The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) convened a Special National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting on 20 June 2025, where one of the key agenda items was the Federation’s response to the President’s call for a National Dialogue to be held on 15 August 2025. This follows a proposal initially tabled by former President Thabo Mbeki, endorsed by the ANC’s National Executive Committee, and ultimately adopted by the Government of National Unity (GNU).
After extensive debate, the NEC has resolved that SAFTU will participate critically and reluctantly in the National Dialogue process, on the basis of a clearly defined class perspective and an unwavering commitment to the working-class cause.
SAFTU’s Position: Participating Without Illusions
We do not participate with illusions about the nature of this process. We are under no false hopes that the National Dialogue will magically resolve the catastrophic conditions afflicting the working class. The NEC recognizes:
- That this process is a last-ditch effort by a discredited ANC to reclaim legitimacy after losing its electoral majority and presiding over a 30-year period marked by neoliberal betrayal, corruption, and abandonment of the economic demands of the Freedom Charter (the wealth of country shall be shared) and Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP).
- That the call for dialogue comes not from genuine introspection, but from political desperation. The ANC and its leaders have long known what is wrong with the country. The crises of unemployment, collapsing public services, rising inequality, mass poverty, and deindustrialization are the direct result of their policy choices.
- That this is not South Africa’s “CODESA moment 2.0”, as some claim. CODESA was a negotiated transition after a protracted liberation struggle. This is an elite-led damage control exercise by those who have failed in office.
We Will Not Be Silenced Nor Co-opted
The NEC agreed that non-participation carries its own dangers. It would risk sidelining the working-class voice at a time when the country is desperate for real alternatives. We therefore choose to engage, but we do so on our own terms, with the following conditions and purpose:
- SAFTU will use this platform to indict the ruling class, to expose how the very people convening this Dialogue are those who have implemented austerity, privatisation, wage suppression, and the hollowing out of the state.
- We will make our demands clear: land expropriation without compensation, nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy, abolition of austerity, a wealth tax, a basic income grant, and a complete overhaul of macroeconomic policy.
- We will mobilise our allies and the broader working-class community to ensure this Dialogue is not monopolised by technocrats, capital, and political elites. Where necessary, we will organise parallel working-class engagements to raise the voice of the unemployed, the poor, and the marginalised.
A Track Record of Empty Commissions
SAFTU has no confidence in the government’s ability to implement the outcomes of this Dialogue. Since 2018, at least 23 presidential commissions, councils, and panels have been created,with little to no impact on the lives of ordinary South Africans. These include:
- The Presidential Economic Advisory Council
- The Commission on State Capture
- The Climate Change Commission
- The Infrastructure Advisory Council
- The Anti-Corruption Council
- And many more…
They have produced reports, but the government has ignored their recommendations, just as it has ignored the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Zondo Commission and failed to act on corruption. This Dialogue, too, risks becoming yet another talk shop without implementation.
We Will Not Legitimize Austerity
SAFTU rejects any attempt to use this Dialogue as a means of manufacturing national consensus behind neoliberalism. The GNU and the ANC must not be allowed to use this platform to shift blame onto society as a whole, when they have governed without accountability for decades. We will not be party to collective amnesia.
SAFTU will insist that:
- The crisis in public education, health, housing, and infrastructure is rooted in budget cuts and fiscal consolidation.
- The jobs bloodbath and rise in informal, precarious work is due to deregulation and capital’s power over government.
- South Africa’s polycrisis is not natural, it is man-made, created by an ANC-led state captured by capital.
A Mandate for Militant, Strategic Engagement
The NEC resolved that:
- SAFTU will participate in the National Dialogue reluctantly but strategically, not as endorsement but as intervention.
- SAFTU will mobilise its affiliates and community allies to submit working-class demands into the Dialogue process.
- SAFTU will challenge the legitimacy of the so-called ‘Eminent Persons Group’, many of whom have been complicit in the failures of the past.
- SAFTU will prepare to hold alternative events, protest actions, and parallel forums if the process is manipulated or silenced.
The South African working class has nothing to lose by participating in the National Dialogue, but only if we do so with clear eyes, militant voice, and strategic purpose. We go in not as invited guests of a failed government, but as a force of conscience and resistance, committed to putting the people before profits and rescuing South Africa from the abyss of neoliberal collapse.
A Statement was issued on behalf of SAFTU by General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
For more details, contact the National Spokesperson at:
Newton Masuku
066 168 2157
Newtonm@saftu.org.za
