Income and wealth inequality in Canada reach a new record

Steven Fields

A homeless encampment in Kitchener, Ontario, in front of the former Krug Furniture factory

According to a report by Statistics Canada on income and wealth distribution issued in July, income inequality reached a record high in the first quarter of 2025. This marks a fourth consecutive increase year-on-year; notably, starting at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Statistics Canada defines the income gap as the difference in the share of disposable income between households in the top two quintiles (top 40 percent) of the income distribution and the bottom two. This gap grew from 43.8 percentage points in the first quarter of 2021 to the record high of 49.0 percentage points in the first quarter of 2025.

The lowest income households (the bottom 20 percent) fared the worst. The average disposable income of this group was $6,373 in Q1 2025. This was the only group that had declining average wages, mainly due to weak labour market conditions; the manufacturing and mining sectors were especially adversely affected. The average income for this underprivileged segment of the working class would have dropped compared to Q1 2024 but for the modest increase in government support measures, such as social assistance and employment insurance.

In contrast, the highest income households (the top 20 percent) fared the best. It was the only quintile that increased its share of disposable income compared to the previous year. The average disposable income of this group was $52,282 in Q1 2025—a 7.7% increase compared to Q1 2024. Investment income—a major income component for this group—increased by 7.4 percent. These gains allowed this segment to grow their net savings at an above average pace of 9.6 percentage points compared to the year prior.

The economic position of the middle-income households (the middle 60 percent) was relatively unchanged. The average disposable income was $21,403 in Q1 2025, compared to $20,402 in Q1 2024. The increase was mostly due to moderate wage gains. The investment earnings for this segment declined slightly relative to one year earlier. The disposable income share of this group dropped by 0.6 percentage points.

Closely related to income inequality is wealth inequality. Over time, income inequality drives and amplifies wealth inequality. Households with high incomes can save and invest, while low-income households spend their disposable income on basic necessities.

In Canada, the richest households capture the lion’s share of the country’s wealth. The wealthiest top 20 percent accounted for almost two-thirds (64.7 percent) of total net worth, averaging $3.3 million per household. This represents an above-average 3.1 percent increase in wealth compared to Q1 2024. However, the bottom 20 percent of households had a negative net worth of -$1,644, as they owed more in debts and liabilities than they owned in assets. Given the high cost of living in most of Canada, many such households are one pay cheque away from financial calamity.

Behind the numbers, a stark portrait emerges: a society in the throes of a deepening social crisis. Skyrocketing home prices and rents, especially in major urban centers, continue to push housing out of reach for many Canadians, fuelling homelessness and financial strain. Homelessness in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, has more than doubled in the last three-and-a-half years. 

According to a recent survey conducted by Pollara Strategic Insights, 23 percent of Canadians report that they are unable to buy sufficient food. Record numbers are turning to food banks as financial pressures mount. More than two million workers seek assistance every month, with many arriving for the first time. Children account for a third of those in need. The food bank system is buckling under the strain—last year, a third of food banks could not meet demand.

The response to the latest Stats Canada report by the press has been muted and predictable. The liberal-leaning newspapers made appeals to the Liberal Mark Carney government to make the tax system more progressive, increase the benefits for the less affluent and build affordable housing. Pseudo-left outfits made similar appeals in addition to suggesting that the solution lies in increasing workers’ unionization rates.

Such appeals are deceptive and politically bankrupt. A question must be asked: what is the economic and historic trajectory that led to the current situation? It is certainly true that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated current economic trends—but the path was laid decades ago.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991, an atmosphere of capitalist triumphalism prevailed in North America. In the United States, the Democratic government of Bill Clinton moved swiftly to dismantle the welfare state. Having been forced to make greater concessions to the working class in the immediate post-war period compared to its southern neighbour due to its relative weakness and a militant upsurge of the class struggle, Canadian capital had more expansive social programs to demolish.

The process of social counterrevolution began in earnest when the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien introduced large social spending cuts in the mid-1990s despite budgetary surpluses. The process continued during the premiership of Paul Martin, Chrétien’s former Minister of Finance. In the early 2000s, the focus of the Liberal government was centered on corporate and personal income tax cuts, as well as reductions in capital gains taxes. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper continued with the policy of broad personal and corporate tax cuts. During the financial crisis of 2008, the government transferred tens of billions of dollars to Canada’s largest banks. During the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in 2020 and 2021, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to the largest banks and major corporations with the full backing of its trade union and New Democratic Party “partners.”

Although not in a straight line, the income and wealth gap grew during this period. This was not the result of mistaken policies. Rather, this was the outcome of definite class interests expressed through the pursuit of a ruthless class war agenda by the ruling elite against the working class. At every point, both Liberal and Conservative governments ensured that the interests of the corporations and the well-to-do were protected. Workers, by contrast, saw union-enforced wage “gains” that trailed productivity growth — and at times fell behind inflation. 

The trade union bureaucracy has served as a key mechanism for the enforcement of the ruling class’ onslaught, because it has worked to systematically demobilize all worker opposition as social inequality has exploded over the past four decades. The bureaucracy’s nationalist basis and pro-capitalist outlook means that their first loyalty is to the state. The bureaucracies maintain close ties to the NDP and the Liberals. They have embraced the former central banker Carney as a defender of “Canadian jobs,” as he has followed his predecessor Trudeau—who oversaw the banning  a succession of strikes, including at Canada Post—by criminalizing the Air Canada flight attendants’ strike.

The primary concern of the well remunerated upper echelons of the trade union bureaucracies is the defence of their own privileges, which rest on a corporatist partnership with the state and big business. In the present stage of economic development, trade unions are not a bulwark against inequality. Their heyday—when the trade unions led workers to important victories by way of militant struggles within the nation-state framework—is in the distant past. Today, job actions isolated to a single country and a specific industry cannot be effective against powerful multinational companies.

The Canadian economy is facing strong headwinds due to the rising levels of debt, stagnant labour productivity, the impact of trade wars, and sharpening antagonisms between the imperialist powers amid an intensifying redivision of the world. The Canadian ruling elite is desperate to reach some sort of accommodation with the fascist government of President Donald Trump, which it views as the preferable way to wage war in pursuit of Canadian imperialism’s global predatory interests. But with Trump threatening to annex Canada as part of American imperialism’s preparations for an escalating world war, the new Liberal government is expanding its economic and military ties with European imperialism as a hedge.

The questions of war and inequality are inextricably linked. Carney’s Liberals have earmarked $9 billion in new defence spending for 2025-26, promising to hit NATO’s 2 percent benchmark. Carney also endorsed a new pledge to raise military spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035. Increases of such magnitude will require a full-scale assault on what remains of healthcare, education and other social programs the working class depends on. As the global imperialist war develops, workers will be expected to pay not just in money but also in blood.

Death toll in Afghanistan earthquake exceeds 1,400

Kevin Reed

People search for survivors after a powerful 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, in Mazar Dara, Kunar province, Afghanistan, Tuesday, September 2, 2025. [AP Photo/Hedayat Shah]

A devastating earthquake struck Afghanistan late Sunday unleashing destruction and a death toll surpassing 1,400 and climbing as emergency operations work against obstacles to provide search and rescue services and aid to the isolated population.

The quake is among the country’s deadliest natural disasters, with a 6.0-magnitude that struck at approximately 11:47 p.m. local time. The epicenter was located near the border of Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, roughly 27 kilometers (almost 17 miles) from Jalalabad, Afghanistan’s fifth largest city.

The earthquake’s depth was a shallow 8 kilometers (5 miles), making it particularly destructive, and its tremors were felt hundreds of kilometers away, including in the capital city of Kabul and across the Pakistani border. In neighboring Kunar province, as well as adjacent Laghman and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan, mud-and-timber homes offered little resistance to the ground’s movement.

According to Taliban authorities, over 1,400 are confirmed dead, more than 3,100 are injured and at least 5,400 homes have been destroyed. Entire villages in Kunar province are reported to have been flattened, with countless people remaining trapped beneath the debris.

Rescue operations are hampered by rough terrain and landslides, which blocked roads into the worst-hit districts and prompted authorities to deploy commando units and helicopters for evacuation. The destruction is overwhelming, with food scarce, medical supplies insufficient, and the transportation of the wounded and survivors possible only on foot or by makeshift stretchers.

Eyewitness reports have revealed the depth of the catastrophe. Residents in Dara Noor, near Jalalabad, described frantic searches for loved ones beneath the wreckage, using shovels, their bare hands and whatever tools they could find to reach the trapped. “I lost my wife and two sons. I am half-buried and try to get others out,” one survivor told CNN.

Ahmadzai, a doctor with Kabul Asia Hospital dispatched to the area, told CBS News:

“The destruction is overwhelming. Entire villages have been flattened, and people are still trapped under the rubble of collapsed homes. Roads are blocked, making it nearly impossible to move supplies or evacuate the wounded. The situation is desperate. Food is scarce, medical help is insufficient, and the only effective way to deliver assistance is by helicopter. Without air support, reaching these communities is nearly impossible.”

Rescue efforts are being carried out with only basic tools, and this has meant that bodies and survivors alike are being recovered at a very slow pace. Many people were asleep when the earthquake struck, further adding to the casualty toll as mud-brick and timber homes collapsed upon them. “These are life-and-death decisions while we race against time to reach people,” said UN Resident Coordinator Indrika Ratwatte.

Aid groups such as World Vision, CARE and UNICEF have reported that mud and timber structures in several villages, especially in Chawki and Nurgal in Kunar, simply collapsed, burying entire families. Many who survived the quake later died while waiting for rescue teams, as both terrain and weather—including flash floods just days before—conspired to block humanitarian efforts.

A report by BBC revealed the extraordinary difficulties in getting information from the quake zone. Landslides have blocked access roads, while infrastructure devastation, including the collapse of communications systems, has left much of the area cut off. The BBC report said:

“It’s as difficult to reach those places as it is to get information out. In previous Afghan earthquakes, casualty figures have differed as the days have gone by, but it’s possible that we’ll never truly know the full scale of this disaster.”

Earthquakes are frequent in Afghanistan because the country sits atop a series of active fault lines created by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. This collision causes intense crustal deformation, resulting in numerous major faults, such as the Chaman Fault system, which runs through eastern Afghanistan and produces large, shallow and destructive earthquakes.

Afghanistan’s northeastern and eastern regions have experienced powerful, shallow quakes in recent decades. The nation had deadly earthquakes in 1998 (4,000 dead in Takhar Province), 2002 (over 1,000 dead in Nahrin), 2015 (over 400 dead), and most recently the 2022 Paktika quake (over 1,000 dead).

However, Afghanistan’s vulnerability to devastating quakes has not only a geological but a social and political source. The overwhelming majority of homes are from materials that offer no protection against seismic shocks. The lack of basic infrastructure, roads, medical facilities and engineering expertise, itself a legacy of decades of destruction and underinvestment, intensifies the impact of moderate disasters.

The country’s exposure to repeated disasters is inseparable from four decades of war and occupation led by the US and its allies. US imperialism invaded the country in 2001, launched a 20-year occupation and unleashed a campaign of bombing, night raids and assassinations that not only killed tens of thousands of civilians but destroyed basic infrastructure, healthcare and agriculture.

The withdrawal of US and NATO troops in August 2021 has precipitated an economic crisis amid an intensification of sanctions, isolation and asset seizures.

On September 1, 2025—four years to the day after the final US withdrawal—the Trump administration announced a halt to all remaining US humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, deepening the already catastrophic situation. Notably, Afghanistan depends on foreign aid for 80 percent of its budget for schools, hospitals and food distribution.

Making matters worse, the US seized over $7 billion in Afghanistan central bank assets after the Taliban resumed power, freezing the country out of the global financial system and triggering mass unemployment, hunger and the collapse of public health. The World Food Programme and humanitarian organizations have repeatedly warned of starvation on a vast scale, compounded by each new disaster.

The international response to the earthquake on Sunday exposes the deadly consequences of US imperialist policy. Afghans searching for survivors in Nurgal, Kunar, Nangarhar and Laghman face both the physical destruction wrought by the quake but also the deliberate devastation brought by decades of war, occupation and economic strangulation.

Efforts to provide emergency assistance—with Taliban authorities, aid groups, and desperate families pleading for international help—are prevented by the broader framework of sanctions and political control imposed by the imperialist powers.

As of this writing, the US government has not issued a formal statement pledging aid or support to Afghanistan following the earthquake. The US State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs instead expressed “heartfelt condolences to the Afghan people” via a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Meanwhile, Britain has offered a paltry emergency funding package of £1 million (approximately $1.3 million) for earthquake aid, with funds split between the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

Other European countries, coordinated through the European Commission, have pledged about €1 million (approximately $1.16 million) in humanitarian emergency funding, in addition to tents, clothing, medical supplies and other essential aid to the affected areas.

The earthquake in eastern Afghanistan is both a natural disaster of immense scale and an indictment of imperialism’s criminal legacy in the country. As the death toll rises and rescue workers struggle to reach the devastated villages of Nangarhar, Kunar and beyond, the roots of the catastrophe lie fundamentally in the long-term effects of imperialist war, occupation, plunder and the deliberate isolation of the people of Afghanistan to face the devastation alone.

Survey reveals deterioration of physical and mental health among schoolchildren in Sri Lanka

Pani Wijesiriwardena

A 2024 joint survey conducted by the Ministries of Health and Education in Sri Lanka—under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO)—has revealed alarming trends in the physical and mental health of schoolchildren.

Global School-based Student Health Survey Sri Lanka [Photo: WHO Sri Lanka]

Titled Global Student Health Survey, Sri Lanka (GSHS), the study surveyed 2,912 students from Grades 8 to 12 (ages 13–17) across 40 schools in various parts of the island. It examined alcohol and drug use, eating behaviour, mental health, physical activity, safety factors, tobacco use, and injuries resulting from violence and neglect. The findings were based on students’ self-reported responses to a questionnaire.

Compared to the previous GSHS conducted in 2016, the latest data indicates a significant deterioration in the physical and mental wellbeing of students over the past eight years.

Dr. Alaka Singh, WHO representative in Sri Lanka, stated: “Key findings indicate an increasing trend in substance use, consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, physical inactivity, sedentary behaviour, and psychosocial issues compared to the 2016 GSHS. The findings reveal a double burden of malnutrition alongside high rates of smoking, serious injuries, physical fights, and cyberbullying.”

A major concern highlighted in the survey is poor weight management among students: 21.4 percent are underweight, 12.1 percent are overweight, and 3 percent are obese. Being underweight is typically a result of malnutrition, whereas overweight and obesity are linked to the regular consumption of unhealthy food, poor dietary habits and lack of physical exercise.

The survey found that 4.3 percent of students reported feeling hungry due to a lack of food at home in the 30 days prior to the survey—an increase from 3.1 percent in 2016. Additionally, 1.8 percent said they had skipped breakfast due to food shortages in the seven days leading up to the survey.

Fruit and vegetable consumption remains “alarmingly low.” Nearly 24.9 percent of students reported not eating any fruit in the week prior to the survey, while 3.1 percent said they hadn’t consumed any vegetables. Only 26.1 percent of students reported eating vegetables three or more times per day.

In an interview with the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), Dr. Lakmini Magodaratne, director of the Mental Health Division at the Ministry of Health, emphasised the growing prevalence of mental health issues among students: “The percentage of students without close friends has increased from 5.6 percent in 2016 to 7.5 percent in 2024. Feelings of loneliness have also risen significantly. In 2024, 22.4 percent of students reported feeling lonely in the past 12 months, compared to 9 percent in 2016.”

She added that 11.9 percent of students reported being unable to sleep due to anxiety—a sharp rise from 4.6 percent in 2016. “Eighteen percent of students reported symptoms of depression, with a particularly high rate of 26.3 percent among 16–17-year-olds,” she said.

The number of students who had considered suicide rose from 9.4 percent in 2016 to 15.4 percent in 2024, while suicide attempts increased from 6.8 percent to 9.1 percent. More than one-third—36.2 percent—had experienced severe psychological distress, yet only 2.1 percent had sought help from adolescent clinics.

When asked about the root causes of these issues, Dr. Magodaratne told the WSWS: “I basically believe that competition among children is the main cause of this mental stress. Because of competition, they are trapped in private tuition classes. There is no physical or mental rest. There is no time for sports, for being in nature, or for engaging in creative or artistic activities.”

Asked how these problems could be addressed, she suggested that the “New Education Reforms” planned by the current Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government would offer solutions. She claimed these reforms aim to eliminate competition in education and ensure access to quality learning.

Notwithstanding Dr. Magodaratne’s assertions, the government’s policies are unlikely to adequately address the worsening health crisis.

As the WSWS explains in its August 12 article, “Sri Lanka’s Dissanayake government announces market-driven education reforms“: “Various academics have raised concerns that students will be forced to select subjects aligned with labor market demands rather than those essential for a comprehensive education, such as aesthetics and history. Instead of cultivating thoughtful, independent critical thinkers, the ruling elite aims to prepare youth for low-wage exploitation by local and global investors.”

Defending these reforms in Parliament on July 24, President Dissanayake said: “Our most valuable asset, the resource that needs to be sharpened and honed to build this nation, is our human capital… From an economic standpoint, we must secure a position in the advanced global labor market. For this, we require a high-quality system that acquires and disseminates knowledge emerging in the world at any given moment.”

In other words, the reforms are being shaped to serve the interests of both local and international big business.

Additionally, the GSHS 2024 report reveals that the use of drugs, violence, and student-related accidents have all increased in the past eight years.

The report recommends several solutions, stating: “Strengthening an adolescent-responsive health system must be a priority. This includes increasing resource allocation, ensuring all health service providers are trained to deliver adolescent-friendly services, expanding access to such services, and creating widespread awareness among schoolchildren and adolescents.”

However, instead of increasing health sector funding, the JVP/NPP government is pushing forward with IMF-mandated austerity measures, which include further undermining the public health system. Public health expenditure, which stood at 410 billion rupees ($US1.27 billion) in 2024, has been reduced to 383 billion rupees in 2025.

The growing competition among students is rooted in worsening social inequality, unequal access to quality education, and limited university placements and employment opportunities—outcomes of decades of austerity policies imposed by successive governments. Education spending has consistently remained between 1–2 percent of GDP, with projections indicating further cuts in line with IMF demands.

Rising student malnutrition reflects the broader social crisis. Poverty is worsening amid skyrocketing living costs and high unemployment. A recent UNICEF report stated: “2.3 million children in Sri Lanka do not have enough to eat. Families wake up every day to increased food prices, struggling to provide for their children in a country where vital services like healthcare and education are being pushed to their limits. Sri Lanka’s children are paying a heavy price for this crisis.”

Meanwhile, the World Bank reports that the national poverty rate is expected to rise to 22.7 percent this year. This situation will be worsened by the privatisation of hundreds of state-owned enterprises and the global economic fallout from the U.S.-China trade war, which has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

ArcelorMittal South Africa announces 4,000 job cuts

Alejandro López

The 140 meter tall stacks and 70 meter tall Coke Ovens at Arcelor Mittal Newcastle. [Photo by Viresh Mahabeer / CC BY-SA 4.0]

ArcelorMittal South Africa (AMSA), one of the continent’s largest steel producers and a subsidiary of the global steel giant, ArcelorMittal, the world’s second-largest steel producer, has announced over 4,000 job cuts, surpassing the prior announcement of 3,500 layoffs earlier this year.

The company plans to close its long steel plants in Newcastle and Vereeniging and restructure operations at Vanderbijlpark, wiping out tens of thousands of indirect jobs in mining, transport, logistics, and countless small businesses that rely on the wages of steelworkers, unleashing a social disaster across entire communities.

AMSA’s origins lie in the state-owned Iron and Steel Corporation of South Africa (Iscor), founded in 1928. For decades, Iscor was the backbone of South African industrialisation, producing the bulk of the steel used in construction, mining, rail, and manufacturing. Its growth rested on the brutal exploitation of black labour under the Apartheid regime. In 1989, amid mass working-class struggles that were shaking the Western-backed Apartheid regime, Iscor was privatised in a fire sale by the white Afrikaner ruling class, eager to strip state assets before handing political power to Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.

Iscor’s privatisation was followed by a restructuring in 2001, when its mining assets were spun off into Kumba Resources, leaving steel as its main operation. Three years later, in 2004, the global conglomerate Mittal Steel, controlled by Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, once ranked by Forbes as the sixth richest man in the world, acquired a controlling stake in Iscor. The merger of Mittal Steel and Arcelor in 2006 then produced AMSA.

Claims that privatisation would revitalise the steel industry proved a fraud. Through the 2010s, AMSA repeatedly posted losses even as it sacked thousands of workers and shut down capacity, only earning a profit in 2019. Between 2014 and 2020 alone, the workforce was slashed from 15,000 to just 7,000. Each round of cuts was justified with the mantra of “efficiency” and “restructuring”.

AMSA’s plant closures, first announced in November 2023, were postponed three times before the company made its final announcement in September 2025. The company blamed spiraling electricity costs, worsened by rolling blackouts imposed by Eskom, the state-owned electricity company that generates 90 percent of South Africa’s power, and the breakdown of rail transport under Transnet, the state-owned ports and rail monopoly.

AMSA is heavily reliant on Transnet Freight Rail, which moves 91 percent of its iron ore and all its coking coal to its plants. The collapse of rail has forced the company to use far costlier road haulage. Eskom’s blackouts further crippled production, at times compelling Vanderbijlpark to shut down for up to eight hours a day.

These crises are the product of decades of ANC capitalist rule, in which state-owned enterprises like Eskom and Transnet have been systematically looted by a corrupt elite that cloaks its plunder in the language of “black empowerment”, a cynical cover for anti-working-class politics aimed at creating a thin layer of black capitalists, of whom President Cyril Ramaphosa, one of South Africa‘s richest men, has been a prime beneficiary.

These problems, however, cannot be simply reduced to corruption. They are inseparable from the global capitalist crisis. Across the world, steel capacity has vastly outstripped demand, with 113,000 jobs destroyed between 2013 and 2021 in OECD economies alone. In Europe, entire regions have been devastated by steel closures, such as the Redcar plant in Teesside, UK, where 1,700 jobs were wiped out.

Governments have only intervened where steel is deemed essential for war production, as in Britain, where loss-making steel plants are being taken over on the grounds of maintaining capacity for the military economy.

South Africa’s steel consumption has collapsed by 20 percent over the past seven years, reflecting the combined impact of contracting auto industry and construction sectors, the collapse of public infrastructure spending, and the global oversupply of steel.

South Africa’s manufacturing capacity for crude steel stands at 8-9 million tonnes a year, but demand was only five million tonnes in 2023. Of this, AMSA supplied 2.8 million tonnes. With China dominating global production using more advanced and cost-efficient methods, AMSA’s losses ballooned from about $100 million in 2023 to $270 million in 2024. This despite the ANC pouring in $180 million in bailouts with no binding requirements to protect jobs.

The collapse is not confined to steel. Workers across South Africa are facing a jobs bloodbath. In 2025 alone, Daybreak Foods, one of the country’s largest poultry producers, cut 2,200 jobs. Goodyear, the US tyre manufacturer, shut down operations and destroyed 900 jobs. Ford slashed nearly 500 jobs, adding to the 4,000 jobs already wiped out in the past two years. Glencore, the Swiss-based commodities conglomerate, is threatening thousands more job cuts. The South African Post Office has axed 4,000 workers.

Manufacturing employment has already plunged from 1.4 million in 2005 to just over a million in 2021, a loss of more than 300,000 jobs in a decade and a half. This crisis is set to deepen, with the Reserve Bank warning that US tariffs could wipe out a further 100,000 jobs in the auto and agriculture sectors.

Workers must not accept this destruction of jobs and livelihoods. Steelworkers, auto workers, miners, postal employees and the broader working class face a common assault and must draw political lessons from their experiences. Three stand out.

The first is the role of the trade unions. For decades they have not been instruments of struggle but mechanisms for enforcing defeats. At every stage in the dismantling of South Africa’s steel industry, they have acted to suppress opposition, tie workers to the ANC government, and protect their own positions and privileges.

When AMSA announced its first closure plans in November 2023, the South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) —representing roughly 800,000 workers across 24 affiliate unions—acknowledged that tens of thousands of jobs had already been wiped out since privatisation. Yet SAFTU refused to mobilise workers against the closures.

Instead it issued appeals to the ANC to “re-nationalise steel and increase spending on an extensive infrastructure rollout, so as to create a market for state-owned, worker-controlled steel industry revitalisation, not for capitalists.” SAFTU knows that the ANC government has no intention of renationalising AMSA, let alone creating a “worker-controlled” steel industry.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the country’s largest metalworkers’ union with over 338,000 members, has also intervened to prevent strike action. In November 2024, NUMSA called off a wage strike after General Secretary Irvin Jim was “briefed” by AMSA CEO Kobus Verster, and issued a joint statement with the company, recognising “the need to settle the strike promptly”. The strike, which had the potential to rally wider layers of workers against job cuts and wage suppression, was then shut down as NUMSA’s appealed to the ANC to convene “social partners” in the steel and auto sectors.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) limited its response to calling on the government to intervene to save jobs at Assmang’s Beeshoek iron ore mine, which has already lost nearly 700 jobs after AMSA terminated contracts. The Solidarity trade union postured about “fiercely resisting” AMSA layoffs, but confined its activity to legal manoeuvres and press statements.

The essential role of the unions is as industrial policemen, ensuring that opposition does not break out into a direct struggle against the corporations and the state.

The second lesson is the role of the rival nationalist movements, above all the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). When AMSA confirmed the closures, the EFF declared: “The government cannot continue to wash its hands while South Africa’s industrial backbone is dismantled. We reiterate that the state must pursue a programme of industrial recovery through nationalisation, investment in infrastructure and decisive support for domestic production.”

The EFF does not call on workers to fight the closures, strike, or build independent organisations of struggle. Instead, it appeals to the ANC, the instrument of capitalist rule that has overseen privatisation, looting, and mass job destruction. Its call is not for socialist nationalisation under workers’ control, but for nationalist restructuring under the corrupt state apparatus that has already plundered Eskom, Transnet, and other state assets.

The perspective advanced by the EFF is that post-apartheid capitalism can be reformed if only the state acts decisively. As EFF leader Julius Malema told Business Day on Friday, “The parties that can work together is the EFF, MK and the ANC and then it can bring stability but also the political will to change the lives of our people.”

This is a fraud. Three decades after 1994, the working class faces mass unemployment, collapsing infrastructure, and deepening poverty, while a thin layer of black capitalists, Ramaphosa among them, has enriched itself alongside international finance. EFF’s nationalist programme of “industrial recovery” offers nothing to the working class.