Programme Director, Comrade Mike Shingange, President of NEHAWU and First Deputy President of COSATU;

General Secretary Zola Saphetha;

National, provincial and local leadership of our militant affiliate, NEHAWU;

Leadership of the ANC led by cde 1st DSG Nomvula Mokonyane

Leadership of the SACP, led by cde GS cde Solly Africa Mapaila

CEC of COSATU;

Former leaders of this glorious union

International guests and friends, Most importantly, the members of NEHAWU.

Thokozani, Camagwini kubantwana bethongo

Comrade Mike Shingange, Thank you for inviting your Federation, to join you for this historic congress. We are honoured to be here, to offer our full support to NEHAWU and most critically, to hear the struggles of our members from public service departments to public sector entities and to listen to the successes and challenges facing workers on the ground.

We thank President Shingange and General Secretary Zola Sapetha and the collective leadership of NEHAWU for being consistent and active members of the CEC of COSATU, for engaging in robust but progressive debates and for defending the collective resolutions and decisions of the Federation.

We must congratulate the union of Yure Mdyogolo and Bhekokwakhe Mkhize for reaching this milestone of 39 years. It is a path of revolutionary struggle that has shielded cleaners and nurses from some of the worst forms of exploitation, defended Community Health Workers and uplifted ordinary public servants from the shackles of apartheid to being recognised for the public service they provide to the nation.

We salute you on behalf of the entire Federation of Elijah Barayi and Ray Alexander.

It is no accident that COSATU will soon be celebrating 41 years of continuous struggle. We are humbled that throughout this journey of toil and sacrifice, COSATU and NEHAWU have stood as one.

This is a unity of the working class that is grounded in ideological consciousness…in pursuit of the principles of scientific socialism and whose unity must always be jealously guarded. We dare not take our Affiliates, our Federation, our Alliance for granted.

It is important that we pay heed to the wise words of Amilcar Cabral “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children”.

The challenges facing the working class and the rural poor are immense, they are dire. It is no exaggeration to state that the working class is under siege.

Workers, in particular the youth, battle to find work in an economy barely growing at 1% per annum, with a 43.7% unemployment rate. We remain the world’s most unequal society, faced with entrenched levels of poverty and inequality.

This necessitates that we respond collectively and decisively as the Alliance. We cannot continue naively, upon a path of neo-liberalism and reckless austerity budget cuts. To repeat the mistakes of the past is to continue to reap the very same socio-economic crises.

COVID-19 proved beyond doubt, the critical role of a capacitated developmental state. The working class and the poor do not have the luxury of medical aid, private schools and security. They depend upon a well-oiled state to uplift them from the bondages of poverty.

It was during COVID-19 that our healthcare workers protected the nation, saving millions of lives. It was during this global pandemic that, COSATU with government and social partners put in place one of the world’s largest economic and social relief packages, including more than R65 billion from the Unemployment Insurance Fund that enabled 5.7 million workers from our restaurants to our textile factories to feed their families.

We must be careful in our moments of anger not to abandon the battlefield of class struggle. Some ask, what is the point of Nedlac, our statutory social dialogue forum? Yet…it is at Nedlac that time and again we have defended the hard-won rights of workers and improved the lives of the working class.

When some wanted to end the COVID-19 socio-economic relief package, it was COSATU that stepped to ensure it continued. Today, 8 million unemployed persons receive the SRD Grant, that with all its limitations…. is a foundation for the Basic Income Grant.

It was COSATU that intervened with the recent fuel price hikes with government, to ensure that R18 billion fuel levy relief was provided to cushion commuters.

We are not elected to merely lament on the challenges facing workers but to find and implement progressive solutions. When clothing workers were not paid during COVID and the UIF was unable to dispense relief in time, COSATU and SACTWU tabled the Two-Pot Pension Reforms. Today more than 4 million workers, including many public servants, have received over R70 billion relief.

We are now engaging government on the next phase of these reforms, to reduce the suffocating tax and provide greater relief for struggling workers. Whilst we continue to push forward, we must avoid the temptation to denounce our own victories.

Workers are battling retrenchments on a daily basis, and many are injured during the course of work yet, when they go to claim monies due to them from the UIF and the Compensation Fund, they are met with never ending queues, delays and frustration. Can we emerge from this conference with a concrete set of proposals on what must be done to fix these public sector institutions that exist to serve the working class?

We must congratulate our public sector unions and the Federation on a battle won to stop the abusive increase GEMS sought to impose upon members. This is what a fighting trade union movement does. We must extend such campaigns across all medical aids.

We must ramp up our fight in defence of the National Health Insurance as the only path to achieving universal healthcare. We dare not lose this war comrades. We must be on the ground and in the courts.

COSATU was insulted when we tabled the Eskom debt relief package in 2019, we persevered and today Eskom has turned the corner and defeated the loadshedding that once crippled the economy. Now we must defend this anchor of industrial growth and block any attempt to privatise it. We must ensure that Eskom is assisted to make electricity affordable for economic growth.

The recovery of Transnet and Metro Rail prove that the state can and must be fixed and not abandoned to privatisation. More must be done to return these and other critical State-Owned Enterprises to full capacity. This is not a luxury but essential to growing the economy and creating decent jobs.

The Federation has long agreed to champion Proudly South Africa and Buy Local. But when we ask affiliates for reports on this, we are met by silence. Are our investments supporting companies that produce locally produced goods? Are the t-shirts and bags purchased for this conference made in South Africa?

A discussion is needed about the role of the Public Investment Corporation. These are workers’ hard-earned pensions and insurance funds. They must be used to ensure workers can retire in comfort and to provide relief for workers when in need. They must be mobilised to stimulate inclusive economic growth and industrial development, to tackle unemployment and to ease the cost of living burden upon members.

We must express our frustration about the challenges many public servants, teachers and police officers face when it comes to the affordability of housing. What is our plan to ensure the GEPF provides affordable home loans and housing subsidies for our members? Why is this a matter for conference resolutions but not for implementation?

The Minister for Higher Education and Training has correctly called for an overhaul of our SETAs. This is long overdue. Our economy is struggling to grow, and our youth lack the skills of the economy of today, let alone tomorrow. Why are we silent as comrades who organise the SETAs on this urgent matter? Or are we content to allow the mismanagement and looting of workers’ monies?

The danger of the call by some to abandon Nedlac, to withdraw from engaging, even your class enemies, is that you will leave the site of contestation to your opponents and rivals. When the original proposals to amend the labour laws were tabled at Nedlac, they were nothing less than an assault upon the hard-won rights of workers that generations fought for. We were presented with a fait accompli that would have gutted our labour protections.

Some chose to run away from engaging at Nedlac. COSATU stayed and persevered and succeeded securing agreement to double severance pay, to expand maternity and parental leave, to extend labour protections to vulnerable workers, to protect the Minimum Wage from deductions, and most critically to defend our hard-won rights.

It is easy to criticise and denounce. We were insulted as COSATU when the National Minimum Wage came into effect yet today it has doubled for 1 million domestic workers, increased by 66% for 1 million farm workers and by 50% overall in the few years it has been here. It has raised the wages of 6 million vulnerable workers from construction sites to petrol stations. This is victory of the Federation of John Gomomo and Nana Abrahams.

Former President Thabo Mbeki correctly said that “Gloom and despondency have never defeated adversity. Trying times need courage and resilience. Our strength as a people is not tested during the best of times.”

Our alliance with the African National Congress, the leader of the liberation movement, and the South African Communist Party, is not a fair-weather friendship, it is the most effective and only vehicle to secure the total emancipation of the working class. Yes, each Alliance Partner, including ourselves, are faced with serious challenges, and own goals, but to abandon the Alliance which defeated apartheid and set the nation on the path of transformation and ultimately of building socialism would be reckless at best.

The September 2025 COSATU Central Committee mandated the Federation to defend the Alliance and engage each Alliance Partner on the need to unite and to reconfigure the Alliance. We are encouraged that an Alliance Summit to do exactly this is to be convened by the beginning of August.

This is not a matter that we can abandon nor allow workers to be divided over. We need an ANC that is renewed and biased towards the working class. We need an SACP that is capacitated and on the ground. We need an Alliance that is able to provide clear political direction to government at all levels and to hold it accountable.

We dare not fail when the very gains of the 1994 democratic breakthrough are at stake. The lessons of 2024 require the Alliance to unite and flesh out the modalities of contesting the 2026 local elections. We need our Alliance Partners to work with the Federation to find each other. Now is not the time not to allow our narrow differences to divide us.

Karl Marx correctly implored the Proletariat of the World to Unite and that is what guides this Federation of Violet Seboni and John Nkadimeng.

Our struggles are not unique to South Africa. Workers from Zimbabwe to Myanmar are under siege. This is why COSATU and its Affiliates must continue to raise the red banner of international solidarity from the ILO to SATUCC, from ITUC to WFTU. We must leave no corner uncontested.

Whilst some may dismiss social dialogue, it is COSATU and the international labour movement with the support of our government, that forced the ILO to adopt Convention 190 to End Violence and Harassment in the World of Work. Today its principles have been cast into our labour and criminal laws to protect our daughters and sisters as they seek to earn living as waitresses or receptionists, as paramedics or cleaners.

Recently the International Court of Justice ruled in favour of our demand to declare the right to strike an inalienable right of all workers. This is a powerful tool in defence of workers and the labour movement by which all governments can be held accountable.

Some question why COSATU engages in matters of trade from AGOA with the US to the EPA with the EU, to the FTA with China and India yet it is our motor manufacturing, farm and clothing workers whose jobs will be lost if the voice of workers is not heard. It is the tax revenues that the state depends upon to pay the staff of SARS and Home Affairs that will be in danger if we do not ensure that South Africa exports can be sold. 

We must not be naïve comrades, the most reactionary forms of right-wing chauvinism are on the rise across the world, from the industrialised west to even here at home. It is during these dark times that the left and the labour movement must be united.

It is during these naked assaults that we must ramp up solidarity, not slogans, to provide support to workers in Cuba, Venezuela, Palestine and eSwatini.

We must be equally clear that we reject all forms of xenophobia, violence, criminality and vigilantism. Our laws must be obeyed at all times, by South Africans and those who chose to come to South Africa. Only the state must enforce our laws.

Government must abandon the austerity budget cuts that have weakened the ability of the state to enforce the rule of law and it must act without fear or favour against criminals.

Equally we reject accusations that South Africa is xenophobic. We expect people, including visitors, to respect our laws, including immigration. We expect our sister African nations’ governments to embrace democracy and human rights and to create jobs and economic opportunities for their people in their countries.

South African cannot carry this burden along, not when we are battling a 43.7% unemployment rate, when our public services are overstretched and our crime levels are unacceptably too high.

Amilcar Cabral reminded us to “Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories”.

If we are to win these wars, to protect and uplift the working class, then we must ensure NEHAWU, COSATU and the labour movement are battle ready. Slogans are not enough.

Are we content with only 25% of workers being unionised and half of these being members of COSATU? Have we abandoned the call of one industry, one union, one country, one federation? What is our plan to take NEHAWU to over 300 000 members?

Do we appreciate that recruitment is a step and not the end? Are we empowering our branches and servicing our members? The reality is no as we are flooded with calls on a daily basis.

Are we servicing and supporting our Branches or are we distracted by our narrow differences and conference ambitions? We must raise our serious concerns about the loss of once vibrant Branches such as UWC and the dangers we face in repeating this fate at Parliament, NECSA and elsewhere. Let us not be complacent when members raise their frustrations.

Our most effective recruitment tool is a happy member. Let us action our Cost-of-Living campaigns from securing better wages to providing affordable housing to our members.

NEHAWU has always been a pillar of support for COSATU. We are heading to our national congress in September. We need NEHAWU to continue being a source of revolutionary ideas and a defender of COSATU and workers’ unity.

The tasks facing NEHAWU at this conference are immense.

COSATU can only be as strong as our Affiliates, we are confident NEHAWU will continue to be a defender an engine of the Federation of Mark Shope and Dora Tamana. We need to see a fighting, militant, coherent and united NEHAWU emerge. We need to see a decisive and bold programme of action adopted and implemented that unites workers, builds the state, grows the economy, creates jobs and lays the path for socialism.

We do not during these dark days facing the working class have the luxury to give up or wallow in self-pity, nor do we have the time to rest upon our laurels and engage in slogans.

We are confident that NEHAWU will continue to make us proud, to push COSATU to do more and to defend the working class.

Thank you. Enkosi. Amandla!