Programme Director
Leadership of the Institute for Economic Justice
National Office Bearers and leaders of our affiliates
Comrades representing the workers of South Africa
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Good morning, comrades.
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of South African Trade Unions to this Joint COSATU/IEJ National Advocacy Strategy Workshop on Just Transition, Decent Work and Localisation.
We gather here today not because the challenges before us are small, but because Organised Labour has never been afraid of confronting difficult moments in history. Every generation of workers has been called upon to respond to the defining questions of its time. Ours is no different.
Today we face an economy that is struggling to create decent work, communities burdened by deepening poverty and inequality, and a climate crisis that is no longer a distant threat but a lived reality for workers and the poor. Yet, within these challenges lie opportunities to fundamentally reshape our economy in favour of workers, communities and future generations. It is also becoming clear that the global rush for Africa’s critical minerals, and raw materials has the potential of integrating Africa in the global economy as an exporter of raw materials and an importer of value-added goods, meaning that Africa is exporting jobs, maintaining premature deindustrialization, low growth, high levels of unemployment, poverty and social inequality.
That is why this workshop matters.
This is not simply another policy discussion or stakeholder engagement. It is an opportunity for the Federation to sharpen its collective voice, strengthen its advocacy and build a worker led agenda that ensures the Just Transition becomes a pathway towards industrialisation, localisation, decent work and social justice.
As COSATU, we have consistently argued that workers must not merely participate in the transition, they must help design it, influence it and ultimately benefit from it. The transition cannot be something that happens to workers, it must be shaped with workers, by workers and for workers.
Over the next two days, we are called upon to move beyond identifying problems and begin refining practical solutions. Our task is to strengthen COSATU’s advocacy so that our policy positions continue to influence national planning, industrial policy and investment decisions. We must ensure that every climate policy, every industrial strategy and every investment programme contributes towards creating decent work, rebuilding productive industries, strengthening local manufacturing and reducing inequality.
You are gathered here Comrades, guide the federation as it approaches its National Congress, to develop alternatives to neoliberalism, austerity, deindustrialisation, unemployment and social inequality. Making that the Federation develops clear evidence based positions on just energy transition, decent work, localization and finally develop an advocacy strategy.
Allow me also to express COSATU’s sincere appreciation to the Institute for Economic Justice. This partnership has demonstrated the value of combining rigorous research with worker experience and practical organising. It has strengthened our ability to engage government, social partners and international processes from a position that is informed, credible and firmly rooted in the interests of the working class.
Comrades, we should approach this workshop with confidence. The future of South Africa’s economy is still being written. Organised labour has both the responsibility and the capacity to ensure that workers are not spectators in that future, but active architects of it.
I wish you successful engagements and deliberations in this workshop and look forward to the outcomes that will craft our strategic engagements in the National Congress in September.
Thank you very much.