As trade unionists in this country will readily agree, workers’ education is a vital aspect of trade union and political organisation.
In South Africa it is even more vital. Legislation proposed by the South African government, following the report of the Wiehahn Commission, is aimed at forcing African trade unions to register with the Department of Labour. The intention is to bring hitherto independent trade unions more tightly under state control. This aspect of the Wiehahn Commission’s proposals has rightly been focussed on by the trade union movement and solidarity organisations internationally.
Another aspect of the Commission’s proposals which has not been emphasised to the same extent concerns workers’ education. As well as imposing controls on the African trade unions through registration, the regime intends to limit independently organised workers’ education projects and to place stringent controls on the material produced by trade unions and other bodies in South Africa for this purpose.
In spite of the South African regime’s intention to repress meaningful education involving workers, such education will undoubtedly continue, under clandestine conditions if necessary.
The South African Labour Education Project (SALEP) has recently been established to support and further the work of trade union and political education and organisation among the workers of South Africa. Its membership consists of individuals who have collectively gained considerable experience both in the labour movement in South Africa and in the field of economic, political and trade union research. Its purpose is to produce material, prepared from the working class point of view, for use by the workers’ movement in South Africa and also by the labour movement and solidarity organisations abroad.
In the conditions of South Africa, the importance of workers’ education can scarcely be exaggerated. The most highly industrialised country in Africa has one of the highest illiteracy rates. Some fifty per cent of African people over the age of fifteen can neither read nor write. The majority of African workers have not had the opportunity to complete primary school education. The present generation of African working class youth, the first to receive high school education, suffer the terrible disabilities of poor facilities, lack of teachers and over-crowded classrooms. The Soweto uprising of 1976 was the revolt of this new generation against the deprivation of educational opportunities and against the entire system of repression and exploitation in South Africa.
SALEP is not intended as a substitute for the work of education and training which will be carried on by the trade unions on the shop floor in South Africa. It is intended to supplement this work whose scope the regime is constantly narrowing.
Nor can a project launched in London in any way take the place of educational work carried on, person to person, among the workers in South Africa. But the Project can make an important contribution in supporting such work in South Africa, by providing basic materials, both written and oral, and through the appropriate research. This contribution is all the more necessary because none of the existing organisations potentially able to carry out such work has so far given it any systematic attention.
The Project will concentrate its efforts on the production of booklets, tapes and other material dealing with questions which cannot easily be tackled in open work by the trade unions in South Africa. Because of the high rate of illiteracy, tapes and illustrated material will be important aids. The Project has the capacity to produce material written and oral, in African languages, Afrikaans and English.
The Executive Council has already sent a donation of £50 to support the Project. Donations from individual members, Chapels and Branches should be sent to the General Secretary at Head Office, and made payable to the South African Labour Education Project.
Reprinted from NATSOPA Journal and Graphic Review, Volume 10, No. 9, October 1980.
