The South African Federation Trade Union (Saftu) says it is confident that it will reach 1 million members by next week.
The newly-formed federation held its third national executive committee meeting In November. It says 24 affiliated unions under its leadership have reported that they are growing despite the job losses in the economy.
Saftu says it has also added three more unions in the past few months.
General Secretary of Saftu, Zwelinzima Vavi, says they are on course to grow 300 000 members and reach 1 million members by December.
“And since May, we have been working hard that every unions that develops strategies to grow, to be relevant, to be responsive and to be involved with issues workers are raising every day. And it is precisely because of that, (that) the unions came to this meeting and said we are all growing and we will be consolidating that on December 5 where we will be verifying all the members. But by January, all unions are required by the policy of the federation to update their membership.”
The federation says it will also intensify its battle against corruption. It is preparing documents to launch a High Court action against the Hawks, Saps and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to force them to do their job.
The federation says it has not received any response from Saps, Eskom and Transnet in regards to the charges they laid against them.
In October, the federation laid criminal charges against executives of Trillian, Eskom and Transnet.
Saftu says they received a response from the NPA claiming to be investigating the Public Protectors State Capture report since March 2017.
“We will not announce the day, but it will happen anytime between today and any day over the next few days. We will be in court and in the court we will ask the court to enforce the Hawks, Saps and the NPA to do the job that they have been prescribed by law. We have given them every bit of evidence they need and for them to act upon and so far they are refusing to do so.”
Saftu says it will embark on a series of protest actions in 2018 against government.
“The NEC has decided that the Saftu NEC to be held on the 20th February 2018 will decide the date for the general strike. In the meantime, we will continue with small scale mobilisation and protest actions as a warm up to mass demonstrations and strikes in 2018. These will include demonstrations outside Parliament on the days of State of the National and Budget speeches, the Esidimeni scandals, Eskom tariff increases and exploitation of labour brokers.”
The federation says the cost of providing free technical and vocational training could be funded from the R100 billion surpluses accumulated by the unemployment Insurance Fund. Despite being against the coup in Zimbabwe -Saftu has announced that it is in unison with the people of Zimbabwe as they celebrate a new hope for their country.
