ActionSA wants National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza to schedule an urgent debate on what it says is a crisis in South Africa’s manufacturing sector.

ArcelorMittal South Africa is winding down its Long Steel operations, directly affecting 3 500 workers in Newcastle and Vereeniging, and potentially threatening over 100 000 downstream jobs.

In the automotive sector, almost 500 Ford employees in Pretoria and Gqeberha face retrenchment, while Goodyear’s closure of its 78-year-old tyre plant in Kariega will impact around 900 direct jobs and thousands more in the supply chain.

ActionSA wants Minister of Employment and Labour Nomakhosazana Meth, Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Parks Tau and representatives from the Industrial Development Corporation, Unemployment Insurance Fund, labour unions, industry leaders, and affected workers to be in attendance and contribute to the debate.

ActionSA Member of Parliament Alan Beesley described the situation as a national emergency, stating that South Africa was at a critical inflection point.

“Without urgent parliamentary action, hundreds of thousands of livelihoods hang in the balance,” he said.

ActionSA wants the debate to prioritise interventions such as revising electricity tariffs, strengthening energy infrastructure for smelters, industry-specific financial support tied to job preservation, incentivising localisation, and implementing retraining programmes and social protection for displaced workers.

He noted that over the last two years, South Africa’s automotive industry had seen 12 company closures and more than 4 000 job losses.

“… this is not just about company closures. High electricity costs, loadshedding, inefficient ports, and crumbling road and rail infrastructure are driving up operational costs and undermining the competitiveness of our automotive sector,” Beesley said.

The mining and smelting industry are similarly under threat, he added, noting that Glencore and Merafe have initiated retrenchment processes at their Boshoek and Wonderkop smelters.

This will potentially affect almost 2 500 direct jobs and 17 000 indirect roles, impacting an estimated 155 000 dependants, he said.

Additional retrenchments at Assmang’s KwaZulu-Natal smelter have affected 600 workers, he added.

Meanwhile, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) described developments as a “devastating pattern”, claiming the mass retrenchments exposed “the opportunism” of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government.

ActionSA accused the Presidency of deliberately delaying announcements of job cuts, last year, under the guise of finding solutions for companies such as ArcelorMittal.

The EFF said workers were “fed false hope” so that the ruling party could “mask its economic failures and secure votes”.

“What we are witnessing is the destruction of the little industry South Africa has left, a collapse that will hollow out communities and deepen mass unemployment,” it stated.

The EFF called for government’s immediate intervention to preserve jobs, protect the steel sector and ensure workers were not left without compensation and support.

The party reiterated that government must pursue a programme of industrial recovery through nationalisation, investment in infrastructure and support for domestic production.