Zingiswa Losi: Power, Persistence, and the Future of Feminist Labour Leadership in Africa
Zingiswa Losi - COSATU’s President
Introduction: The Struggle for the Soul of the Labour Movement
Across Africa, trade union spaces have long been male-dominated, with women relegated to the grassroots despite comprising the majority of workers in sectors like healthcare, education, garment manufacturing, and domestic work. But the tides are shifting.
Zingiswa Losi’s ascent to the presidency of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU); one of the continent’s largest and most politically influential labour federations marks not just a symbolic milestone, but a tactical repositioning of working-class leadership in Africa.
In a time when union relevance is increasingly under pressure from neoliberal reforms, outsourcing, and platformisation, Losi’s leadership is redefining the rules of engagement, especially for working-class women.
From Shopfloor to Global Stage: A Worker’s Journey
Born in 1975 in KwaZakhele, Port Elizabeth, Zingiswa Losi entered the workforce like many African women through the military and later the manufacturing sector. She worked at Ford Motor Company in Port Elizabeth, where she joined NUMSA (National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa) in 2002 and quickly rose to shop steward.
Her ascent was not without cost. Within NUMSA, then a COSATU affiliate, Losi challenged entrenched patriarchy, often being the only woman in leadership meetings. Her persistence paid off when she became Second Deputy President of COSATU in 2009, before being elected as COSATU President in 2018, making her the first woman to lead the 1.8 million-strong federation.
In 2022, she was re-elected unopposed, a clear signal from the rank-and-file that her leadership was not insincere, but strategic.
A Feminist Voice in a Hostile Terrain
COSATU, despite its liberation credentials, has struggled with internal misogyny. Women in the labour movement have long had to fight battles not only against bosses but against their own comrades.
Losi’s leadership has focused on building an explicitly feminist trade union culture. She has spoken out against gender-based violence in workplaces, pushed for collective bargaining agreements that include maternity rights, and challenged the “boys’ club” mentality that often sidelines women workers from leadership. But a feminist trade union culture goes beyond advocating for women’s inclusion, it’s about transforming power dynamics across the labour movement. It means prioritising care work, promoting equity, and creating safer, more democratic spaces where all workers regardless of gender, class, or background can thrive.
Rather than benefiting only women, feminist strategies seek to dismantle exclusionary structures that harm everyone, including men, by promoting fairness, solidarity, and shared leadership. In doing so, they build stronger, more inclusive unions that are better equipped to fight for justice on all fronts.
Under her leadership, COSATU has begun reviewing its internal gender policies, championing youth and women's leadership pipelines, and resisting token appointments.
Pan-African Solidarity and Global Influence
Losi’s impact also extends far beyond South Africa. As President of the Southern African Trade Union Coordination Council (SATUCC), she coordinates campaigns across the Southern African Development Community (SADC). She is also a member of the General Council of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and currently sits on the Governing Body of the International Labour Organization (ILO) for the 2024–2027 term. From Johannesburg to Geneva, she is helping place African working women on the global labour agenda.
Yet, Losi’s story is not the norm. Many African unions still lack clear gender equity policies or structures to support women’s leadership. The feminisation of poverty, informality, and precarious work has left women carrying the economic burden of entire households, without the political power to shape workplace or union policy.
To change this, labour movements across the continent must embrace feminist leadership not as a sideline project, but as central to class struggle. This begins by organising women where they already are: in informal markets, domestic work, and outsourced public services. Unions must fight for quotas that ensure gender parity in leadership, demand that collective bargaining includes gender-sensitive provisions (like paid maternity leave and protection from GBV), and build women’s caucuses with real authority.
Internal cultures of patriarchy must be called out and transformed. Training and mentorship are essential, but so is holding male leaders accountable when they block or belittle women’s contributions. Unions must also use legal frameworks like ILO Convention 190, which focuses on the elimination of violence and harassment in the world of work, to push internal reforms and negotiate enforceable workplace protections.
Comparative Insights: Women Leaders, Different Struggles
Across the continent, we are already seeing these shifts in motion. In Uganda, women organisers in the Uganda Textile, Garment, Leather and Allied Workers’ Union (UTGLAWU) have led groundbreaking campaigns for decent work in the garment sector. In Tunisia, the UGTT Women’s Committee has influenced national negotiations by forging alliances with youth and feminist groups. And in Nigeria, women organisers have pushed for safe transport and health care access for female workers in the informal economy.
What these women share with Zingiswa Losi is not only their resolve but a radical clarity: the fight for gender equity is the fight for labour justice. Patriarchy, like poverty, is a structural condition; one that must be named and dismantled inside unions, just as we seek to dismantle it in the workplace and the state.
But it is also more than a cultural bias; patriarchy operates as a tool of capitalist domination. Capitalism depends on inequality to sustain itself, and patriarchy like racism has historically been used to justify and deepen this exploitation. As feminist theorists such as Silvia Federici, Maria Mies, and the Wages for Housework movement have argued, the unpaid and undervalued labour of women especially in the domestic sphere has been essential to capital accumulation. This legacy lives on in the feminisation of poverty, the informal economy, and the persistent devaluation of care work. Dismantling patriarchy in unions, therefore, is not a side issue; it is central to building a truly emancipatory, anti-capitalist labour movement.
Conclusion: Leadership Is Not a Title; It’s a Struggle
Zingiswa Losi’s presidency is not just about representation. It is a strategy for rethinking union power from the margins. She represents the intersection of worker, woman, and movement-builder in a labour landscape where capital is increasingly borderless and organised labour is under siege.
Her leadership reminds us that building a people-centred union movement requires confronting patriarchy, not just poverty. That feminist leadership is not a “soft” agenda; it is a class agenda. And that the future of African unions depends on whether they make space for women not just to participate, but to lead.
References
Glamour South Africa. (2025). Women in Charge: 5 Facts to Know About Zingiswa Losi. Link.