Provincial Leadership of our militant SAMWU,
Leadership of the Federation and Alliance Partners,
Most importantly the rank and file of SAMWU, from Springbok to Warrenton,
Comrades, please accept warm revolutionary greetings on behalf of the CEC of your Federation and our best wishes for this important Provincial Congress.
We are meeting as our members, the working class and the entire nation face many painful challenges. This Congress takes place as we prepare to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Federation in December in Dobsonville.
This Provincial Congress presents an opportunity to reflect on the challenges facing municipal workers and to empower ordinary shop stewards of SAMWU.
It is essential that we remember those who laid the path for SAMWU and COSATU to be what we are today, the generations of Elijah Barayi and Petrus Mashishi. We owe it to these stalwarts to continue in their footsteps and when we err, to correct our mistakes.
It is no exaggeration to state that the working class is under siege as never before since the democratic breakthrough of 1994.
The economy is barely growing at 1% for the last 17 years. Unemployment continues to rise and is currently a painful 42.9% overall and 72% for the youth. Poverty, inequality, crime and corruption remain entrenched.
The public and municipal services that the working class depend upon are underfunded, reeling from years of budget cuts, corruption and mismanagement and struggling with critical frontline vacancies.
The many gains we have made since 1994 from investing over 61% of the Budget in working class communities, to providing social grants to 27 million, to tackling the legacies of centuries of racism and sexism, are in serious danger of being eroded by budget cuts and the rising costs of living.
The recent gains we have made towards ending loadshedding, rebuilding Transnet and SARS, tackling corruption are at risk of being forgotten as electricity becomes unaffordable, the mining and manufacturing sectors shed jobs and comrades continue to be implicated in unexplained wealth.
We now face a potential bloodbath of jobs from agriculture to motor and other manufacturing sectors as the United States imposes a 30% tariff on South African exports. This is a blow to the economy that workers cannot afford. We will continue to intervene with government to ensure that this crisis is resolved and done so urgently.
Government must move with speed to tackle our many existential crises. It is not good enough to say we will resolve the tariff crisis. DTIC must put in place support to protect at risk farms, factories, businesses and workers.
The Unemployment Insurance Fund must fix the many challenges preventing workers from receiving relief, including the Temporary Employee Relief Scheme.
South Africa is at a crossroads that requires a budget that capacitates the state to provide the essential services the working class needs to survive, to stimulate inclusive economic growth to tackle unemployment and poverty and to provide a better life for all.
This requires government led by the African National Congress to engage with the Alliance, with Business and Labour and communities on a bold and progressive budget to take economic growth to the 3% needed to create decent jobs.
It requires the leadership of government to be decisive in implementing programmes, to deal with those who fail to spend their budgets, to arrest those who break the law or steal.
Society is rapidly losing patience with all of us.
Comrades, much work continues to be done by COSATU with affiliates, in particular, SAMWU at Nedlac, Parliament, in the industrial master plans and bargaining councils.
We must not forget that it was SACTWU in March 2020 who first proposed the Two Pot Pension Reforms. Today it is the law of the Republic with more than 3.5 million workers having received over R60 billion to date.
Engagements are taking place on reducing the tax burden upon workers, enabling fund members to access further relief and to ensure that workers losing their jobs are able to access all their savings.
Engagements are taking place at Nedlac on the labour law reforms. In 2022 when government and business tabled their proposals, we were shocked by their attempts to gut the progressive labour laws that took workers decades of hard-fought struggles to win.
We adopted a deliberate strategy to wear down government, to divide government from business and when the time was right after three years of intense monthly and weekly negotiations, to strike and offer compromises on areas that would not harm workers, to block proposals that would weaken workers’ rights and to score victories that would extend protections to millions.
SAFTU and other armchair critics claim the labour laws will be weakened and that COSATU has sold out. They claimed the same lies when we achieved the National Minimum Wage, the Two Pot Pension Reforms and countless other victories.
The reality is that SAFTU does not have capacity and only attended 3 out of more than 30 meetings. Yet they are always available to fly to Europe!
Whilst COSATU did not achieve all we had sought at Nedlac, we are confident that we have managed to ensure workers’ rights remain secure and that many critical gains advancing workers’ protections have been won, including:
Defeating a variety of proposals to weaken our labour laws and roll back workers’ rights.
- Defeating proposals to exempt SMMEs from the majority of labour laws.
- Defeating proposals to reduce the National Minimum Wage to R20 an hour.
- Defeating proposals to extend the limit on labour broking to 12 months.
- Defeating proposals to remove protections from dismissals for persons under 30 years of age.
- Defeating proposals to exempt SMMEs from having to pay retrenchment payments if they had not yet operated for 2 years.
- Increasing severance pay for workers losing their jobs from one to two weeks per year employed.
- Extending protections for the National Minimum Wage including from deductions.
- Guaranteeing on-call workers a minimum number of shifts to ensure they can earn sufficient income to take care of themselves.
- Requiring labour inspectors to check pension fund payments compliance by employers.
- UIF assisting workers in the event of an employer defaulting on monies owed.
- Recognising the rights of atypical workers to join trade unions and engage in collective bargaining e.g. artists, musicians and actors.
- Further negotiations that will take place soon on ensuring atypical workers enjoy the protection of the UIF and Compensation Fund.
- BCEA provisions compelling employers to pay their employees’ pension contributions will be strengthened including requiring interest to be paid for late payments to the workers’ funds.
Some areas of substantial disagreement remain, including exempting start-ups from collective bargaining council agreements and the definitions of unfair labour practices. COSATU is continuing to engage with government on these to ensure that when the Bills are finally tabled before Parliament, those and all other remaining areas of disagreement are resolved in the interests of workers.
The Bills are now before the state law advisor and will then be released for public comment and later retabled at Nedlac for final consideration on any further needed amendments. They will then be submitted to Cabinet and Parliament, which would hold further public consultations. COSATU remains confident that the final legislation will continue to protect workers’ rights and that such protections will be further extended.
We hope that at some stage SAFTU’s leadership will mature to play a constructive role at Nedlac. Seeking media headlines may entertain friends over drinks but does nothing to strengthen workers’ rights in law or reality.
This same SAFTU is absent from the Nedlac engagements on the Merchant Shipping Bill where through COSATU’s interventions we have secured agreement to extend all labour rights to merchant and fishing workers.
Revolutions are won through honesty and hard work. Negotiations require you to pitch up and engage.
Comrades it is important that SAMWU continue to work closely with COSATU at Nedlac. In fact, if it were not for SAMWU’s leadership and support, we would not have achieved many of the victories we have won over many years at Nedlac.
It is equally important that we take this information to members and workers, train and empower them to claim their rights.
We will head to the most difficult local government elections in 2026 where if we cannot convince our members, their families and the working class on the importance of voting and voting for the Alliance, we may find the National Democratic Revolution and our many gains under severe threat.
We have seen that coalitions breed instability with mayors changing left, right and centre and little progress made to fix local government or deliver basic services. We have seen municipal workers left unpaid, pensions pickpocketed, and companies close.
Again, our leadership in government needs to move much faster to turn things around before it is too late.
The state of local government is extremely worrying. Approximately 70% of municipalities in South Africa are in serious financial trouble. We have seen up to 36 municipalities struggle to pay staff, including eight in the Northern Cape with Thembelihle amongst the worse. We have seen many struggling to provide basic services, including Kimberly the provincial capital.
We have managed to intervene with COGTA in January to stop the retrenchment of 67 000 CWP employees. We now need a permanent solution to the crisis of local government, including a new funding model, insourcing EPWP and CWP workers, tackling corruption and removing incompetent politicians and managers.
This is a struggle that SAMWU and COSATU must continue to lead.
We need equally to ensure that the Alliance is not only radically reconfigured but also united. The African National Congress and the South African Communist Party are our allies. We respect and support them. But we need them not to divide workers.
The ANC and the SACP must engage and find each other and explain to us the modalities to unite the Alliance, including the SACP’s decision to contest state power.
This is a matter that Affiliates must deliberate on, not as leaders but with our membership across the country. We have set a process as the CEC to engage on this sensitive issue and receive a clear mandate from workers, including holding Special CECs and the Central Committee in September and ultimately our National Congress in 2026.
We must ensure that the Alliance is united, members are mobilised and the working class turns out in decisive numbers to return the movement to power in the local elections. Not to enrich politicians but to deliver a better life to all our people, from Okiep to Kenhardt.
Leadership, all of these can only be won, if we have a strong SAMWU and COSATU.
We must raise the alarm bells that our membership continues to shrink, many affiliates remain fragile and our campaigns are not felt by workers.
SAMWU remains an example for many to follow. Not so long ago, SAMWU was in serious trouble. Today it is a union that can be felt across factories, that is growing across farms, that is engaged with members and responding to their needs.
SAMWU needs to share these experiences with other unions who struggle to get the basics right.
But SAMWU can and must do better. Your membership is too small. Can we not push it to 200 000 paid up by the COSATU Congress next year?
Can we ramp up our campaigns to recruit and service municipal workers, from Port Nolloth to Douglas?
Can SAMWU not offer training sessions to shop stewards and organisers on how to recruit and service members? How to train and empower workers? How to manage investment funds to benefit members not leaders? How to maintain unity and democratic processes? How to exemplify the non-racial, non-sexist vision of the Freedom Charter?
These are the life and blood of the labour movement. We need SAMWU to share these good stories of the Federation with our comrades as many have forgotten these fundamentals.
Leadership allow me to conclude here, by thanking you for giving COSATU this opportunity to report to you, our members, and for all the support you have given the Federation and most importantly for all that you have done and continue to do for the working class.
Amandla!