7 ... BUT NOT FOR BREAD ALONE

The consequences of capitalism on the lives of working class people extend beyond the workplace per se. Although workers sell their labour power for only a specified period of time each day and each week, their proletarian status ensures that all aspects of social life are circumscribed by the realities of powerlessness. Under Apartheid in South Africa, Black workers and their families suffer these hardships to a degree unknown by their White working-class counterparts. In particular, workmen's compensation, unemployment and housing constitute three areas of Black proletarian life worthy of specific attention.

The purpose of this section is briefly to demonstrate that SACTU campaigns were not restricted to quantitative demands for higher wages. Rather, SACTU responded to the needs of workers created by the starvation wage system. In this way, SACTU was rooted in and moved with the consciousness of the people; the political effect was a merging of the economic with the political and a strengthening of the Congress Alliance in its struggle for total liberation from national oppression and class exploitation.

Workmen's Compensation

The April 1962 issue of the Government Gazette reported that £38,202 was owed to 4,800 'missing' workers who were eligible for but had not claimed workmen's compensation. The overwhelming majority were African workers. By 1966-67, 8,730 Africans, or 75 per cent of an those listed as eligible for benefits, were 'missing'. When asked to explain such a seemingly unusual situation, the Workmen's Compensation Commissioner stated, 'there is something about an African - call it superstition if you like - that makes him flee from the job or the place where he is injured on duty. ¹

If he had been honest, the Commissioner, instead of resorting to racist mythology, might have admitted that the real reason that African workers injured on the job had not claimed their compensation was that they had in most cases been 'endorsed out' of the urban area as 'not serving the interests of the White economy'. Furthermore, the lack of proper record-keeping by employers and the WCC in most cases meant that 'Jirn No. 5' or 'Tom No. 9' could not be traced. The companies, concerned only with exploiting the African's labour-power, failed to record his surname or address, or even if this were done, failed to pass on the relevant information to the WCC following the injury. In sum, when an African worker is injured in South Africa, physical suffering is accompanied by economic and social dislocation. Even if the injured worker manages to get a medical certificate, he/she would seldom be assigned to a lighter job until recovery; Africans physically unable to do the heaviest work are regarded by White capitalists as expendable and superfluous to the Apartheid economy.

Under the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1941, it is the responsibility of employers to notify the WCC of accidents and industrial diseases. In the case of African workers, this information is to be given to the Department of Bantu Affairs and Development. If this requirement is satisfied, the injured worker has a period of twelve months in which to claim the compensation owed; if this is not done, the Government Gazette then lists the names and claims and after one month all monies return to the state coffers.

As with all labour legislation in South Africa, 'race' is the major variable in the WC Act. Workers may be permanently or temporarily injured, totally or partially injured - both logical distinctions. But workers may also be injured 'as Africans', as distinct from Whites, Coloureds and Indians. Sections 83 and 88 of the Act enumerate special procedures and different (usually lower) rates for African claimants. For example, no compensation is payable to an African if disabled for less than seven days. In the case of death, African workers' dependants are eligible to receive 'one lump sum' payment, the amount of which is determined by the Commissioner; the amount, however, cannot exceed that given for permanent total disability.

In agriculture and mining, special provisions applied. In 1956, the WC Act included farm labourers for the first time, but claims could be made only on injuries resulting from the use of mechanically-driven machinery. In the mines, a new Pneumoconiosis Act in 1956 reduced the compensation available to Africans suffering from miners' diseases (silicosis, phthisis, TB, etc.) to a lump sum of £240. (Previous to that it had been possible to receive almost twice that amount in some cases.) For White workers suffering the same industrial diseases, four grades of compensation reflecting severity provided compensation to dependants, including children up to 18 years of age. In the case of death, African dependants must furthermore prove their eligibility to the Native Affairs Department before the pitiful lump sum payment is granted. In response to the 1956 law, Workers Unity spoke for all African mine workers when it said: 'Africans as a whole will gain nothing. We Africans who get this sickness are sacked at once. We go back to our homes with this little money, and die. ²

SACTU Head Office and affiliated unions - particularly the FCWU - responded to these appalling conditions by spending countless hours attempting to trace and contact injured Africans eligible for compensation. In addition, the WCC and employers' organizations were approached with the demand that an efficient system of record keeping be instituted immediately. In general, SACTU inquiries were treated with contempt and hostility, particularly by certain mining, engineering and other companies in heavy industries where accidents were more frequent and managements least concerned about ensuring adequate compensation.

SACTU established an excellent series of lectures explaining the provisions of the WC Act and distributed these to all Local Committees and affiliated unions as a stopgap measure designed to inform African workers of their limited rights under the law. As for the law itself, SACTU's 1960 Conference demanded that',,.compensation for all workers, irrespective of race and sex, be increased, and that disabled workers be given full pay during the time of their absence from employment and without long delays. These demands fell on deaf ears.

As for the so-called 'missing' claimants, a SACTU press release issued in 1962 exposed the hypocrisy of the Commissioner's statement quoted above:

It is remarkable how all trace of African workers is lost when money is due to them in spite of the fact that they are heavily tagged by passes, thumb-prints, identity numbers and all the other red-tape of Apartheid. If an African does not pay his poll tax, he is easily found.³

And for those who, according to the Commissioner, 'flee' from work following injuries, SACTU queried whether it was not strange that they 'kept fleeing' from certain companies more so than others.

The mention of the poll tax was not accidental, as this too had increased in 1960 to a minimum of £2 per year for each African male over the age of eighteen. No such tax applied to any other section of the population. This was but one of 160 compulsory and 681 voluntary levies imposed upon the African majority under Apartheid. These revenues, subtracted from already below-subsistence wages, financed the bureaucratic machinery that administered and controlled the movement of Africans from the cradle to the grave.

Unemployment: The Scourge of Capitalism

Unemployment is the disease of capitalism, it is one of the crimes for which the workers get punished. ⁴

It is a well-established fact that capitalism cannot sustain conditions of full employment for its workforce. Insofar as production is geared towards the creation of profits and the accumulation of capital, rather than production for use to satisfy real human needs, it is in the interests of the ruling class to always have a 'reserve army' of unemployed labour that serves to depress the value of wages paid to those productively employed. When the wage demands of organized labour reach unacceptable levels, the capitalist class is then able to replace that labour with a portion of the reserve army. In other words, the crisis of unemployment is a structural feature of capitalist society and, as such, has little to do with the capabilities or inclinations of individual workers.

In South Africa, under the migrant, cheap labour system of Apartheid, it is no surprise that Africans suffer the most severe repercussions from unemployment - especially in periods of capitalist recession. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, this problem became particularly acute in the major industrial centres. Normal functioning of capitalist priorities, plus the Nationalists' policy of removing ,unproductive' African labour from urban centres, resulted in tremendous suffering for Black and especially African working class families.

Accurate and comprehensive data on the number of unemployed workers of all races is virtually impossible to find. The fact that even White unemployed workers, the most protected and privileged under Apartheid, were driven by circumstances to form a Johannesburg Council of Unemployed Workers in 1961 gives some indication of the seriousness of the situation. For Coloured and Indian workers, the problem was much worse. In Durban, an estimated 40 per cent of the entire workforce was out of work in 1962. Within the large Indian community, approximately 50 per cent, or 40 to 50 thousand workers, were jobless and destitute. Starvation was reported in the working class districts of Happy Valley, Clairwood and Sea Cow Lake. Suicide rates increased as many considered death the more attractive alternative. ⁵

For Africans, the most exploited, the government used the unemployment crisis as a means of endorsing out thousands to the rural areas and reserves. Even in the rural areas, Africans had to 'compete' with convicts amassed for slave labour on the farms. The Bantu Affairs Department (BAD) made no attempt to establish statistics on the number of Africans unemployed during this period, although SACTU and other bodies made a conservative estimate of 100,000 Africans out of work. On one occasion in late 1961, the Johannesburg office of the BAD admitted that there were at least 25,000 permanently unemployed in that area alone, and no new work-seeker permits were being issued. An African who lost his/her job in the urban area had only fourteen days in which to locate alternative employment before being removed to the reserves and left there to starve.

As in all capitalist countries, a system of unemployment insurance designed to appease working class militancy exists in South Africa. The Unemployment Insurance Act of 1937, re-enacted in amended form in 1946, provided for a UI Fund to which certain classes of workers falling within defined wage limits were obliged to contribute. The employers and the state also 'contributed' to this Fund, investing the millions of pounds in profits and monies previously stolen from the workers themselves. The 1946 amendments included urban African workers as contributors as part of the Smuts Government's 'reforms' following the Mine Workers Strike. Important exclusions, however, were African mine and farm labourers, whose slave-driving bosses objected to such welfare-oriented schemes as obstacles to the efficient exploitation of cheap labour. Also excluded were domestic servants, public servants, casual workers and certain categories of seasonal labour.

When the Nationalists came to power in 1948, they excluded virtually 90 per cent of African workers from eligibility under the UI Act by restricting benefits to those making more than £ 182 per year. In 1957, this was changed again to exclude all Africans making less than £5 3s. 3d. per week. Furthermore, African workers eligible under these conditions were obliged to take any job available, and failure to do so resulted in a forfeiture of benefits. Nationalist changes in the legislation from 1948 onwards meant that African workers who had paid into the Fund in previous years were robbed of an estimated £9 million in contributions and denied all benefits.

The UI Fund grew in size to an estimated R 140 million (£70 million) by 1962, but the exclusion of the majority of unemployed from benefits meant that the Fund did little to alleviate suffering. In fact, the Minister of Labour used a portion of the workers 'money to subsidize companies forced to lay off staff in 1959. Three years later, the Minister made a tour of Europe as part of the government's scheme to promote White immigration to South Africa. Rather than allowing Black workers to assume skilled positions, the racist regime went out of its way to ensure that the 'civilized labour' policy was maintained while the African masses starved.

Against these intolerable conditions, SACTU Local Committees throughout the country took the initiative to organize the unemployed. As Stephen Dlamini recalls, it was 'SACTU's role to explain the capitalist system to the people so that individual workers did not become depressed but rather collectively organized to fulfil the working class role of changing society'. Not surprisingly, the momentum for the SACTU campaign came from Durban, where Indian workers were starving and Africans were 'sleeping in water drains'.⁶ Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and Cape Town followed the Durban lead by organizing mass meetings of the unemployed throughout the early 1960s.

In April 1959, the Durban LC enrolled 150 members into an Unemployed Workers Union (UWU), and from this base called on the other four Congresses to get involved in a 'Jobs for All' campaign. SACTU Head Office and LCs demanded: that the U1 Fund be used to increase the size and length of UI benefits., an end to White immigration and equal opportunity for all workers to take on skilled jobs; amendments to the UI Act to cover all workers; and a national minimum wage of £1-a-Day which, if granted, would make a large proportion of African workers eligible for benefits under the Act.

In September 1961, as conditions worsened in Natal, a SACTU delegation from Durban decided to present these and other demands in the form of a memorandum to the Minister of Labour in Pretoria. The Minister agreed to meet the delegation and five SACTU activists left by car for the 400-mile trip to the Transvaal. In Pietermaritzburg, they were intercepted by the Special Branch and told that the meeting had been cancelled, but they proceeded in any case. Stopping in Johannesburg, the delegation went to SACTU offices where the SB again harassed and interrogated everyone present. The following day, upon arriving at Compensation House in Pretoria, they were met by armed police and told that the delegation must turn back. The group, which consisted of Stephen Dlamini, Mate Mfusi and three Indian trade unionists, resisted this intimidation and eventually talked officials into at least accepting the memorandum. Upon their return to Durban, Diamini and others were arrested. It was later reported that the Minister cancelled the meeting because Africans were part of the delegation; that is, he would discuss unemployment only with regard to those workers covered by the IC Act. For the African workers, Workers Unity described the alternatives: '. . . a whole population is either forced to starve or sell its labour on the slave market'.

The Wits LC followed the example set by Durban. Numerous rallies were held on the Johannesburg City Hall steps, and an Action Committee of Unemployed Workers was formed. Initial signs of cooperation with the White workers' Council of Unemployed Workers disappeared quickly as the latter were intimidated by the authorities into severing all relations with SACTU. The Council did, however, call for an end to Job Reservation, White immigration, and a national minimum wage of £1-a-Day as well as equal coverage for African workers under the Ul Act. In Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, more rallies were held. Alven Bennie recalls that in PE sympathetic liberal organizations tried to organize a soup kitchen, but the Local Committee rejected this approach because 'our approach was to seize power and we could not achieve that by becoming a charity organization'. ⁷

As with Workmen's Compensation, SACTU was left with few options except to lobby wherever possible for changes in the UI Act. In September 1962, Head Office sent a memorandum to the Minister of Labour requesting representation on the UI Board. Listing its numerous objections to provisions in the Act, SACTU argued that other coordinating bodies represented on the Board could not speak for - and did not care about - the interests of African workers. These other bodies either had few African trade unions affiliated (as was the case with TUCSA) or, more commonly, they refused Africans affiliation. Only SACTU, representing 40,000 African workers, could speak for the most exploited section of the working class. For precisely this reason, the Minister of Labour refused to even acknowledge receipt of the memorandum. To the Nationalist government and the capitalist class, unemployed Africans do not constitute a human dilemma worthy of attention; they are only a force to be disciplined and controlled and cast out of sight to the barren reserves.

Housing and Rent Arrears

The fantastic situation then arises where the (Johannesburg) City Council as an employer pays its employees starvation wages and then jails and fines those employees for not being able to pay the rents which the Council itself has fixed. ⁸

After starvation wages and unemployment, the third side of this triangle of exploitation and suffering was the housing and rents crisis. Under the Native (Urban Areas) Act, Africans in urban areas were required to live in designated, racially segregated areas - hostels, villages or townships. Only African domestics who stood at the beck and call of their White oppressors in the suburbs were exempt from these restrictions. Using cheap African labour in the construction trade, 'model' townships sprang up on the perimeters of the industrial centres in the 1950s.

Associated with the forced removals to 'African areas' was a significant increase in the total cost of subsistence living: rents payable to local authorities sky-rocketed and transport costs to travel the average 10-12 miles to work now became a matter of daily necessity. Only wages failed to increase. For the many workers averaging around £8 per month income, payment for transport, rent and food purchased at work would normally cost £7 10s. leaving only 10s. (shillings) for the month to cover all other expenditures. In essence, the 'slum clearance' programme meant greater suffering and starvation in only slightly better accommodation.

Until the end of 1954, the state housing policy focused on what was termed 'sub-economic' units. Residents of these units who earned less than £15 per month had average rents of £2 5s. or about 15 per cent of total monthly income. From 1955 onwards, the government policy shifted to the 'economic' housing scheme, whereby tenants earning £15 per month paid a rent equivalent to 20 per cent of their income; the Johannesburg City Council raised the income level to £20 as the base rate for 'economic' rentals. These flat percentage rates became a tremendous burden on African families living on poverty wages, a burden that for most could not be met.

The assessed rentals bore no relationship to the tenants' ability to pay. SAIRR concluded that a minimum monthly subsistence budget, excluding rent, for the Johannesburg African family in 1958-59 was as follows:

If, for example, a tenant made £ 16 per month, the 20 per cent reduction for rent (£3 2s. would leave only £ 12 18s. for all other expenses. As the SAIRR study excludes rental payments from the budget, this means that the minimal shortfall between income and expenditure would be around £9 per month. Thus, payment of 'economic' and 'sub-economic' rents was a virtual impossibility for the vast majority of African tenant families.

The inferior quality of these tiny, rapidly -constructed township houses added to the difficulties of African workers. Inadequately heated during the winter months, and unbearably hot in the summer, the majority of the homes had no electricity, no running water, no inside toilet facilities, no ceilings, no room partitions and only earthen floors. Harry Loots, a SACTU leader in the Transvaal FCWU who had worked as a surveyor for the City Council during the construction of the Soweto township, recalls that the houses were 'just four walls with no internal divisions and no concern for the comfort of the occupants. Living conditions were appalling.'9 In Kwa Mashu, the African township built 14 miles from Durban in the late 1950s, houses were within a short period of time in bad repair, roads and drainage systems were poor, lighting was inadequate and recreational areas were nonexistent. The same conditions obtained in Merebank, an area where poor Indian families resided. These realities led SACTU to warn the government in 1962 that it was 'sitting on a time bomb which will explode if this situation continues'. Indeed, the 'time bomb' exploded into violence on many occasions throughout the 1960s and 1970s, particularly during the Durban strikes of 1973-74 and the Soweto uprisings of 1976.

Returning to the rent issue, thousands of African tenants throughout the country had no alternative but to default on these exorbitant rents. In Kwa Mashu, for example, over £45,000 in rent arrears was owed by Africans (over 80 per cent of the township population), and 53 per cent of Indian families in Merebank were behind in their payments. Instead of adjusting rents to reasonable levels based on the ability to pay, the local authorities resorted to the brutal practice of invoking Section 38 (3) (p) of the Native Urban Areas Act which allowed for criminal prosecution of rent defaulters.

The Johannesburg City Council became the most notorious local administration to make criminals out of poverty-stricken African tenants. In early morning raids, police would enter the townships and after a sufficient number of defaulters were rounded up, they would be put in jail, held there for 1 to 2 days and then taken before the local Magistrate's Court for trial. Sentences ranged from 5s. for an admission of guilt to £2 or two weeks in jail. For the thousands who were forced to choose jail, jobs were lost making rent arrears even higher, workers were re-imprisoned, families evicted and personal possessions sold by the City Council to cover the cost of rents owed. The families would then, in most cases, be 'endorsed out' of the urban areas, either to starve in the reserves or become slave labour on the farms.¹⁰

Many of those prosecuted by the City Council were among township residents who refused to pay rent increases when the transition to economic' rents was made; over 2,000 also refused to fill out Council questionnaires regarding family incomes. The Council then merely assumed incomes of £20 per month, charged 'economic' rents and prosecuted with abandon all defaulters. Most nonsensical of all was the practice of making defaulters pay fines that did not apply towards the rent arrears, thus having the effect of increasing indebtedness. Or, on other occasions, defaulters would be given a six-month period in which to pay, and if payments were late or missed, the tenant would be put in jail for six months for contempt of court. Also, persons found innocent in rent arrears cases were still forced to pay the cost of the summons. As a Workers Unity article put it in 196 1, 'for city councils to persist in this attitude is sheer economic exploitation'.¹¹

Although the Johannesburg City Council defended its victimization in narrow legalistic and economic terms, the fact was that low wages paid to its 20,000 Council workers created the very poverty that made rents impossible to pay. Approximately 10,000 of these workers received less than £13 per month, and 87 per cent received less than enough to meet the SAIRR minimum subsistence budget. In some jobs, City employees were paid only 50 per cent the average wage given by private employers. With this high basic rental rate, plus court fines for arrears, many tenants were spending up to one-third of their incomes on rent-related costs. For the Council, however, prosecution was lucrative as an estimated £38,000 came from rent arrear payments not credited against the original unpaid rents. If one considers that in at least one month in every year, the mandatory lump-sum deduction of £2 for the African poll tax is taken out of wages by employers, it is no surprise that almost all township residents would be in rent arrears at one time or another. Understandably, parasitic money-lenders lost no opportunity in further exploiting African workers as they waited outside the factory gates. As Phyllis Altman, SACTU Assistant General Secretary, concluded in 1962:

The African workers live in a nightmare of debt, fines and imprisonment. They walk a tight-rope where one unanticipated event (such as the death of a parent in a rural area, involving travelling or funeral expenses) throws their budget out and they are immediately in arrears with their rent. ¹²

In response to these deplorable situations in Johannesburg, the Wits LC and SACTU Head Office took the initiative on behalf of township residents. A high profile publicity campaign exposing the Council's practices, coupled with mass meetings and demonstrations and the formation of Residents' Associations forced the City Council to curb the most excessive examples of victimization and criminal prosecution. For example, the Council was forced to stop sending tenants 'final warnings' where no previous warnings had been issued; often the 'final warnings' reached the tenants after the date designated for payment and subsequent eviction.

The SACTU campaign operated at two levels. The most difficult but also most successful part entailed intervention on behalf of individual tenants. An estimated 90 per cent of rent defaulters earned between 0-4 per week. Desperate for assistance, these persons would be lined up at the SACTU office each morning, waiting to speak to Phyllis Altman and others about their respective situations. In almost every case where either SACTU or Residents' Associations challenged the Council, the summons against the individual was either withdrawn or satisfactory alternative arrangements made. In fact, Altman discovered later that the Council files of individuals assisted by SACTU were marked 'Don't arrest' or 'Don't jail'.

At a more general level, SACTU and other supportive groups campaigned for an end to criminal prosecutions, a reduction in rents and rents based on the type of accommodation rather than as a percentage of income. All of these demands were related to the demand for a general increase in the wages of African workers. A SACTU delegation met with the Johannesburg City Council, pointing out the crucial relationship between low wages and rent arrears. Other specific objections were made - for example, SACTU called for an end to the 'lodger's fee', whereby the Municipality could charge for children sixteen years or over living at home with their parents. The 1962 SACTU Annual Conference added new demands, which included the waiving of all arrears, a lowering of house rentals to 75 cents per room and a 50 per cent reduction in public transport costs.

Mounting pressure initiated by SACTU on the City Council led it in 1962 to agree to end criminal prosecutions, but only with the added counter~threat of increased evictions. The Council also proposed that employers automatically deduct 25 per cent of the wages for those workers in rent arrears, but SACTU and others vehemently objected to a scheme which would maintain high rents and in effect make the capitalist bosses 'rent collectors' for the City. As SACTU said in a press release:

The scheme will ensure that the City Council gets its rent and then the Africans will be free to starve on the rest of their salaries. There would of course be no problem with rent collections if the Africans were paid a living wage.

Yet the City Council resisted wage increases and voiced the old argument that increased 'efficiency, production and supervision of the African workforce' must precede wage hikes.

Other Local Committees in Durban, Kimberley, the Cape Western Province and Port Elizabeth took up the campaign in their respective areas. In Cape Town, the major focus was on the forced removal of Africans from the Western Cape; in Port Elizabeth, the LC presented a memorandum to the City Council opposing rent increases and high unemployment. Although Councils pretended to make special allowances for 'hardship' cases, unemployment was consistently rejected as the basis for 'hardship' exemptions. In Durban, the LC monitored the Kwa Mashu situation closely, as Kwa Mashu had been the new township where most Africans were forced to live after the violence in Cato Manor in 1959 (see Chapter 9). The high incidence of kwashiorkor, a malnutrition disease resulting from poverty, was linked to the low wage-high rent issue by SACTU activitists in Durban.

In conclusion, SACTU leaders considered the housing-rents campaign as one of the most effective ever waged. As with the £1-a-Day campaign, the demand for lower rents and better housing emerged from the objective needs of the people. Both were clearly the consequences of class exploitation under Apartheid. It must also be kept in mind that these non-wage campaigns discussed in this chapter were conducted most enthusiastically during the early 1960s when state repression reached its peak. Even in the final moments of above-ground activity, SACTU never failed to base its campaigns and goals on the needs and aspirations of the South African working class.

NOTES

1.Quoted in Workers Unity, February-October 1962.

2.Workers Unity, October-November 1957.

3.Workers Unity, February-October 1962.

4.Workers Unity, November 1961-January 1962.

5.New Age, various issues, 196 1; interview, Stephen Dlamini.

6.Interview, Stephen Dlamini.

7.Interview, Alven Bennie.

8.SACTU Memorandum on Rents and Criminal Prosecutions for Rent Arrears, presented to Johannesburg City Council, 8 December 196 1.

9. Interview, Harry Loots.

10. P. Altman, 'The Rents Scandal', Workers Unity, November 196 I-January 1962.

11. Workers Unity, 1961.

12. P. Altman, op. cit.

[Contents] [Next Chapter]

8 STRIKES AND INDUSTRIAL ACTIONS

... A strike teaches workers to understand what the strength of the employers and what the strength of the workers consist in: it teaches them not to think of their own employers alone and not of their own immediate workmates alone, but of all the employers, the whole class of capitalists and the whole class of workers....

A strike, moreover, opens the eyes of the workers to the nature, not only of the capitalists, but of government and the laws as well.... Strikes, therefore, teach the workers to unite; they show them that they can struggle against the capitalist only when they are united; strikes teach the workers to think of the whole working-class against the whole class of factory owners and against the arbitrary police and government. This is the reason that socialists call strikes' a school of war', a school in which the workers learn to make war on their enemies for the liberation of the whole people, of all who labour, from the yoke of government, officials and from the yoke of capital.

V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. IV (1960), pp. 315-17.

Despite continuous attempts by the South African ruling class to suppress and contain the forward movement of the African working class, history has demonstrated the futility of their tactics. Since African workers were first incorporated into the economy as a cheap labour force they have waged industrial strikes and taken various forms of political action against their objective exploitation.

The 1946 African Mine Workers' strike had so threatened the structure of the total society and the profits of capital, that the state was forced to introduce further repressive measures to curb the militancy of African workers. The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, designed in part to weaken the trade union movement, had robbed the working class of 56 dedicated trade unionists, seventeen of them Africans. However, as already shown, it was the Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act of 1953, a vicious piece of anti-worker legislation, which was specifically designed to crush the rising tide of militancy among African workers and prevent the growth of African trade unions. Despite the fact that this Act rendered all strikes by African workers illegal, the workers continued to defy the legislation, never giving up their most vital weapon in the struggle against the ruling class - the right to withdraw their collective labour-power.

African workers have never been passive victims of exploitation. There is no better example of their refusal to acquiesce to the new legislation than the strikes which took place in Durban, only months after the Act became law. On 8 July 1954, 340 African workers at United Tobacco Company (UTC) took decisive strike action to achieve their demands.

Workers downed tools after management had refused to recognize the Union and the workers' demands that their wages and conditions be raised to the level of Cape Town tobacco workers. Refusing to make use of the new machinery created by the Native Labour Act, strikers were immediately harassed and intimidated. Twenty leaders were arrested and charged under the Act. As well, the Native Administration instructed all pass registration offices in Durban not to renew the permits of any African worker who had participated in the strike and lists of UTC workers were circulated to other companies. UTC dismissed the entire African workforce, some 1,360 workers, intimating that they could re-apply for their jobs. Management then expected that they would return to work and submit to the company's conditions. The strikers refused and were immediately replaced by scab labour, heavily protected by the police. The Secretary of the Union was fined £ 100 or 6 months hard labour (suspended for three years) and one other strike leader was fined £25 or 3 months hard labour, plus 6 months hard labour suspended for three years. All the remaining accused were fined £5 or one month hard labour.

In response to a Tobacco Workers' Union appeal, the ANC, the SAIC and the COD called for a total boycott of UTC products. This demonstration of solidarity with the victimized workers was highly successful and UTC suffered heavy losses. However, the strikers themselves were hit hard, unable to find jobs because of the blacklist. The combined forces of the state and the employers were used against these fearless workers and the provisions of the Native Labour Act were being tested on them, as a deterrent not only for them but for those African workers contemplating strike action in the future.

In another strike by African workers at Natal Cotton Spinners during this period, a similar resistance to the Native Labour Act was displayed. New Age reported at the time that these were 'not the usual, isolated, spontaneous outbursts of exasperated workers, but a manifestation of the African workers' realization of the need for unity, solidarity and trade union organization'. This had frightened the government, the article went on, because the initiatives had come ,Straight from the factory'. ¹

In spite of the Native Labour Act, there were some 435 strikes by African workers during the period from 1954 to 1960, and only ten Works Committees set up under the Act were functioning by 1960. Thousands of workers were prosecuted and fined or imprisoned. This in itself indicates that the workers were not deterred by the punitive legislation enacted by the state and were determined to use the strike weapon as one of the means by which to challenge the basis of their exploitation.

From 1955 onwards, SACTU and its affiliated unions continued to encourage African workers to boycott the machinery of the Native Labour Act. The organization supported the use of the strike weapon by all workers, Black or White, in their attempts to gain legitimate working class demands. The industrial strike, though representing only a partial challenge to the capitalist system, was none the less recognized as an important attack on the basis of that system - the control and exploitation of labour power.

An analysis of strike activity during the SACTU year shows that between 1955 and 1957 there was a considerable upsurge in the number of strikes by African workers (see table on page 276). After 1957, there was a downturn in activity, perhaps due to the fact that many new wage determinations for unskilled workers were introduced in the 'years following. Increasing African unemployment, coupled with a sluggish economy, may also have had a deterrent effect on strike activity.

Because of the nature of state repression in South Africa, issues involved in any single strike can easily be connected with the struggle against the whole social order, the entire ruling class, and are not restricted to the individual employer. African workers are faced with a united front of government and employers, backed by the power of the police. State repression via racist anti-worker legislation, police and Special Branch harassment, employers' victimization and intimidation, the Pass Laws and other controls imposed on the freedom of mobility -all of these combined made it impossible for the African worker not to appreciate the whole basis of his/her exploitation and to comprehend in its entirety the social system he/she was part of.

Leon Levy, past President of SACTU, likened strikes by Black workers in South Africa to 'small scale civil wars' with 'lorry-loads of police, armed with batons, sten-guns and tear-gas bombs', where 'great pick-up vans arrive and all the strikers are arrested ' ² All strikes supported by SACTU whether for higher wages and improved working conditions, union recognition or reinstatement of unjustly dismissed workers, were met with the full force of the state. Their strikes were most definitely 'schools of war'.

An analysis of some of the strikes to which SACTU gave organizational support between 1955 and 1964 follows. The purpose is not to assess the effectiveness of the organization on the basis of its quantitative strike record, but rather to examine the nature and dynamics of class struggle at the point of production, that is, to analyse the extent of class consciousness and potential for revolutionary action on the part of workers, and to study the responses of capital and the extent of state intervention in each case.

Strikes by Migrant Workers

The migrant labour system in South Africa, besides restricting the freedom of mobility of the worker and his family, creates additional difficulties within the field of trade union organizing. Migrant workers, circulating between wage-labour and the reserves, do not represent a stable and permanent labour force. However, the history of their involvement in both industrial actions and political protests over the years, has revealed that these workers, despite the disabilities forced upon them, do possess an advanced proletarian consciousness, perhaps even fostered by the system of controlled barracks and compounds. An analysis of the struggles of dockworkers in South Africa illustrates this well.

In Durban, there had been a long history of resistance by the dockers, who refer to themselves as 'oNyathi (meaning 'buffalo' in Zulu). In 1930, they led struggles against the poll tax, against the passes (culminating in the death of Johannes Nkosi) and against the institution of a municipal monopoly in beer-brewing. These workers continued to carry out strikes and other actions throughout the 1940s, a period of intense conflict in Durban.

In 1954, in defiance of the Native Labour Act, 1,167 stevedores struck for seven days in support of a demand for an increase in their daily wage from 10s. 3d. to 15s. They were forced to return to work after being threatened with ejection from the employer-owned compounds. The Native Labour Board granted workers a Is. 3d. a day increase but at the same time charged workers with striking illegally. Ninety-five were found guilty and fined 10s. each. The major issue in the struggles of Durban dockworkers in the mid1950s was the togt labour system. Migrant workers were paid on a daily basis in the Durban docks; when ships were in the harbour there was work for them and they were paid by their employers. However, the system offered no security and workers could not rely on any kind of regular income. Early in 1956, dockers went out on strike, and included the elimination of the togt system as one of their demands. They wanted monthly contracts to ensure a regular income. In November 1956, workers struck once more. Employers had placed a small group of workers on permanent staff, with two weeks' annual leave. However, in the process they cut down the rates of pay of these permanent employees, leading to a sympathy strike by the, remainder of the workers. All workers were demanding to be paid on a monthly basis but at least at the same rate of pay as they were receiving as togt labourers.

The elimination of the togt labour system of casual labour and its replacement with a contract labour system would actually enable the employers and the state to exert a more direct control over the workers. Under the old system, if labourers decided for any reason not to work on a particular day, there was little that could be done in terms of the law except deportation from the urban area. The introduction of the contract labour system meant that workers would be liable to prosecution for any breach of contract. Therefore, the workers were in a very difficult position; they had a choice between two different forms of super~exploitation.

In November 1957, the Minister of Native Affairs, Dr H. F. Verwoerd announced his intention to remove most of the stevedoring compounds in the Point Dock area, and allow only 2,000 African stevedores in the area. While the government and employers were discussing the merits of this policy, the workers themselves were preparing to take action in support of the SACTU/Congress Alliance call for a 3-day Stay-At-Home beginning 14 April 1958. For various reasons, the Stay-At-Home was not successful throughout the country (see Chapter 10). However, in Durban the dockers boldly displayed their militancy and embarked on an important struggle against stevedoring companies.

Seventy-five per cent of dockworkers went home during the Stay-At Home and those who remained were forced out of the privately-owned compounds by the police. Nevertheless, they struck at work, demanding £ 1 -a-Day. These workers refused to do any overtime work until their comrades returned and when they did, all workers unanimously decided to do no more overtime work until they were paid £1-a-Day. The harbour was congested and by Sunday, 27 May, over twenty-five ships lay idle in port. On that day, no workers reported for work, increasing pressure on the employers. Finally a settlement was reached which brought their wages up to 14s. per day, with other increases granted as well.

After the 1958 actions, a meeting of employers and government representatives decided to eliminate the togt labour system and establish a centrally-administered compound system, designed for greater control over the labour force. As part of this system, an attempt was made to incorporate indunas (African foremen) more effectively into the structure of authority of the stevedoring companies. These indunas had previously performed certain responsibilities like recruiting and marshalling workers in particular gangs, which would now be performed by the labour supply company in a centrally-run compound system. Their new tasks were those of 'sergeant-majors' of the company and they were to receive substantial wage increases of 4s. a day. This sparked off industrial action again in February 1959.

The workers had expected more from the Wage Board which sat during 1958. The SACTU Durban Local Committee had given evidence before the Board and had requested a substantial increase in wages, that the workers be put on a weekly-paid basis and urged the Board to improve their working conditions. The strike broke out on 24 February when it was clear that there would be no increase for labourers and a 4s. increase for the indunas. By 25 February, 1,500 labourers were out, once again crippling the harbour. Rather than negotiate with the workers, the employers, the Department of Labour and the police went ahead with the plan to force the labour supply company on the workers. All strikers were dismissed and ordered to leave the premises of the company compounds. A strong detachment of police arrived and immediately began attacking those in the vicinity with their batons. Several workers were seriously injured and 87 were arrested following this incident.

The companies took advantage of the strike to introduce the labour supply company. All workers were re-engaged on a weekly-paid basis. SACTU initially considered this an advance in their conditions of employment.

Togt labour has long been a source of friction between the workers and the employers, and the introduction of a weekly-paid permanent labour force is a definite gain by the workers.... With the establishment of a permanent labour force it will now be possible to organize the workers into a union and we hope that the employers will negotiate with this union and avoid any further trouble in the docks. ³

However, the low wage offered (£3 per week) was rejected by the workers. Arguing that they could earn more under the previous system if work were made available throughout the week (potentially 84s.), the men demanded increased wages and refused to work overtime. The workers put their case in this way:

The employers want to kill us with overtime. In the past we used to take off a day or two whenever we felt tired, but now that we are employed on a weekly basis we could not do this. We feel that more workers should be employed by the stevedoring companies and at the same time we should be paid a decent wage for the hard work we do .⁴

The brutal response of the employers was to dismiss the entire labour force and recruit new workers from Zululand to take their place. The workers had correctly recognized and resisted the employers' attempts to increase their control over the workers' labour time. But the combined forces of the state and the employers were used to crush this resistance and the workers were defenceless.

Port Elizabeth was the scene of another fierce struggle carried out by railway and dockworkers. For a long time these workers had demanded increased wages, but their demands had been brushed aside. At the beginning of 1957, the workers embarked on a go-slow strike to draw attention to their plight. On 26 February, they decided to start work one hour later and stop one hour earlier and not to work overtime or on weekends, in support of their demands for a wage increase from 1 Is. 6d. .per day to 25s. per day. Railway workers joined the dockworkers, demanding an increase from the present £4 10s. 0D. a month to £7.

The railway officials and shipping companies called on the state for assistance and the full range of its resources were mobilized to defeat the workers' actions. In addition to the normal representation by the Labour Bureau, the Department of Native Affairs officials, police and Special Branch, the army was called in and placed on standby orders. Stevedores were shipped in from Cape Town and East London by the companies. According to reports, these workers were told there was another bus and train boycott in progress making it impossible for Port Elizabeth stevedores to go to work. Armed police guarded the ships ensuring that there was no contact with the strikers. Govan Mbeki reported from Port Elizabeth at the time:

From March 2nd to 7th the harbour looked like a city which had recently been occupied by a foreign invading army. The armed might of a Government that regards African labour as the possession of a dominant white capitalist class strutted about in a great show of strength. ⁵

The stevedores returned to work on Monday, 4 March, but the shipping companies were only. prepared to allow them to resume work if they surrendered unconditionally and dropped their demands. Workers refused and were swiftly marched out of the harbour.

As they left, hundreds of barefooted convicts flooded into the harbour, driven at the point of a rifle to load manganese and to handle cargo in conditions that were not any better than those in which the slave drivers' whip cracked on the backs of slaves two centuries ago .⁶

On 5 March, railway workers were locked out and replaced by prison labour. A recruitment drive brought in workers endorsed out of major cities (with promises that their documents would be placed in order if they agreed to work in Port Elizabeth) and also large numbers from the Transkei and the Ciskei where food production had fallen. By the joint actions of the railway authorities, shipping companies, the police force, the army and the influx control measures, the essential flow of goods was not interrupted by a shortage of cheap labour.

Militant leaders like Vuyisile Mini, Caleb Mayekiso and Alven Bennie led the campaign to support the harbour workers within the SACTU Local Committee. SACTU appealed to the international working class to denounce the use of convict labour and the ICI7TU took the lead in issuing a warning to the South African regime. Within hours, Minister of Labour Schoeman conceded, ordering a ban on convict labour at the docks. The workers decided that since convicts were being withdrawn they should return to work to forestall the engagement of labour recruited in the Transkei and Ciskei. The companies were clearly in a stronger bargaining position with the state ensuring them a large army of surplus labour.

Stevedores were accepted back because they were relatively skilled and would ensure greater efficiency at the docks. The unskilled railway workers however were dismissed, their work-seeker permits withdrawn, and their reference books left unsigned as a means of punishment. The re-employed stevedores were subsequently paid at the rate of railway casuals, 9s. 6d. for married men and 7s. for single men, thereby cutting the workers' wages by between 2s. and 4s. 6d. per day.

From both accounts of the struggles of dockworkers in South Africa certain conclusions can be drawn. The collective action amongst African migrant workers on the docks is an indication of their disregard for the system which attempts to control their movements and stifle their militancy. In both cases, these workers acted in complete unity against insurmountable odds. However, in such a strategic sector of the economy, it was inevitable that the full power of the state was brought in to crush their resistance. The state's role, though a secondary one to that of individual capitalist companies, nevertheless renders their action against the working class that much more effective.

In both cases the workers gained invaluable experience as to the nature of capitalism and the role of the state, experience which they were able to use in assisting workers involved in future struggles in other industries. These workers were a powerful influence within SACTU and injected local committees with the same class consciousness and militant spirit with which they had carried out their own struggles.

Non-Racial Trade Unionism

In the South African context, it was a courageous act on the part of African workers to carry out a strike in defiance of the Native Labour Act. It was an even more courageous act in many cases to come out on strike with workers of other races, whether Coloured, Indian or White. Yet there are numerous examples of strikes which embodied this kind of non-racial unity.

1 1 WANTED TO SUPPORT MY COLOURED BROTHERS'- SPEKENHAM AFRICAN STRIKERS SENTENCED (CAPE TOWN). That was the headline of a New Age article which appeared in the 10 October 1957 edition, reporting on a strike by some 200 workers at Spekenham Food Products factory, Strikland, Cape Town; the workers' demands were for increased wages and better working conditions. The solidarity between the African and Coloured workers was a key factor throughout the four-week strike. All members of the FCWU and the A-FCWU were demanding at least £1-a-Day in line with the demand put forward by SACTU throughout the country. On the first day of the strike, twenty-seven African workers were arrested for contravening the Native Labour Act and several days later four Coloured workers were arrested for allegedly interfering with scabs trying to get to work.

Since 19 5 3, these workers had not received an increase in the cost-of- living-allowance (COLA) and were out to convince employers that they could not live on their existing wages. Their bosses responded by sacking the striking workers, claiming that they would be able to recruit sufficient scab labour to carry on production. In fact, they found it very difficult.

The non-racial unity demonstrated by strikers was followed up by the four Congresses jointly sending a deputation to see management to reopen negotiations with the workers.

We feel that the unfavourable conditions under which these employees were forced to work, the totally inadequate wages paid, left them no alternative but this action, when their employer refused to make any concessions to their demands for improvements. We wholeheartedly support the demands of these workers.

Signed by: Z. Malindi (ANC)

N. Daniels (SACPO)

D. Goldberg (COD)

L. Kellerman (SACTU) ⁷

The FCWU provided strike pay and food donations to the strikers throughout.

At the trial of the twenty-seven African workers charged under the Native Labour Act, these workers told how when they first arrived at work and found Coloured workers outside the gates, they decided to stand by them. One worker said,

I didn't hope to gain anything for myself. The reason 1 didn't go to work was that 1 wanted to support my Coloured brother workers who were on strike. ⁸

The Magistrate rejected these statements by African workers. They were found guilty and sentenced to a fine of £7 10s. 0D. each, or thirty days' imprisonment. Though the workers did not win immediate gains through their strike action, a Wage Determination was soon granted and their COLA increased.

This kind of unity was not uncommon between members of the FCWU and the A-FCWU who worked closely together on every issue affecting their general memberships. The same comradeship existed between the TWIU and the A-TWIU.

In March 1956, 1,200 workers staged one of the most successful strikes in the history of textile workers' struggles. The strike began on 12 March, when 900 Coloured workers walked out of Hex River Textile Mills, Western Cape. At this stage African workers remained at their jobs for fear of prosecution under the Native Labour Act and they were supported by Coloured workers in this stand. However, when a notice appeared on the factory gate advertising 900 vacancies, African workers walked out in solidarity. As predicted, these 242 African workers were rounded up by the police and taken to jail. The next day all workers were released on £3 bail, except three leaders - Joe Ndamoyi, Julius Busa and Kopie Baartman. Local Worcester residents showed their support for the workers by raising a large amount of money for the strike fund.

After four days of strike action, workers gained substantial increases in their wages as well as additional benefits. These included free overalls, the establishment of a sick benefit fund, the agreement to establish an Industrial Council for the worsted section of the industry, and the reinstatement of all workers was guaranteed. In short, by uniting as a strong force against the employers, these Coloured and African textile workers scored a victory for all workers at Hex River Textile Mills.

In another similar display of unity, 200 African male workers employed at a woolwashery in Durban went out on strike in support of twelve Indian women workers in 1959. Their employer, 0. T. H. Beiers (who had been interned in South Africa during the war for pro-Nazi sympathies) owned a farm where he reared chickens, in addition to owning two factories. He slaughtered these chickens to sell to ships passing through the Durban harbour.

If Beiers failed to get rid of all of his chickens, he usually forced them upon his elderly women workers, deducting whatever price he demanded from their wages. These twelve women, all widows, were already heavily exploited by Beiers and were barely able to feed themselves and their families from the miserable wages they were paid.

Both groups of workers, the African men and the Indian women, had joined the A-TWIU in Durban only months before the strike. These twelve women, now knowing the union would support them, decided to inform their employer that they did not wish to buy his fowls. As a result Beiers dismissed the women and immediately the 200 African workers rose to support them. Assembling outside the factory gates on Monday morning in their national Zulu dress of beautiful bead and leatherwork, these men demanded that Beiers come and address them on the matter of the women's dismissal.

Melville Fletcher, the union organizer, was called in by the workers. Beiers still refused to reinstate the women and instructed Fletcher to remove all workers from the premises, in fact creating a lockout. The workers then marched to the trade union offices and Beiers informed the Labour Department that his workers were on strike. Neither the employer nor the workers were prosecuted for an illegal lockout or strike.

Strikers mingled with passers-by persuading work-seekers not to enter the factory. On weekends they explained the reasons for the strike to unemployed Africans in the Zulu 'homelands' requesting them not to accept work there. As a result of their perseverance, there were no scabs recruited. Textile workers in England sent a cable of support to the A-TWIU and Southampton dockers cabled Beiers threatening not to unload any ship carrying his wool.

After two weeks, the Municipality threatened to throw the African strikers out of the Municipal barracks and endorse them back to the homelands. The workers and the Union considered that the lesser of the two evils was to accept the employer's offer to reinstate them at a higher pay-rate. The employer refused to reinstate the women but the Union found other higher-paying work for them as well. All of the men returned to work singing their Zulu folk songs, united and strong as members of the Union. ⁹

These are just a few examples of the kind of unity displayed by workers in South Africa who refused to accept the racial division of the workforce. For African workers in particular it was always a considerable risk to take. Such examples illustrate the level of working class consciousness attained by workers in SACTU-affiliated unions. True to the principles upon which SACTU was founded, they pursued a policy of unity amongst all sections of the working class and solidarity of all workers in their struggle against the South African ruling class.

A Tradition of Militancy

The strike by 3,800 African textile workers at Amato Textile Mills, Benoni (Transvaal) during February 1958, illustrates the conditions under which the state takes the lead in repression against the working class. The primary condition for such intervention is a long tradition of militancy on the part of the workers in a particular factory. A point is then reached when it becomes essential that all the power of the state be used to crush the unity and solidarity formed in the course of progressive struggles. This is exactly what happened at Amato Textile Mills, a large jute manufacturing company, in 1958.

Almost 4,400 African workers were employed at the factory and these workers provided the backbone of the A-TWIU in the Transvaal.

Wages were extremely low (£3 a week), barely enough to allow a worker and his family to survive. The workers' transport costs had also risen since they had been forcibly removed beyond the city limits to Daveyton and Watville and their rent trebled in the process. Wages had not been increased since 195 1.

At Amato there was an interesting mixture of very young, militant African workers and older, more experienced trade unionists. Together they had carried out many strikes and through these had gained a Medical Benefit Fund as well as other benefits. Union dues were collected by the employer as a concession to the A-TWIU. The introduction of the Native Labour Act did not deter these workers and in December 1956, 365 workers stopped work when a foreman dismissed two fellow workers. They were all charged with striking illegally and of the 365, 202 were found guilty.

In February 1958, workers went out again to demand higher wages. Management refused to consider any increases for the workers and the Native Labour Board officials refused to allow direct talks between the A-TWIU and the employer. The militant workers were ready to take action and many of them talked of burning the factory to the ground. Union leaders Edmund Cindi (Chairman of the Benoni A-TWIU branch) and Rufus Makuru (National President of the Union) persuaded workers to go home. When they returned to work they were prevented from entering the factory by armed police. The following day when workers came to collect their pay, an unprovoked baton charge took place injuring over forty workers. Eye-witnesses described the scene as a brutal and totally unexpected attack.

All workers were dismissed and told if they required jobs to report to Influx Control and the Native Affairs Department. By a combined effort on the part of employers and the state, some 340 militants were black-listed, with their employment possibilities blocked through influx control regulations. Strike leaders were among the dismissed and many of them were endorsed out of the urban areas or banished to the reserves where in most cases they had never set foot before. Unemployed activists who avoided being endorsed out lost their township accommodation as soon as they failed to pay the rent. This was a heavy blow to the organizational strength of the A-TWIU. Although the workers' militant spirit had not been crushed by these repressive measures, the mass strike action characteristic of Amato workers ceased to exist for some time.

In this case, the intervention of the state was direct and included physical force against the workers. As a consequence, workers were defenceless after having lost the right even to sell their only possession -their labour-power. SACTU passed a resolution at its 1958 Conference demanding that the victimized workers be reinstated and all Union facilities restored; a nation-wide boycott of Amato products was threatened if these demands were not met. However, this threat failed to materialize and the solidarity of Amato workers was fragmented and destroyed.

Resistance to Super-Exploitation

Without effective trade union organization, workers are without weapons in the struggle. SACTU and its affiliated unions realized this above all else. Only by organizing workers into strong trade unions could workers prevent their bosses from reaping even greater profits from the exploitation of their labour-power.

In 1956, as reported in an earlier chapter, the head of the Central Native Labour Board publicly stated that Africans were 'too childish' to understand trade unions. Militant food workers who resisted wage cuts in their industry proved the lie to such racist and paternalistic rhetoric.

In November 1959, management at LKB in Port Elizabeth informed workers that from then on they would be paid according to the scale of wages laid down in Wage Determination No. 179, issued by the Wage Board in August of the previous year. These wage rates were lower than those already in effect under the agreement between the trade union and the employer.

LKB was the biggest canning concern in South Africa and the company's plans were to extend these wage cuts to all other branches, thus drastically affecting the lives of thousands of Black workers. Canning workers were already bitter about other recent attacks on their union by the employers and the state. During the previous session of parliament, legislation had been passed depriving workers in the food and canning industry of the right to strike. Recently too, Frances Baard, local Secretary of the Union branch, had been refused permission to collect subscriptions on factory premises and company officials had refused to cooperate with one of the Union's committees. Lastly, A-FCWU President, Elizabeth Mafekeng, was driven into exile only weeks before.

Workers refused to accept the Wage Board agreement which would mean nearly 16 per cent reduction in wages. Management told them to leave the factory and return the following day at 2.00 p.m. to collect their wages. The time cards of over 1,000 African and Coloured workers were taken and a lockout was in effect.

Liz Abrahams, Acting General Secretary of FCWU, issued a statement to the employers warning of solidarity actions: 'Food and canning workers all over the country are carefully watching the fruit as it comes into their factories and will refuse to work fruit from P.E.'10 LKB was originally one of the firms on the Congress Alliance boycott list of the early 1950s (see Chapter 10), but after granting some concessions its name was removed. There was strong pressure from workers to request Congress to re-include LKB on the list in 1959.

African and Coloured workers remained strong and their bosses were noticeably worried about the dismal failure of their 'stay out of the factory' order. They had also failed to fill the factory with alternative labour. LKB workers were united in their opposition to starvation wages and refused all attempts to induce them to return to work.

Finally, the unity of the workers paid off. One month after the original declaration by management, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mr R. S. Ferreira, announced that LKB would not be introducing the new Wage Determination but would instead pay workers 'a bonus' to enable them to maintain the existing pay rates. He said this decision had been taken because LKB wanted a 'contented labour force' [sic]. The bosses' attempt to increase the rate of exploitation had been stopped.

The jubilant workers returned to the factory victorious after having won an important struggle. Their success against these savage attacks on their living standards clearly resulted from the strength of the Union and the unity of all workers.

The Verwoerd plan for the establishment of 'border industries' to make better use of readily-available cheap, Black labour from the reserves, led to the setting up of the Hammarsdale Clothing Factory in Hammarsdale, twenty-seven miles from Durban. It was one of the first examples of the border industry developments discussed in Chapter 4.

Employers at Hammarsdale did not expect the resistance that they encountered from the African workforce who refused to accept the conditions of exploitation imposed on them. In February 1959, 388 African workers walked out of the factory in support of a demand for increased wages. The workers were angered when they were told that the present owners had shut down their factories in Fordsburg and Durban to come to Hammarsdale where labour-power had been promised at a lower rate. After an agreement was concluded between employers and workers' representatives, the labour force returned to the factory. Agreement was also reached on other outstanding issues: (a) full recognition of the African Clothing Workers Union (Hammarsdale); (b) negotiations to be held before April 1960 for improvements in wages and working conditions; and (c) officials to be allowed to use the factory cloakroom for all trade union meetings.

However, due to the disruptive tactics of J. C. Bolton, Secretary of the Garment Workers Union (Natal), in his effort to smash the ACWU (a SACTU affiliate) workers were forced to resort to strike action again in February 1960. Chairman of the ACWU, Johannes Hiongwana, had approached management with a proposal to meet the Union's executive to discuss the question of wage increases as set down in the previous agreement. Management refused to deal with Hiongwana, instead labelling him an 'agitator', and then said that the only people they would negotiate with were 'Jimmy Bolton's union' from Durban and the Industrial Council for the Garment Workers.

When this was reported to the workers, the whole factory of over 500 workers walked out. They demanded that both Billy Nair (their Secretary) and Moses Mabhida (Chairman, SACTU-Natal) be present at all negotiations on their behalf. The employer eventually agreed to this but only on the condition that Bolton also be present; he further charged that the present committee of the Union did not represent the workers and that a new ballot to be conducted by Bolton had to be arranged. Apparently Bolton and the Industrial Council had agreed to certain wage increases which would bring wages of beginning workers up to £1 7s. 9d. per week. SACTU stated that Bolton had no right to interfere with the African workers at Hammarsdale, workers who were demanding £3 5s. 0D. per week.

The strike continued and 137 African workers were arrested under the Native Labour Act, including members of the Union committee. SACTU appealed to all workers to assist the Hammarsdale strikers, and people living in the surrounding area rallied a great deal of support. As a result of the strike the clothing factory was closed down and the proprietor decided to move back to Durban. The workers stood firm against the threats and intimidation of the bosses and the White trade union leaders who collaborated with them in an attempt to break the Union. Eventually this solidarity led to a resounding victory as the employer subsequently reopened the factory on terms acceptable to the ACWU and its members. Workers won their demands for the recognition of their trade union and the guarantee of increased wages from the 1st of April. The only unsatisfactory outcome was that the employers refused to reinstate the Chairman of the Union, Hiongwana. After several meetings with the workers, Union officials agreed to accept this condition of the settlement; immediately afterwards at a general meeting of workers Hiongwana was appointed full~time organizer of the Union.

The agreement concluded was also a defeat for Bolton and the Natal GWU, a Union notorious for betraying the interests of the workers and making 'sweetheart deals' with the employers. It was, however, a solid victory for the African workers at Hammarsdale in their struggle against below-subsistence wages. Even in the border industry areas, the ruling class could be defeated.

Strikes Initiated by New SACTU Unions

Most of the above examples involved established unions like the TWIU and the FCWU, strong and militant unions which had a history of strike actions by their members. In the course of SACTU's organizing campaigns, several new African unions were organized, in many cases by workers who had immediate grievances which they wanted settled. Some of the examples of strikes carried out by these newly-formed unions demonstrate a fresh spontaneity and surprising willingness to carry out sustained opposition to conditions imposed on them by the bosses.

The strike by Bay Transport Company workers of Port Elizabeth was one of the major disputes of 196 1, and is of significance in that the Native Labour Act officials were by-passed by both the employers and the workers. It is also significant because four years after the strike, in December 1965, ten African workers were sentenced to four and a half years' imprisonment for having 'furthered the aims of the banned African National Congress' by taking part in the 1961 strike.

Alven Bennie and other members of the Port Elizabeth Local Committee had been actively organizing these workers into a union during 1960. The union was still very small when the workers themselves decided to take action. African bus drivers were dissatisfied with the one-man operation (which they had agreed to try for a trial period) and they claimed the Company had not honoured certain promises with regard to wages and other matters. The registered trade union had negotiated an agreement with the Port Elizabeth transport company to cover White and Coloured bus drivers, but it could not represent the African workers at the bargaining table. The African drivers demanded that the agreement be extended to them and that they be guaranteed a minimum wage of £1 per day. (The banned ANC had supported the SACTU demand for minimum wage legislation.)

On 10 January 196 1, the 194 workers informed management that if their demands were not met, the single-decker buses would remain at the depot and the double-deckers would 'go slow'. When demands were not subsequently met, the union members carried out their threat and the workers of New Brighton walked to work. The African drivers were arrested but were allowed out on bail. Although the Company operated a skeleton service during the strike, the Black population of Port Elizabeth boycotted the Bay Transport buses for 40 days, often walking twelve to twenty-eight miles to and from work - an outstanding demonstration of solidarity.

The Port Elizabeth SACTU Local Committee, actively involved in the strike throughout, protested against the recruitment of scab labour by the Company. At one mass meeting chaired by SACTU activist Vuyisile Mini, the workers adopted three significant resolutions, pledging:

(a) to use all available recognized means employed by workers throughout the democratic world to protect workers' rights;

(b) to wage an uncompromising struggle against the Native Labour Act; and

(c) to register the appreciation of the untiring efforts of the bus workers to resolve the bus dispute amicably in spite of the hostile attitude adopted by the representatives of capital.

Finally, because of the economic disruption caused by the boycott, the Mayor of Port Elizabeth, together with representatives of the local Chambers of Commerce and Industry, called both parties to a meeting. At no time during this historic meeting was there any indication that those present regarded the matter as anything other than an industrial dispute; the Mayor and his followers did not consider themselves to be involved in a discussion of 'subversive' activity. They were merely anxious to break the deadlock that had almost brought the city to a standstill.

An independent tribunal was set up after negotiations between the Company and the African drivers failed. The SACTU LC as well as Head Office assisted the workers in the nomination of their legal representative (progressive lawyer, Joe Slovo) and spokesperson (banned trade unionist, Ray Alexander). Ex-Chief Justice Centilivres chaired the tribunal and the case was given a fair hearing.

As a result of the tribunal's findings, the Company raised wages. The starting rate for African drivers was to be £7 13s. 2d. per week, rising to £9 18s. 6d. and those drivers who did the work of conductors on one-man buses were to be paid an additional 10s. per week. Like their White and Coloured fellow workers, they were to receive an annual bonus representing 3 per cent of their annual pay, they were to be issued with free protective clothing, and they were to be given the right to become members of the Sick Benefit Society. A new SACTU Union, the Bay Transport Company Workers Union was formed on a much stronger basis than its predecessor.

The workers had scored a significant victory, but one which they had to pay for three years later. By 1963, the state had launched a vicious attack on the progressive elements in the Eastern Cape, a traditional stronghold of the banned ANC. Over 1,000 people were arrested in the Port Elizabeth area, the majority forced to serve long prison sentences for having furthered the aims of the ANC after its banning.

Ten of the PE busmen, whose 1961 strike became 'subversive' in 1964, were also among the victims of Apartheid justice. During their trial, the defence brought three leading members of the ANC from Robben Island prison, where they were serving life sentences, to give evidence on behalf of the accused to the effect that their strike was in no way connected with the ANC. But the Magistrate ignored this evidence, concluding that the workers had 'danced to the tune of the ANC' and that by taking part in the strike they had furthered the aims of the banned organization.

The trial received little publicity and the ten workers were herded into prison quietly. Though their sentences were later reduced from the original four and a half years, this case represents a glaring example of the response of the South African ruling class to African workers who dare to challenge the system by demanding improved wages and working conditions through strike action. Upon release from prison, these men were further victimized by being sent out to the Bantustans to rot.

In March 1961, 360 workers, members of a new SACTU affiliate, the Match Workers Union (Durban) staged a successful demonstration at the Lion Match Company, demanding higher wages. The police and the Labour Department tried to intervene but workers refused to speak to them. They won increased wages, a non-contributory pension scheme and a medical benefit fund.

In August of the same year, one of the trade union leaders was dismissed and the factory workers tried to send a deputation to the Manager in regard to his reinstatement. When this failed they held a lunch-hour demonstration with placards stating: 'NO DISMISSALS'; RECOGNIZE OUR UNION';'DEMAND £1 A DAY';'LOW WAGES BREED CRIME'; 'KWASHIORKOR IS KILLING US'. Police were called in and a convoy armed with sten guns arrived. Workers were told to stop demonstrating and their claims would be considered later, but they were not satisfied with this assurance. They were then given five minutes to disperse and 140 were arrested and later released on £5 bail. Of those 140, 136 were charged with an 'illegal strike' and fined £5 or ten days' hard labour. The Durban SACTU Local Committee spared no effort in attempting to negotiate with the management of the firm, but this was refused. Once again the full force of the state was used against the strikers. Though only recently organized into a union, they demonstrated their willingness to stand up to the bosses and government in pressing for trade union rights and a living wage.

In each of these examples of strike action taken by SACTU unions, one thing is common. Despite the restrictions imposed upon African workers even before contemplating strike action, each case has demonstrated the courage and commitment of those workers in their struggle against exploitation. Restrictions like the Native Labour Act and other punitive legislation, the operation of the Labour Bureaux established under this Act, and the threat of the industrial reserve army of unemployed labour being used by the state - all of these obstacles and more did not deter these workers from carrying out their collective strike actions.

Through these various actions these SACTU affiliated unions managed to gain some important concessions from the ruling class; consequently, they prevented an even greater rate of exploitation of themselves and their brothers and sisters in other industries and areas. They also gained for themselves and for other workers a stronger sense of class solidarity and heightened class consciousness. By conceiving of strike action as one method of attack on the whole exploitative system under South African capitalism, workers demonstrated that there is no power greater than the combined force of a united working class.

If, as Lenin said, each strike was a 'school of war' where workers learned more effective ways of carrying forward the struggle against their common enemy, then SACTU was one of the 'classrooms' in which they were taught. As a trade union coordinating body, its role in strike actions was a supportive and educative one. However, because of SACTUs belief in the importance, indeed the necessity, of linking economic with political struggle, the 'lessons' delivered to workers always centred on ways in which one individual strike could be connected to a whole network of broader issues central to the nature of the total society. Again, to quote Lenin:

The struggle of factory Workers against the employers inevitably turns into the struggle against the entire capitalist class, against the whole social order based on the exploitation of labour by capital. ¹¹

Learning, however, is a dialectical process. What the workers learned from SACTU was at every step along the path of struggle equally matched by the militant inspiration provided by the Black rank-and-file workers themselves.

NOTES

1. New Age, 9 September 1954.

2 Leon Levy, 'African Trade Unionism in South Africa', Africa South in Exile, London, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 32-43.

3. New Age, 5 March 195 9.

4. New Age, 9 April 195 9.

5. New Age, 14 March 1957.

6. Ibid.

7. New Age, 5 September 195 7.

8. New Age, 10 October 19 5 7.

9. Information on this strike was taken from B. du Toit, op. cit.

10. New Age, 17 December 195 9.

11. V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 2, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1960, p. 107.

9 WOMEN PLAY A LEADING ROLE

When women massively become political the revolution has moved to a new stage.

Vietnamese Women, December 1970

'Wathin't a bafazi, way ithint'imbolodo uzo kufa'

(Now you have touched the women (Strydom), you have struck a rock, you have dislodged a boulder; you will be crushed).

a Freedom Song sung by South African

women protesting against the extension

of Pass Laws to African women, 1956

The Historical Roots of Oppression

The unprecedented militancy demonstrated by South African women during the 1950s advanced the liberation struggle significantly. However, to speak generally of South African women is to obscure the real importance of these bitter struggles. It is the African women in particular - those who suffer from both national and sexual oppression - who sacrificed most in the struggle against the South African state's definition of them as 'superfluous appendages' of African male workers.

African women workers have had a specific role to play. Exploited as workers, oppressed as Africans, they bear the additional burden of sexual inequalities. In South Africa, women provide another source of readily available cheap Black labour so necessary for the system to survive. Yet these women, whose consciousness has spanned several dimensions of oppression, played a crucial role in the advancement of the working class struggle spearheaded by SACTU.

Similarly, African women played a leading role in the general political struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. Specific campaigns led by the women were those which attacked the basis of their particular oppression. In their campaigns against the extension of pass laws to African women, against the government-sponsored beer halls and their attacks on the dipping tanks in the rural areas, the women represented a strong, united force to be reckoned with. Their strength and determination inspired the men who fought alongside them and they advanced the liberation struggle considerably during this period. The origins of the oppression of African women in South Africa are similar to those which characterized all colonized nations during the plunder of previous centuries. Expropriation of tribal lands, slavery, forced labour, destruction of indigenous culture - these were the effects of the onslaught of colonialism on the people of Africa and elsewhere. Two aspects combined to define the particular form of oppression suffered by women in these societies: the destruction of traditional social structures which had given status to both sexes, and the sexual exploitation of African women by the White colonizers. They became a ,colony within a colony'.

In South Africa, the Apartheid state has ensured the continuation of a system in which African women are oppressed on the basis of their skin colour and their sex. Through the system of migrant labour, the pass laws and other special laws affecting African women, the regime has created a particularly unique form of oppression, distinguishing it from other forms of female oppression within capitalist societies. In South Africa women are stripped of all those rights considered basic human rights throughout the world - the right to choose where to live and work, the right to live with their partners and husbands, the right to bring up and care for their own children.

Apartheid Laws and African Women

The most devastating laws affecting African women are those which ensure the maintenance of the migrant labour system. Robbed of their productive lands, burdened with numerous taxes, African men have been forced to sell their labour-power on the farms, in the mines and in the factories of 'White' South Africa. Their wives and children are ,superfluous appendages' left to live in the barren and desolate Bantustans, termed 'homelands' by the Apartheid regime.

The men and women who work in the cities are illegal immigrants in their own country - 'labour units' to be defined as productive or nonproductive. Even those who have spent all of their working lives in the townships surrounding the White cities are treated as 'temporary sojourners'. More and more people are being forcibly removed from their dwelling places in the towns and cast out to the barren reserves as all African workers are being turned into migrant labourers.

Women serving no purpose for the White economy are discarded, unable to live with their husbands except perhaps during the annual two-week holiday allowed migrant workers. They fight for survival in the barren reserves, eking out a miserable existence from what little land is available, supplemented only by the meagre earnings sent by their husbands. Kwashiorkor and other diseases associated with malnutrition are widespread and death from starvation, particularly among children, is common in the reserves.

Insofar as capitalism always seeks the highest rate of profit, it is in the interests of the South African ruling class to keep the Apartheid system intact and refine the migrant labour policy accordingly. By shifting the burden of the maintenance of the workers' families onto the backs of African women in the reserves, the reaping of super-profits is guaranteed. Employers can then justify the below-subsistence wages paid to African workers by arguing that they are partially supported from subsistence farming in the 'homelands'. In reality, poverty and disease are rampant in the reserves and a stable family unit is an impossibility.

The pass laws have been described as the 'African worker's handcuffs'.' BY controlling the movement of the African labour force, they prevent Africans from selling their labour freely. All Africans over the age of sixteen are forced to carry these 'passes' which prove they are employed, that they have a permit to live in the city where they work and that they have permits to seek work. Failure to produce these on demand renders the African workers liable to summary arrest and conviction.

Passes for women were not introduced until the mid- 1950s. When the announcement was made, South African women launched a massive campaign against passes, realizing what the consequences would be. They had seen their men harassed and arrested, fined, imprisoned and deported to White farms as forced labour - all as a result of their failure to produce passes on demand. They had suffered through the pass raids and the disappearance of their husbands and sons and knew what this would mean if they too had to carry passes. The women's resistance campaign is documented in a later section of this chapter.

What has been described so far are the effects on African women of laws which apply to both men and women. But what of those laws which oppress women solely on the basis of their sex? To maintain its subjugation of women in the Bantustans, the Apartheid regime has devised a special interpretation of the customary life and laws of traditional African society, an interpretation which is an insult to the heritage of the African people. These laws have been distorted and applied by alien White courts and do not reflect the true position of women in traditional, pre-colonial society. Under what is now termed African customary law, unless an African woman has been 'emancipated', she is deemed a perpetual minor, always under the guardianship of a man (firstly her father and when she marries, her husband). Only unmarried women, widows or divorcees can apply for 'emancipation' to a Native Commissioner's Court, which takes into account the woman's 'character', education, other abilities and whether she owns immovable property. If granted emancipation, the woman becomes free of her guardian's control. As it stands, however, women cannot own property in their own right, claim inheritance, or act as guardians of their children. They cannot enter into contracts, sue or be sued without the aid of their male guardians.

Regardless of their age and marital status, African women are always subject to the authority of men. The government dares not make significant changes in these laws for fear of greater independence and militancy of African women. The system is designed to ensure a largely docile, subservient reserve army of labour to be brought into capitalist production when it is needed, discarded when not. ²

Indian and Coloured women also suffer oppression based on skin colour and sex. The position of White women corresponds with that of women in most other male-dominated societies. They endure inequalities in employment, wages and in law but at the same time enjoy other advantages merely because they are White in South Africa; for example, White women have the vote. Coloured and Indian women on the other hand, are discriminated against in the sphere of education, housing, employment, wages and health. Laws which have had detrimental effects on their family lives are those such as the Group Areas Act which has legislated the forced removal of Black families to townships based on racial grouping, leaving the inner-city areas as 'White areas'.

Black South African women suffer oppression at the hands of the Apartheid state which differs in degree and in kind from that of their male counterparts. In spite of this and in spite of the attempts to divide women by racial categories, South African women have consistently stood up and confronted the state in unity. No better example can be provided than the women's campaigns of the 1950s. Their struggles illustrate the spontaneous militancy which emerged and once directed, proved to be a significant threat to both employers and the state.

Women Rise Up Against the State

Women's resistance campaigns are not a recent phenomenon in South Africa. As far back as 1913 in the Orange Free State, African women in urban locations organized demonstrations against being forced to buy new residence permits each month. Demonstrations spread throughout the province and the campaign continued for years, eventually leading to the withdrawal of these permits. Similarly in 1918, the newly-formed Bantu Women's League of South Africa launched a series of anti-pass campaigns which raised the political consciousness of African women.

In later years, Indian women organized mass campaigns and strikes against the taxes they had to pay. These women, brought to South Africa as indentured labourers, recognized that they were a source of cheap labour on the colonial plantations and fought against these slave conditions. Coloured women too, continually resisted attempts by the successive racist regimes to use them as pawns in the implementation of segregation policies.

The African National Congress Women's League had for many years been organizing women for the national liberation struggle. These women also performed a more traditional function, that of providing food and accommodation for ANC conferences and meetings.

It was not until April 1954, when the Federation of South African Women (FSAW) was born, that women of all races united to carry on the struggle against racial and sexual discrimination. At the founding conference, 146 women delegates representing 230,500 women from all over South Africa gathered in Johannesburg, 'to discuss how to win social, economic and political rights, and how to make a greater contribution in the struggle to win freedom for all of the people of South Africa'.³ Many women who were later to become SACTU leaders attended this historic conference. Veteran trade unionist Ray Alexander praised the past efforts of women in her speech:

We are here because we want to find solutions to the problems which mean so much to us and to those we represent. Our women have shown their worth in building the A.N.C., trade unions, in strikes and demonstrations. They have played an important part in the Defiance Campaign - our women defied the unjust laws and went to jail. Many were expectant mothers, while others had babies on their backs.⁴

In 1955, the Minister of Native Affairs announced that African women were to be issued with passes beginning in January 1956. This was the impetus for the major women's campaign of the 1950s - the Anti-Pass Campaign. The first major protest against the pass laws occurred in October 1955, when 2,000 women, mostly Africans, converged in Pretoria to voice their opposition and to present their signed protests. Lilian Ngoyi, garment worker and President of FSAW, explained the militancy of the women to their men, who were in most cases shocked by this well-coordinated and bold stand: 'Men are born into the system and it is as if it has become a life tradition that they carry passes. We as women have seen the treatment our men have - when they leave home in the morning you are not sure if they will come back. If the husband is to be arrested, and the mother, what about the child? ⁵

The campaign intensified in 1956 when the government began issuing passes to sections of women least likely to protest - women farm workers in particular. Protests grew throughout the country and in many towns women gathered together to burn their passes, their 'badges of slavery'. The campaign, spearheaded by the FSAW with assistance from the ANC Women's League and SACTU, steadily gained momentum during 1956 and culminated in a mass demonstration in Pretoria on 9 August 1956, the date now designated as South African Women's Day. On that day in 1956, women poured into Pretoria and Johannesburg from all over South Africa by train, bus and car. Port Elizabeth women had raised £700, enough for 70 women to attend. On this day some 20,000 women assembled in Pretoria, all heading for the Union Buildings to present their protest to the Prime Minister himself, Johannes Strydom. The women sang, 'Strydom you have struck a rock, you have touched the women' as the four leaders (Lilian Ngoyi, Rahima Moosa, Sophie Williams and Helen Joseph) representing each 'racial' group, marched up to the Office of the Prime Minister where they left thousands of petition forms at the door. After 30 minutes of complete silence, the women sang freedom songs and then dispersed, walking away from one of the most incredibly organized and fantastic demonstrations in the history of women's struggles in South Africa.

Despite this tremendous opposition, passes for women were introduced and as predicted brought increased suffering to Africans. However, this did not mean an end to women's protests as they continued to organize against the pass laws throughout the country.

Thousands of women took part in massive rallies, processions and demonstrations in Johannesburg during 1958. Zeerust, in the Western Transvaal, was the centre of the most bitter struggle. In one village, only 76 out of 4,000 women accepted pass books, many burning them as an expression of defiance. The women's anger was directed not only against the state, but also against any chiefs who collaborated with the South African regime. Some bloody incidents occurred during these acts of resistance and many women were beaten, shot, their houses burned and some forced into banishment.

Elsewhere throughout the country groups of women continued to resist the pass system by refusing to accept reference books. In every centre, women members of SACTU actively campaigned against passes, calling on women workers to defy these oppressive laws. Throughout this period countless women were arrested, detained and beaten, but this repression did not stop the women.

Natal Erupts: Protests Against Beer-Halls and Dipping Tanks

Uprisings led by the women spread throughout Natal during 1959 and 1960. The major protests emanated from the Cato Manor shack settlement, where African residents lived in extreme poverty. Their homes had no lighting or sewerage provided and families were subjected to constant raids by police. The women's resentment focussed on the system of municipal beer-halls.

The law prevented Africans from brewing their own liquor at home and yet allowed men to go to municipal beer-halls to drink the 'Bantu Beer' provided there. These beer-halls were a source of tax revenue to assist in the administration of Apartheid machinery. African women continued to defy the law, brewing liquor at home to sell in order to earn a few pennies more and retain a traditional form of hospitality. Because of the already meagre wages their men brought home, the women deeply resented the money they drank away in the beer-halls. They argued that the beer-halls should be closed and that they should be allowed to brew at home. Police raids intensified as the women's anger built up.

On 18 June 1959, some 2,000 Cato Manor women gathered to tell their grievances to a local official. The response they received was vicious: hundreds of women and children struck down by police wielding batons. The township erupted and violence spread. Municipal buildings were burned down and vehicles were destroyed. Three Africans were shot and killed as they tried to burn down a beer-hall. ANC leaders called on the people to be non~violent and appealed for peace, but the disturbances spread. This incident provided the impetus for an unprecedented movement which spread throughout the city and countryside.

The militant women of Natal called for a total boycott of the beerhalls. Leaders like Dorothy Nyernbe, Florence Mkize and Gladys Manzi inspired the women who carried out an intensive campaign of picketing the beer-halls in a number of municipalities. There were huge demonstrations and women marched right into the beer-halls, attacking the men who dared to come and drink there, and destroying the object of their oppression - the beer-hall itself. Stephen Dlamini recalls how effective their campaign was: 'In the evenings when beer-halls were normally 100 per cent full, only a handful were there and it was suspected that even some of these may have been police spies. But the ordinary rank and file workers never went in. ⁶

When men in the beer-halls saw the women coming, they fled immediately. The police were always there. They tried to prevent the women from entering, but they were usually outsmarted. Mate Mfusi observed one such incident:

These women were very powerful. Some came half dressed (in traditional dress) with their breasts exposed, and when they got near this place the Blackjacks (police) tried to block the women. But when they saw this, the women turned and pulled up their skirts. The police closed their eyes and the women passed by and went in! ⁷

Elias Mbele recalls a time 'when the women took off their panties, filled them with beer and said, "Look, this is what happens," as they squeezed them out'. ⁸

At first the men were shocked by the actions of the women; chauvinist attitudes were revealed as they witnessed their women attacking a symbol of their domain. However, they did not retaliate or fight back and once they saw police attacking the women viciously, they fully supported the women in their struggle. ANC and SACTU men gave their support to the women and the youth in particular backed them up, often coming back to the beer-halls the following week to finish off the job. Many beer-halls were closed but police action intensified against illegal brewing. As a result, many leaders were jailed and women severely beaten.

In all of the various acts of resistance, the unifying current was the women's hatred of the dreaded pass laws and influx control and their effect on family life, both in the urban townships and in the rural areas. When the uprising spread to the rural areas, women attacked yet another edifice of their particular oppression - the dipping tanks. Women were forced to fill and maintain these dipping tanks for cattle without payment. They reacted against this form of exploitation by burning and destroying the dipping tanks. The protests spread throughout Natal and three-quarters of the tanks were destroyed. In one village, police arrested the entire crowd of demonstrators, nearly 400 women, and they were given the option of a fine of £35 or four months' imprisonment. They all chose prison, many taking their babies with them to the jails.

Despite police beatings, arrests and imprisonments, the spirits of the women in Natal remained high. At the December 1959 Conference of the ANC in Durban, as Govan Mbeki spoke from the chair, the women were rushing at the door and yelling, 'We must go out and defy ... !' Mbeki said, 'Bavulele Mabangeni!' (Open the doors for them).⁹ That year also, the men made a special bright red banner for the Conference which read, 'Makabongwe Amakosikazi'(We Thank the Women).

Violence erupted again in Cato Manor early in 1960. The people still lived in appalling slum conditions and police raids had intensified. One African policeman, Dludla, was notorious for his treatment of residents. Determined never to walk away from a house-raid without an arrest, Dludla would always carry a spare bottle of illicit spirits in his pocket and conveniently place it under a pillow or elsewhere in order to ensure his quota of victims. He often said, 'I'll ask for your passes here and in heaven too!'

A series of events occurred which further added to the build-up of hatred for police actions in Cato Manor, by now a nest of seething uneasiness. At one weekend demonstration police shot a baby on the mother's back and this proved too much for the people to take. Shortly thereafter the masses retaliated, killing nine police (including Dludla) and the ANC declared that this kind of occurrence was a result of the degrading conditions and vicious police harassment of residents.

The upsurge of women's protests in 1959 posed some vital questions for the ANC leadership at the time. Firstly, the women's actions -especially in the rural areas - were unexpected even by their male counterparts in the organization. Moses Mabhida has made some interesting comments on the situation at the time. For instance, the fact that women had to take the stand they did, without their men knowing, indicated to him that perhaps the leadership of the ANC did not understand very well the problems of the people. 'The fact also may be that because of African attitudes, the society didn't expect women to participate in the way that they did.'¹⁰

Another interesting question which emerged from this campaign was the apparent readiness of the people to take up arms against the Apartheid state. Certainly many of the women, and many rank and file members of the ANC, thought that the time had come for an armed uprising. Among the leadership though, there were those who feared that the situation would become uncontrollable. Reflecting on this situation, Mabhida had this to say:

When the women demonstrated, 1 think it was one of the most powerful demonstrations. Unfortunately for our people, we didn't realize the extent of the organization of the people, which was at that time very high, and the women formed a very strong nucleus for a powerful organization. If 1 may say, if our people had taken it further, it might have taken the same trend as it did in Iran - maybe not exactly the same, but the extent of organization and the militancy of the people was almost the same. ¹¹

A prominent woman member on the Natal ANC Executive kept asking the others, 'How long shall we go on with these demonstrations which are one-sided in the sense that the police assault our people, and in all ways we ask them not to retaliate?' It was a question which was to be posed over and over again in the next few years and one which was resolved to some extent by the decision of the ANC in 1961 to turn to armed struggle.

SACTU and Women's Struggles

Throughout the years, SACTU has consistently recognized that women, and particularly African women, suffer an additional form of oppression and therefore have a distinct role to play in the political and trade union struggles in South Africa. Their support for the struggle of women was part of the commitment to the general struggle for complete emancipation of the people of South Africa and a commitment to build a South Africa free from oppression on the basis of race, class or sex.

As SACTU stated in a letter of fraternal greetings to the Transvaal Provincial Conference of the Women's Federation in November 1956,

It is the women of South Africa who have demonstrated to all progressive forces the true meaning of militancy and organization and we in the trade union movement are determined to follow your courageous example.

The campaign against Pass Laws is 'basic to the struggle for freedom'. As you fight laws for women, we fight them for workers.

Let us not rest until the absolute value of every individual is recognized and all oppressive legislation defeated.

Year after year SACTU joined with all other progressive forces to condemn the pass laws, and particularly their extension to African women. At its first Annual National Conference in March 1956, held in Cape Town, Frances Baard led a lengthy discussion on the effect on women of the pass laws.'Once women accept the passes,' she said,'they will be jailed every day.' Resolutions condemning the pass laws were approved at every conference and May Day pledges always included a call to continue the fight against them. Local committees in each area were called upon to unite with the women in their struggle and take action relevant to the local situation.

During 1958 and 1959, when employers were making the possession of passes a condition of women's employment, SACTU considered it necessary to take effective counter-action.` In this case, SACTU was defending their rights both as workers and as women. The SACTU 1959 Conference Report stated that SACTU had contacted the Chamber of Industry and Commerce requesting they intervene because African women opposed pass laws and in the interests of harmonious labour relations the Chambers should bring pressure on the government. Their request was refused. SACTU later wired the Associated Chambers of Commerce meeting in Margate, asking them to oppose the issuance of reference books to African women. The reply: 'Your telegram acknowledged. Questions of this nature entirely outside scope of our Industry and no comment can be made."' This response was then strongly attacked by SACTU in a press release and SACTU decided to approach employers directly.

In October 1958 a circular went out to 400 employers of African women. In it, SACTU stated that there was no legal compulsion for employers to register African women, nor for them to take out reference books.'The Pass system,'the circular pointed out,'is the greatest cause of unrest and dissatisfaction among African men. With the extension of this system to African women, this unrest and dissatisfaction will be increased 1,000-fold.'

Within the trade union movement, SACTU alone campaigned against passes for women. In November 1958 they appealed to the SATUC to join SACTU in a deputation to the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce and the Federated Chambers of Industry, stating that the issue of passes to women was a violation of their rights as workers for freedom of movement and association, and of their right to sell their labour freely. Once again, the TUC betrayed the interests of the majority of African workers and sent no reply to SACTU.

The 1958 SACTU Conference labelled the whole Pass System as basically anti-worker and anti-trade union. Referring specifically to the case of African women, Conference recognized that the women's struggle against passes was the concern of all workers and called on all affiliated unions, local committees and the trade union movement as a whole to support the women's campaign without qualification. Though as we know the campaign did not result in the abolition of passes, it contributed greatly to the politicization of the African working class and to the mobilization of the masses throughout the country in the late 1950s. At the 1960 SACTU Conference, congratulations were extended to the African population in their fight against the pass laws, 'the very basis of cheap labour in South Africa, and the instrument the capitalist class to preserve wage slavery'. ¹⁴

The Effect of the Natal Uprisings

The militancy demonstrated by the women in Natal in 1959 had a profound impact on SACTU as well as activists in the political movement. One delegate at the 1960 SACTU Conference stressed the importance of SACTU linking up with the struggles of peasants and in particular the women. He felt that SACTU had 'missed the boat in this recent situation, that old methods had to be discarded and that it was important to know and feel the pulse of the people'. ¹⁵

In Natal itself, the SACTU Local Committees was already active in tapping this upsurge of militancy in its campaign to double the SACTU Natal membership and build up 100 new factory committees. Billy Nair, Secretary, explained:

The 1959 demonstrations in Natal and the tremendous advances in the trade union field must be exploited to the full. SACTU is aware that it has a decisive role to play in advancing the struggle not only for higher wages and better working conditions but also for freedom for all in South Africa.

Over 10,000 members joined SACTU during the great political upsurge in Natal last year. Our task in the coming months is to consolidate this force and to increase our membership and influence amongst the working people of Natal. ¹⁶

The 1959 campaigns by peasant women and the women's campaigns in general, did influence SACTU to devote greater attention to organizing workers and peasants in the rural areas and to promote greater unity among the oppressed people of Natal generally. This became even more crucial after the banning of the ANC in April 1960. A Natal Rural Areas Committee was formed and together with SACTU called several 'Workers and Peasants' Conferences'. Women played a leading part in these and other conferences. At one meeting in December 1962, attended by 1,500 people, the women's leaders Gladys Manzi and Dorothy Nyembe (Secretary and Chairman of the FSAW, Natal, respectively) were the principal speakers. On other occasions, speakers included Vera Pormen, President of the Federation in Natal, and member of the SACOD before her banning in April 1962, and Fatima Meer of the Natal Indian Congress. Natal thus became a vital area of SACTU organizing in the early 1960s before the period of heavy repression directed against its leaders and members.

Other SACTU campaigns which focussed on women's issues specifically included one against the introduction of taxes for African women, and another calling for equal compensation for African and White widows following the death of 435 miners at Clydesdale Colliery in January 1960.

At the 1959 Conference, a FCWU delegate described the introduction of taxes for women as a 'terrible blow' and appealed for unity, stressing that the 'men must help the women; it is their struggle too!' African women earning between £ 15 and £20 per month now had to pay £ 1 per year tax and an extra £ 1 per year for every £5 above a wage of £20 a month. The poll tax for African men earning between £ 15 and £20 a month was raised to £2. These represented large amounts to Black workers and their families, barely existing on their starvation wages.

The discrepancy between compensation offered African and White widows of the Clydesdale victims was outrageous. A White widow would receive a lump sum of £75 for immediate expenses and £40 for medical expenses, a pension of £ 13 1Is. 4d. a month with an extra £6 15s. 8d. a month for each child (up to three children), and on remarriage, two years pension in a lump sum with children's allowances up to the age of seventeen. African dependants were to receive one lump sum payment of approximately £ 180, nothing more. 11 The inhumanity displayed by the mining company, which more than a month after the disaster could still not provide a full list of African miners killed, shocked the world. SACTU took on the responsibility of arranging for a memorial service and launching a fund to assist the African dependants. The campaign for equal compensation fell on deaf ears, and African miners' widows were left destitute.

In sum, SACTU welcomed the campaigns undertaken by women in the late 1950s and pledged political and material support for their militant actions. The organization recognized the oppression of women as being of a specific kind distinct from that based on class and race alone. But it is the women within SACTU, women who experienced this particular form of oppression directly, who had the least to lose and who contributed a great deal to the struggle for non-racial trade unionism.

Women Workers and SACTU

Because of the practical issues of our society, the differences between men and women died a natural death ... a worker is a worker whether Black, White, man or woman.¹⁸

Certainly the 'practical issues' confronting both men and women workers demanded a special kind of unity in their fight against employers and the state. Under Apartheid, class and racial divisions are fostered to a much greater extent than divisions between the sexes. However, the fact remains that African women workers are at the bottom of the scale in terms of wages, rights of residence in the towns, working conditions and other basic rights.

From the beginning, SACTU recognized the vulnerability of African women workers to super-exploitation by the bosses:

It must be the task of the entire trade union movement to lend a helping hand to organize all women in the industry, especially African women, so they can take their rightful place in the trade union movement of South Africa and make an end of the system which uses women as the source of cheap labour.... The key is organization. Only when women in the trade union movement are well organized with men, can it be a truly representative trade union movement. We call upon all trade unionists to encourage women workers in their place of work to become active members of their unions and play a part in strengthening the trade union movement in this country and taking up the great issues of an end to the inferior position of women in the industries and trades, and for equal pay for equal work. ¹⁹

In one sense, however, African women workers had one less obstacle c