THE TURN-OUT elections to the 'Asian' section of South Africa's new legislature confirmed that the vast bulk of the minority of blacks who did have the vote — Asians and coloureds - reject any form of collaboration with white rule.
Simultaneously the taneous African uprisings in the Vaal triangle towns south Johannesburg, showed totally excluded majority of blacks also appreciated the elections were an important attempt government at confirming status.
For the moment the white state is able deal with these isolated outbreaks. Yet a series of factors suggest white rule in South Africa is closer to the precipice than many commentators calculate.
South Africa faces a economic crisis. The price of gold has fallen continuously, and gold is the commooty war accounts or almost one half of South African exports. It has fallen from $500 an ounce in 1983 to $350 an ounce today. This has been accompanied by a severe drought for the past three years. Food imports have cost South Africa more than R3 billion in foreign exchange.
Real Gross National Product fell by three percent last year after dropping one per cent in 1982. It is'still falling.
Inflation has been over 10 per cent for the past 11 years. changes for half the amount in dollars it got in 1981.
Of course the most drastic effects of the crisis are felt by poor blacks. More Socialist Action last week in tricameral whites.
But the draught sponthe costs of of that the One third employed by the state. apartheid by the tion....(quadruplication!). their twice the level four years ago.
relatively incomes -cent correct: terrific quickly perk up blems would remain untouched.' 500,000 black miners.
The prevailed until recruited locally — the 'homelands' The rand now number from urban areas than 50 per cent of the Vaal townships' 'available for work' population are out of a job. Basic food prices and the low income cost of living index consistently go up faster than do prices for well-off hasn't stopped there. Mortgages now cost up to 19 per claim. cent - and there's no tax relief! Bank loans are 22 per cent. In the long term maintaining the states repressive apparatus and cushioning its super privileged whites are prohibitive. what it is.
white workers are Administering costly duplicaAt R4.2 bilion. defence spending this vear is Meantime attempts to expand the country's manufacturing base come up against the absolute impoverishment of neighbouring states, its only viable export market, and the big decline in local — especially or Diacks.
In these circumstances the comment of the Economist, 28 July, was 100 per •...A drought or a rise in the gold price could spirits in Johannesburg. But the country's deeper proA more immediate threat to Botha's government comes from the two year old National Union of Miners which their organises up to 90,000 of the country's migrant labour system that recently brought workers from all over the sub-continent Vaal to une mines. Now a clear majorily are most of those from but an increasng etc.
This establishment of a more settled worktorce In une mines was key to une union's growth. It is encouraged by the fact that black wages average one fifth of white wages.
The new union has been campaigning for a 25 per cent rise this year. In June the Chamber of Mines unilaterally imposed a wage settlement. The NUM has deliberately gone through all the negotiating machinery in pursuit of its If the strike still comes next week it will be very difficult for government to present it as illegal. Whatever repression it uses will be starkly shown up for There remains a possibility that the strike, which is now limited to eight mines, could spread rapidly, not just on the mines but into other sectors, many of them having stronger and longer established unions, which are feeling the same economic pressure.
Complementary to the growth of the unions has been that of new black united front political organisations like e United Democratic Front and lI Forum committer So far the government has chosen not to deciare these illegal, although up to tivists were detained during the recent sham elections.
• Because of the overwhelmingly proletarian class composition of the black population, the democratic demands that they put forward, and the upsurge of opposition to collaborators amongst ranks, questions are inevitably raised about what sort of political leadership black people need reflected in a confused way by the main targets of this week's 'rioters': black collaborators, members of the stooge local councils for whom nobody votes, shopkeepers, The Financial Times, 7 September, put it this way: A black proletarial Is turning on a black establishment in a pattern that poses grave dangers for blacks who have "joined the system" in order to reform it from within. The broadening of the base of the government by consent Indian leaders representativeness in the new parliament, and to grant full autonomy to blacks at a local level - creates the danger of polarisation on a class rather than a racial basis.
A Trotskyist couldn't have put it better — only we'd call it permanent revolution. and we wouldn't term it a 'danger', rather a gressive development that alone will enable the thorough completion by the mass of its population of the coming South African revolution. — to include coloured of doubtful throughly proTO: ARTHUR SC UNION OF M FROM: JOE FOS FEDERA] THE FEDERATIO SUPPORTS THE CLOSURES. WITI FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS BE ABLE TO OFF THE FIGHT FOR PARTICULARLY WORKERS AND S WE BELIEVE TH STEP FORWARD STRUGGLE FOR SOCIETY. AMAN
THE THREAT OF a miners' strike in the gold fields of the Rand must be adding to the growing ficulties confronting the apartheid regime, after the rejection of the constitution by the whelming majority of the 'Indian' and 'coloured' voters.
The growth of the African independent trade unions - the fastest in the world the past decade has phenomenal.
Apartheid is a form of racial oppression directed against all black Deople, but is also designed to be an effecRGILL, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ER, GENERAL SECRETARY, ION OF SA TRADE UNIONS.
N OF SA TRADE UNIONS FULLY UM IN ITS FIGHT AGAINST PIT THE FORMATION OF A WIDER SOUTH AFRICA'S INDEPENDENT EXT YEAR, WE HOPE IN FUTURE TO ER YOU MORE CONCRETE SUPPORT. THE RIGHT TO WORK IS UNDERSTOOD BY SOUTH AFRICAN UPPORTED BY OUR FEDERATION. T YOUR VICTORY WILL BE A MAJOR N THE WORLDWIDE WORKER OB SECURITY AND FOR A RATIONAL LA! ille massacre dif- Nevertheless, trade umon organisation over- in the mines, docks and industry.
South = |I Unions been truly mass demonstrations 1960.
SACTU
Owner ground.
Wing decade.
strikes in Durban, non-racial trade theid as a whole.
Solidarity, Вод.
Wells)
militancy tive barrier to the development of independent working class organisations.
black WOLKCIS South Africa have a long tradition of the and militancy. The 1920s and the 1930s saw strikes In 1946 there was a massive strike of mineworkers organised by the African Mineworkers Union and backed by the growing industrial unions. In the mid- leagues. 1950s, the South African Congress of (SACTU) mobilised black industrial unions culminating in 'stay-athomes' around the time of Sharpville in But the apartheid state was able to break the back of these unions in 1960 was driven underThe level of organisation among black workers collapsed for the followThe revival of the workers movement began in the 1970s with mass rapidly spreading to the East Rand and East London. They marked the re-birth of the independent unions. In spite of government hostility, the unions suc ceeded in winning many concessions.
"The black trade union movement, as the embryo of a broader working class movement, has become in the last 10 years the maior organisational form of resistance of black workers. It is the key to the development of a working class movement in South Africa and its future will shape both the character and and file. efficacy of the struggle against apar(A Question of Fine and Laurence Alarmed at the rapid growth and Intons. the government tried to bring it under control through the Wiehahn Commission.
YEARS 1973 Total Number of Strikes No. of Workers 98 378 involved It recommended that 'African' trade unions should, through a system of formal registration, be incorporated into officially sanctioned collective bargaining svstem.
Registration would ensure a more structured oraeriy situation. 'African' members of registered unions would enjoy the same privileges (sic) as their white, Indian and coloured colSome restrictions which kept black workers out of skilled jobs would be phased out. Registration of racially 'mixed' unions would be permitted By Charlie van Gelderen With this went recommendations for official regulation of union activity through a National Manpower Com La ban political activity.
The government, under pressure overseas who thought recognised unions would te more pliant than 'unrecognised' reluctantly part of Wiehahn proposals.
Strong opposition from the unions forced the government to drop its initial prohibition on migrant workers This victory gave the new unions a foretaste of their potential power.
From the start the new unions were determined not to fall into the pattern of the established unions which led to the distancing of leaders from the rank In the period when they were cut off the official structures, unions had to rely on their strength on the shop floor for effectiveness in dealing with employers. This led to an emphasis on shop floor structures through shop steward committees.
The unions fought for the develop1974 1975 1976 59 244 23 323 28 013 A COMPARISON OF STRIKES IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1973-82 ment of plant level bargaining in place of, or in addition to, bargaining at industrial council level The restrictions Wiehahn Commission has not had the effect of curbing militancy of the unions.
Between 1980 and 1982, the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) almosi membership. Within Metal and Allied Workers Union trebled its membership during almost doubled it again in 1982.
Within FOSATU recognised shop steward committees ir 173 tactories as compared with 99 in 1981. Strikes major Side by side with their numerical growth there was a marked increase in unions, strike action. the even greater perhaps, is the rapid raising of consciousness unionists. Complicating matters for the regime is that the escalating levels of strikes is parallelled by the growth of resistance which reached its culmination in the bovcott of sham elections unions played a key role in this boycott. The death in detention of Neil Aggett, organiser of the Food and Canning Workers Union, wide half-hour these February 1982.
from all major industrial unions downed tools to protest Aggett's death. It was the first instance of industrial action of a political nature organised on a national scale and centred on the point of 1977 1978 1979 15 304 14 160 22 803 imposed by the the growth doubled 13.6.83).
FOSATU, the , 1981 black workers. there are now He capitalist significance, the . working the movement altered and The trade workers.
So Solidarity led to a nation• political strike on l Over 100,000 workers the South production rather than the 1980 1981' 1982 61 785 92 842 189 022 traditional form of 'stay away' and showed the increased potential and high degree of maturity of the new trade union movement.
The power of the black workers has grown so much that white workers are now joining black trade unions because 'You don't get fired easily if you belong to black unions' (Rand Daily Mail, In the last 10 years, the black trade union movement has become the major organisational form of resistance The more politically aware trade union leaders see it as the foundation on which a broader working class movement would be built.
important the FOSATU congress in April, 1982, the general secretary Joe Foster stressed the limitations of the trade union move ment and the need for a broade: political working class movement.
pointed out that: In ThE curiortits these working class movements (trade unions nav power and organisation yet politicall:
class is still subject to policies and practices that are clear! against their interests as the activities of Thatcher and Reagan show.
He then went on to state that whilst in the socialist countries political and economic relations have been greatly there have been great and benetits tor 'There is still the need for workers to control their own destin!
was not struggling 1o restore capitalism in Poland, its strug gle was to establish more democrati workers control over their society.
The independent trade unions will undoubtedly provide the rock on which African workers party will be built. Its future will shape both the character and efficacy of the struggle against apartheid as a whole.
Socialist Action
Socialist Action 14 September 1984
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Record rise in unions