COSATU Membership Stagnates, Ages

Farrel — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:45:00 -0400

Despite being South Africa’s largest trade union (technically not correct as it is a confederation of unions but you get my point) and being in the media an awful lot, COSATU still has less than 2 million members nationwide. It’s been estimated that they have between 1.4 and 1.7 million although COSATU has never given concrete membership numbers. To put that into perspective, if COSATU had to break from the ANC and get every single one of it’s members to vote for it (or whatever form it took as a politicial party) they would get about 35 seats compared to the DA who have 47.

However the biggest concern for COSATU leadership is the fact that their membership is growing older. The largest age group in COSATU is men aged between 35-46 which kind of indicates that since the ANC took over in 1994 (when this age group would’ve been 23-34 in their prime working years) COSATU’s membership has not exactly exploded. Should this trend continue COSATU are going to be a shadow of themselves in a 15-20 years.

Politics.za: COSATU Membership Stagnates, Ages

COSATU Membership Stagnates, Ages