Zingiswa Losi, the president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), delivered a pointed response to US president Donald Trump’s controversial remarks on South African land reform and violence against white farmers during a high-level meeting at the White House on Tuesday.
Losi, the country’s first female president of COSATU, joined president Cyril Ramaphosa as part of a delegation aiming to strengthen diplomatic and economic ties between the two nations.
Trump used the opportunity to repeat long-standing, debunked claims of ‘systematic killings’ of white farmers, raising alarm over land expropriation policies in South Africa.
She countered his narrative with a clear message: crime in South Africa is a universal scourge, not a racially targeted phenomenon.
“The problem in South Africa is not necessarily about race, but it’s about crime,” Losi told Trump. “Black men and women in our rural communities are just as many victims of brutal crimes as anyone else.”
Born in 1975 in KwaZakhele, Eastern Cape, Losi began her activism in the anti-apartheid struggle, inspired by her politically active family. She served in the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) from 1996 to 1999 before joining Ford Motor Company in Port Elizabeth, where she became a shop steward for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA).
Her rise within the labour movement was steady. She served as COSATU’s second deputy president from 2009 and became its first female president in 2018, securing re-election in 2022.
Beyond her union leadership, Losi has played key roles in the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), championing workers’ rights and economic transformation.
She is also president of the Southern African Trade Union Coordinating Council (SATUCC), representing unions across the SADC region.
On Tuesday, Losi used her platform to call for cooperation, not division. “We are here to say: how do we, both nations, work together to reset, to really talk about investment but also help to address the levels of crime?” she said.
Politics
