Originally published in Inqaba ya Basebenzi No. 8 (November 1982).
by P. Qubulashe
Every worker in this society precariously lives and works only by permission of the bosses. The very existence of a worker depends upon the capitalists’ greed to make profit.
In 1952 the Nationalist Party government, through the ingenuity of the then Native Kaptein, Dr H.F. Verwoerd, as Minister of Native Affairs, passed the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act.
According to the Act, every African (male and female) has not only to carry a pass on his/her person, and even on his/her corpse until buried, but also to produce it on instant police demand, or face summary arrest, imprisonment and subsequent deportation to the Bantustans.
In consequence, the whole society for Africans and particularly for African workers has been reduced to an even more infernal hell. Only in the grave can African workers hope for sanctuary.
Regimenting
This state of affairs has continued unabated since the ‘abolition’ of passes by the Act.
The Act abolished, in fact, the up-to-then police inefficiency regarding the enforcement of the pass system for regimenting and regulating the movements of the African workers in accordance with labour requirements. Verwoerd found the evil trick for the enforcement of influx control in combining the various unwieldy passes into a Dompas, alias Reference Book.
Thirty years later, in 1982, this same government has, through yet another Native Kaptein, Dr Piet Koornhof, Minister of Cooperation and Development, introduced in parliament the Orderly Movement and Settlement of Black Persons Bill in an insane bid once more to tighten up influx control.
In the interests of SA capitalism – structured on African cheap migrant labour – every African is regarded as a migrant, and this is particularly so of African workers.
The NP laws in the 1950s cut down the legal period of 14 days for a migrant worker to seek work in the industrial areas to 72 hours. Now Koornhof’s Bill seeks to cut it down to 17 hours or less. Underlying this savagery is the denial to Africans of the right to live in the urban areas, called ‘white spots’, unless they are slaving for the capitalists.
But SA capitalism necessarily feeds on African cheap labour. In conformity with this, the same laws made provisions for the retention of a certain number of African workers as required by industry, while mining, agriculture etc., are fed from the Bantustans through the labour recruiting agencies.
Thus a small section of the African labour force were given so-called Section Ten ‘rights’. These could only be acquired if an African worker, not born in an urban area, has lawfully lived there for fifteen years in a stretch, or has worked for one boss for ten years in succession. In consequence, large numbers of African workers are locked-up in the Bantustan labour reserve camps.
Section Ten ‘Rights’
Koornhof’s Bill seeks with the aid of the ‘Bantu’ Homelands Citizenship Act, to reduce and phase out Section Ten ‘rights’, ferret-out Africans from urban areas and jam the outlet gates of the Bantustans. While contract workers are the first victims of the Bill, over the heads of African workers with Section Ten ‘right’s’ hangs the sword of Damocles.
The Riekert Commission recommendations, accepted by government, have laid down conditions for the legal presence of an African worker in the cities, based on the availability of officially approved accommodation and legal employment. An absence of one or both renders an African worker an “unauthorised person” liable to arrest, imprisonment and deportation to the Bantustans.
As the economy contracts under the impact of world recession, not only contract workers are retrenched but also workers with Section Ten ‘rights’. The housing shortage is worsening, and government is trying to impose legal limits on the number of people living in a house. Thus, on both counts, fewer and fewer workers will have the right to remain in the cities.
More and more of African workers with Section Ten ‘rights’ will have their heads equally rolling under the blade of the labour guillotine.
According to the Bill, an “unauthorised person” seeking work in the urban areas will face, if arrested between 10pm and 5am, a sentence of six months imprisonment or a fine of R500.
There have always been night-time curfews on African workers imposed in cities and towns. Koornhof’s Bill is to extend this curfew to the townships. It is a 10pm to 5am curfew to operate not only in the dark streets but also on the rough, cold floors of the township slums as the police, to enforce the observance of the law, must increasingly mount night raids.
Capitalist Weapon
It is obvious that no worker can be in a position to pay a fine of R500. In consequence, he must land in jail for six months instead of getting a job for which, in any case, it is an offence to look.
It is an inherent law of capitalism to exploit and pay workers low wages, and keep, in reserve, an army of unemployed.
But it is typically SA capitalism to lock-up workers in labour reserves without the bare necessities of life, and lock them up in jail if they dare, as they must, escape from these labour camps to the cities in search of employment.
After locking the workers in jail, though, the capitalists are pleased to come and take them out again, provided they will work for them for nothing, as convict labour.
In the final analysis, influx control is a foul weapon in the hands of the capitalists to fight and subdue the working class.
The militancy and the developing trade union movement of the black working class have driven the capitalist class into a state of frightful nightmare. The old days of relative passivity of the black working class are over.
Thus the present ongoing struggle of the black working class is, for the capitalists, like a sudden raising of the head and tensing of the muscles by a giant long kept in chains, and presumed subdued for ever.
In fear of the present turn of events in the class struggle and the economic downturn, a treacherous enemy like the capitalist class can only hope to survive by throwing at the working class every weapon at its disposal.
Even before Koornhof’s Bill has become law its brutal provisions are already being implemented against contract workers in the Cape and on the Rand.
The reason behind this insanity is the fact that major industrial sectors are experiencing the effects of the recession. The capitalists, as a result, have embarked upon a programme of mass retrenchments, reducing working hours, suspending overtime, and cutting down on labour recruitment.
Capitalist Lunacy
The aim of this capitalist lunacy is to cut production, with the further deadly effect of worsening social poverty – the main victims of which are workers, particularly African workers.
Faced with these worsening hardships, the workers have no other choice except to struggle against the capitalists and their state.
It is in fear of this struggle that the state, in defence of the capitalist class, has launched its offensive against workers. This malevolent little man Koornhof has ordered that contract workers should not be permitted to change jobs, and those already fallen victim of retrenchment should not be re-employed but be endorsed out to the Bantustans.
This is a deliberate effort to weaken the workforce by scattering retrenched workers to the Bantustans, forcing those still employed into submission to the profit-making cravings of the capitalists, flinging into jail those defying the influx control regulations.
The whole battery of influx control legislation is a wide-ranging political attack on the working class. The endorsement of African workers to the Bantustans as a result of retrenchments – no fault of workers – and as a result of losing jobs for whatever reason – again, no fault of workers – is the meanest, most treacherous way of handling workers by the capitalists.
Banishment
But the capitalists also use influx control legislation to deal with militant workers, trade unionists and political activists. Under the influx control measures, workers stand to lose even their entire leadership at one strike as the state banishes them to the Bantustans.
Here, workers are not only subjected to the worst economic hardships and psychologically debilitating scourges, but are also politically preyed upon by the Bantustan zombie governments.
The harassment and battering of the African workers by the capitalist state with its use of the vile influx control measures are all aimed, finally, at defeat of the entire workforce. Thus the influx control legislation is nothing else but a capitalist legislation to bring into submission the entire SA labour force in all its racial components.
It is upon the migrant labour system that SA capitalism stands. It is equally by influx control, which regulates migrant labour like a conveyor belt, that SA capitalism is protected. In a nutshell, the migrant labour system is the nerve centre or the life-blood of SA capitalism.
Thus the capitalist class cannot think in any other way but to maintain the migrant labour system. Influx control is the political and legislative machinery to preserve the migrant labour system at whatever cost.
The moral indignation of ‘liberals’, often puffed-up as a make-believe attack on the state, calling on it to scrap influx control, creates false hopes in the minds of the African workers that it is possible for the capitalist state to abolish influx control.
To abolish influx control necessarily means to abolish migrant labour, the pass system, and consequently capitalism itself. No amount of moralising, however, can bring to an end capitalist rule.
It is only the organised might of the workers that is capable of resisting the legislative and political armoury of the capitalist class. It is only this might that is capable, finally, of bringing an end to racism and capitalism.
To achieve this goal – the liberation of the blacks from racist oppression; of the working class from capitalist exploitation; of society from capitalist rule – workers must organise themselves in their millions.
Thus to fight influx control effectively, the immediate task facing workers and revolutionary youth is to build revolutionary trade unions, and the ANC on a socialist programme.
© Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2021).
