoIZDSsANKMjmD6Rsd1CtGybVzL.1
Meeting ID: 942 9779 9087
Passcode: 499871
Contact: me...@ditsela.org.za or ma...@ditsela.org.za for enquiries.
We encourage everyone to participate in the conversation, because meaningful solutions can only emerge when different voices and experiences are brought together.
Comradely Greetings,
DITSELA Media
Ditsela Workers’ Education Institute
+27 11 492 0302 (Switchboard)
@DITSELAWorkersEducationInstitu
South Africa #ClassSolidarity
COSATU stands in solidarity with NUM as it embarks on mass action against Eskom unbundling
Zanele Sabela, COSATU Spokesperson, 13 March 2026
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) stands squarely in solidarity with its militant Affiliate, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), as it unleashes mass mobilisation against the unbundling of Eskom.
During the State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa made an announcement regarding the continued restructuring and unbundling of Eskom including the establishment of an entirely independent transmission entity that will own and control transmission assets.
COSATU and NUM view this as a bid to privatise perhaps the country’s most strategic state-owned enterprise via the backdoor. Our stance is clear – we are vehemently opposed to the unbundling of Eskom in any format. The breaking up of the energy utility risks its long-term sustainability, is certain to undermine workers’ rights and job security, and will lead to further escalation of the already unaffordable price of electricity.
Moreover, the formation of an independent transmission entity will hollow-out Eskom’s most valuable assets and leave a shell. Government’s obsession with liberalising the energy sector is frankly baffling. A public good as crucial as electricity must never be put in private hands. As it is, not everyone in the country has access to electricity, privatising Eskom will only lead to energy poverty. This cannot be allowed to pass as it will impact the working class the worst.
Another thorn on our side is Samancor Chrome’s insistence on pushing ahead with the retrenchment of 2 400 workers despite the National Electricity Regulator granting it and fellow ferrochrome producer, Glencore-Merafe Resources, relief in the form of a 35% reduction in electricity prices. The move was meant to mitigate the distressed conditions under which the two entities are operating and boost their sustainability. NUM views Samancor’s Section 189 notice as a spit in the face, particularly as the union negotiated tirelessly to have the tariffs reduced to protect both the smelting sector and the jobs within it.
Samancor’s actions and rush to retrench workers is an act of extreme bad faith and undermines extensive engagements between government, industry and labour, including at Nedlac to find a fair compromise. These engagements have yielded massive compromises by Eskom to grant a 62KW relief for struggling industries. COSATU fully supports NUM’s call and will be seeking urgent engagements with government, Eskom and industry on this burning crisis.
To highlight its displeasure at the plan to unbundle Eskom and Samancor’s planned retrenchments, NUM will be rolling out mass action starting this Saturday, 14 March, with marches in the Free State and Kwa-Zulu Natal as follows.
Free State March
Date: 14 March 2026
Time: 9 am
Assembly point: Batho Community Hall
Destination: Lebohang Building (Premiers office)
Contact: Tiisetso Mahlatsi, COSATU Provincial Secretary, 077 607 3012
Kwa-Zulu Natal March
Date: 14 March 2026
Time: 9 am
Assembly Point: Eskom New Germany, Pinetown, Durban
Keynote Address: NUM President, Phillip Vilakazi
Contact: Edwin Mkhize, COSATU Provincial Secretary, 082 399 7756
Or Khuleh Ntuli, NUM Acting Regional Secretary, 078 478 3877
COSATU and its Affiliates will join the marches.
Issued by COSATU
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POPCRU supports the NUM on defending Eskom, workers’ jobs and South Africa’s energy sovereignty
Richard Mamabolo, National Spokesperson, 13 March 2026
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) extends its full support and solidarity to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) following its principled stance against the continued restructuring and unbundling of Eskom.
As a proud affiliate of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), POPCRU recognises that the struggle to defend Eskom as a strategic state-owned asset is not only the concern of energy workers, but a broader working-class struggle that affects the entire South African society. Eskom remains a cornerstone of our country’s developmental capacity, and any attempt to fragment or weaken it threatens the economic stability and social wellbeing of millions of South Africans.
POPCRU shares the NUM’s serious concerns regarding the continued unbundling of Eskom into separate generation, transmission and distribution entities. We agree that the creation of an independent transmission entity that will own and control key transmission infrastructure raises legitimate concerns about the long-term sustainability of Eskom and the potential opening of the door to creeping privatisation of South Africa’s energy system.
Recent developments in the energy sector have also exposed worrying policy contradictions. For several years, households were encouraged to invest in solar energy solutions as a response to the electricity crisis. However, many South Africans are now confronted with the prospect of being required to pay additional charges simply for having solar systems installed in their homes. Such developments raise legitimate concerns among ordinary citizens who made personal financial sacrifices in order to contribute to energy stability. These contradictions undermine public trust and reinforce perceptions that energy policy is increasingly shifting away from the interests of the people.
Equally troubling are emerging reports and perceptions that the transmission infrastructure may ultimately be opened to private interests or sold to the highest bidder through the creation of an independent transmission entity. If such a trajectory were to materialise, it would represent a clear form of privatisation of one of South Africa’s most strategic national assets. POPCRU firmly rejects any attempt to privatise transmission infrastructure without transparent public engagement and meaningful consultation with organised labour and other stakeholders, particularly the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
Electricity is not merely a commodity. It is a public good that underpins economic development, public safety, and the delivery of essential services. Weakening Eskom’s financial and operational integrity risks deepening energy poverty, increasing the cost of electricity for working-class households, and undermining South Africa’s broader industrialisation objectives.
POPCRU therefore supports the NUM’s call for urgent, structured consultations between government, Eskom, and organised labour regarding any proposed changes to Eskom’s institutional architecture. Workers and their unions must not be treated as passive observers in decisions that have far-reaching consequences for employment security, pension funds, working conditions, and the future of the energy sector.
We equally support NUM’s mobilisation programme, including regional marches aimed at defending Eskom as a 100% publicly owned utility and safeguarding the livelihoods of workers in the energy value chain. POPCRU will stand firmly with the NUM on this matter and will actively encourage broader working-class and community mobilisation against any policies that advance the privatisation of strategic public infrastructure. Such tendencies are dangerous for the country and for the people of South Africa at large.
We share the NUM’s deep concern regarding the reported retrenchment processes initiated by Samancor Chrome despite this significant tariff relief. Any company that benefits from public interventions aimed at stabilising production must act responsibly by protecting jobs and honouring the spirit of the engagements aimed at safeguarding workers’ livelihoods.
The survival of South Africa’s smelting and beneficiation industries is vital not only for employment, but also for advancing a developmental and industrial economy that creates value locally rather than exporting raw minerals.
POPCRU therefore calls on government, industry stakeholders, and regulators to prioritise policies that strengthen Eskom, support industrialisation, protect jobs, and ensure that the country’s energy resources serve the interests of the people as a whole.
We reaffirm our solidarity with the NUM and all workers in the mining and energy sectors in their struggle to defend decent work, public ownership of strategic resources, and the broader interests of the working class.
Issued by POPCRU
International-Solidarity
5 ways to make gender transformation at work a reality
Women workers global collage
12 March, 2026
If you are a woman at work, the chances are you already know the feeling. You work as hard as the man next to you, and earn less. You take on more at home, and get penalized for it at work. You speak up in a meeting, and get talked over.
Gender inequality at work is not accidental. It is built into structures, who makes the rules, who they were designed for, and who gets left out. Changing that is what gender transformation means. Here are five ways to make it happen.
1. Recognize that “treating everyone the same” is not the same as equality
Most workplaces would say they treat men and women equally. But equal treatment is not the same as equal outcomes, especially when the rules were written with one group in mind.
Take safety equipment. For decades, protective gear was designed for the average male body. Women had to make do with a kit that did not fit and faced higher injury rates as a result. The rule was “the same” for everyone. The outcome was not.
Gender transformation means going further than acknowledging this problem. It means changing the rules themselves, involving women in writing them, challenging assumptions about who certain jobs are for and making sure safety, pay and promotion systems work for everyone.
A good test for any workplace policy: who was this designed for, and who does it leave out?
2. Count the work that nobody counts
Before and after the paid working day, most women work a second shift. Cooking, cleaning, raising children, caring for elderly parents, work that keeps families and communities going, but that does not appear in any payslip or GDP figure.
Globally, women do 76.2 per cent of all unpaid care work, more than three times as much as men, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO). An estimated 708 million women are outside the paid workforce entirely because of care responsibilities, compared to 40 million men. At the current pace of change, the ILO calculates it will take 210 years to close that gap.
This matters for workers because care responsibilities follow women into the workplace, shaping which jobs they can take, which hours they can work and how far they can progress. Real gender equality means recognizing this work, redistributing it more fairly and building workplaces that account for it: through parental leave that fathers actually use, affordable childcare and flexible working that does not derail careers.
3. Close the pay gap and make employers prove they have
Women earn around 20 per cent less than men globally. The United Nations puts it plainly: for every dollar a man earns, a woman earns 77 cents, for work of equal value. Mothers are hit hardest: wages fall with each additional child, while fathers often see theirs rise.
Part of the gap comes from outright discrimination. But much of it reflects something deeper: jobs done mainly by women are valued less than equivalent jobs done mainly by men. A care worker earns a fraction of what a security guard earns, despite comparable skills and responsibility.
Closing the gap starts with making it visible. Employers should be required to publish salary data broken down by gender and role, so that gaps cannot be hidden. Workers and unions can then use that data to challenge unfair pay, in negotiations, in the courts and in public. IndustriALL’s Pay Equity Toolkit is a free, practical guide developed specifically to help trade unions tackle the gender pay gap, from raising awareness to negotiating pay transparency with employers.
4. Change the institution, not just the rules
Policies only go so far. Lasting change requires changing the culture of organizations, including trade unions themselves. As Professor Akua Opokua Britwum, one of Africa’s leading feminist scholars, has argued at IndustriALL’s women’s committee meeting in Cape Town, June 2023:
“you could put 100 per cent women in union leadership and still have a union that fails women workers, if the structures and culture remain unchanged.”
IF Metall, the Swedish metalworkers’ union, wrote feminist principles into its founding statutes, the French union CGTintroduced equal gender representation on its leadership committee in 1999. ELA in Spain ran an anonymous survey across its entire membership in 2017 asking honest questions about discrimination and bias within the union itself, 95 per cent of members responded. The results were uncomfortable. They acted on them anyway.
Men are part of this too. A workplace that expects women to carry all the care at home, and all the advocacy for equality at work, is not a feminist workplace, it is an exhausted one. Unions and employers that have engaged men directly, through training, through honest conversations about how gender norms harm men too, have made more lasting progress.
5. Know your rights and demand they are enforced
Workers have more rights than many realize, and those rights exist because previous generations fought for them. On gender equality at work, some of the most important protections come from international standards set by the ILO.
The Violence and Harassment Convention (C190) establishes that every worker has the right to a workplace free from violence and harassment, including gender-based violence. The Equal Remuneration Convention (C100) sets out the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. These are not aspirational goals, they are binding standards in countries that have ratified them.
The problem is often enforcement. Rights on paper mean little without pressure to implement them. That pressure comes from organized workers, in unions, in campaigns and in workplaces. IndustriALL has developed a train the trainers toolkit on C190, available in more than a dozen languages, to help affiliates put the convention into practice.
IndustriALL’s 2025 feminist resolution, adopted by IndustriALL affiliates, sets out a full agenda: from equal pay and safe workplaces to care work, climate justice and the fight against rising authoritarianism. It makes clear that gender justice is not a side issue for the labour movement. It is the labour movement.”
“Gender transformation will not come without a fight. The tools, the frameworks and the solidarity are there. The question is whether we use them with determination and shared purpose,” said Chirstina Olivier, IndustriALL assistant general secretary.
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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