A resolution by Numsa’s central committee ― the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa’s highest decision-making body between national conferences — calling for a return to Cosatu has triggered deep divisions within its top leadership and regional structures.
The resolution could rattle SA’s labour movement by pushing workers further away from the ANC, which leads the tripartite alliance, deepen existing fractures and hasten the unravelling of organised labour’s influence on government policy.
Numsa, which is set to hold its national congress to elect new leadership in December 2026, is widely regarded as a militant union that has taken head-on both the government and private sector employers over higher wages and improved conditions of employment for its 460,000-plus members.
The union held a meeting of its central committee (CC) from December 3 to December 7, during which the committee “resolved to have engagements with Numsa [structures] and Fawu [Food and Allied Workers Union] with an intention to restore Numsa back to Cosatu”.
Responding to Business Day during a media briefing in Johannesburg on Monday, Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said the union would issue a media statement and/or hold a possible briefing “on all the issues that relate to distortions of the Numsa resolutions taken at the CC”.
South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said: “The Numsa central committee did not make such a decision. Above all, we met Numsa NOBs [national office bearers] on January 15.
“They were unambiguous in their affirmation that the CC does not even have the power to change a national congress resolution.
“Saftu held an NEC [national executive committee] on January 16, during which Numsa was categorical that no such decision exists.”
In a document outlining the central committee’s top decisions of the December meeting, the CC said: “To the extent that Cosatu is saying Numsa must return back to Cosatu, Numsa must be able to know whether its policy positions and decisions it took, which led to its expulsion from Cosatu, will not be affected ... by such a renewed call from Cosatu that it must return back to Cosatu.”
The committee endorsed a proposal to invite “strategic” Saftu and Cosatu affiliates, political parties such as the UDM, COPE, EFF, MK, ANC and the SACP into a political colloquium/symposium led by Numsa aimed at uniting the working class behind a programme to transform the economy, address issues of ownership and control, the land question and industrialisation, among other things.
Vavi said the issue of calling a colloquium in which trade unions and political parties would be invited “is very different from going back to Cosatu”.
The committee endorsed that Numsa must engage with Cosatu and the SACP given their approaches to Numsa.
“That the SACP has invited Numsa to participate in the conference of the left and Cosatu has invited both Numsa and Fawu to their CC.”
In an internal discussion document, Numsa deputy general secretary Mbuso Ngubane said calls for a return to Cosatu must be examined carefully.
“Returning to structures that have lost their capacity to act does not rebuild worker power,” Ngubane said.
“Unity that exists only on paper does not translate into improved wages, secure jobs or dignity at work.”
In the past three decades that Cosatu had been part of the ANC-led tripartite alliance, “the conditions of the working class deteriorated rather than improved”.
He wrote that Cosatu’s membership had fallen steadily from the two-million registered in the early 2000s, affiliates had weakened and it was struggling to mobilise sustained national action.
“The way forward for Numsa cannot be a return to arrangements that have already failed the working class ... returning to Cosatu under these present conditions would not revive worker power,” Ngubane said.
“It would bind the union again to a political project centred on the state rather than on struggle.
“It would place discipline above democracy and loyalty above truth.
“Trade unions exist to organise workers as a class.
“Their strength lies not in proximity to ministers or access to policy forums, but in their capacity to withdraw labour, disrupt accumulation and build solidarity across workplaces and communities.”
He said the future of the working class would not be secured by “returning to declining institutions or exhausted alliances”.
When contacted, Ngubane declined to comment.
Analysts said the central committee resolution marked the end of Jim’s credibility in SA’s union movement and could also “mark the beginning of the end of his long period as general secretary of the country’s largest union”.
Political analyst Imraan Buccus said: “Jim’s attempt to take Numsa back to Cosatu and to do the same with Saftu, as well as bringing the EFF and MKP back into the ANC has split the Numsa top leadership, as well as the regions.
“A number of insiders think that Jim may not survive this.
“The discussion document circulated by his deputy, Ngubane, has marked out clear lines of contestation.”
Writing in TimesLIVE last week, Buccus stated that documents Jim circulated to the Numsa leadership before the central committee meeting were explosive, adding: “A report authored by Jim called for the leaders to discuss taking the union back into Cosatu, from which it was expelled in 2013.
“Jim is also facing an all-out attack from Khandani Msibi, head of the Numsa investment company, who is making very serious allegations against Jim.
“This and the fact that Jim’s turn to the ANC is widely understood to be a result of donor pressure are doing his standing in the labour movement very serious damage.”
Richard Pithouse, founder and executive director of The Forge, a platform for public discussions, said: “Irvin Jim’s attempt to return Numsa to the ANC overturns the union’s 2013 break with alliance politics, when it committed itself to building an independent working class and left alternative outside the ruling party.
“It has been met with intense opposition from union leaders in Numsa and a number of Saftu unions, as well as grassroots activists and various actors in the broader left, who regard it as a betrayal of the commitment to political independence of the union movement forged over the past decade, and as a historic betrayal of the left.”
Pithouse, who has taught philosophy and politics in SA universities since 1995, said: “Jim’s effort to restore the hegemony of the ANC over both organised labour and society has not emerged from a consultative or participatory democratic process within Numsa and is a gross violation of these principles.”
He said there was particular outrage at Jim’s attempt to draw the MK party into his proposed political realignment, “given its evidently kleptocratic, authoritarian, personalist, chaotic and socially chauvinistic character”.
“This is the end of Jim’s credibility in much of the union movement, and across the left, and could also mark the beginning of the end of his long period as general secretary of the country’s largest union,” Pithouse said.
In an opinion piece recently, political analyst Steven Friedman wrote: “Jim has proposed to Numsa’s leadership that it rejoin Cosatu.
“He is also urging Saftu to return to Cosatu ...
“If Numsa does return to Cosatu, this could spell the end of Saftu, which may be unable to survive without its largest union.
“This would strengthen the ANC’s hold on the labour movement by removing an independent federation from the scene.”
Numsa was expelled from Cosatu in November 2014 after divisions over the federation’s support for the ANC and for allegedly recruiting workers outside its mandate.
Vavi was axed as Cosatu general secretary in March 2015 over what the labour federation called gross misconduct.
Vavi would later tell the media the real reason he was dismissed was that “I could not find it in my conscience to implement a decision to dismiss” Numsa members from Cosatu.
Vavi and Numsa would later play crucial roles in formally launching Saftu in April 2017.
Fawu left Cosatu for Saftu a year earlier.
Vavi recently criticised Cosatu for engaging Saftu-affiliated unions such as Numsa and Fawu with a view to rejoin Cosatu, saying these actions were disingenuous, undermined unity efforts and were a deliberate attempt to destabilise Saftu. — Business Day
