South African Transport and Allied Workers Union

The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) is a trade union in South Africa. SATAWU went to a national congress in 2018 after being compelled by the 2017 court order to do so, this was based on the fact that the then leadership was not complying with the SATAWU Constitution and had total disregard of accountability on the finances, our subscriptions, which led to mismanagement of funds resulting into:

1) Late payments of staff members salaries and office rentals

2) None payment of COSATU affiliation fees and

3) None compliance to statutory obligations such as, submission of audited financial statements to the Department of Employment and Labour through the office of the Registrar and also filing the tax returns to SARS for exemption purposes since we are a non-profit organization according to the legislations.

4) Unfairly dismissing staff members and the expelling of shopstewards who upheld the SATAWU CONSTITUTION and demanded accountability and transparency in the administration of the organization.

Fast forward to 2022, the current National Office Bearers had failed to comply with the SATAWU CONSTITUTION by not calling the structural meetings like the Central Executive Committee, CEC ( This is the highest decision structure between National congresses), Finance Committee, FINCOM, which makes budgets and allocates funds for union activities on a quarterly basis per year.

The NOBs basically micromanaged the organization until there was a complaint filed in June 2022 with the DoEL, the Registrar regarding these anomalies in the running of the organization and this compelled the NOBs to call the first CEC since their election in 2018 whilst the SATAWU CONSTITUTION expects them to call at least 3 of these meetings per year. It was after this Sep'22 CEC that the agenda of the NOBs became clear and apparent in that not only did they worsen the administration of the organization and continued to perpetuate the failures, as listed above, of the previous NOBs:

1)They have unilaterally increased the salaries of the Secretariat office, i.e, the General Secretary and his deputy, and also their allowances for rentals and those for the worker leaders in the NOBC.

2) They established investment arms on behalf of the organization and appointed themselves as directors without the approval of the CEC.

3) During the current NOBs tenure the membership dropped from 101 458 as per the 2018 National Congress report to 60 000 due their ineffective leadership.

THE EXPULSIONS

As you may be aware that in December 2023, two months after their term of office expired instead of convening a National Congress as per Constitutional mandate, they convened a CEC after a second complaint was sent to the DoEL, the Registrar in September 2023 which forced them to act. In the 'so called' CEC they resolved the expel more than 22 shopstewards who demanded accountability and compliance of the SATAWU CONSTITUTION since structural meetings like the PECs were not being held and these would have been platform for us to ventilate our dissatisfactions on the status of the organization.

History
In the late 1990s, the South African Railways and Harbours Union (SARHWU) and Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) were both affiliates of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and undertook lengthy negotiations on a potential merger. In December 1998, the Black Trade Union of Transnet Workers and the Transnet Allied Trade Union merged into SARWHU, which renamed itself as the "South African Transport and Allied Workers' Union". On 18 May 2000, the TGWU finally merged with this union, forming a new entity, which was also named SATAWU.

The union suffered a split in 2012, when former president Ephraim Mphahlela led around half the membership into the new National Transport Movement. A further split in 2015 led to the founding of the Democratised Transport Logistics and Allied Workers Union. SATAWU is an affiliate of the COSATU and the International Transport Workers' Federation.

Chinese arms ship refusal
In May 2008, the An Yue Jiang, a ship from the People's Republic of China bearing a large amount of Chinese-manufactured weapons that were bound for Zimbabwe, had docked in Durban harbor; but the dock employees, who were all members of SATAWU, refused to unload the ship of its inventory. SATAWU and COSATU supported the refusal of the cargo, and trade union federations in other southern African countries also refused to unload the ship when it subsequently redocked in other harbors, such as Walvis Bay and Luanda.

General Secretaries

 * 2000: Randall Howard
 * 2009: Zenzo Mahlangu
 * 2018: Jack Mazibuko