Cosatu and our affiliates across all workplaces celebrate the contributions of working-class women on Women’s Day. We honour our mothers, sisters, wives, daughters and all women for their silent sacrifices, for raising our children, for caring for our sick parents, for working to bring food to the kitchen, for being the backbone of our families and indeed the nation.
Your sacrifices must not go unnoticed, unappreciated or unrecognised.
While we celebrate Women’s Day, let us reflect and rededicate ourselves to the full emancipation and empowerment of women. South Africa marks this important day in our history when more than 20,000 women marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 in protest against the extension of pass laws to women.
The labour federation joins the nation in not only paying tribute to these women who altered the trajectory of the nation but also to the millions of women today who remain the backbone of working-class communities and families.
This year Women’s Month is celebrated under the theme “Women’s socioeconomic rights and empowerment: building back better for women’s improved resilience”, focusing on South Africa’s efforts to achieve meaningful progress towards gender equality by 2030.
Although strides have been made in the emancipation of women on many fronts, the nation still lags in many critical areas. Gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) is endemic, with women and children subjected to devastating acts of criminality. We fear for our daughters’ safety as they travel to school and university. We are pained when those to whom we entrust their safety at schools, police stations and other workplaces abuse that trust and inflict horrific instances of GBVH on them.
GBVH is endemic, with women and children subjected to devastating acts of criminality. We fear for our daughters’ safety as they travel to school and university.
While we are battling this pandemic of GBVH, we welcome victories we have helped to secure as the trade union movement. Cosatu commends the promulgation in 2021 of the Criminal & Related Matters Amendment Act, the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences & Related Matters) Amendment Act and the Domestic Violence Amendment Act.
These laws are significant weapons against GBVH, making provision as they do for the listing of sex offenders on a national registry, the barring of sex offenders from positions of authority and the strengthening of the police’s powers to intervene in suspected cases of GBVH. Cosatu welcomes these progressive laws, but it is crucial that the government ensures that key personnel, in particular our police officers, court officials, teachers, social workers and health workers, are sufficiently trained and resourced to ensure their implementation.
The Government Communications & Information Service, with the support of the media, organised labour, business, the religious sector and broader civil society, needs to undertake public education campaigns so that ordinary citizens are aware of their rights and responsibilities: for example, we all have a moral obligation to report offenders to the police.
The federation welcomes the Victims Support Services Bill which will help ensure survivors of GBVH are provided safe spaces at police stations, health-care facilities and courts to ensure their protection and dignity.
The department of social development must move with speed and table this progressive bill in parliament to ensure that it can be adopted before the 2024 elections. Once this bill is enacted into law, it will be critical that sufficient resources are allocated to the police, courts and hospitals to provide these safe spaces for survivors. It will be a tragedy if this important bill were not adopted by parliament.
The department of justice & constitutional development needs to expedite amendments to strengthen the Maintenance Act — including garnishing orders and credit bureaus blacklisting — to ensure that defaulting partners are compelled to pay monies and support owed to their former partners and their children. This will be the most effective way to tackle this shameful culture of neglect by too many men.
We are pleased with the relief that the national minimum wage has brought for 6-million workers, in particular those sectors — domestic work, farm work, hospitality, retail and cleaning — in which women predominate.
While Cosatu welcomes this progress, more needs to be done to ensure equal work for equal pay. The proposed amendments to the Companies Act requiring listed companies to publicly disclose their wage gap will be a powerful step in the right direction and begin a tradition of naming and shaming abusive employers. We look forward to seeing this pathbreaking bill being tabled in parliament shortly.
The federation and its affiliates continue to work with the department of employment & labour to help enforce implementation of the Employment Equity Amendment Act across workplaces.
The report by the Commission for Employment Equity in June highlighting that 29 years into democracy 62% of senior management positions are held by whites, most of them men, needs to be a wake-up call. Only recently the insurance industry has seen the appointment of its first woman CEO. We need to unlock economic growth by removing the obstacles for all workers, irrespective or their race or gender, to meet their full potential.
Cosatu will table at Nedlac (National Economic Development & Labour Council) legislative proposals to increase the levels of protection and support for mothers, during and after their pregnancies.
While much progress has been made, much remains to be done. We cannot afford to reduce these battles to platitudes and slogans. They require concrete action. This is a battle that ordinary South Africans and we as labour, as well as our counterparts in business, the government and civil society, must actively embrace and drive.
We must lead by example and not tolerate in our midst those who abuse women and children. We must work and hold the government accountable. We must be at our workplaces and ensure women workers are protected. We dare not fail our women and daughters.
* Losi is president of Cosatu
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