Cosatu to reconvene congress in Midrand after affiliates withhold credentials
The federation's executive says its constitution allows a reconvened congress to sit within a month, with or without credentials being submitted.
Cosatu will reconvene its 15th National Congress in Midrand next month, after the gathering adjourned two days early when affiliate unions refused to submit their credentials.
The refusal was a response to the suspension of Cosatu’s first president, Mike Shengange, by his own union, Nehawu. Credentials are the record that decides who is in the room and whether a congress can take a decision. Without them, the federation’s leadership had a choice between pushing on and risking a legal challenge, or stopping the clock and starting again.
SABC News reported that the federation’s executive committee has pointed to Cosatu’s constitution, which allows a congress to be reconvened a month after an adjournment.
The president’s case for stopping
Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi set out the reasoning in her own words, and it is worth reading closely, because it is an argument about law rather than about personalities.
“In as much as we were engaging one another the risk of going beyond that and insist on continuing with the congress could have been a possible litigation because you’ve proceeded with a congress that on record does not quorate,” she said. “It would have been a court argument to then say, they were here but they were not here in the interest of uniting this federation it was important to unite this constitution. The constitution further says, the adjourned congress must reconvene within a month.”
That is the crux. A congress that cannot show a quorum on the record can have its decisions undone later by a court, and a federation that spends the next year in litigation over its own resolutions is a federation that cannot bargain. Adjourning is the cheaper option, even though it costs a month.
Losi also said a reconvened congress automatically forms a quorum and can proceed whether or not credentials are submitted. That is the federation’s reading of its own rule book, and it is the reading that will be tested the moment the gavel comes down next month.
What the constitution is being asked to settle
Cosatu’s rules are not an administrative detail. They are the mechanism by which 1,8 million workers, through their unions, take positions on wages, on the national minimum wage, on Eskom and Transnet, and on who speaks for labour when the government sits down to negotiate.
A congress that adjourns without finishing its business leaves those positions unresolved. It also leaves the federation’s own leadership unsettled at a moment when the labour movement’s relationship with the government it helped put in place is under strain.
The executive committee has emphasised that the constitution provides for exactly this situation. The provision exists because federations have adjourned before, and because the drafters understood that a divided congress is better paused than forced.
What it means for members
For an ordinary Cosatu member, the practical effect is a delay. Resolutions that would have been adopted this week, on wages, on organising and on the federation’s political posture, will wait until the reconvened congress sits.
For the unions that withheld credentials, the month is a window to press their case over Shengange’s suspension. Nehawu’s decision to suspend him is the trigger for the standoff, and it has not been withdrawn.
For the federation’s negotiators, the delay is a handicap. Cosatu carries weight at Nedlac and in the wage talks precisely because it can speak with one mandate. A month without a congress is a month without a fresh one.
The state of play
The congress was held in Midrand and ran for three days before it adjourned. Cosatu has publicly thanked the journalists and media houses that covered it, and the federation’s own account of the week has been circulated on its social media channels.
What has not happened is a resolution of the underlying dispute. The suspension stands, the credentials were not submitted, and the congress is coming back.
Cosatu’s president has framed the decision as one taken in the interest of unity. Whether the reconvened congress produces that unity, or simply relocates the argument to a room with a quorum, is the question the next month will answer.
The reconvened 15th National Congress is due in Midrand within a month of the adjournment on 16 September 2026.
Source: SABC News (website), COSATU to reconvene National Congress next month
