COSATU President: Address COSATU Limpopo Provincial Congress

Comrade Provincial Chair,

General Secretary Solly Phetoe and Deputy General Secretary Mkhomazi Thwala,

Leadership of the Province and Affiliates,

We gather today at a pivotal moment in our history. In the course of this year we will celebrate 40 years since the founding of COSATU in 1985, and 70 years since our predecessor SACTU was launched and the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1995.

Equally we must reflect on our struggles, victories, and the challenges ahead.

COSATU was forged in the fires of militant resistance against apartheid exploitation and capitalist oppression. Our movement has always been about more than just workplace struggles-it has been about national liberation, democracy, women's emancipation, and socialism, and ensuring a better life for all people.

The Current Class Struggle

The transition to democracy in 1994 was meant to be a gateway to economic transformation. However, the reality is that monopoly capital remains in control, using policies like GEAR and trade liberalization to solidify its dominance. Meanwhile, Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) created a narrow elite, benefiting a few individuals while the working class continues to suffer.

Today, unemployment is at crisis levels at 41.6%, affecting over 12 million people, and poverty grips 30 million South Africans. Instead of reversing these injustices, government has for far too long embraced reckless and painful austerity budget cuts, weakening essential services whilst corruption remains endemic.

The state has become a site of accumulation for tenderpreneurs, leading to state capture, mismanagement, and governance failures.

The Political Landscape and Alliance Challenges

The 2024 elections exposed deep fractures in the ANC's support amongst the working and middle classes, reflecting growing dissatisfaction among workers and communities.

The ANC's failure to lead decisively has resulted in:

• Gauteng: ANC support plummeting amid service delivery failures and corruption.
• KwaZulu-Natal: A dramatic drop from 54% to 17%, with factions and nationalist parties gaining ground following similar decimation in the Western Cape.
• Free State, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and the Northwest: Governance and service delivery failures, corruption, including the painful scars of the VBS heist and the murder of our shop stewards as well as economic stagnation have weakened the movement.
• And in the Northern Cape the movement has fallen under 50% for the first time since the 1994 elections with a dozen municipalities routinely failing to pay their employees, with routine water shedding, potholes across, high levels of alcohol fuelled violence and crime in our townships.

Whilst the ANC has suffered, workers have not found a true political home elsewhere. The DA represents big business and white privilege, while parties like the EFF and MKP represent the state capture project and unashamedly exploit frustration at the movements' failures.

The Alliance crisis has reached a decisive period. The ANC negotiated a Government of National Unity (GNU) with the DA and 9 other political parties without the involvement of its Alliance partners, knowing our concerns about the entry into office of political parties with a history of espousing anti-worker and neo-liberal policies.

The Path Forward: Rebuilding the Working-Class Movement

Comrades, our task is clear: we must take control of our own future! No other class will fight for us-we must organize, mobilize, and lead the struggle ourselves.

1. Defending Workers' Rights and Fighting Neoliberalism

• Strengthening collective bargaining and resisting wage suppression.
• Opposing privatization and revitalizing State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs).
• Expanding National Health Insurance and fighting against austerity cuts.

2. Building COSATU's Strength

• Rebuilding our unions and mobilizing unorganized workers.
• Political education for shop stewards and members to sharpen class consciousness.
• Strengthening COSATU Locals and Provincial Education Committees.

3. Reviving the Socialist Agenda

COSATU and the SACP must reclaim the working-class struggle and push for socialist alternatives, to radically reconfigure the Alliance and to compel the ANC to accelerate its cleansing and renewal and to return to its historical working-class bias.

We must revive discussions on the Reconfigured Alliance-not as an extension of ANC rule, but as a workers' vehicle to drive transformation.

4. International Solidarity

We remain committed to practical expressions of solidarity with our sisters in Palestine, Cuba, Eswatini, and other working-class struggles globally.

COSATU must deepen internationalism, ensuring that South Africa's labour movement stands in solidarity with progressive struggles worldwide.

A Call to Action: Forward to a Workers' Future!

Comrades, history has shown us that change does not come from above-it is won through struggle. COSATU must lead the fight for economic justice, workers' power, and socialist transformation.

We cannot wait for government to change course; we must force the change through our own organization, mobilization, and direct action.

We must ensure that our locals are alive, vibrant and leading campaigns from Mokopane to Mussina. We must lead weekly recruitment campaigns from the mines in Lephalale to the farms of Tzaneen, including setting up information tables in our towns on Saturdays when workers come to shop.

Unity is our weapon and division our enemy. When we are united, we will be victorious. When we are divided as leaders, as affiliates, as the Federation, as the Alliance, then we will be defeated. The choice is ours. But the mandate from workers is clear.

We must not be a fair-weather Alliance partner. When there are by-elections, then we must be on the ground with the ANC and the SACP, campaigning door to door to ensure the Alliance remains the leader of society and is empowered to direct government to uplift the working class.

We must commend you comrades for your tireless efforts in the 2024 elections, where Limpopo led the nation in defending the liberation movement and our hard-won gains.

But even here in our victory, we must be worried about those votes we have lost and the decline in voter turnout. Every single vote counts. None must be left behind. Similarly, the by-election results in Thabazimbi in December, including the loss of a ward to AMCU's Labour Party must be a wakeup call for us to reconnect with workers and our communities.

We must be agents of change in our workplaces ensuring that we provide quality services to our learners at our schools, to patients at our hospitals and the public at our police stations.

We must expose corruption in our municipalities and expose those employers in both the public and private sectors who pickpocket workers' pension funds.

We must be seen to lead workers and our communities. We must hold employers and government accountable. Not only must we lament, but we must provide solutions.

The road ahead is not easy, but if we stand together, we can win.

Let us unite in action, build workers' power, and fight for a future where the working class is truly in control of its destiny!

Forward to socialism! Forward to workers' power! Viva COSATU! Viva!