The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has welcomed the announcement that South Africa will host the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) summit in November.
There has been speculation on the summit after four leading Congress members in the United States of America asked the Biden administration to move the summit away from South Africa after the fallout over the Russian ship that docked in Cape Town last December.
This led to frantic efforts by senior Cabinet members going to Washington to outline South Africa’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
They also denied that Pretoria sold arms to Moscow.
President Cyril Ramaphosa was this week leading a high-level delegation to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly and he also met with US business leaders on the sidelines of the world governing body meetings.
Cosatu said the announcement of the summit heading to South Africa was a huge boost for the country.
The trade union federation also said the Agoa summit will for the first time include Cosatu and unions from Africa and the US.
Cosatu said they work closely with the unions in the US and they will push for the respect of labour laws to companies doing business in these countries.
It said it was crucial for South Africa to trade with major economies in the world including the US, China, Japan and the European Union.
It added that Agoa has provided reduced tariff access to a number of sectors in the economy including mining, clothing, jewellery, agriculture and manufacturing.
“Agoa is renewed annually and extended for five-year terms. South Africa’s retention is currently subject to review as Agoa expires in 2025. Not only do US companies investing locally support 450,000 South African jobs; but even more indirect local jobs in the mining, manufacturing and agricultural sectors benefit from our large volumes of exports to the US,” Cosatu said.
“The revenues and taxes they generate contribute towards government’s fiscus and thus its ability to fund badly needed public services and jobs. The overwhelming majority of these workers are members of Cosatu affiliates,” it said.
“Cosatu’s mandate is to protect workers’ jobs and to tackle unemployment. We cannot afford a single job loss with an unemployment rate of 42.1 percent and when 60 percent of young people struggle to find work,” the trade union federation said.
“The federation has been deeply dismayed by statements by some politicians who have sought to weaponise trade relations and undermine South Africa’s sovereignty and hard won non-aligned stance and firm belief in the need for conflicts to be resolved through peaceful dialogue,” it said.
“Workers should not be punished because of geopolitical crises in the world that they have nothing to do with or little power to resolve.”
The federation said it was crucial to keep jobs in a very tough economic environment.
Every job was needed in South Africa.
The South African Reserve Bank said recently that the economy could have grown at a higher rate, but load shedding had an impact.
Electricity Minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said more than 620,000 people lost their jobs last year due to load shedding.
But they want to mitigate that by bringing in more sources of energy.
South Africa will immediately get 100MW of gas from Mozambique once contractual issues between Eskom and the Mozambican energy company have been resolved.
There will be another 600MW that will be dispatched on the grid as soon as all other issues are finalised with Mozambique.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
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