SAMWU 2025 YEAR-END MESSAGE

31 December 2025

SAMWU 2025 YEAR-END MESSAGE

Revolutionary greetings to all SAMWU members, union staff, water sector employees and municipal workers.

Firstly, as SAMWU National Office Bearers, we want to take this opportunity to lower our banner in honour of the all union leaders and members that we have lost during the year under review. May their revolutionary spirits continue to rest in peace.

As the sun sets on 2025, SAMWU National Office Bearers reflect on a year of intense struggle, hard-won gains, painful losses, and renewed organisational resolve. We do so not from a position of comfort, but from within a battlefield defined by collapsing municipalities, waterboards that do not value employees, austerity-driven policy choices, employer hostility, and a sustained assault on the dignity of municipal and water sector workers.

At the beginning of the year, SAMWU declared 2025 the Year of Action and Progress. This declaration was an explicit commitment to move beyond analysis into decisive action, to confront employer intransigence head-on, and to defend workers against the deepening crisis in local government. As the year draws to a close, it is clear that this theme was not merely aspirational, it was lived in strikes, negotiations, court battles, organisational rebuilding, and political interventions across the country.

However, as a revolutionary organisation, SAMWU understands that history does not pause. Each year of struggle lays the foundation for the next phase. It is therefore fitting that as we conclude the Year of Action and Progress, we do so while consciously preparing the organisation for 2026: “The Year of Renewal and Consolidation of Workers’ Power.”

As we prepare to enter 2026, SAMWU does so with sober clarity about the road ahead. The Year of Action and Progress revealed an undeniable truth: while workers continue to bear the cost of governance failure, it is also workers who remain the last line of defence against total institutional collapse in local government.

The declaration of 2026 as The Year of Renewal and Consolidation of Workers’ Power is therefore both a response to crisis and a statement of intent. Renewal speaks to the necessity of strengthening organisational discipline, renewing leadership mandates through the 13thNational Congress, rebuilding political education, and restoring confidence among workers who have endured years of instability and betrayal.

Consolidation speaks to the need to defend and entrench the gains secured through struggle, whether in collective bargaining, legal victories, organisational structures, or political space. SAMWU enters 2026 determined to ensure that no victory is reversed, no agreement undermined, and no worker isolated in the face of employer aggression.

Workers’ power, in this context, is not an abstract slogan. It is expressed in strong shop steward structures, united membership, effective collective bargaining, strategic litigation, mass mobilisation, and principled political engagement. It is expressed when workers refuse to normalise unpaid salaries, unsafe working conditions, or the theft of their benefits. It is expressed when workers understand their role not only as employees, but as a social force central to the defence of public services and constitutional democracy.

A Sector in Crisis, a Working Class Under Siege

The year 2025 unfolded against the backdrop of a local government sector in advanced decay. Across South Africa, municipalities are collapsing under the weight of chronic underfunding, mismanagement, and corruption. The municipal funding model is broken, yet workers are expected to absorb its failures through unpaid salaries and frozen benefits. National Treasury’s obsession with cost containment has turned municipalities into zones of permanent instability.

In this environment, municipal workers are treated not as essential service providers, but as expendable costs. SAMWU has consistently warned that austerity is incompatible with service delivery.

This painful situation in municipalities is the reason why as SAMWU, we continue to argue for the total overhaul of the municipal funding model. In the policy arena, SAMWU has this year actively participated in the review of the White Paper on Local Government, rejecting technocratic solutions that ignore workers’ lived realities. We made our submissions and will be actively participating in the public participation process, we want to ensure that our submissions finds expression in the ultimate end product, this in the interest of municipal workers and service delivery in general.

In September 2024, while welcoming the Labour Court ruling on the constitutionality of the amendments to the Municipal Systems Act, we indicated that these amendments were not only an attack on the political rights of workers, but also a total siege of the working class. We are however pleased to report that this year, we opposed the application by our employer, the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) who did not agree with the ruling of the Labour Court declaring these amendments unconstitutional.

The Constitutional Court, in its wisdom ruled that indeed that these ammendments are punitive and that the prohibition of municipal workers to hold political office is unconstitutional. Last year, we indicated to our members that we will challenge these amendments to the highest court in the land and indeed, we have done so and municipal workers have come out victorious. We once again encourage our members to actively participate politics, not only as voters, but also as candidates as confirmed by the Constitutional Court. We firmly believe that governance and politics in the country requires people who have lived experiences, and who better, than municipal workers themselves?

Mandate Renewal and Worker Education

In 2025, SAMWU reaffirmed a fundamental and non-negotiable principle of working-class organisation: a union that is not organised is defenceless, and a union that loses contact with the shop floor loses its revolutionary character. In a period marked by employer aggression, institutional decay in local government, and sustained attacks on collective bargaining, organisational renewal was not a luxury, it was an urgent necessity.

It is against this backdrop, and based on the Union constitution and resolutions of the Central Executive Committee, that the successful conclusion of Shop Steward Elections across the country must be understood as a significant political achievement. These elections were not merely procedural exercises to comply with constitutional requirements, they were deliberate acts of renewal that reasserted the authority of workers to choose their own representatives. Through these processes, the leadership of the union was refreshed, mandates were clarified, and accountability to the membership was strengthened. Most importantly, they ensured that the voice of the shop floor continues to guide the strategic direction of SAMWU at all levels of the organisation.

Flowing from the Shop Steward Elections, SAMWU successfully convened Regional Shop Steward Councils (RSSCs) in all nine provinces. These councils played a critical role in consolidating organisational unity, sharing experiences from different workplaces, and collectively analysing the challenges confronting workers in municipalities and the water sector. RSSCs remain an essential space for developing collective responses to employer tactics, strengthening coordination across regions, and reinforcing the political consciousness of shop stewards as both worker representatives and organisers of struggle.

Beyond regional structures, SAMWU further demonstrated organisational resilience by convening Provincial Congresses in eight of the nine provinces, despite difficult material and political conditions. These congresses provided a platform for rigorous debate, reflection on organisational performance, and the renewal of provincial leadership mandates. While the Limpopo Provincial Congress remains outstanding, the National Office is fully seized with the task of ensuring that it is convened ahead of the 13th SAMWU National Congress, scheduled for 16–19 March 2026.

Central to these processes was the recognition that mandate renewal must be accompanied by worker education and political development. In this regard, SAMWU continued to prioritise the strengthening of shop steward capacity, recognising that informed, confident, and politically grounded representatives are essential to defending workers’ rights in an increasingly hostile environment. The organisational gains of 2025 therefore lay a solid foundation for 2026: The Year of Renewal and Consolidation of Workers’ Power, where renewed mandates must be transformed into disciplined action and sustained worker-led power.

Collective Bargaining

Despite an increasingly hostile and unstable bargaining climate, SAMWU recorded historic and hard-won gains in the water sector during 2025. These victories were not secured through employer goodwill but through disciplined negotiation, organisational pressure, and an unwavering commitment to defending the material interests of workers. At a time when public sector employers are seeking to weaken collective bargaining through exemptions, delays, and litigation, SAMWU’s achievements in the Amanzi Bargaining Council stand as a powerful affirmation of the continued relevance and strength of sectoral bargaining.

Through the Amanzi Bargaining Council, SAMWU successfully negotiated a 7% across-the-board salary increase, providing essential relief to workers in the water sector against the rising cost of living and the erosion of real wages. More significantly, the union concluded a historic Pay Progression Agreement, guaranteeing an additional 2% salary increase from the 2026/27 financial year. This agreement represents a decisive breakthrough, affirming that career progression and wage growth are fundamental rights to be collectively negotiated—not discretionary favours granted by employers.

However, these gains were immediately met with despicable bad-faith conduct from Rand Water, which attempted to renege on the 7% agreement barely a day after appending its signature. This act was not only an insult to workers but also a direct assault on the integrity of collective bargaining itself. For a well-resourced public entity with clear financial capacity to attempt to walk away from a binding agreement set a dangerous precedent that, if left unchallenged, would have undermined the entire bargaining system in the sector.

SAMWU responded decisively and without hesitation. In defence of our members and the collective bargaining framework, the union activated its legal processes to challenge this illogical and opportunistic attempt to evade responsibility. We are therefore pleased to report that, in the interest of our members, SAMWU successfully opposed this challenge, ensuring workers ultimately received what was rightfully due to them. This outcome reaffirmed a vital principle: agreements reached through collective bargaining are binding and must be honoured, regardless of shifting political or financial expediencies.

Beyond immediate wage struggles, SAMWU has continued to advance a long-term, worker-centred bargaining agenda within the Amanzi Bargaining Council. Of particular significance is the union’s leadership in championing the introduction of a post-retirement medical aid benefit. Negotiations on this matter are at an advanced stage, reflecting growing recognition that workers who dedicate their lives to providing essential water services must not retire into medical insecurity and neglect.

In addition, parties are engaged in negotiations for the introduction of a danger allowance for employees who, by the very nature of their work, face inherent and ongoing risks. While no monetary compensation can substitute for safety, SAMWU firmly believes that such an allowance is a necessary recognition of the hazardous conditions under which many water sector workers operate daily.

The introduction of post-retirement medical aid will serve as a critical lifeline for thousands of workers as they transition out of active employment, ensuring dignity in retirement. Similarly, the danger allowance will affirm the value of the selfless service rendered by workers who sustain a life-giving resource under often perilous conditions. Together, these interventions reflect SAMWU’s commitment to deepening and consolidating workers’ power through collective bargaining, in line with the organisation’s strategic direction toward 2026: The Year of Renewal and Consolidation of Workers’ Power.

Within the South African Local Government Bargaining Council (SALGBC), SAMWU continues to engage in a protracted and complex struggle around the Wage Curve, an issue that has remained unresolved for many years and caused deep frustration among municipal workers nationwide. The Wage Curve issue goes to the heart of wage injustice in local government, as thousands of workers continue to be remunerated incorrectly, not according to the approved grading of their municipalities, despite performing the same work and carrying the same responsibilities as their counterparts elsewhere.

This longstanding anomaly has entrenched inequality within the sector, undermined morale, and perpetuated a system where workers in lower-graded municipalities are effectively punished for structural failures beyond their control. SAMWU has consistently maintained that equal work must be met with equal pay and that workers cannot continue to subsidise governance and financial management failures through depressed wages.

In 2025, parties within the SALGBC intensified engagements on the Wage Curve, with a renewed focus on developing practical and implementable proposals that can finally resolve this matter. These negotiations are ongoing, and SAMWU remains firmly committed to securing an agreement that corrects historical distortions, restores fairness, and ensures municipal workers are remunerated in line with their municipalities’ correct grading. While the process has been slow and contested, the union continues to apply pressure within the bargaining council to prevent further delays and evasions.

At the same time, SAMWU recognises that not all battles can be won in boardrooms alone. The experiences of 2025 have reaffirmed a fundamental lesson of working-class struggle: when negotiation reaches its limits, mass action becomes a necessary and legitimate weapon.

In this regard, SAMWU proudly commends and salutes our members in the Petrus Mashishi Region (Johannesburg) and the Joe Molosane Region (eThekwini). Through disciplined, collective, and courageous action on the ground, these members demonstrated that organised and mobilised workers’ power can compel employers to do what prolonged negotiations have failed to achieve. Their struggles ensured that workers in these municipalities are now paid in accordance with the correct municipal grading, restoring both material justice and dignity.

We are further pleased to report that this year, we finally received a Labour Court ruling regarding the outstanding salaries of our members in the City of Tshwane. The Court ordered that the matter of the 3.5% salary increase be referred back to the SALGBC. We are pleased that the SALGBC has once again ordered the City to pay workers these increases, and that the City has committed to doing so.

It is, however, unfortunate that the Court ventured into the merits of the outstanding 5.4% increases, essentially denying workers these increases. We want to assure our members that this matter is receiving the full attention of the union. We have assembled a strong legal team to appeal this aspect of the ruling and are confident that, once again, workers will emerge victorious.

These victories did not come easily. They were won through unity, sacrifice, and a clear understanding that rights are rarely handed over voluntarily by those in power. They serve as powerful examples of what can be achieved when workers act collectively and refuse to accept injustice as normal.

As SAMWU moves toward 2026: The Year of Renewal and Consolidation of Workers’ Power, these experiences reinforce the union’s strategic approach: combining disciplined engagement in bargaining councils with mass-based mobilisation on the ground. It is through this dual strategy that the union will continue to defend workers’ rights, correct wage injustices, and entrench workers’ power across the local government sector.

Preserving Revolutionary Memory

A union without memory is a union without direction. In 2025, SAMWU took decisive steps to honour and embed this memory within the fabric of our organisation by launching the inaugural Koena Ramotlou Memorial Lecture and renaming the Ekurhuleni Region in his honour. This was not merely a symbolic gesture but a deliberate reaffirmation of our commitment to remembering the leaders who shaped our struggle and inspired generations of workers.

Similarly, the continuation of the TT Musethu and Ronald Mani Memorial Lectures has allowed us to consistently engage with the ideological foundations of our movement, fostering critical dialogue about the challenges we face and the strategies required to overcome them.

In preparation for the inaugural John Dlamini Memorial Lecture in 2026, and the ongoing Petrus Mashishi Memorial Lectures, SAMWU is ensuring that these platforms remain dynamic and relevant. They are more than commemorations, they are ideological weapons against amnesia and opportunism within the labour movement and society at large. They guard against the forgetting of history that too often leads to repeating mistakes or losing sight of the movement’s core purpose.

These memorial lectures keep alive the memory of those who paid the ultimate price for workers’ rights and dignity. They serve as educational tools, inspiring new generations of activists to carry forward the struggle with clarity of purpose and a deep understanding of the sacrifices that underpin every right won. They challenge complacency, reminding us that the freedom and benefits enjoyed today were hard-fought and are constantly under threat.

The Political Terrain and the 2026 Mandate

As we approach the 2026 Local Government Elections, the political landscape is undergoing significant shifts that demand our careful attention and strategic clarity. Central to these changes is the South African Communist Party’s (SACP) recent decision to contest state power independently. This development reshapes the dynamics within the longstanding tripartite alliance of COSATU, the SACP, and the ANC, an alliance that has historically been central to the liberation movement and the broader struggle for workers’ rights and social justice in South Africa.

As an affiliate of COSATU, SAMWU aligns with the position articulated by the federation, especially as endorsed during the recently convened 8th COSATU Central Council. The Council took a firm stance that the SACP’s decision to contest elections independently must not serve as a wedge to divide the working class or weaken the broader labour movement. This principle is critical because the unity of workers, both within the union movement and across political platforms, is fundamental to advancing our shared goals of economic transformation, social justice, and the protection of workers’ rights.

However, this new political configuration introduces complex challenges. For SAMWU, these challenges are particularly acute because our union organises primarily in the local government sector, the very sphere where the electorate directly chooses their employers through municipal elections. This unique relationship means that shifts in political allegiances and party contests at the local government level have immediate and tangible impacts on our members’ working conditions, service delivery, and the governance of their workplaces.

Given the gravity of the situation, SAMWU recognises the necessity of approaching this moment with both caution and a commitment to democratic process. We understand that the decision of the SACP introduces a political quagmire that could potentially fragment the labour movement or create confusion among our membership if not handled with care and clarity. To this end, SAMWU, in collaboration with COSATU, will embark on a thorough process to engage with our members directly. We will seek to source a definitive mandate on the political direction that our union—and by extension, the federation—should adopt with regard to electoral support in the upcoming local government elections.

This consultative process is not merely procedural; it is an affirmation of our commitment to member-driven democracy and political accountability. We are acutely aware that the decisions made now will shape the conditions of our members’ workplaces and communities for years to come. Therefore, it is imperative that our position reflects the collective will of our members, grounded in the realities they face and the principles that guide our struggle.

The upcoming 13th National Congress of SAMWU will serve as the definitive platform to pronounce on this critical political issue. It will provide a space for robust debate, reflection, and ultimately, a clear mandate that will guide the union’s engagement in the electoral process. Through this democratic exercise, SAMWU aims to preserve unity, strengthen workers’ power, and ensure that the union’s political posture is coherent and aligned with the broader objectives of social transformation and workers’ emancipation.

In summary, while the SACP’s decision to contest state power marks a significant shift in South Africa’s political terrain, SAMWU remains steadfast in its commitment to unity and solidarity within the labour movement. We will navigate this new reality with prudence, democratic participation, and a focus on maintaining cohesion within the federation. Our goal is clear: to ensure that workers remain united and empowered, regardless of shifting political alignments, as we collectively strive toward a just and equitable society.

Towards Renewal and Consolidation

As we move toward 2026, SAMWU stands at a historic crossroads. The upcoming 13th National Congress in March will be more than a leadership election, it will be a decisive moment to renew our organisational mandate and consolidate the collective strength and wisdom gained throughout this defining Year of Action. This congress will lay the foundation for a renewed, disciplined, and united union ready to face the challenges ahead with clarity and purpose. As we prepare to close one chapter and begin another, we want every member to know that SAMWU is mobilising and strategising for a year of transformation and growth.

We call on all our members to join us on this journey of renewal and consolidation, bringing their voices, energy, and commitment to rebuild stronger shop steward structures, deepen collective bargaining power, and advance political education. Equally, we extend a heartfelt invitation to municipal and water sector workers who are not yet members, now is the time to unite and organise. In the face of ongoing attacks on worker rights, institutional instability, and austerity-driven policies, only a united and empowered workforce can defend the dignity, rights, and livelihoods of all workers. Together, we will reclaim workers’ power and ensure it is expressed not as a slogan but as a living reality.

2026 is the Year of Renewal and Consolidation of Workers’ Power. It is a year to rebuild, to defend what we have won, to unite across divisions, and to advance the cause of justice, fairness, and dignity for all municipal and water sector workers. The road ahead will be demanding, but we move forward with confidence because our strength lies in our unity, our discipline, and our unwavering commitment to one another. Join us, stand with us, and be part of this powerful movement.

On behalf of SAMWU National Office Bearers, I wish you all a happy new year, “The Year of Renewal and Consolidation of Workers’ Power”

Amandla!

Nelson Mokgotho

SAMWU President