SAFTU

SAFTU Independent, Militant and a Democratic Federation South African Federation of Trade Unions
(1)

18/07/2026

NELSON MANDELA INTERNATIONAL DAY 2026
Mandela's Long Shadow: Foreign Influence Campaigns and the Struggle for South Africa's Democratic Identity
Input by Zwelinzima Vavi
General Secretary – South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU)

Today, 18 July, we celebrate not simply the birthday of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
We celebrate the life of a revolutionary whose courage, sacrifice, humility and humanity inspired millions across the world.
Mandela belonged to South Africa.
But he also belonged to Africa.
Indeed, he belonged to humanity.
As we honour his extraordinary legacy today, the greatest tribute we can pay him is not merely to recite his words or remember his achievements.
It is to ask ourselves a difficult question:

Would Nelson Mandela recognise the South Africa we are becoming?

South Africa's freedom was won in part by Africa
Mandela never forgot that South Africa did not defeat apartheid alone.
When apartheid declared war on our people, Africa opened her arms.
Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Algeria, Ethiopia and many other countries welcomed our exiles, trained our freedom fighters, educated our children and shared their scarce resources with a people struggling for freedom.
The Frontline States paid an enormous price.
Their economies were destabilised.
Their territories were invaded.
Their leaders were assassinated.
Their people died because they refused to abandon the South African liberation struggle.
Many paid with blood.
Many paid with poverty.
Many delayed their own development so that South Africa could one day become free.
Our democracy, therefore, is not simply a South African achievement.
It is an African achievement.
It was built on African solidarity.
That is why Mandela believed South Africa carries a permanent moral debt to this continent.

Mandela warned us long before 2008
Only months after becoming South Africa's first democratic President, Mandela returned to Alexandra, where he had lived as a young man.
Speaking at Alexandra Stadium on 25 February 1995, he issued a warning that today sounds almost prophetic.
He said:
"During the years I lived here, the people of Alexandra ignored tribal and ethnic distinctions. Instead of being Xhosas, or Sothos, or Zulus, or Shangaans, we were Alexandrans. We were one people, and we undermined the distinctions that the apartheid government tried so hard to impose.
It saddens and angers me to see the rising hatred of foreigners. We had a legacy of unity and solidarity here. This great legacy has been undermined by recent attacks on foreigners, some of whom are naturalised citizens.
We cannot blame other people for our troubles. We are not victims of the influx of foreign people into South Africa.
We must remember that it was mainly due to the aggressive and hostile policies of the apartheid regime that the economic development of our neighbours was undermined. As a result, today they are unable to provide jobs to their own citizens.
No one should blame these people for coming to South Africa. Let us never forget that many African countries accepted our people when they were exiles. They shared their limited resources and educated many of our children. They gave us food and shelter when we had nowhere else to go."
Comrades,
Those are not my words.
Those are the words of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, spoken on 25 February 1995, barely ten months after assuming office as South Africa's first democratic President.
He did not wait for the horrors of the xenophobic attacks of 2008 before condemning hatred against fellow Africans.
He saw the danger almost immediately.
He understood that if South Africans ever forgot the solidarity shown to us by the rest of Africa, we would begin to betray the very foundations upon which our own freedom was built.
His warning was not only about violence against foreigners.
It was about the soul of our democracy.

Mandela's warning confronts us today
Today we meet at a deeply painful moment.
Across South Africa we are witnessing scenes that should disturb the conscience of every democrat.
Documented refugees - people recognised and protected under both South African and international law - have spent weeks sleeping on the pavements of Durban after being violently driven from their homes.
Others have been beaten.
Their homes and businesses destroyed.
Families have been chased from one community to another.
Some women have reportedly given birth while living on pavements because they had nowhere else to go.
Many now face an impossible choice:
Return to countries from which they fled war, persecution and death or remain in South Africa living in fear.
These are not statistics.
These are human beings.
Workers.
Mothers.
Children.
People whose dignity deserves the same protection as ours.
This is not who we were.
This is not who Nelson Mandela struggled for us to become.

Defending dignity does not mean denying our own crisis
None of this means South Africans do not have legitimate grievances.
Our country is experiencing one of the deepest socio-economic crises in its democratic history.
Mass unemployment.
Poverty.
Hunger.
Deepening inequality.
Crime.
Corruption.
Failing municipalities.
Collapsing public services.
These realities generate understandable anger and frustration.
But Mandela warned us that we cannot blame other people for our troubles.
Scapegoating migrants will not create jobs or open closed factories.
It will not rebuild our industries.
It will not fix local government.
It will not end corruption.
It merely redirects the anger of the poor towards other poor people while those truly responsible escape accountability.
Government Failures That Fuel Division
But if we are serious about confronting Afrophobia, we must also be honest about the failures of the democratic state.
Governments have a responsibility to unite people, not to create conditions that set the poor against the poor.
Unfortunately, successive governments have failed in at least two critical respects.
First, they have failed to manage South Africa's borders effectively, securely and humanely.
Every sovereign nation has both the right and the responsibility to know who enters its territory, to administer asylum and refugee systems fairly and efficiently, to combat human trafficking and organised crime, and to enforce immigration laws consistently and without corruption.
This is not inconsistent with human rights.
It is part of responsible governance.
When the state fails to fulfil this responsibility, uncertainty grows, rumours replace facts, fear replaces confidence, and migrants themselves become more vulnerable to criminal syndicates and abuse.
Second, government has failed to stop the exploitation of migrant workers by unscrupulous employers.
Far too many employers deliberately exploit the vulnerability of migrant workers, whether documented or undocumented, to pay poverty wages, ignore labour laws, undermine collective bargaining and weaken trade unions.
This exploitation hurts migrant workers.
It also hurts South African workers by driving down wages and working conditions for everyone.
Yet instead of prosecuting those employers who profit from exploitation, the state has too often looked the other way.
The tragic consequence is that poor South Africans are encouraged to blame poor migrants, while those who profit from cheap labour escape accountability.
The poor are turned against the poor, instead of being united against poverty, exploitation, corruption and inequality.
That is exactly the politics that Mandela rejected.
He understood that systems of injustice survive by dividing those who should be united.
That is why he reminded us that in Alexandra they stopped seeing themselves as Xhosas, Zulus, Sothos or Shangaans.
They became one people because they recognised a common struggle.
That remains Mandela's challenge to us today.

The labour movement must choose
As trade unionists and progressives, we cannot be selective in our humanity.
Surely SAFTU cannot proudly proclaim in its Constitution that it is a progressive, socialist, internationalist and anti-xenophobic federation, yet remain silent when fellow human beings are hunted, displaced and brutalised.
We cannot defend workers' rights inside the factory gates while abandoning human rights outside them.
The labour movement was built on one timeless principle:
An injury to one is an injury to all.
If that principle stops at our national borders, then it ceases to be a principle at all.
Our solidarity cannot stop at the Limpopo River.

A message of hope
Comrades,
As we confront the rise of Afrophobia and xenophobia in South Africa, we must also recognise that this forms part of a wider international trend.
Across many countries we have witnessed the resurgence of right-wing nationalism, racism, anti-immigrant politics and attacks on democratic institutions.
These currents have often been encouraged, financed and amplified by powerful political and economic interests that profit from fear, division and hatred.
The world has paid a heavy price.
Wars have multiplied.
International law has been weakened.
Multilateral institutions have come under sustained attack.
Human solidarity has too often been replaced by suspicion, intolerance and the politics of scapegoating.
The consequences have been felt not only in the United States, but across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
We have seen greater instability, deeper polarisation, attacks on migrants and refugees, and a weakening of the international consensus that human rights belong to all people.
Yet history teaches us another lesson.
No political moment lasts forever.
No politics of fear is permanent.
Every presidency comes to an end.
The task before democrats, trade unionists, progressives and all defenders of human dignity is to ensure that the politics of hatred, division and xenophobia do not outlive the leaders who have popularised them.
We therefore look forward with hope to a world in which this dark chapter gives way to a renewed commitment to democracy, international cooperation, peace and human dignity.
We also hope that the networks, organisations and institutions that have invested so heavily in promoting xenophobic and exclusionary politics across the world will gradually lose both their influence and their appeal.
Nelson Mandela reminded us that hatred is not part of our nature.
It is learned.
And if hatred can be learned, then it can also be unlearned.
That is why we remain optimistic.
The struggle for solidarity is always longer than the politics of fear.
Justice always outlives intolerance.
Humanity ultimately triumphs over hatred.

Conclusion
Nelson Mandela taught us that freedom without humanity is hollow.
He taught us that South Africa's liberation is inseparable from Africa's liberation.
He reminded us that when South Africans needed refuge, Africa did not ask for our passports.
Africa opened her homes.
Africa educated our children.
Africa trained our freedom fighters.
Africa buried many of her own sons and daughters because they stood with us.
History now asks South Africa a simple but profound question:
Will we honour that solidarity or will we betray it?
On this Nelson Mandela Day, let us reject Afrophobia.
Let us reject xenophobia.
Let us reject tribalism, racism and every ideology that seeks to divide the African working class.
Instead, let us recommit ourselves to Mandela's vision of a South Africa rooted in African solidarity, human dignity, equality and justice.
Because if we betray those values, we do not merely betray migrants.
We betray the very legacy of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
I thank you.

17/07/2026

South Africa in Crisis

Zwelinzima Vavi

South Africa stands on a precipice, and the working class is entitled to say that it saw this coming. Workers warned against neoliberalism, against GEAR, against privatisation, against labour broking, against premature trade liberalisation, against austerity and against the commercialisation of public goods. Workers warned that a democracy that does not transform the material conditions of the majority would one day face a crisis of legitimacy. Our warnings, once dismissed as slogans, are now vindicated as historical fact, vindicated by mass unemployment, hunger and despair.

The National Democratic Revolution was never meant to be merely about changing who occupies the Union Buildings. Workers did not fight simply to change the colour of those who govern. They fought to change the conditions under which they live. The Freedom Charter was a covenant with the oppressed, promising that the people shall govern, that the people shall share in the country's wealth, that the land shall be shared among those who work it, that there shall be work and security, and that all shall be equal before the law.

The ANC's Strategy and Tactics adopted at Morogoro took this further, warning liberation would be meaningless unless the wealth of the land returned to the people as a whole, and that allowing existing economic interests to retain their power intact would not represent even the shadow of liberation. The liberation movement understood that political power without economic transformation would betray the deeper meaning of freedom.

The RDP became the bridge between the dream and government, the Freedom Charter translated into a programme of housing, water, electricity, jobs, land, industrial development, education, healthcare and public transport. The tragedy is that the RDP has disappeared from our political vocabulary. Instead of reconstruction we speak of fiscal consolidation. Instead of redistribution we speak of investor confidence. Instead of public goods we speak of cost recovery. That ideological shift is at the heart of the crisis.

Let us be fair. Democracy changed South Africa. Apartheid was defeated, universal suffrage was won, a progressive Constitution was adopted and workers' rights were entrenched in law. Millions gained access to housing, electricity, water and social grants. These gains are real, they were won through struggle rather than given as gifts, and they must be defended.

But we must also tell the truth. Access to water and electricity without affordability is not liberation completed. A Constitution that promises rights but cannot satisfy a hungry child does not liberate that child.

More than thirteen million South Africans are unemployed on the expanded definition. This is a national catastrophe. It means young people waking up every morning with nowhere to go, parents unable to feed their children, pensioners supporting entire households, and workers accepting any wage because unemployment has become a weapon.

The greatest betrayal of democratic South Africa has been the normalisation of mass unemployment. We speak about unemployment as if it were weather, as if it simply happened. It did not simply happen. It is the result of choices: the choice to abandon a decisive industrial strategy, to liberalise prematurely, to allow deindustrialisation, to tolerate labour broking and casualisation, and to discipline public expenditure rather than mobilise the state to create work.

Perhaps nothing exposes the failure more painfully than hunger. South Africa is a country capable of feeding its people, yet millions experience food insecurity, children suffer from malnutrition and stunting, and workers increasingly cannot afford nutritious food even when they are employed. Workers did not struggle for political freedom in order to queue for food parcels. Hunger is not charity work. It is political economy. It is about wages, jobs, land, food prices, transport costs, corporate concentration in the food system, and the failure to use the democratic state decisively so that no child goes to bed hungry.

The land question remains unanswered, but it must not be reduced to commercial agriculture. Land is also an urban question. Millions have moved from the former Bantustans and apartheid labour reserves into cities built to exclude them. They move into shack settlements because land and housing are unavailable or unaffordable, they live far from jobs, and they spend hours and large portions of their income travelling. When the Freedom Charter says the land shall be shared among those who work it, that is a rural and an urban demand. It is about farms, but it is also about housing, transport and whether workers can live near opportunity. This is why the trade union movement has always insisted that public transport is a class question.

The collapse of commuter rail was one of the greatest attacks on workers' living standards in the democratic era, forcing millions into more expensive transport. Every extra rand spent on travel is a rand taken from food, and every extra hour on the road is an hour stolen from family life. The rebuilding of the rail system must be welcomed, but public transport cannot be left to the logic of profit.

The working class also experiences the state through policing, courts, Home Affairs, municipalities, clinics and schools, and a weak state hurts the poor first. The rich can buy private security, private healthcare, private education and senior counsel; the poor cannot, and when detection, investigation and prosecution fail it is the poor who suffer.

Justice has increasingly become stratified by class. The Freedom Charter promised equal justice, and equal justice requires more than beautiful constitutional language. It requires a functioning criminal justice system that protects women, children and workers in townships and informal settlements. Crime is not only a security issue. It is a class issue.

We must also be historically honest. By 1994 the Soviet bloc had collapsed, capital had become mobile, unions were weakening globally, and privatisation, deregulation and austerity had become the language of the age. South Africa entered democracy at the high tide of neoliberalism. That is an objective fact.

But objective conditions do not abolish political choice, and liberation movements are judged by the choices they make within their constraints. GEAR represented a decisive rupture with the RDP, shifting the centre of gravity from reconstruction and redistribution to fiscal discipline and market confidence. The trade union movement warned that it would not deliver the promised jobs, that it would weaken industrialisation and deepen inequality.

The 2008 crisis then offered a fork in the road. The United States abandoned free-market dogma to rescue its own system with public power, while South Africa followed the austerity path, with the VAT increase to 15% a symbol of a burden placed on workers and the poor. We argued for state-led development, industrial policy, infrastructure and employment creation. We were not listened to. The evidence is now written in the lives of workers.

The working class of today is not the working class that defeated apartheid. Factories have closed, permanent work has declined, and labour broking, outsourcing, casualisation and platform work have grown. The class now includes precarious workers, informal workers, domestic workers, farm workers, community health workers, unemployed graduates and pensioners supporting households. If unions organise only those in permanent employment they will become representatives of a shrinking minority. The future of trade unionism depends on organising the whole working class.

Material crisis produces political consequences. When people lose hope and progressive organisations are weak, reactionaries provide the answers, and so we see xenophobia, Afrophobia, ethnic chauvinism and personality cults. The liberation movement once united people across ethnicity, language and race; workers entered the factories as Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Venda, coloured, Indian and white workers, and emerged as comrades. That unity did not fall from heaven. It was built through organisation and political education, and as those institutions have weakened, old backward identities have returned. We see migrants blamed for unemployment they did not create. Our fallen heroes must be turning in their graves. They did not die so that the poor can attack the poorer while capital escapes untouched. This is where Fanon and Biko remain indispensable. Colonialism does not only occupy land; it occupies the mind, and when Africans turn against other Africans the revolution remains incomplete.

A movement that once celebrated sacrifice, modesty and service now too often displays crass materialism and the abuse of office. Many leaders no longer live where workers live, and social location shapes consciousness. A leadership that lives far from workers can begin to speak left while living right.

The National Democratic Revolution must be renewed or it will become a historical slogan. Renewal cannot mean nostalgia. It must mean returning to the core promise of liberation. A renewed NDR must rebuild the developmental state, abandon austerity, reindustrialise, tax wealth, stop illicit financial flows, discipline capital, and treat water, electricity, health, education and transport as public goods. It must confront hunger as a national emergency, organise the unemployed and precarious, defend migrants while demanding lawful and humane migration management, and pursue regional integration, because no wall can defeat poverty.

The Freedom Charter was our dream during the nightmare of apartheid. During the dream of democracy, millions have lived a new nightmare of unemployment, hunger and despair. That is the contradiction we must confront. The generation that defeated apartheid fulfilled its mission. Ours must complete the unfinished tasks of liberation: to rebuild, to organise, to educate, to unite and to fight, until the promise of the Freedom Charter is not a memory of what we once dreamed but the lived reality of everyone who calls South Africa home.

Zwelinzima Vavi is the General Secretary of the South African Federation of Trade Unions

15/07/2026

MEDIA STATEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
15 July 2026

SAFTU WELCOMES THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEAL’S DECISION TO HEAR THE NPA’S APPEAL IN THE OMOTOSO CASE

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) warmly welcomes the decision of the Supreme Court of Appeal to grant the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) leave to appeal the acquittal of self-proclaimed pastor Timothy Omotoso and his co-accused.

For survivors of gender-based violence and for everyone who believes in justice, today’s decision is among the most encouraging developments our criminal justice system has seen in recent months. While the granting of leave to appeal does not determine guilt or innocence, it affirms that there are important legal questions arising from the High Court judgment that deserve consideration by a higher court. It restores hope that justice has not yet run its full course.

SAFTU pays tribute to the extraordinary courage, dignity and resilience of the complainants, who endured years of trauma and public scrutiny in pursuit of justice. Their determination has become a source of hope for countless survivors who often remain silent because of fear, intimidation and the belief that reporting sexual violence will lead nowhere.

South Africa remains gripped by an epidemic of gender-based violence. In the latest SAPS crime statistics, 9,516 r**es were reported in just three months. Yet research into the attrition of r**e cases has found that only about 8.6% of reported r**e cases ultimately result in a conviction. This means that more than nine out of every ten survivors who summon the courage to report r**e never see justice done. Against this backdrop, every judicial decision in a sexual offences case carries significance far beyond the courtroom. It shapes public confidence in whether the justice system is capable of protecting the vulnerable and holding perpetrators accountable.

It is precisely because so few survivors ever obtain justice that today’s decision by the Supreme Court of Appeal is so significant. It sends a powerful message that where there are serious questions about the correctness of a judgment, our legal system has the capacity to review and, where necessary, correct itself. That is fundamental to the rule of law and to restoring public confidence in our courts.

SAFTU commends the National Prosecuting Authority for its determination in pursuing this appeal. We urge the NPA to prepare its case with the utmost diligence and professionalism. The complainants have already carried an enormous burden. They must not again be failed by weaknesses in investigation, prosecution or legal preparation.

No religious title, wealth, social standing or political connection should ever place anyone above the law. The law must protect the vulnerable before it protects the powerful.

Justice delayed is painful, but justice abandoned is intolerable. We hope today’s decision will not only bring justice closer for the complainants in this matter, but will also encourage other survivors of sexual violence to come forward knowing that their voices matter and that the struggle for justice is never over.

For media enquiries contact the National Spokesperson at
Newton Masuku

066 168 2157
[email protected]

Media Officer
Asive Dyani
071 901 9564

15/07/2026

MEDIA STATEMENT
15 JULY 2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SAFTU ON THE MURDER OF ACTIVISTS AND THE DEFENCE OF THE RULE OF LAW

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) condemns in the strongest possible terms the murder of Andile Somgaxa, the Gauteng leader of the March and March movement, and calls on the South African Police Service (SAPS) to leave no stone unturned in identifying, arresting and successfully prosecuting those responsible.

Violence and political assassination have no place in a constitutional democracy. While the motive for the killing of Somgaxa has not yet been established, SAFTU calls on the South African Police Service to conduct a thorough, impartial and professional investigation to ensure that those responsible are identified and prosecuted. If it is found that he was murdered because of his political activities, this would represent yet another deeply disturbing political killing that threatens democratic freedoms and echoes the pattern of assassinations that has claimed the lives of a number of Abahlali baseMjondolo leaders and other political activists.

At the same time, SAFTU wishes to state unequivocally that we fundamentally reject and oppose the xenophobic politics promoted by Somgaxa and the March and March movement. Their attempts to scapegoat migrants for South Africa's deep social and economic crises are reactionary, divisive and harmful to working-class unity. However, profound political disagreement can never justify murder. We reject both xenophobic politics and political violence and defend the democratic principle that political differences must be contested through debate, organisation and lawful political engagement—not through intimidation, assassination or bloodshed.

SAFTU is deeply concerned that, despite the initial arrest of two suspects in the murder of Mahikeng activist Thato Molosankwe, the case has been severely undermined by the removal of crucial evidence from the police docket, resulting in the NPA proceeding without key evidence and the subsequent release of the suspects. This represents a serious setback in the pursuit of justice and raises troubling questions about the handling of the investigation and prosecution. SAFTU calls on both the South African Police Service and the National Prosecuting Authority to act with urgency and diligence to rectify these failures, strengthen the investigation, ensure that all relevant evidence is properly secured and presented, and work tirelessly to identify, apprehend and successfully prosecute everyone responsible for Molosankwe's murder. Those who commit or facilitate political killings must not be allowed to escape accountability because of investigative or prosecutorial failures. Justice delayed only emboldens those who seek to silence activists through violence.

We call with equal urgency for the speedy arrest and prosecution of all those who murdered Mokoena Letsie of Potchefstroom, as well as anyone who planned, financed or conspired in his killing. Those who orchestrate political or community assassinations must face the full might of the law.

Finally, SAFTU calls on SAPS to intensify its efforts to arrest and prosecute all those responsible for violent attacks, intimidation and acts of criminality directed at foreign nationals across South Africa. Whatever grievances people may have, they can never justify murder, assault, vigilantism or xenophobic violence. Our Constitution demands that the law protects everyone who lives in our country.

SAFTU reiterates that the struggle for social justice can never be advanced through the barrel of a gun, the knife of an assassin, or the violence of the mob. Whether the victim is a political activist, a community leader, a worker, a refugee, a migrant, or an ordinary resident, every life is equal before the law and every act of violence must be met with the full force of justice.

Justice must be applied consistently and without fear or favour. There can be no place for political killings, xenophobic violence, vigilantism or mob justice in a constitutional democracy.

For media enquiries contact the National Spokesperson at
Newton Masuku

066 168 2157
[email protected]

Media Officer
Asive Dyani
071 901 9564

09/07/2026

MEDIA STATEMENT
09 JULY 2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SAFTU STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH FAWU AND THE UNION AGAINST HUNGER: AN INJURY TO THE SUNBAKE WORKERS IS AN INJURY TO THE ENTIRE WORKING CLASS

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) expresses its full solidarity with its affiliate, the Food and Allied Workers’ Union (FAWU), and the Union Against Hunger (UAH) in their campaign for justice for the 28 Sunbake workers who were dismissed in 2023.

SAFTU calls on all workers, trade unionists, community organisations, progressive formations, students, faith-based organisations and all those who believe that no human being should go hungry to join the picket outside the South African Human Rights Commission’s National Investigative Hearing into South Africa’s food system on Friday, 10 July 2026, in Braamfontein.

This struggle is about far more than the fate of 28 workers.

It exposes one of the greatest contradictions of South Africa’s economy: the workers who plant, harvest, process, bake, transport and sell food are themselves trapped in poverty and hunger. Millions of workers cannot afford the very products they produce. There can be no greater indictment of an economic system than one that condemns food producers to food insecurity.

The Sunbake workers were entitled to receive bread under an existing workplace agreement. The dispute concerns allegations that some workers exceeded the agreed allocation. Even if those allegations were accepted, SAFTU believes the dismissal of 28 workers was grossly disproportionate. Progressive discipline, engagement and corrective measures should always be preferred over destroying the livelihoods of workers and condemning their families to years of hardship.

Almost three years later, the punishment continues—not only for the dismissed workers, but for their children, partners and entire households who have lost income and security.

This case reminds us that hunger is not caused by a shortage of food. South Africa produces enough food to feed its people. Hunger exists because millions of working-class families cannot afford to buy the food they help produce. It is the direct consequence of poverty wages, unemployment, inequality and an economic system that places profit before human need.

That is why SAFTU supports the campaign led by FAWU and the Union Against Hunger. Their struggle is our struggle.

SAFTU further believes that discussions about South Africa’s food crisis cannot be separated from discussions about wages, labour rights and economic justice. A food system that generates enormous profits while those who produce the food remain hungry is fundamentally unjust.

We therefore support FAWU’s demands for:

* The immediate reinstatement of the 28 dismissed workers.
* Genuine engagement to resolve the dispute fairly.
* Recognition of the existing bread-allocation agreement.
* A review of workplace benefit systems through collective bargaining.
* Fair, corrective and proportionate disciplinary practices.

SAFTU also supports FAWU’s position that, should meaningful engagement fail, workers and communities have every right to consider lawful consumer action against companies that refuse to correct injustice.

We call on all progressive South Africans to stand shoulder to shoulder with the dismissed workers by joining tomorrow’s picket. Every victory won by workers strengthens the entire working class. Every injustice tolerated weakens us all.

An injury to one is an injury to all.

For media inquiries, contact the National Spokesperson at:
Newton Masuku [email protected]
0661682157

Media Officer: Asive Dyani 0719019564

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