The COSATU-affiliated Southern African Clothing & Textile Workers Union is tremendously proud of out-going Trade, Industry & Competition Minister, Ebrahim Patel.
His 15 year service as a South African Cabinet Minister in some of the most challenging government portfolios has been service to the nation with distinction.
We have always known him to be a person with integrity, hardworking and innovative in whatever he does.
Classified coloured under apartheid, he grew up on the Cape Flats, reared by a single mother who worked as a seamstress in the clothing industry.
At age 16, he organised support among high school students, mosques and churches for African and coloured striking workers at a food factory, Fatis and Monis and was part of a group of students who formed an anti-apartheid high school student organisation.
He completed matric in 1979 with distinction, coming in the Top 10 in matric results nationally and registered for a degree at the University of the Western Cape (UWC).
In 1980, the young 18-year old led 100 000 high school and university students in a student strike against apartheid education, chairing the coordinating Committee of 81 meetings and was arrested and kept in Victor Verster prison for many months. He successfully finished his exams at UWC a few weeks after being released from prison.
A year later he was again detailed for organising students and communities and kept in solitary confinement.
Shortly after his release and return to university, he was rearrested by the security police the following year, and kept in detention in Soweto and later in police cells near Duduza. He was never charged.
He left university and worked in a research institute of the School of Economics at UCT, where he completed his degree.
After forming a union for workers at higher education institutions, he joined the textile union, working as a branch organiser and later as its national educator, and helped unite five different trade unions into a single organisation that SACTWU is today. He was later elected general secretary of the union.
After the 1994 elections, he chose to stay in the labour movement and represented workers in national and global forums, serving as the global spokesperson at the ILO on employment and social policy. He was appointed by President Mandela to the first Financial and Fiscal Commission and served on the committee that recommended far-reaching changes to South Africa's university system and was on the Council of UCT for about a decade.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
His time in government has seen tremendous advances in trade and industrial policy, and key advances in worker interests. These have been set out in numerous documents and are demonstrated in the jobs that were created. When he went into Cabinet in 2009, the clothing industry was in deep crisis, losing 15 000 jobs a year. His period of office in Cabinet saw the industry stabilised, with measures to protect local jobs and to help firms upgrade their machinery and competitiveness.
But perhaps Ebrahim Patel's most lasting legacy in government, both for workers but also the society more broadly, will be what he has done to fight inequality, promote redistribution and build social partnerships. He brought fresh ideas to policy-making. He was hands-on and active. He was not afraid to tackle vested interests and showed enormous courage in fighting state capture during his period in Cabinet, protecting the IDC and competition authorities during a period when many public entities were captured. He spoke out openly against corruption during the height of state capture, for us most tellingly in a widely reported speech at a Sactwu Congress in 2016.
Many of the measures he drove, including modernising our competition regime and legislation, promoting black industrialists and worker share ownership programs, amending the companies' law, promoting investment and ensuring constructive dialogue between business, labour and government, have laid the basis for a country that is fairer and more equal.
We look forward to working closely with him in the next chapter of his public service. But we also grant him the opportunity to take time to rest!
Well done, Son of SACTWU and COSATU!
