Zingiswa Losi

Zingiswa Phyllis Losi (born 2 October 1975) is a South African politician and trade unionist who is currently serving as the president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) since September 2018.

Losi was born on 2 October 1975 in KwaZakhele in the former Cape Province, though her family moved to nearby New Brighton, outside Port Elizabeth, when she was a year old.

She was one of nine children born to Graham Mzwandile Losi, who was a general assistant at a hospital and later a debt collector at a furniture shop, and Vuyiswa Esther Losi, who was a domestic worker and later a general assistant at a hospital.

She has a twin sister named Zamela.

In New Brighton, she attended Phendla Lower Primary School and Phillip Nikiwe High School before matriculating at Ithembelihle Senior Secondary School.

Her family was political – two of her elder siblings went into exile with the anti-apartheid movement in 1985 and 1986 – and she was active in the Congress of South African Students as a teenager.

After matriculating, she enrolled at the University of South Africa to study economics in 1995, but she dropped out later the same year and returned home to study teaching at the Algoa College of Education.

Her first job was as a technician in the South African National Defence Force, where she served from 1996 to 1999.

In 1996, Losi left her studies to join the South African National Defence Force as a technical assistant to aviation artisans; her posts included a stint at the South African Air Force base in Bloemfontein.

She served in the military for three years, leaving in 1999, and the following year she relocated to Port Elizabeth, where she was a casual worker in JET clothing stores – as well as an active member of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League in the Nelson Mandela Bay region – until 2001, when she was employed at Ford Motor Company.

Between 2001 and 2014, she worked for the Ford Motor Company in Port Elizabeth, and she joined the trade union movement in 2002 as a shop steward for the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa), a large Cosatu affiliate.

She was formerly Cosatu's second deputy president from 2009 to 2018.

She is a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and a former member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (ANC).

Born in the Eastern Cape, Losi became politically active as a youth activist in the Congress of South African Students and ANC Youth League.

She served three terms as Cosatu's second deputy president, beginning at the federation's 10th national congress in September 2009.

Although she was elected to her Cosatu office as a representative of Numsa, she soon fell out with her union over her closeness with Cosatu president S'dumo Dlamini, who was a supporter of President Jacob Zuma and whose primary rival, Zwelinzima Vavi, was allied with Numsa.

In September 2009, Losi attended the 10th national congress of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), South Africa's largest trade union federation, to which Numsa was affiliated.

At the congress, held in Midrand, she was nominated and elected to succeed Violet Seboni, who had recently died, as second deputy president of Cosatu.

She won the position in a vote against Boitumelo Louise Thipe of the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers' Union (Saccawu).

During her first term as Cosatu deputy president, on 7 September 2011, Losi was arrested in Siteki, Swaziland, where she was scheduled to address a pro-democracy rally organised by the Swaziland Democracy Campaign.

Ahead of her speech, Swazi police fired stun grenades and tear gas into the crowd and arrested Losi and a Cosatu colleague; they were questioned and deported back to South Africa.

She was elected to a second term in September 2012 and a third term in November 2015, serving under Cosatu president S'dumo Dlamini and alongside first deputy president Tyotyo James.

Losi remained a supporter of the Swazi democracy movement, pledging the solidarity of "the global working class" in September 2012.

Losi's tenure as Cosatu deputy president coincided with political tumult in the federation, precipitated in particular by divisions between Cosatu president S'dumo Dlamini and Cosatu general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi; among other things, the two top officials differed in their attitudes towards the incumbent ANC government, with Dlamini a renowned supporter of President Jacob Zuma.

Cosatu worked closely with the ANC through the Tripartite Alliance.

Losi was suspended from Numsa in September 2013, pending a disciplinary hearing, and in March 2014 she announced that she had left Ford and Numsa to work for the South African Police Service and serve as a shop steward for another Cosatu affiliate, the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru).

During this period, she was also a member of a seven-member ministerial committee, under the chairmanship of Malegapuru Makgoba, that was established by Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande in January 2013 to oversee racial and gender transformation in South African universities.

Losi's own union, Numsa, backed Vavi when he was suspended from the Cosatu secretariat in 2013, but she was nonetheless viewed as closely allied to Dlamini; by September 2013 the Mail & Guardian reported that Vavi's supporters were planning to remove Dlamini, Losi, and deputy general-secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali from their Cosatu offices on the grounds that they were "lackeys of ANC leaders".

Losi professed to be unconcerned by the rumours, denying that she and Dlamini were overly close to the Zuma-led ANC and saying that, "I will not be disturbed by people making noise in the periphery".

She worked for Ford until 2014, first as an operator in the engine components and assembly division and later as a quality inspector, and she joined the trade union movement in 2002 when she was elected as a shop steward for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa).

She told the Mail & Guardian:"There is no such thing that we want to turn Cosatu into a sweetheart union. We have an alliance with the ANC and we continue to engage with the party. We continue to raise matters with the ANC in the alliance. We are an independent and autonomous. If that was not the case, we would not have taken to the streets to protest against e-tolling. We would not have said ban labour brokers. If we want to influence ANC policies, we have to work with them. We must continue to contest for our space in the alliance."Later the same week, Losi publicly defended Cosatu's decision to campaign for the ANC ahead of the 2014 general election, despite strong opposition from Cosatu affiliates to the government's e-toll policy.

Days later, Numsa announced that Losi had been suspended from her position as Numsa's shop steward at Ford, effective 26 September and pending a disciplinary inquiry on charges of bringing the union into disrepute.

Her suspension from Numsa brought her position in Cosatu into question, because loss of membership in her Cosatu affiliate would have led to the loss of her Cosatu office.

She later said that her suspension had been unconstitutional and the charges "trumped-up".

In mid-March 2014, amid rumours that Numsa was imminently to be expelled as a Cosatu affiliate, her disciplinary inquiry was pre-empted by the announcement that she had resigned from her job at Ford and therefore from Numsa.

Shortly afterwards, it emerged that Losi had become a shop steward for the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru).

She has been a member of the SACP Central Committee since July 2017 and served on the ANC National Executive Committee from December 2017 to December 2022.

On 20 September 2018, Losi was elected unopposed to succeed Dlamini, becoming Cosatu's first woman president.

Her election was backed by an impressive coalition of Cosatu affiliates, including the National Union of Mineworkers and National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union.

She was re-elected to a second four-year term in September 2022.