The 2015 Cosatu special congress came to a standstill as insults were hurled and comrades battled each other, debating her legitimacy as a member and second deputy president of the federation.
Zingiswa Losi cut a lonely figure at the back of the hall as she was humiliated. But on Thursday, as Cosatu’s newly elected leader, she was carried on the shoulders of Cosatu members as ululation and cheers rang from every corner in the same hall at Gallagher Estates in Midrand.
Thousands of members of the country’s biggest trade union federation celebrated the rise of the first woman in Africa to lead a labour federation.
Looking back to her unhappy day in 2015, Losi said she was persecuted by her former union, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), which was expelled from Cosatu in 2014, and its allies in the federation for not toeing the line in her disagreements with then Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi on organisational issues.
Losi was forced to quit her job at Ford’s Port Elizabeth plant where she had worked since 2002 and served as a Numsa shop steward.
Charges formulated by her union against her pointed to her intended dismissal. "I was being targeted, not because I am Zingiswa Losi, but because of the position I occupied and what I stood for in the federation, which meant if you wanted to weaken the federation you needed to start with this one [Losi]. I started to look for employment elsewhere."
She went on to join the SA Police Service’s civilian secretariat as deputy director in 2014 and was soon elected a Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union shop steward, protecting her position in the federation.
When she took to the stage on Thursday after being elected unopposed to lead the federation, tears filled Losi’s eyes.
"It is humbling, because to have gone through the ranks of the trade union movement … it was not easy. There were difficulties on the way, but I managed to find my way through them.
"To be where I am today, where workers did not nominate and elect me because of being a woman but [because they] had walked with me through my journey in this trade union movement, is humbling," she said.
The 43-year-old does not take her role lightly. She appreciates that Cosatu has been at many a crossroads, and once more it is battling for survival as the changing nature of work, now more dependent on technology, threatens unions.
Having served as a soldier in the SA National Defence Force for three years before joining Ford, Losi has shown herself to be adaptable, but she admits the task awaiting her and other newly elected leaders of Cosatu is momentous.
She is fully aware she has inherited a weak federation facing threats from all sides with the emergence of the SA Federation of Trade Unions which Numsa went on to form when it left Cosatu.
Cosatu affiliates had also been weakened by nearly a decade of infighting over union resources, including its billion-rand investment companies, and had lost sight of their mission, which was to organise and protect workers.
"We have to go back to basics and understand what constitutes this trade union," she said.
"If we want a strong Cosatu we [affiliates] must be strong first. We become strong by servicing our members and making sure that we are not far away from our members, and making sure we pay what is due to the federation so that resolutions that are adopted at the congress are implemented."
With Cosatu affiliates withholding subscription fees from the federation it has operated on a shoe-string budget since 2015.
As a member of the national executive committee of the ANC, Cosatu’s ruling alliance partner, Losi will also have to mediate between the two partners. Indeed, the federation threw down the gauntlet this week in its demand for a reconfigured alliance, failing which it would go its own way.
Losi is also a member of the SA Communist Party’s central committee.
Although she said that if push came to shove she would choose Cosatu, she did not envisage a scenario in which that would be necessary.
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