Cosatu has bemoaned the composition of Parliament’s impeachment committee investigating President Cyril Ramaphosa over the Phala Phala scandal, while the MK Party claims the process is biased in favour of the ANC.
Trade union federation Cosatu believes the composition of Parliament’s impeachment committee is unconstitutional.
The committee will consist of 31 MPs from 16 parties, with the ANC allocated a majority of nine members, while the DA has five, the MK Party three, and the EFF two.
The remaining 12 seats will be shared among smaller parties.
The directive establishing the committee was issued by the National Assembly Speaker, Thoko Didiza, under Section 89 of the Constitution.
This follows a Constitutional Court ruling, which revived the Section 89 inquiry into the alleged cover-up of the theft of a large amount of foreign currency at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Limpopo farm in 2020.
The apex court ruled that the legislature acted unconstitutionally when it voted not to adopt the report and set up an impeachment committee.
It ordered Parliament to establish an impeachment committee for Ramaphosa to answer to prima facie evidence about foreign currency stolen from his Phala Phala farm.
Cosatu’s Matthew Parks says Parliament’s decision on how parties will be represented on the committee is unconstitutional.
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He says the committee includes political parties with negligible representation in Parliament.
“ This has been done at the expense of the largest party in Parliament, the African National Congress, which, in proportion to its representation, is entitled to at least twelve members or 40%.
“Instead, it has been allocated nine or 30%. This directly undermines the electorate, which saw fit in the 2024 national elections to provide the ANC with 40% of the seats in Parliament.”
However, the MK Party, the official opposition in Parliament, told the SABC that it believes the committee is rigged in favour of the ANC and its government of national unity allies.
“We also do not want a repeat of what happened in 2022, where the ANC used its majority to protect Ramaphosa,” said the MK Party’s Visvin Reddy.
“I still don’t understand why ANC leaders want to protect this man. He’s a liability.”
“We cannot claim to fight for the working class while allowing a section of that class to be hunted like wild animals,” Ajaero stated. He urged COSATU to spearhead a mass campaign within every union, community, and workplace, educating South Africans that migrant workers are not the cause of poverty, but victims of the same oppressive system.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has called for urgent action to combat xenophobic violence against African migrants in South Africa, demanding that the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) lead a mass educational and sensitisation campaign across communities and workplaces to protect migrant workers.
In a powerful letter dated May 7, 2026, addressed to the President of COSATU in Johannesburg, NLC President Joe Ajaero condemned the recent killings and destruction of businesses owned by African migrants, describing the attacks as the result of economic hardship and failed government policies. Ajaero warned that South Africa could not claim to defend the working class while allowing African migrants to be hunted and killed.
“We cannot claim to fight for the working class while allowing a section of that class to be hunted like wild animals,” Ajaero stated. He urged COSATU to spearhead a mass campaign within every union, community, and workplace, educating South Africans that migrant workers are not the cause of poverty, but victims of the same oppressive system.
“We must break, once and for all, the racist myth that a fellow black African from across a colonial border is our enemy,” Ajaero added.
The NLC also condemned the passive response of the South African security forces, accusing them of complicity in the violence. Ajaero called for a full deployment of state resources to protect migrant workers and their properties, stressing that perpetrators must be swiftly prosecuted and compensation provided to families who have lost loved ones or livelihoods.
The NLC further warned that xenophobia was a threat to working-class unity across Africa, undermining collective bargaining power and weakening the fight against exploitation. “Xenophobia is not good for anybody, especially the world of work, because it fractures working-class unity and weakens our collective bargaining power against capital,” Ajaero explained.
To address the crisis, the NLC proposed an emergency meeting of African trade union centres under the African Regional Organisation of the International Trade Union Confederation and the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity. This meeting would aim to develop joint mechanisms for protecting migrant workers across the continent.
Ajaero cautioned that if the xenophobic violence in South Africa is left unchecked, it could spread across the continent. “Xenophobia is a cancer that, if not excised in South Africa, will metastasise across the continent,” he said.
The recent Supreme Court ruling on the Van der Vyver Transport case has exposed the ongoing chaos and maladministration faced by workers at the Compensation Fund, prompting COSATU to demand urgent reforms for a fairer system. Image: Leon Lestrade/ Independent Newspapers
The recent Supreme Court of Appeal ruling on the Van der Vyver Transport case shone a long overdue spotlight into the chaos and maladministration that thousands of workers experience time and again at the Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Fund (CF).
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is heartened that the Supreme Court called for an independent investigation into the deeply worrying state of affairs at the CF.
This is a demand that the Federation has been making for many years.
Employers experience endless challenges when attempting to register their employees with the CF, be it online or in person.
This results in many employers simply giving up and leaving their workers unprotected should they be injured or even die during the course of their work.
When workers apply for relief after a workplace injury or disease, all too often they are not met with relief or assistance, but endless queues, bewildering red tape and outright bureaucratic indifference.
A visit to anyone of the Department of Employment and Labour’s Labour Centres will show workers in desperate need of urgent relief, subjected to days of endless queues and even then, they may still not find the help they need and are entitled to by law.
Countless workers reach out to Cosatu and employers for assistance to unlock these bureaucratic obstacles. We have seen time and again workers battling to access relief for years at a time.
Tragically the same shameful experience is felt by workers when applying for their Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits.
Newspaper headlines have shown time and again how workers’ UI and CF contributions when invested to generate interest to ensure the sustainability of these two important Funds, being treated as a slush fund for corrupt politicians, officials and businesspersons. Whilst there has been some progress in tackling the scourge of corruption and state capture in the Funds, by no stretch can we say this battle has been won.
These painful experiences undermine the progressive objectives of the Funds and the tireless efforts of the majority of their staff to ensure that workers and their families receive the relief they are entitled to timeously.
The Funds are a key anchor of South Africa’s social security umbrella with the CF providing compensation to workers injured or who have been affected by a disease during the course of their work as well as their families in the event of their death.
Recent progressive amendments to it have extended cover to more than 1 million domestic workers as well as relief for workers affected by post-traumatic stress disorder (important for security personnel as well as mineworkers and women who experience gender-based violence at work.
Proposed amendments in the current labour law reforms include extending such cover to atypical workers, e.g. actors, performers and platform employees.
The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) provides severance pay for workers who’ve lost their jobs, reduced time relief for workers at struggling companies who may not be able to pay salaries whilst undergoing restructuring as well as maternity leave pay.
Recent amendments included providing paid parental and adoption leave as well as maternity leave for mothers who experienced still born births and third trimester miscarriages.
As with the CF, new proposals include extending UI protection to atypical workers such as Uber drivers plus doubling severance pay from one to two weeks per year worked.
As we saw during Covid-19 when the economy was placed under lockdown, the UIF played a key role by releasing over R65 billion to help 5.7 million workers take care of their families, prevent millions of job losses and stimulate economic growth.
What was also brought to the fore during COVID-19 were how archaic the UIF and CF systems were and remain.
Subsequent reports by the Auditor-General how shown how these porous systems enable corruption inside and outside the Funds to take place.
They have been at the heart of why employers struggle to register their staff and why workers have to queue for days and still battle to receive their relief.
COSATU has raised this matter time and again with government at Nedlac, in Parliament, in bilaterals and publicly over the past six years.
Business and the broader labour movement have echoed these calls.
We have called upon the Department and the Funds to put in place a process to cleanse, overhaul and modernise these Funds, to ensure employers can register employees with ease and workers can receive their full relief without hassles.
Business offered to design a system free of charge for the Funds. The Government Technical Advisory Centre provided a comprehensive diagnosis of what needs to be done. The South African Revenue Service (SARS) offered to build a new system for the Funds as it had done during the Mandela Administration.
Yet these offers have been blue ticked by the Department.
Instead, once a year the Department appears before Nedlac with a PowerPoint presentation on how the Funds will definitely be fixed over the next two years with an exorbitant price tag for consultants attached. Similar PowerPoints are trotted out before Parliament with incredulous 90% delivery targets claimed!
Yet a visit to any Labour Centre today is a painful reminder that workers in their most desperate moment of need will be subjected to shameful delays and red tape to access what is legally theirs. Many simply give up.
This is simply unacceptable and should not be tolerated. No amount of perfume can make this experience for workers smell nice.
The path to fixing the Funds is not complicated.
They require competent management, the removal of corrupt and criminal elements, the filling of vacancies and hiring of critical skills, investing in infrastructure, especially IT and putting in place modern, user friendly, transparent, accessible and corruption proof systems.
SARS must be enlisted to design and set these up.
We cannot continue to accept nor tolerate these abysmal state of affairs. Workers deserve better. Government must act and be seen to upholding workers’ hard-won rights.
Labour unions have warned Prasa against retrenchments. Picture: (Freddy Mavunda)
Labour raises possible ‘jobs bloodbath’ across the rail operator’s operations
The United National Transport Union (Untu), the majority union at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), has criticised the rail operator for allegedly steaming ahead with plans to retrench 603 employees without consulting labour.
“We reject this move by Prasa, therefore, we appeal to all our members not to sign any acknowledgement letter or correspondence issued in relation to this retrenchment process. The manner and behaviour of Prasa undermines the legal objective of a joint consensus-seeking consultation process,” said Untu spokesperson Atenkosi Plaatjie.
A facilitation process by the commission for conciliation, mediation and arbitration (CCMA) was flawed, she said, as Prasa management “consistently refused to provide labour with critical information requested in an effort to avert this jobs bloodbath”.
“This information would make way for a people optimisation process within the rail business where there are currently open vacancies. Such organograms should have formed the basis of the consultation process, as they would have assisted in preventing this bloodbath.
“Labour repeatedly requested these structures, but they were never provided. This failure has significantly contributed to the process being fundamentally flawed,” she said.
The parastatal incurred irregular expenditure of R3.8bn in 2022/23, earning a qualified audit opinion from the auditor-general for the period. From 2018/19 to 2021/22, the auditor-general issued a disclaimer on its financial statements, which signifies that the accounts cannot be relied on and often suggests the company is in a parlous financial state.
Prasa received government subsidies amounting to R7.2bn for operations and R12.3bn for capital expenditure in 2022/23. The entity generated revenue of R119m from fares, operating lease rental income of R620m, other income of R181m and interest received of R1.7bn.
Prasa, which has a network of more than 2,000km of track, has historically been plagued by ageing infrastructure, vandalism, lack of reliability and effectiveness, fraud, corruption and safety concerns.
The entity launched its general overhaul programme in 2022 at a cost of R7.5bn (of which R3.48bn had been spent by the end of March 2025).
The overhaul was established to refurbish and extend the service life of Prasa’s legacy rolling stock fleet — the older Metrorail coaches and mainline passenger services locomotives that serve millions of commuters in South Africa’s metropolitan regions.
Prasa said it has grown its ridership from 39.4-million in the 2023/24 financial year to 77-million by last year.
Plaatjie said Untu noted with concern that despite shortages of security personnel, “Prasa has now included protection services employees in its retrenchment plans”.
“This decision is both shocking and contradictory, particularly as Prasa’s own corporate plan identifies the ongoing need for additional protection services officers to safeguard passengers, rail infrastructure, and operations against vandalism and cable theft,” she said.
“It makes absolutely no sense to retrench protection services employees unless Prasa wishes to repeat the catastrophic mistakes made during the Covid-19 period, when security contracts were cancelled, leading to widespread vandalism, rampant cable theft, and the destruction of critical rail infrastructure and trains.”
Plaatjie said Untu’s legal department is exploring the next course of legal action in the section 189 process. Organised labour has called for a meeting with Prasa group CEO Hishaam Emeran on May 22 to “discuss this disgraceful retrenchment process by the entity. This approach by Prasa has caused immense anxiety and uncertainty among affected employees and their families, and it must be condemned.”
Satawu spokesperson Amanda Tshemese said the Cosatu affiliate would comment in due course. Prasa spokesperson Andiswa Makanda has been approached for comment, which will be added once received.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) demands urgent and decisive action to tackle the unemployment crisis. The latest jobs report released by Statistics South Africa for the 1st Quarter of 2026, is beyond depressing. Whilst there is usually a slight downward trend after the festive season peak in the last quarter of the year, the job losses for the first three months of 2026 are extremely worrying.
The expanded definition of unemployment has risen by 1.6% to 43.7% with the total number of unemployed persons rising by 301 000. The construction as well as community and social services sectors have been particularly hard hit, notwithstanding some positive jobs increases in manufacturing, mining and agriculture. Whilst the overall increase in unemployment was largely driven by school leavers and matriculants entering the labour market after the end of the school year, we must all be deeply concerned by the state of the economy and its inability to absorb the youth.
The outlook for the 2nd Quarter is likely to be similarly bleak due to the unprovoked war in the Middle East and the massive impact it has had on international oil and fuel prices, essentially doubling over the last two months. This has already seen economic growth projections for South Africa for 2026 slashed from an already meagre 1.4% to 1%. Inflation for transport has already jumped with food and other essential goods likely to soon follow suit. This may see the Reserve Bank hike the repo rate, inflicting even further pain upon highly indebted workers and an embattled economy.
We cannot continue to normalise 1% economic growth and dangerously high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality. The extent of this crisis requires a bold and aggressive stimulus package to kickstart the economy, rebuild public and municipal services, make capital affordable and accessible for SMMEs and industrial sectors, and extend relief for the unemployed by expanding public employment programmes.
Similarly, efforts to reduce the price of electricity, restore rail and ports to full capacity, and invest in economic infrastructure and tackle crime and corruption must be accelerated.
COSATU will be tabling formal proposals on a stimulus package mobilising every possible public and private financial resource to Nedlac and Parliament. Unemployment is the single greatest threat to the nation. It requires the same decisive and progressive response as was mobilised and led by President Cyril Ramaphosa during COVID-19. This is a ticking time bomb we dare not ignore.
