Speaking at the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the publication of New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy and the release of issue no 100, former President Kgalema Motlanthe welcomed its partnership with the University of the Western Cape, saying “collaboration between universities and civil society can strengthen democratic life in profound ways. As we mark 25 years of New Agenda, the deeper lesson is clear: when universities and civil society organisations work together with trust and purpose, they strengthen democracy itself. They produce better ideas, foster active citizenship, and help societies confront today’s challenges with courage and creativity.” Dr Motlanthe, who is director of IFAA’s Board, wished New Agenda well “as it enters its next quarter-century. “It stands as a powerful example of what an academic journal can be: rigorous, relevant, accessible, and firmly rooted in a commitment to social transformation. It demonstrates that scholarship and activism need not be in opposition; they can, and should, enrich one another.”

The defining crises of our era will require a great realignment of global forces, middle countries, the coalition of progressive movements – marginalised communities, women’s groups, workers, the unemployed and the working poor – to shape a new reality going forward. ARI SITAS examines the unfolding process that has created the current disastrous instability and friction, and argues for the need for creative efforts to transform the catastrophic reality into an inclusive developmental world order.

COSATU, South Africa’s storied federation of trade unions, with its affiliates, played a critical role in the defeat of apartheid and in the construction of new modes of industrial relations – and politics – after 1994. Forty years old in 2025, COSATU’s industrial unionism model is the focus of this fine-grained analysis by SHANE GODFREY, MARIO JACOBS and IAN MACUN. This special focus provides a context for a discussion on the state of unions in South Africa today. Its focus moves the debate beyond recognition of the impact of economic liberalisation, features of corruption and authoritarianism, and the changing social composition of the union membership to consider what the future could hold for the way COSATU and its affiliates are structured in a difficult new world.

The new wave of trade unions that emerged in South Africa during the 1970s was marked by non-racialism, democracy, and worker control. The unions’ growth, slow at first but then accelerating, was due in part to their organisational effectiveness, the gains they were able to make for workers, and the anti-apartheid politics they adopted. By the early 1980s, the new independent unions had become a major force in the labour relations system and a key part of the fight for political democracy in South Africa.

Until the reforms to labour legislation initiated in 1979, almost all the trade unions that formed the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the National Council of Trade Unions (NACTU), and the Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA) were excluded from participating in industrial councils. These unions had therefore pursued a plant-level collective bargaining strategy that enabled them to maximise their bargaining power and worker control. After the reforms, the new unions had to decide whether they would continue to bargain mainly at plant/enterprise level or participate in industrial councils. The option of bargaining at both levels was more or less excluded because it was so strongly opposed by employers.

Despite decades of colonialism, land dispossession, apartheid exploitation, and protracted armed struggle, South Africans are willing to talk to each other; negotiation is a hallmark of our post-apartheid society. Now that’s being put to the test. The National Dialogue was mandated to confront the intractable triple crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequality, but it faces another challenge from deep within the party that created it. TONY EHRENREICH asks if the ANC leadership, crippled by corruption and greed, is still up to negotiating a way to a better future