2025 sees South Africa commemorate numerous milestones in the struggle to end apartheid, including Cosatu’s 40th anniversary and the 70th anniversaries of our predecessor, the South African Congress of Trade Unions and the Freedom Charter.
It is important that we celebrate these struggles and honour those who made our constitutional democracy possible.
While we are proud of these milestones and how far we have come under government led by the ANC over the past 31 years of democracy, we must equally be honest over how far we still have to go, where we have erred and what needs to be done.
The first call of the Freedom Charter presciently demanded that The People Shall Govern!
Today South Africa is a robust democracy whose Constitution and the progressive values underpinning it are globally respected.
Ours is a nation guided by the Constitution, with free and fair elections and where the state is held accountable by society and the courts.
We must be concerned by declining levels of voter turnout, fueled by despondency amongst society and by public representatives who exploit the privilege to lead as an opportunity to loot.
Legislation is subject to public participation, including at Nedlac where Labour and Business hold extensive engagements helping enrich Bills before they are tabled at Parliament for further public participation.
While there are legitimate complaints about the extent to which government and Parliament listen to society’s views, Cosatu can point to many instances where the workers’ proposals carried through, from the Two Pot Pension Reforms releasing R44 billion helping 2.4 million highly indebted workers, to overhauling of the Public Investment Corporation Act to tackle corruption and ensure it invests its funds in ways that protect pension fund members, grow the economy and create jobs.
The core of the liberation struggle was to defeat the apartheid regime and institutional discrimination and hence the call that all national groups shall have equal rights and all shall enjoy equal human rights.
Today these laws have been repealed and hate speech and unfair discrimination criminalised. Yet we have seen a flurry of hate speech on social media, which must no longer be tolerated.
The Constitution declares all shall be equal before the law but all too often workers cannot exercise their rights due to long court delays and expensive legal fees.
The other core calling of the Freedom Charter for the people shall share In the country’s wealth has seen the growth of a Black middle class, the removal of apartheid barriers and state investments in the social wage.
But much more must be done to support emerging SMMEs and Employee Shareholder Ownership Programmes plus investing in rural communities and townships. Our status as the world’s most unequal society and staggering rates of unemployment must be a wake-up call.
The Freedom Charter calls for The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It! Despite significant interventions since 1994, land ownership remains overwhelmingly guided by the colour of one’s skin and generational wealth.
This is a ticking time bomb requiring decisive action, in particular releasing public and abandoned land for housing, economic and agricultural opportunities plus prioritising farm workers, labour tenants, informal and rural residents with the necessary support to become successful farmers and entrepreneurs.
The Freedom Charter boldly demanded that there shall be work and security.
Cosatu as leader of the trade union movement is often challenged on what workers have achieved since the democratic breakthrough.
Under our progressive Constitution and labour laws workers have the right to unionise and collective bargaining, to be protected from unfair discrimination, to equal pay for equal work, to work in a safe environment, and to receive financial support when on maternity or parental leave, when retrenched or dismissed, or injured or in the event of death at work.
Child labour has been criminalised. The National Minimum Wage Act has raised 6 million farm, domestic, construction, hospitality, security, transport and other vulnerable workers’ wages.
Yet many workers struggle to exercise their labour rights, especially with a 43.1% unemployment rate. The government’s plans to drastically increase the number of labour inspectors will be an important step towards ensuring the rights of all workers are respected.
Key to an inclusive economy is ensuring the doors of learning and culture shall be opened. Strides have been made with no fee schools and free meals helping ensure millions of poor children are in class, nearly R50 billion spent annually enabling millions to access tertiary education, hiring teaching assistants boosting classroom learning and the pending enrollment of 700 000 learners in Grade R as a compulsory part of schooling.
But we must act to tackle the rising teacher learner ratios, gang violence affecting township schools, the 10% TVET graduation rate and the shortage of skills in a struggling economy.
The Freedom Charter compels government to ensure there shall be houses, security and comfort. Today 61% of the Budget is spent on the social wage supporting millions to access housing, healthcare, transport and social security. Parliament recently passed the National Health Insurance Act providing a path towards universal healthcare.
Many achievements have been won since 1994, but many of these are under severe threat due to corruption, criminality, budget cuts and a struggling economy. A decisive shift is needed to capacitate the state to fulfill its developmental mandate and tackle entrenched levels of poverty and inequality.
South Africa has moved from being a threat to the region to an active participant in bringing peace to Africa. Our ability to continue to honour the call for There Shall Be Peace And Friendship! requires an SANDF and SAPS that are provided with the resources needed to fulfill their mandates, be it in Manenberg, Phillipi, Congo or Darfur.
Cosatu is proud of our strides towards realising the vision of the Freedom Charter. We are equally pained by our own goals. We remain determined to continue working towards ensuring that all South Africans, in particular the working class, enjoy that society envisaged in Kliptown in 1955.
Cosatu President Zingiswa Losi
*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or .
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