By Saul Molobi
I write this not just as a tribute to COSATU (established on 1 December 1984)on its 40th anniversary, but as a personal reflection on a life lived in the trenches of the liberation struggle – armed not with guns, but with pens, pamphlets, and the power of words. My frontline was the newsroom of Learn and Teach Publications, an independent, anti-apartheid publishing house dedicated to making English-language material accessible to those with limited literacy. Our flagship monthly magazine, Learn and Teach, was more than a publication – it was a movement.
We wrote for the people. But writing for the people meant being among the people.
Our editorial policy required that every article pass the test of relevance, accessibility, and truth – measured not in ivory towers, but in the lunchrooms of factories and the dusty corners of warehouses. As a writer and someone who majored in education at university, I found myself drawn to the literacy workshops held in workplaces by Learn and Teach Adult Literacy, the SACHED Trust, and often, by COSATU-affiliated trade unions. These lunch-hour reading circles were more than just informal classrooms; they were incubators of worker consciousness and mobilisation.
Sitting with workers – often unionised, sometimes not – I witnessed Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed come alive. We did not simply read the magazine. We dissected it. We debated it. A story on mineworkers resisting dangerous conditions in Rustenburg would spark discussions about safety at a plastics factory in Isando. A profile of a fired shopsteward in Durban became a lesson in labour law for a domestic worker in Soweto. We didn’t just report the struggle – we became part of it.
In this way, our articles became vehicles of mobilisation, especially in non-unionised workplaces. Learn & Teach gave voice to those whom apartheid sought to silence. But we were not alone. In fact, we were part of a larger, vibrant alternative media ecosystem shaped and guided by COSATU’s political vision.
When COSATU launched The Shopsteward, their own worker-centred publication, we built bridges. We shared story leads. We aligned editorial strategies. Ours was the working-class pen, theirs the worker’s sword – and together we carved out a space in a hostile media landscape that too often ignored or distorted the lived realities of the oppressed.
Each publication in our ecosystem played a unique role: South African Labour Bulletin (SALB) served the fully literate worker-intellectual; Work in Progress unpacked high-level policy debates; SPEAK gave a platform to women activists fighting on both class and gender fronts; Challenge explored faith through the lens of liberation theology; and Saamstaan in the Cape echoed our cries in Afrikaans. Alongside us were comrades from New Nation and Weekly Mail, who reported the stories mainstream editors were too scared – or too compromised – to touch.
Print was powerful, but COSATU understood the importance of visual storytelling. Its video unit captured worker protests and community meetings, creating a counter-archive to the propaganda of the state broadcaster. Progressive filmmakers from Video News Services (VNS) and collectives like the Film and Allied Workers Organisation documented the struggle on screen, while stills photographers from Dynamic Images rewrote the visual record of our times.
We were all bound together under the ideological guidance of COSATU, and our shared commitment to national liberation, non-racialism, non-sexism, and the socialist future articulated by Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. We weren’t just media workers. We were foot soldiers of the mass democratic movement.
But the victory of 1994 came with unintended costs.
As the ANC-led government assumed office, donor funding that had sustained our publications began to dry up. We were advised to “commercialise” for sustainability, but capitalism is a cruel ally for revolutionary institutions. Thus, we formed the Independent Magazine Group (IMG), a centralised structure designed to pool resources across publications and reduce costs. As I was then serving as Editor-in-Chief of Learn & Teach and, like my comrades, became a board director for our NGO within IMG.
The logic of shared services seemed sound – until it wasn’t. The idea that five receptionists should be retrenched because one would suffice in the new building ran counter to COSATU’s fierce stance against retrenchments. We had internalised the ethos of “an injury to one is an injury to all”. So, we resisted, even at the cost of our survival.
By the mid-1990s, the writing was on the wall. Work in Progress folded. New Nation shuttered. Saamstaan, SPEAK, and Learn & Teach followed. Only a few survived: The Shopsteward, rescued by COSATU itself; SALB, adopted by Wits University; and Weekly Mail, rebranded as Mail & Guardian with UK support.
And yet, COSATU’s Shopsteward remains to this day – a living testament to a federation that never wavered in putting workers first. It refused to be seduced by the illusion of media liberalisation or fooled by the fantasy that mainstream outlets could fill the void left by the closure of alternative media. COSATU understood then, as it does now, that no revolution is complete without its own voice.
As we celebrate COSATU’s 40th anniversary, I honour not only its survival but its stubborn refusal to compromise its principles. I remember the shopstewards who turned lunchrooms into lecture halls. The comrades with cameras who captured our struggle frame by frame. The editors who agonised over headlines that would resonate with a mother reading by candlelight after a long shift.
COSATU’s 40 years is not just a milestone – it’s a reminder that our liberation wasn’t won overnight, and it won’t be sustained without vigilance. The struggle continues, but so does the song. And for those of us who once scribbled in the margins of history, it’s a privilege to know that the chorus still echoes.
Long live COSATU. Long live the workers’ press.
****
Saul Molobi, a former South Africa’s Consul-General to Milan, Italy, is now running his own marketing and communications agency, Brandhill Africa. He has written 6 books since 2020 on brand Africa; economic diplomacy and cultural industries.