The formation of a trade union federation based on the African\nworkers and upholding clear principles of non-racial workers’ unity, was long\noverdue. The South African Congress of Trade Unions, founded in March 1955,\nthus held enormous promise for the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The old “official” trade union movement was dominated by\na leadership reared in the worst traditions of craft unionism and racial\nsectionalism – interested only in advancing the privileges of a mainly white\nminority of workers, by methods of class-collaboration with the employers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The attitude of that leadership had been summed up in their\ntelegram replying to a request by an international trade union body for\ninformation about the 1946 African mineworkers’ strike:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Appears natives were misled by irresponsible people. Police methods controlling strike drastic but warranted. Such action was necessary to maintain law and order and prevent chaos. [1]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In almost every capitalist country, unskilled workers have had to\ntake on their own shoulders the task of organising themselves, meeting with\nindifference or hostility from older craft unions. In South Africa, where craft\nand race privilege have reinforced one another, this was even more the case.\nThe traditions of struggle by African mineworkers, the tradition of the ICU in\nthe 1920s, the success of the CNETU during the Second World War, showed the\npotential of organisation on this basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within the official Trades and Labour Council (from which TUCSA\nwas later to emerge), black workers were tolerated as second-class members and\nhamstrung in their organisation. Pleas to this leadership to give a lead in\norganising and mobilising African workers fell, not surprisingly, on deaf ears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Communist Party long pursued a policy of trying to change the\nTrades and Labour Council, but without success. As late as 1950, the CP\ncriticised the CNETU for rejecting affiliation to the TLC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, the final impetus to the formation of SACTU came when the\nleadership of the TLC unions bolted the door against African workers, leaving\nthe non-racial unions no alternative but to strike out independently. The\nTrades and Labour Council dissolved itself in 1954 and became\n“reconstituted” with a constitution barring unions with African\nmembers from affiliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nWeakness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The weakness of trade union organisation among black workers at\nthat time was shown in the initial membership of SACTU. In 1956, the 19 affiliated\nunions had a total membership of only 20,000 – when 1 to 2 million African\nworkers were potentially unionisable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of these 20,000, the majority were concentrated in three\nregistered unions and their African “parallels”: Food and Canning,\nTextiles, Laundry and Dry Cleaning. Unionisation in these sectors of black\nworkers in the early 1950s had been relatively \u2018easier\u2019 than elsewhere because\nin them production had expanded rapidly, allowing employers to make some\nconcessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the beginning, SACTU’s policy reflected the understanding of\nworker activists that, to secure decent wages and conditions, the struggle\ncould not be confined to an “economic” struggle with employers, but\ninvolved a political<\/strong>struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, what was not<\/strong>made clear – mainly because of\nthe influence of CP ideas within SACTU – was that this political struggle\nnecessarily required working-class leadership, and a programme for workers’\npower and the overthrow of capitalism, in order to succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For this reason, when SACTU affiliated to the Congress Alliance,\nit was not to bring the Congress movement under organised working-class\nleadership and a workers’ programme, but merely to provide worker support for\nthe middle-class policies and methods long enshrined in Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The building of SACTU into a fighting trade union federation\nembracing the mass of workers should have been made a central task – indeed the <\/em>central task – for the Congress\nmovement, with all its authority and resources. Mass industrial organisation\nwas the only basis on which the employers and the regime could have been\ntackled effectively in the political arena too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly such a task was by no means an easy one. In an article\nwelcoming the formation of SACTU, banned Textile Workers’ leader Mike Muller\npointed out some of the serious implications involved:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(I)t is childish self-deception to give out that the mere fact of the formation of this new trade union body is itself a turning point.<\/p>
\u2026trade unions must not be ‘post offices’ referring complaints within the narrow limits of wage determinations and agreements to the Labour Department and Industrial Councils\u2026But to take up a grievance, to lead the workers themselves to act on it unitedly, that is the lifeblood of trade unionism. To teach the workers by their own experience that they can change their own life is at the root of the conception of the political role of trade unions\u2026<\/p>
The potential membership of (SACTU) is limited only by its means and ability to organise the unorganised workers. Besides this one task, all other tasks are of no consequence. It can stand on principles until it drops, it can campaign politically until it is winded, but if it fails to bring into the trade union movement a large proportion of the nearly one million unorganised workers, then its very survival is doubtful. [2]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
To achieve its goals, SACTU needed to break through to organising\nthe heavy battalions of industrial workers on a massive scale – in metal and\nengineering, in steel, in transport, and on the mines. But although these were identified\nas the critical tasks from early in SACTU’s development, and although many\nworker-militants strove valiantly to take this work forward, the necessary\nheadway was not made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At its highest point, in 1961, SACTU’s membership had increased to\nsome 53,000, the majority of whom were still in light industry. Less than\n40,000 were African workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was not the result of any apathy among the workers. As\nSACTU’s 1959 conference itself recognised, “the organising of more workers\ninto effective new trade unions has not kept pace with the degree of\nconsciousness prevalent among the workers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, SACTU organising work in the 1950s was hard hit by state\nrepression. But South African workers – as the 1970s showed vividly – have\nfound methods of laying foundations for mass organisation, including in heavy\nindustry, in the face of the most efficient repressive techniques by the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is quite true that, as a result of the growth of industry,\nAfrican workers had by the 1970s become far more numerous and were placed in a\nfar better strategic position in industry than was the case in the 1950s. But\nif, already in the 1940s, 158,000 black workers could be organised in the\nCNETU, the opportunities certainly existed after 1955 for SACTU to organise\nmany more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nMain problem<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Really, the main problem was the political\napproach <\/strong>taken to the struggle for democracy, which was\nmanifested in the whole Congress leadership, as well as in the leadership of\nthe CP and SACTU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This regarded the working class not as the spearhead of a struggle\nfor power whose leadership would rally all the oppressed – but as merely\n“one component” in a “struggle with many fronts”, that\ncould achieve its aims with the support of the liberal bosses. Thus the\nbuilding of the trade unions was not given the priority, in energy and\nresources, which it desperately needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The point is not altered by the fact that, in conference speeches\nthroughout the decade, leaders like Mandela, Tambo, Sisulu, Lutuli, and others\ncalled on ANC members to build the trade unions and to become members of trade\nunions. As the NEC itself admitted in its report to the ANC’s last conference\nas a legal organisation in December 1959: “ANC members and branches have\nnot realised the importance of working in trade unions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas for workers trade unions are essential instruments, not\nonly for defence of living standards but for schooling themselves in the\nstruggle for power – for the Congress leadership they could not be allowed to\nbecome more than bargaining instruments with the employers. The “politics\nof the working class”, as the leaders saw it, should be confined to\nsupporting a democratic struggle led by the middle class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nSubordinated<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Therefore SACTU’s affiliation to Congress – instead of a means to\nconsciously transform the ANC, which would have been quite possible with a\nMarxist understanding and leadership – became a means of subordinating the\n“independent” trade unions to Congress, to middle-class politics and\nleadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Political policies of class-compromise with liberalism always lead\nto a tendency to hold the workers’ movement back even from the full pursuit of\nthe economic struggle – for if workers become “too” self-confident\nand demanding, this might offend the liberal bosses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Nimrod Sejake, one of SACTU’s most militant organisers on the\nRand in the 1950s, recounted in the last issue of Inqaba<\/em>, the response of the\nSACTU office to plans for calling a strike which had been prepared in nine\nmetal factories simultaneously, was to say: “Nimrod, that is too\nmuch.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nContested<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reformist approach did not go uncontested within SACTU: the\npressure from the working class, expressed particularly through SACTU’s African\nworker activists, ensured this. In SACTU’s early years, for example, this was\nevident in the debate over how to respond to the government’s Industrial\nConciliation Act of 1956.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This Act (taken together with the Native Labour Settlement of\nDisputes Act of 1953) completed the exclusion of African workers from the\nofficially-recognised and state-regulated trade union system, and carried the\nracial division of coloured, Asian and white workers to new extremes. It banned\nthe registration of new “mixed” unions, and racially segregated the\nmembership of existing mixed unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To make a clear break from the past methods of\n“official” trade unionism, and to turn resolutely towards building\npowerful non-racial unions based<\/strong> on\nAfrican workers, it was necessary for the SACTU unions to take a united stand\nagainst the terms of this law – even if that involved defying it. As was argued\nforcibly within SACTU by a number of activists, African workers had no option\nbut to strike illegally to defend themselves. The restrictions imposed by law\ncould not be made to operate if they were defied by the workers in a united\nway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oscar Mpetha summed up this position to the 1957 SACTU conference:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reason we are faced with an IC Act of this nature is because workers had accepted previous IC Acts, which gained them temporary advantages. We need not find ways and means of working within the Act. We could not leave the onus to a few unions. SACTU as a progressive organisation had to reject the Act\u2026Why could we not negotiate from strength? Must we beg that a piece of paper will negotiate for us, that white workers should negotiate for us? Have we no confidence in our own workers that they will change the tide in South Africa? We must not underestimate their strength.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Mpetha’s position was countered with the argument that the SACTU\nunions were still weak and thus could not defy registration. [3]<\/a> In reality that is precisely\nwhy it was necessary to defy it. <\/strong>A\nclear lead was needed to educate the working class – still at a relatively\nearly stage of building their movement – not only on the need to uphold without\ncompromise non-racial unity of their organisations, but also to rely only<\/strong>on their own organised\nstrength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Communist Party gave no clear direction on this central\nproblem facing SACTU, and CP members in SACTU in fact pulled in different\ndirections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The leaders of the biggest registered unions in SACTU (including\namong them some prominent Communists) decided to accept registration on a\nracial basis, thus leaving the onus of any defiance of the law to the African\nworkers alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This decision was made unilaterally, and without thorough discussion\namong the union members, despite the 1957 SACTU conference having agreed to\npostpone a decision in the hope of achieving a united stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus the Textile union amended its constitution to include\ncoloured workers only; the Laundry union divided into separate single-race\nunions; and the Food and Canning union decided to confine membership to\ncoloured workers, organising African workers in the parallel AFCWU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nBitter battles<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the recession of the late 1950s these registered unions, just\nlike the unregistered unions, were thrown into bitter battles against\nretrenchments and wage cuts – in which the registration certificate was no\nassistance at all. In fact the bosses and the state carried out a concerted\nattack on all the SACTU unions – to deny them stop orders, victimise their\nmembers, and break their shop-floor organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While a Marxist policy is not a magic key, it would certainly have\nhelped the class fighters who were the lifeblood within SACTU in their\ntremendously difficult work. With the aid of a Marxist understanding SACTU\ncould have been built into a more powerful force, better able to defend all\nworkers against attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, many opportunities did arise to build a mass trade union movement, in particular from 1957 when, as a result of the upsurge of the mass movement, SACTU launched its campaign for a national minimum wage of \u00a31 a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Continue to Chapter Seven
<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n[1]<\/a>\nQuoted in Simons and Simons, Class\nand Colour in South Africa, 1850-1950<\/em>, Penguin, p. 578.<\/p>\n\n\n\n