The content on this page is not written by Polity.org.za, but is supplied by third parties. This content does not constitute news reporting by Polity.org.za.

The South African Communist Party (SACP) notes the adjournment on Tuesday, 15 September 2026, of the 15th National Congress of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) after it could not be formally constituted. We pledge our solidarity with Cosatu in the challenging situation it faced. 

The SACP respects Cosatu’s organisational independence and looks forward to the federation, as the unity of its affiliates, being able to resolve the internal challenges and constituting its National Congress formally when it reconvenes it.

The SACP stands for Cosatu’s unity and the broader unity of the entire progressive trade union movement. We therefore reiterate our unifying message of support, urging Cosatu to focus its National Congress on what unites workers: the emancipatory struggle against economic exploitation and domination by the capitalist class bosses and their agents in the state, and to improve the working and living conditions of the workers by tackling the heartless, profit-driven restructuring.

This restructuring has led to mass retrenchments in industries such as mining, manufacturing, community and social services, and agriculture, in a country already experiencing a severe unemployment crisis that affects 13.1 million active and discouraged work seekers combined. Workers want a stronger, clearly militant trade union movement capable of developing and leading decisive solutions against the exploitative ownership and use of technology, including AI, by capitalist bosses.  

Privatisation, including through outsourcing, in municipalities, among others in the public sector, is part of the restructuring that workers want a successful Cosatu National Congress to adopt an uncompromised, militant action against. Workers affected by municipalities’ failure to pay their remuneration want a clear programme of action against it by a successful Cosatu National Congress. Privatisation and the failure of implicated municipalities to pay workers their remuneration are, among other things, the results of neo-liberal dominance and policies such as austerity, which involves budget cuts, corruption, maladministration and governance decay. Workers need unity of purpose and cohesion in a class-conscious trade union movement to end this misery.

In electricity power generation, transmission and distribution; in rail network infrastructure and freight; in water network infrastructure; in ports and related logistics infrastructure; and in the high radio frequency spectrum, communication and information technology network infrastructure, workers face restructuring under the yoke of the capitalist-driven neo-liberal reforms embraced by the government of coalition unity. 

At the heart of this foreign-determined, domesticated neo-liberal restructuring is the capitalist agenda to open state network industries to facilitate private wealth accumulation and profit-maximising competition. This is the meaning of “Vulindlela”, loosely translated as “Open the road”, in the policy called “Operation Vulindlela”. Until the rise of neo-liberal policy capture and dominance, these network infrastructure industries were state-owned and controlled. Production and operations in these industries were therefore public enterprise operations.

Issued by the South African Communist Party