As society buckles under unemployment, crime and global political shocks, South Africa just keeps talking.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has been bleeding members, with plant closures in the auto and metal sectors resulting in a jobs bloodbath.
Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim may not be pragmatic, given his historic hard line on the need to build a socialist state, but he is a shrewd negotiator. This was clear in the latest round of wage talks in the motor sector, where the union scored an above-inflation increase for 300,000 workers.
This is remarkable, given that global uncertainties will hit the sector hard as US President Donald Trump’s tariffs take effect. And even more remarkable, given that the union is spending more time negotiating retrenchment packages than salary increases.
Still, Numsa — along with every industrial union in the country — is reeling as membership numbers decline. Public sector unions are largely spared, as the state’s salary bill can attest.
The latest report by Stats SA shows six out of 10 industries shed jobs in the second quarter of 2025 — before Trump’s tariffs took effect. The official unemployment rate increased to 33.3%, up from 31.9% in the previous quarter.
Jim is reluctant to talk numbers. “It is a difficult question. We continue to lose jobs — 500 at Goodyear; a few months before, 700 at Mercedes. It’s coming in waves now,” he tells the FM.
At steel company Macsteel, Numsa is a week into a strike over forced retrenchment. The union argues that the retrenchment process was a “sham” and a box-ticking exercise.
Jim has led Numsa since it was expelled from ANC ally Cosatu in 2015. Along with former Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, Jim formed an opposition body, the South African Federation of Trade Unions. However, insiders say the two have fallen out dramatically.
There have also been rumours of Cosatu having talks to get Numsa to return to its old home. However, Jim’s immediate focus is on working with the department of trade & industry to find a strategic partner to take over Goodyear’s Kariega plant. The tyre manufacturer shut its doors last week as it moved to streamline operations, also cutting jobs in Germany and the US.
“We are doing our best to ensure we can find partners to take over the company and re-employ [its] workers,” says Jim. Jobs in the supply chain were also affected.
Experience of Ramaphosa’s administration over the past seven years indicates that listening is not a strong point
Jim has called on the government to “be bold” and address the glut of tyres being dumped in the country. Though the South African Revenue Service has imposed antidumping duties on new tyres from Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, Jim says it is not enough and imports should be banned outright.
He has criticised the ANC-led government for wasting three decades in its failure to champion a meaningful manufacturing and industrialisation strategy, but says there is a silver lining amid the tariff pressure from the US and shifts in global economic dynamics.
“We are very firm that no crisis should be wasted. To build resilience in times like these, we should move with speed to champion local manufacturing and reindustrialisation. It is also key to drive localisation and create jobs,” he says.
The South African government has delayed finding out what the “transactional” Trump wants and is now delaying in diversifying its trade opportunities, says Jim. “Diversification is not happening quickly enough. We cannot keep delaying and we cannot keep begging Trump. We also should have had an Africa-wide approach to these negotiations; it was a missed opportunity.”
Numsa may be putting out fires on behalf of its members, but it is not participating in the national dialogue, where President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged South Africans to come up with solutions to the many seemingly intractable problems the country faces.
Though opposition political parties, trade unions and key foundations crucial to the project boycotted the initial gathering, Ramaphosa hailed it as a “resounding call” for the conversation among South Africans to begin.
“There was a strong emphasis at the convention on inclusion and participation, with some delegates expressing concern that important voices were missing from the gathering. There was a firm view that special efforts should be made to reach and include groups which were left out or marginalised,” said Ramaphosa.
There is general reticence about the dialogue, because experience of Ramaphosa’s administration over the past seven years indicates that listening is not a strong point. Rather, talking at South Africans has been the norm; perhaps there is an assumption that the dialogue would prove therapeutic for long-ignored ordinary citizens.
Naledi Pandor, a former senior member of Ramaphosa’s cabinet, holds a more cynical view. Without referring specifically to Ramaphosa, she says: “We can’t be asking someone else ‘how do we fix this?’” There is nothing worse than a leader without solutions, she says.
Jim and union members are painfully acquainted with this reality, as negotiations lately are more about severance packages for laid-off workers than salary increases.
But sure, let’s have a dialogue about it.
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