ANC-aligned Cosatu has resolved to work with government departments and law enforcement agencies to ensure employers comply with SA’s labour laws and that South Africans are given “priority status” for employment.
This after several opposition parties — ActionSA, the Patriotic Alliance and community organisations including Operation Dudula — spoke out against illegal immigration and called for South Africans to be prioritised when it comes to job opportunities and other economic empowerment initiatives.
The speakers argued this would help address runaway joblessness in the country and address the deepening scourge of inequality and entrenched poverty.
SA is battling a 33.2% unemployment rate, with government data showing the number of employed people grew to 16.8-million in the second quarter, while the unemployed accounted for 8.4-million.
Cosatu held a four-day eighth central committee meeting in Benoni, east of Joburg, last week where issues pertaining to unemployment, corruption, collective bargaining, worker unity and a reconfigured alliance (ANC, SACP, Cosatu and Sanco) were discussed.
In its declaration, Cosatu said the central committee resolved to:
- Work with the department of employment & labour, home affairs and law enforcement agencies to ensure compliance by all employers.
- Fight against employers using illegal migrants as cheap labour and to avoid compliance.
- Ensure employers don’t use enforcement gaps to divide workers and avoid employing locals.
- Ensure South Africans are given priority status in employment.
- Initiate a campaign against human trafficking, with particular focus on women and children as the worst victims.
- Fight against crime and international syndicates by affirming the tight national security of our state and the people.
Meanwhile, Cosatu, which has always campaigned and supported the ANC during elections since 1994, said the electoral platform had lost traction with growing sections of working-class households.
“For instance, the 2024 general elections witnessed the worst form of such a dissonance by our people at the electoral platform, with 60% of South Africans of voting age not casting their vote, resulting in only 40% of voter turnout. Out of these, the alliance electoral ticket through the ANC only secured 40.18% of the vote, failing for the first time to attain an electoral majority,” the declaration reads.
Election setback for the national democratic revolution
“The alliance characterised the outcomes of these elections as a strategic setback for the NDR [national democratic revolution]. But what became the most unfortunate part was that the ANC still went on to form the GNU [government of national unity] with forces of monopoly capital, which both Cosatu and the SACP characterise as ‘a regression in the NDR’.”
Cosatu also resolved that post the central committee meeting, “there should be an urgent bilateral meeting between the ANC and Cosatu where the federation will register its position against austerity measures, deindustrialisation, and the neoliberal agenda, and deliberately mobilise society against the neoliberal policies”.
Deeper consultative process
“It (Cosatu) shall convene an inclusive National Left/Socialist Axis Summit to deal with modalities, inclusive of time frames and proper co-ordination thereof. (Reaffirmation, as it is a long-standing resolution). It also resolved that the next CEC [central executive committee] should develop a programme to embark on a deeper consultative process, to discuss the 15th SACP National Congress Resolution.”
The SACP resolved at its 15th national congress to contest elections independently of the ANC as it has grown increasingly critical of the ANC’s track record in government and has spoken out against its lackadaisical approach in dealing with service delivery, malfeasance, maladministration and systemic looting in the public service.
However, during a campaign trail ahead of the general election in 2024, Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi cautioned workers against turning their backs on the ANC, saying the socioeconomic gains the party had presided over would be reversed if it were voted out of power.
Urgent engagement with the SACP
“There should be urgent engagement with the SACP and the ANC, and these engagement processes will facilitate a discussion towards a decision at the 15th National Congress [of Cosatu in September 2026].
“It [CC] also resolved that Cosatu and the SACP, upon completion of the internal consultations by affiliates, should have continuous engagements on the modalities regarding the contestation of elections.”
On the sidelines of the central committee meeting last week, Cosatu deputy president Mike Shingange told Business Day whatever decision is taken regarding the municipal elections in 2026, it “must not be to the detriment of the unity of the alliance that has served SA so well for a long time”.
Shingange is also president of Cosatu’s largest affiliate, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu).
During the Cosatu national congress in September 2022, Nehawu, together with the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), called on Cosatu to ditch the ANC and rally behind the SACP in the 2024 election, accusing the ANC of undermining workers and failing to implement tripartite alliance programmes.
The four unions account for more than 600,000 of Cosatu’s estimated membership of 1.6-million.
In December 2023, however, Nehawu made a U-turn and said it would use its structures to campaign for an “outright majority victory” for the ANC, arguing its new position was meant to defend “the gains of our revolution”.
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