Mbhazima Shilowa | We are out in the desert using a skorokoro

Cosatu's September Commission considered three scenarios just after the dawn of democracy. A recent report by the International Labour Organisation has confirmed some of those scenarios as coming true. Mbhazima Shilowa writes that it is no longer just trade unions that must respond, but the whole of society. 

Soon after the first democratic elections, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) established the September Commission, chaired by its then deputy president, Connie September.

The aim of the commission was to consider possible scenarios for the country and the trade union movement as we charted a new path to a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa. The future was pregnant with both promise and uncertainties.