The tussles between the factions in Cosatu and its political allies were focal points at the trade union federation’s elective conference last week. But documents presented at the event showed the organisation faces a deeper crisis than this.
Cosatu was forced to reconvene its congress after an initial attempt to elect new leaders collapsed due to factional fights. The second attempt succeeded only after former Cosatu stalwarts had brokered a peace deal between warring factions to agree on a united leadership slate upfront. The result was the election of former first deputy president Mike Shingange to the position of president, appeasing one faction, and former president Zingiswa Losi to the post of general secretary, appeasing the other.
Fault lines between Cosatu’s alliance partners were less easily papered over. ANC chair Gwede Mantashe stormed off the stage at the reconvened event, refusing to address the gathering ahead of ally-turned-electoral opponent the SACP. The elder speaks last, Mantashe declared, leading to an impasse.
More problematically, the congress revealed that the federation’s problems run far deeper than disputes about which alliance partner should be allowed to speak first and whether Cosatu should back the ANC or SACP in the upcoming local government election.
Cosatu’s financial report showed that its finances are once again in the red; it continues to face audit issues and has incurred a huge debt burden due to the nonpayment of fees by affiliate unions, which owed the federation more than R52m at the end of 2025.
This marks a crisis for the federation, as affiliation fees remain its primary means of survival.
Cosatu’s finance report also illustrated a dramatic drop in membership. Between the previous congress and the end of the 2025 reporting period the federation lost almost 105,000 members, which brought its membership down to 1.4-million. All but three of its affiliated unions saw a decline in membership numbers over the period: health union Nehawu, police union Popcru and municipal union Samwu. Mineworkers union NUM and transport workers union Satawu each lost 25,000 members.
The membership survey done by Cosatu’s research arm, Naledi, reveals that fewer than half of the respondents (44%) believe Cosatu fully represents their views and beliefs. The survey was conducted among high-level union members — 71% of them held an elected union position. The federation’s relationship with the ANC and the SACP is among the core drivers of unhappiness.
Out of date
Dissatisfaction extends to the presence of the DA in the GNU. Cosatu argues in its political report that the GNU has produced an “internal identity crisis” in the ANC.
“For one, the ANC in the GNU appears to have taken a facilitator role, playing the balancing act to manage the GNU rather than as a dominant/majority party. As a result, there seems to be a dilution of the ANC’s historical ideological posture and clarity, as it postures to compromise with the GNU coalition partner, the DA,” the report says.
“Some also argue that while the GNU enabled the ANC to retain power, it has come at a cost of pro-poor policy paralysis, as the GNU has increasingly jettisoned the traditional pro-poor stance, resulting in the ANC facing growing distance and loss of grassroots support. This is also weakening the unity in the alliance.”
Cosatu is facing a changing political and employment environment. Its battle to adapt to a country that is in coalition terrain and in which political expedience trumps archaic ideology was in full view at its congress. Take the cost-of-living crisis: though workers rank this at the top of their list of priorities in the Naledi survey, the federation’s documents and discussions failed to raise anything resembling a solution.
Similarly, unemployment, poverty and retrenchments were among top worker concerns yet Cosatu fell back into the comfort of socialist rhetoric and failed ideology rather than dealing with these issues directly.
In addition, Cosatu leaders are seeing the treadmill that union bosses had become accustomed to, and which had ushered them into government posts, fall away as coalition politics increasingly takes centre stage.
Like the ANC, Cosatu is floundering in its bid to imagine itself in new global and local political waters. It is struggling to renew itself and remains locked in ideological battles that have long become irrelevant to workers. Where unions across the world have shifted strategies to adapt to changing political and economic realities abroad and at home, insiders complain that Cosatu’s congress was fixated on myopic palace politics, linked to positions and the alliance.
The world is changing, and so has South Africa. But like the ANC, Cosatu is battling to adapt. It is a flaw that could culminate in its demise.
Marrian is a political analyst at the Bureau for Economic Research
