The South African Labour Education Project was formed in March 1980 to provide socialist educational material for the workers’ movement in South Africa of a kind that could not be produced openly in the country. It was founded at the request of activists inside the country, but, to carry out this work, established its central offices in London.
An article in the NATSOPA Journal and Graphic Review (October 1980), reproduced here as an appendix, explains SALEP’s formation and purposes more fully.
Profiteering from Cheap Labour
In August 1980 SALEP published Profiteering from Cheap Labour: wages paid by British companies in South Africa. This was the first comprehensive compilation of minimum wage levels paid by British companies in South Africa.
It explained the links between cheap labour in South Africa and mass unemployment in Britain, the importance of the struggle for a national minimum wage index-linked to the cost of living, and the need not only for isolating the apartheid regime and the capitalists it defends, but for building direct links between South African workers and workers internationally.
Profiteering criticised the approach to poverty wages in South Africa taken by the EEC, etc. ‘Codes of Conduct’ – which in essence leave the payment of living wages up to the goodwill of the employers. It criticised also the attempt by academics within South Africa to define ‘poverty datum lines’ as the basis for minimum wages. “Only the workers know what their own needs are” was our argument.
The pamphlet was eagerly snapped up in the labour movement in South Africa and Britain, and two printings of it were rapidly sold out. (A supplement updating the wage levels, and a later SALEP publication on the minimum wages paid by Dutch companies in South Africa met with a similar response.)
Asinamali!
SALEP’s second publication was Asinamali! (‘We have no money!’). This contained facts, explanations and arguments in support of the struggle of black workers in South Africa for a living wage.
It explained why starvation wages were the basis for the capitalist system in South Africa and analysed the capitalist method of exploiting wage labour. It also examined some of the arguments often used by employers against the demand for a living wage, and exposed their incorrectness.
It supported the struggle for a national minimum wage linked to the cost of living. At the same time it pointed out that this struggle is completely bound-up with the struggle to abolish apartheid and the capitalist system.
Asinamali! has to date gone into three printings and has not only been widely circulated but warmly appreciated in the labour movement in Southern Africa and internationally.
Not long after its first appearance, SALEP received a number of translations of Asinamali!, made by supporters in Southern Africa, into the African languages spoken by the South African workers. In 1982 one of these, in Xhosa, was printed, and has also had extensive circulation within South Africa. A Setswana version has since been produced within Southern Africa.
We Live Like Dogs
Since in South Africa more than half of adult black workers, deprived of education by apartheid oppression, can neither read nor write, audio-visual material has a vital role to play in education which assists their struggle.
With this in mind, SALEP’s next production, in 1982, was a slide-tape, ‘We Live Like Dogs’, outlining the conditions and the struggles of black migrant mineworkers. Written by a black youth with working experience on the South African mines, it follows the experiences of a typical migrant mineworker, from Lesotho – and puts those experiences in the context of the whole cheap labour system of apartheid which is the basis of the huge profitability of the SA gold mining industry.
It was partly financed by contributions from the South Wales and North Derbyshire areas of the British NUM.
It explained the need for mineworkers to become organised and to build a strong mass union – and how their oppression and their strategic position in the South African economy gave them a vital role to play in the struggle to end apartheid and capitalism and for a democratic workers’ state in South Africa. It called for maximum international labour movement support for this struggle.
In the latter part of 1982 the South African National Union of Mineworkers was formed, and grew rapidly into the first real union of the black mineworkers for 36 years. This was a historic step.
To take account of the new developments, the slide-tape was revised, to encourage the building of the SA NUM and international support for this. In 1984 it was again updated and turned into a video, both in English and in Sesotho.
The slide-tape and the video have been widely used amongst Southern African workers, and within the labour movement in Britain and other countries.
In particular, they were widely shown in mining areas in the course of the 1984-85 British miners’ strike, and aroused support for the struggle of South African mineworkers. “We are facing difficult conditions and having to make sacrifices, but black mineworkers in South Africa have to put up with ten times more”, was a typical response.
Solidarity with the SA NUM
When, in mid-1984, the NUM declared a dispute with the SA Chamber of Mines, the most powerful employer in the country, the Labour Party Young Socialists asked SALEP to assist in the production of a solidarity leaflet – which was certainly the first, and probably the only, one circulated within the British labour movement on the issue.
In this struggle, the SA NUM made history by securing the first concessions on wages ever made by the Chamber of Mines to organised black mineworkers. Last-minute settlement led to the calling-off of the strike on the first day. However even this victory was achieved only at the cost of the killing and injuring by police of hundreds of mineworkers – a reminder of the brutal repression which South African working people face in the struggle for even the most limited improvements in their lives.
Every worker in Britain and South Africa would have expected all-out support from the British Labour Party leadership for the SA NUM. Yet they not only vetoed financial assistance for the LPYS/SALEP leaflet, but then initiated an “enquiry” into SALEP!
Later in 1984 SALEP assisted in briefing striking British miner Roy Jones, who had been invited to visit South Africa by the SA NUM. Roy spent one month sharing the experiences not only of black mineworkers, but of other black workers, women, and youth, down the mines, in the hostels, and in the townships – and was warmly and generously welcomed. He attended and spoke at two regional congresses of the National Union of Mineworkers – explaining the issues involved in the British strike.
Roy Jones had the honour to be made the first white member of the SA NUM, and also returned with a donation from black South African mineworkers to the British miners’ strike. Even the South African capitalist press was forced to concede that this was a historic achievement.
On his return SALEP produced a bulletin with a first-hand report by Roy Jones, to strengthen support for the struggles of black mineworkers, and to promote links between the SA NUM and the labour movement internationally.
This bulletin has been enthusiastically received by the South African mineworkers, as well as by many labour movement activists in Britain and internationally. Now in its second printing, it is already laying the basis for strengthened links, in preparation for the huge and bitter battles which lie ahead for the mineworkers.
Training Programme
SALEP has also undertaken a modest education and training programme for black youth from Southern Africa. A SALEP Scholarship Fund was established in 1982, and through it directly as well as through other indirect assistance, a number of black youth have been provided with technical training in Britain and experience in the British labour movement. Also workers and youth from other Southern African countries have been brought on visits to Britain to gain experience within the British labour movement.
Southern Africa
In 1982 SALEP changed its name to the “Southern African Labour Education Project”.
SALEP had always viewed the workers’ struggle in South Africa in its international context. The change of name was to make explicit our commitment to assisting with education, links, and common understanding among workers throughout the Southern African region – in recognition of the reality that their problems could not be separated.
The domination of South African capitalism over the region has created a network of exploitation compelling working people into struggle against a common enemy.
The migrant labour system draws many thousands of black workers from independent surrounding states to the mines and farms of South Africa; and at the same time South African based multinationals such as De Beers and the Anglo-American Corporation spread their tentacles through the sub-continent and beyond.
In 1983 SALEP produced a pamphlet on Zimbabwe’s Labour Relations Bill 1983: Danger for the Trade Union Movement. Its 43 pages provided a detailed analysis of the draconian consequences of the Bill for the Zimbabwean working class. Among other measures, the Bill proposed virtually to outlaw strikes, and to bring the trade unions under the direct control of the state. This Bill was enacted by the Zimbabwe Parliament, with some of its worst features strengthened, in late 1984.
An introductory chapter explained how these anti-working class measures flowed from the failure of the ZANU government to carry out the socialist promises on which it was elected at independence in 1980. Instead it had compromised with capitalism: the big factories, mines, and farms remained in the ownership of the same bosses who existed under Smith’s white minority regime, rather than being taken into common ownership under workers’ control and management, or, for the land, being distributed to the African peasantry.
SALEP has also produced a slide-tape on the history of the Zimbabwe trade unions from the time of colonial conquest until the present.
This work has had enthusiastic support among those workers in Zimbabwe who have been at the forefront of the struggle to build mass democratic unions, to organise socialist workers’ education, and to build ZANU as a movement under workers’ leadership to carry through the socialist transformation of society.
Unfortunately the ZANU government, facing mounting discontent because of its compromise with capitalism, is moving to the creation of a one-party dictatorship – by indiscriminate terror not only against the Ndebele minority, but against opposition from workers within ZANU(PF) itself.
In March 1985 fourteen ZANU(PF) supporters, trade unionists and socialists – all also supporters or members of SALEP – were arrested and detained without charges, and some tortured, by the security police. They had been campaigning for democratic trade unionism and organising socialist workers’ education.
Among them was the President of the General, Engineering and Metal Workers Union, and other officials of that union. Others were local ZANU leaders – one of whom had been arrested by Smith’s regime in 1971 for leading ZANU opposition to white minority rule.
As a result of a huge wave of protest by the international labour movement against this arrest of socialists by a ‘socialist’ government, all have been released. The two South African exiles and one Dutch comrade among those detained have, however, been deported; while the Zimbabweans continue to be harassed and victimised by the regime.
These detentions highlight not only the hazards involved in assisting with socialist workers’ education in Southern Africa, but also the vital need which is felt for it by increasing numbers of working people throughout the region.
SALEP will not be deterred by this repression, but will only intensify its efforts in Zimbabwe, as well as in South Africa and other Southern African countries.
Incredibly, however, it was at the same time that supporters of SALEP were being detained and tortured by the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe that the Labour Party NEC carried through its decision to witchhunt against us!
© Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2020).
