1. APARTHEID AND THE BLACK WORKING CLASS - THE PROBLEM DEFINED

... it must never be forgotten that Apartheid and racial discrimination in South Africa, like everywhere else, has an aim far more important than discrimination itself: the aim is economic exploitation. The root and fruit of apartheid and racial discrimination is profit.(1)

Migrant labour. Pass laws. Poverty wages. Victimization at the workplace. Unemployment. Repression. Imprisonment. Banning orders. Death. These are the ingredients of exploitation that shape the lives of millions of African workers from the cradle to the grave under Apartheid.

Understandably, the United Nations, church and humanitarian organizations have described Apartheid as a 'crime against humanity'. Although subjectively correct in the abstract, this formulation masks the real nature of the system of class exploitation that forms the basis of Apartheid. As such, the crucial issue of by whom and through what means Apartheid will be destroyed is left unaddressed. In order to address these crucial issues, we begin by adding the concrete qualification that Apartheid is a 'crime' against working class humanity. Only through the realization that Apartheid society is but one specific example of capitalist social formations can we begin to come to terms with the reality of and dialectical interrelationship between race, class and the liberation struggle in South Africa.

The complex interaction of racial and class dynamics is easily concealed by the appearance of social realities under Apartheid. Race and racial discrimination appear to be the single, dominant consideration determining and affecting all aspects of social life. Black people, regardless of class position, are systematically denied equality of opportunity in the political, economic, educational, cultural and sporting spheres. Africans, the overwhelming majority of the population, cannot vote, cannot own land, and cannot move freely; they are, instead, instructed by the White minority through custom, legislation and state-administered violence as to where to stay, to live, to work, to walk and even to sit. Voteless and voiceless, Africans, Coloureds and Indians are without doubt oppressed as a nation. Unless and until Black South Africans seize state power, there can be no freedom or liberation from this national oppression which has spanned the past three hundred years of colonialism, capitalist development and Western imperialism.

Notwithstanding this primacy of race in the definition and implementation of Apartheid, we must search beyond the appearance of things to discover the social realities. It is in the economic relations of production that we discover why Apartheid structures are so vitally necessary to the maintenance of the South African ruling class. Like all human societies, South Africa must ultimately be understood in regard to the production process wherein human labour power produces the material requirements for the maintenance and progressive development of social life itself. And, as in all capitalist societies, this human labour power is exploited by a non-productive, ruling (capitalist) class which owns and controls the means of production in the interest of capital accumulation and resultant political power. South Africa's uniqueness rests with the fact that class exploitation follows so closely along racial lines, with the Black, and predominantly African, working class bearing the burden of this exploitation endemic to capitalism. In discussing the dynamics of race and class in South Africa, Joe Slovo states,

... for all the overt signs of race as the mechanism of domination, the legal and institutional domination of the white minority over the black majority has its origins in, and is perpetuated by, economic exploitation.(2) (emphasis added)

Thus, just as national liberation is a requisite to freedom from racial domination under Apartheid, so too is class emancipation a requisite to freedom from economic exploitation, the raison d'être of production under Apartheid capitalism.

The realities of Apartheid render Black workers and their dependants exploited both as workers (i.e. sellers of labour power) and as disenfranchised citizens of South Africa. In the struggle for a democratic society free from all forms of exploitation and oppression, the Black working class must obviously be the driving force of the revolution. They must be organized industrially into disciplined and militant trade unions, and they, as a class, must be mobilized to wage mass resistance and struggle against the ruling class and its imperialist partners at all possible levels. Their participation, spirit of militancy and leadership will not only shape the parameters of struggle but also the contours of a liberated South Africa. As we have seen, insofar as Black workers suffer the double yolk of national oppression and class oppression, their emancipation from both is a necessary condition for the freedom of not only their class but of all South Africans.

This book outlines and pays tribute to the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), which was formed in 1955 with these principles and objectives as the basis of its existence. To organize the unorganized Black, especially African, workers into mass-based, national unions that would challenge the power of the bosses was its primary task on the trade union front. Yet it was not a trade union movement based on racial divisions. As the first non-racial trade union coordinating body, SACTU defended the rights and promoted the aspirations of all workers, regardless of race or colour. For this reason, its membership always included a number of White workers, who refused to succumb to the pressures to accept a racially -divided workforce and White domination in society generally. SACTU was the only trade union coordinating body in post-war South African history to promote working class unity, in theory and in practice.

SACTU, from its inception, committed itself to the political struggle against national oppression with equal dedication. Rejecting the reformist cum reactionary call for 'no politics in the trade union movement', SACTU became a member of the Congress Alliance in 1955. Led by the liberation movement of South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC), the Congress Alliance consisted of organizations representing nationally oppressed Africans (ANC), Indians (South African Indian Congress, SAIC), Coloureds (South African Coloured People's Congress, SACPC) and progressive Whites (South African Congress of Democrats, SACOD).

Despite Nationalist Party legislation and repression, SACTU gained strength on both the trade union and political fronts. Organizing drives, closely coordinated with Congress Alliance campaigns, struck a chord with the mass of exploited workers. From an initial membership of 20,000 in 1956, SACTU ranks grew to 55,000 workers in 1962, immediately prior to the massive state repression directed against all progressive organizations in the early to mid-1960s. From 1964 onwards, SACTU was forced to convert its activities to the conditions of underground work, and has continued to spearhead the workers' struggle.

NOTES

  1. Mark Shope, SACTU Report to Solidarity Conference, Accra, Ghana, 1964.

  2. Joe Slovo, 'South Africa - No Middle Road', Southern Africa: The New Politics of Revolution, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976, p. 118.

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