11. SACTU ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT
Of the different types of solidarity with the oppressed peoples of Southern Africa, international working class solidarity is the most important and potentially the most effective because it emanates not from charity or humanitarian motives but rather out of a recognition of common class interests and shared conditions of life under capitalism. The purpose of this chapter is to document the strengths and weaknesses of trade union solidarity work in support of SACTU's nonracial trade unionism from 1955 to 1964.
Before doing so, it is essential to point out that effective international working class solidarity is never a one-way process whereby initiatives and actions flow in only one direction. Nor is such solidarity meaningful if restricted to rhetoric rather than proletarian action. It would be politically incorrect for SACTU to have called for international solidarity against Apartheid if it were not also willing to educate and commit its membership to support workers' struggles elsewhere.
Although confronted daily by the extreme conditions of economic exploitation typical of Apartheid society, SACTU's record clearly demonstrates that the organization never fell victim to the narrow nationalism so characteristic of many trade union centres. Travel restrictions and geographical isolation notwithstanding, SACTU leaders persisted in acquainting themselves and their organized workers with the major world processes of the day - de-colonization, anti-imperialism and working class struggles throughout the world.
Between 1955 and 1963, SACTU Head Office in Johannesburg established regular contact with both major international trade union federations (the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)), twenty national trade union centres in Africa and at least fifty such bodies in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand. Most of this work was handled by Phyllis Altman, Assistant General Secretary, between 1956 and September 1963, when she was banned from all trade union activity.
Workers Unity, the official organ of SACTU, and newspapers of affiliated unions1 devoted considerable space to workers' struggles on both the economic and political fronts in other parts of the world. International working conditions in given industries were analysed and always compared with the super-exploited conditions of the African workers in South Africa. The inferior education system for Black people in South Africa, reinforced by the rigid censorship of news, made these trade union papers among the few sources of information on the international political situation available to the oppressed masses. The revolutionary content on both domestic and international issues was undoubtedly the major reason for their being banned in the 1960s.
In the era of imperialist-inspired cold war hysteria (1950s), SACTU never failed to voice its unqualified support for revolutionary and progressive struggles. Workers Unity and related union papers condemned the intervention of imperialist powers in Egypt and endorsed the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956. Similarly, the organization never failed to oppose repression and undemocratic actions. Also in 1956, a protest meeting was called against the closure of the Soviet Consulate and the severing of diplomatic relations with the USSR. SACTU leaflets stated: 'The South African people have no quarrel with the Soviet people. We want peace and friendship.'
This commitment to international peace and disarmament was annually confirmed at national conferences. Calling for an end to the nuclear arms race, the cessation of atomic tests in the Sahara, and the removal of all rocket and military bases in Africa, the 1960 Conference resolved that, 'We affirm that peace will not come to workers as a gift but must be won through their own efforts.' SACTU opposition to militarism was inextricably linked to the fact that South African defence spending had risen greatly in comparison with expenditures for social amenities for Blacks. Every Black person in South Africa identifies an armed Apartheid state as a direct obstacle to the liberation of the oppressed people from White supremacy in Southern Africa.
The Chinese revolution also inspired SACTU activists. Solidarity visits by Elizabeth Mafekeng (President, A-FCWU) and Phyllis Altman brought first-hand observations of the social benefits resulting from a radical restructuring of society. Mafekeng's comments on China reflected the concerns of an African woman and working class leader:
Today (1956) there are big factories and no unemployment. There are hospitals for the sick, creches for the children and a doctor attending each factory. Mothers have special time off for feeding their babies. Children do not suffer because their mothers are at work. These remarkable changes in China have been won through the struggles of the people and the sincerity of the leaders. 2
Throughout the 1950s, SACTU's paper featured stories on the new society being created by the Chinese people, in obvious contrast to the appalling conditions of life for Black people in South Africa.
Elsewhere in Asia, SACTU took consistently progressive stands in support of workers' rights. Each year SACTU would campaign on behalf of the famous twenty Matsukawa railway workers on trial for twelve years in Japan and sentenced to death. Their 1961 acquittal was followed by this statement from Acting General Secretary Mark Shope:
... Above all, please convey our admiration to our twenty fellow-workers who remained steadfast throughout the twelve long years they were on trial with the constant threat of death hanging over them. They are the real heroes of the working class.... We know that this victory was only made possible through the solidarity of the workers of Japan and the workers throughout the world. It represents a great defeat for imperialists.3
Long before Vietnam became an international issue, SACTU in 1959 condemned the death of political detainees near Saigon and called for the independence of the South Vietnamese people from imperialism. On 23 March 1962 SACTU wrote directly to US President Kennedy, accusing the United States of conducting a full-scale war in South Vietnam. The letter concluded: 'We join with workers throughout the world in demanding the withdrawal of all American aid in terms of advisers, troops and arms from South Vietnam, the release of imprisoned workers and the restoration of democratic and trade union rights.'
In the late 1950s, relations were established between SACTU and progressive trade unions in Australia and New Zealand. The historical parallel of white settler colonialism and its subjugation of aboriginal peoples in both South Africa and the South Pacific made the latter a fertile area for anti-Apartheid working class solidarity. This was made clear when the reactionary Menzies government revealed its pro Apartheid stance by threatening legislation making it an offence for Australian workers to carry out solidarity actions with workers of South Africa or other countries - for example, the Australian trade union boycott of South African products called for by SAC TU and the Congress Alliance in 1959. In the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the 1960 SACTU National Conference passed a resolution stating,
South African workers for their part will always defend the right of Australian workers and trade unions to stand together with their brothers in other countries. We warn the Australian government that it is embarking on the same undemocratic path as the Nationalist Government in South Africa. This demonstrates that the Menzies Government and the Verwoerd Government, as partners in the British Commonwealth, are acting to intensify exploitation of workers of our two countries. These designs will be met with the united and firm resistance of the workers of South Africa and Australia, and like all attempts to divide the workers will, in the long run, end in failure.
In the Americas, the Cuban revolution was a tremendous inspiration to the SACTU struggle in South Africa. Special tribute was paid to the Cuban victory against the imperialist-supported Batista regime and, most importantly, against racism. In turn, the Cuban trade union movement expressed its support for the principled lead SACTU had taken against racism by requesting a copy of the SACTU Constitution in 1959. In the early 1960s, the real lessons of the Cuban revolution were spelled out in the pages of Workers Unity: the campaign to eliminate illiteracy was contrasted with the 65 per cent illiteracy of the Black population in South Africa (which was even higher than in Cuba before the revolution).
American imperialism's determination to reverse Cuban independence was also quickly challenged by SACTU. During the missile crisis of 1962, SACTU-NEC member John Gaetsewe hand delivered a protest letter to the office of the American consul in Johannesburg. The letter accused the US of using the excuse of a missile crisis to smash Cuba and re-impose the conditions of starvation, imprisonment without trial, and exploitation characteristic of the defeated Batista regime. SACTU went on to point out that the US had 360 military bases in Western Europe and the Far East and charged that the American government was holding the whole world to ransom under the threat of nuclear annihilation'. This SACTU and Transvaal Indian Youth Congress deputation was turned away with: 'No Comment now.'
On the African continent, SACTU consistently promoted rank-and-file trade unionism as an integral component to de-colonization and national Liberation struggles. - Afro-Asian Solidarity Conferences and All-African People's Conferences were regarded as strategic continental efforts to unite African peoples with their brothers and sisters in the 'Third World' against divisions created by neo-colonialist interests. Although SACTU and the Congress Alliance leaders were frequently prohibited from travelling to these Conferences, SACTU regularly prepared memoranda documenting the workers' struggle and presenting the case for workers' unity throughout Africa.
Numerous resolutions of support were passed on behalf of workers in the Sudan, Nigeria, Cameroons, Tunisia, Somalia, Nyasaland (Malawi), Morocco, Ghana and the French Congo. The Congolese independence from Belgium was warmly welcomed, but SACTU warned against further intrigues by Belgian, British and American imperialists. The murder of Patrice Lumumba a few months later saw SACTU-sponsored protest meetings throughout South Africa. In Algeria, SACTU was more confident that the progressive forces were in firm control following the revolution, and a close relationship developed between SACTU and the Union Generale des Travailleurs Algerians (UGTA) following Algerian liberation. The General Secretary of the UGTA wrote, 'We are particularly touched to receive such an expression of solidarity from the workers of South Africa who themselves have such a hard struggle for liberty and independence.'
In Southern Africa, SACTU internationalism focussed on the issue of White minority regimes and the exploitation of Black workers who suffered alongside their brothers and sisters in South Africa itself. In October 1956 SACTU and the Congress Alliance issued a press statement in support of striking African miners on the Copperbelt in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and condemned the State of Emergency which threatened attempts to organize legitimate African trade unions. A subsequent issue of Workers Unity presented a historical analysis of the collusion between the government and the mining corporations, the same exploiters of African labour in the South African mines. In May 1962,28,000 African mine workers struck again on the Copperbelt to increase their miserably low wages and improve working conditions. Of importance to SACTU in this strike was the position of the White miners union which agreed not to scab on African workers; although White miners in South Africa to this day have refused to unite on class lines with their African co-workers, SACTU heralded the Northern Rhodesian situation as a symbol of the theory and practice of SACTU struggles.
Solidarity with the oppressed peoples living under Portuguese colonialism also featured prominently in SACTU campaigns. The 1962 Conference endorsed a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations expressing 'outrage and indignation' at the war of extermination being carried out in Angola. The letter read:
The workers of South Africa know that the workers of Angola do not possess the most elementary human rights and that they are subject to forced labour on a scale unknown in any part of the world. Their living conditions beggar description and death from starvation is common.
We appeal to the United Nations to take immediate action to call a halt to the mass murder of the people of Angola and to demand that democratic rights are granted not only to Angola, but to Portugal itself and other Portuguese held territories.
It follows that SACTU fully supported the turn to armed struggle by the MPLA in Angola, the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau and FRELIMO in Mozambique as the only means available to ensure emancipation of the working people in those countries.
In the British protectorates bordering South Africa, SACTU fulfilled its obligation to come to the assistance of workers' movements whenever possible. In 1961, three SACTU Executive members travelled to Basutoland (now Lesotho) to advise on trade union problems and to help draft a bill for trade union rights and protection of workers. In June 1963 in a letter to the High Commissioner for UK Protectorates, SACTU condemned the use of British troops to smash a general workers' strike at Mbabane in Swaziland. In these cases and others, SACTU circulated information on strikes in the neighbouring countries to affiliated unions and urged them, if possible, to contribute financial assistance.
Finally, within South Africa itself, SACTU persisted in the face of Government hostility to organize all workers around May Day campaigns. The tradition of May Day celebrations has a long history in South Africa, dating back in this century to the progressive trade unions of the 1930s and carried on in the 1940s by the CNETU and its affiliates.
In the late 1940s, the move to the right by the SAT & LC leadership, as reflected in the Executive's willingness to promote Apartheid trade unionism, made the perennial United May Day Committee more difficult to sustain. Furthermore, the Nationalist Government was beginning to interfere in Industrial Council agreements between employers and unions by preventing May Day as a public workers' holiday, a right gained as far back as 1926. In 196 1, the Minister of Labour wrote to SACTU: 'I have to advise you that it is not government policy to approve of wage determinations and industrial council*. agreements which provide for May Day as a public holiday.'
Yet it was the 1950 May Day demonstrations above all else that stand out as a factor rendering May Day activities difficult to organize during the late 1950s. The impending Suppression of Communism Act (which allowed the state to declare as unlawful any organization it considered to be furthering the aims of Communism') led the Transvaal ANC, the CNETU, the Johannesburg District Communist Party and the Transvaal Indian Congress to call a one-day general strike on 1 May 1950. The strike led to violence in many African townships; nineteen Black workers were killed and thirty-eight injured as a result of police attacks. 4
Against this background of intimidation and repression, SACTU attempted to revive May Day to its rightful place in the political calendar of the South African working class. Workers were encouraged by Frances Baard, militant leader of the Food and Canning Workers Union in the Eastern Cape, to hold demonstrations and celebrations in homes, halls, factories and the streets. 'It is the duty of every tradeunionist to organize functions vigorously to ensure that every worker can celebrate May Day in one way or another together with his comrades in all parts of the world' (Morning Star, April 1957). Throughout the years, the pages of Workers Unity were filled with May Day messages to the workers from SACTU affiliates and international trade unions.
By the late 1950s, May Day had ceased to be an important day of international working class solidarity within the White-dominated trade unions and coordinating bodies in South Africa. The May Day message from SACTU President Leon Levy and General Secretary Leslie Massina, both banned following the Treason Trial arrests of December 1956, commented: 'We believe this is a surrender to the capitalist class, who for so long have hated May Day and have tried to take it away from those who have won it.' In the early 1960s, with no support from the South African trade union movement generally, SACTU and particularly the South African Clothing Workers Union organized May Day meetings and demonstrations to further promote SACTU campaigns for the recognition of African trade unions, a national minimum wage of £ 1-a-Day, and an end to Job Reservation in industry.
Again, outside of the South African context, the promotion of May Day may be an activity taken for granted and not worthy of the attention given it here, except for one point: every mention of May Day in SACTU documents was used as evidence by the Crown in its assertion that the twenty-three SACTU Treason Trial defendants (as part of the total 156 defendants) had committed treason against the state. Such is the state of freedom for workers in South Africa.
This review of SACTU's internationalism clearly demonstrates the principled solidarity that marked SACTU struggles during its first decade. Veteran trade unionists around the world will recall that engraved at the bottom of SACTU stationery was the motto: 'An Injury to One is an Injury to All'. The remainder of this chapter will assess the response of the international trade union movement to SACTU non-racial trade unionism in South Africa.
International Affiliation to the WFTU
Shortly after the Inaugural Conference, the issue of international affiliation was raised at the second Management Committee meeting held on 13 April 1955. A motion was proposed by Lucy Mvubelo (SACTU Vice-President and representative of the GWU~AW), and seconded by Cleopas Sibande (A-TWIU) 'that the South African Congress of Trade Unions should affiliate to the World Federation of Trade Unions, and that the Secretary should enquire about the affiliation fees.' The motion was passed and then referred to the first NEC meeting held in Johannesburg on 27 June 1955.
At the June meeting, with representation present from all SACTU Local Committees (Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and the Witwatersrand), the issue of international affiliation was tabled for discussion. Following comments made by President Beyleveld and General Secretary Massina regarding the benefits of WFTU affiliation, Stella Damons (FCWU, Port Elizabeth) and John Nkadimeng (SACTU National Organizer) moved and seconded that 'SACTU affiliate to the WFTU'. The motion was passed unanimously. Minutes from this meeting add that'. . . with regard to the payment of affiliation fees it was agreed that the full amount be paid after which an exemption would be sought until such time as our financial position improved'. This decision to affiliate to the WFTU was included in the General Secretary's report to the first Annual National Conference held on 1-4 March 1956 in Cape Town. For reasons of political security, the WFTU never regarded its association with SACTU as that of an official affiliation, and SACTU never actually paid affiliation fees.
The SACTU policy of attempting to have cordial and productive relations with both of the international trade union federations (the WFTU and the break-away ICFTU) might suggest that the political decision to openly affiliate to the WFTU so early was unwise, or at least ill-timed. Such a view would, however, be incorrect for two reasons, the first historical and the second political.
Historically, it is important to recognize that the predecessor to SACTU, the Transvaal CNETU, had been affiliated to the WFTU since the latter's formation in 1945. The WFTU, in the early post-war years, included the CIO unions from the United States, British trade unions and trade union bodies from the socialist world; it was a truly international body that was recognized at the founding conference of the United Nations as the world spokesman for labour. Black trade unions in South Africa, struggling to organize the exploited masses in the post-war era of South African industrialization, naturally looked to the WFTU for assistance, and support was always forthcoming. There was never an attempt to create reformist trade unions that would accept the line 'no politics in the trade union movement', a slogan that was later to become the rule-of-thumb for the ICFTU in its relationship to African trade unions inside South Africa.
Thus, throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, Executive members of the CNETU corresponded with the WFTU and attempted - in most cases unsuccessfully - to attend WFTU conferences. Prominent African and Coloured trade unionists who were prevented from freely travelling to WFTU and other trade union meetings in Europe included Dan Tloome, J. B. Marks, James Phillips and Gana Makabeni. 5 It is perhaps worth quoting the Minister of Labour Schoeman who attempted to articulate the 'logic' of Apartheid reasoning on this question:
I think it is unfair to the Non-European himself to allow him to go overseas, especially in a country where there is no colour bar and no discrimination, to attend a conference there and then have him come back to our conditions here.... While there is a Nationalist Government, 1 don't think that will be permitted.
As detailed in Chapter 2, heavy bans against trade unionists under the Suppression of Communism Act took their toll on CNETU leaders in the early 1950s. In October 1953 Dan Tloome, James Phillips and Arnold Selby (a progressive White trade unionist serving as Secretary of the A-TWIU) were forced to send the following telegram of apology to the WFTU meetings in Vienna:
We who were elected as delegates of the Transvaal CNETU deeply regret we are unable to attend your great conference because of the undemocratic travel restrictions imposed by the Union government. Following our election as delegates, all three of us were ordered ... to resign from our trade unions and desist from our trade union activity under pain of imprisonment. Thirty-three other prominent trade unionists have also received similar orders recently.
Only Leslie Massina of the CNETU Executive (and subsequently first General Secretary of SACTU) escaped these early banning orders and managed to attend international trade union meetings. In February 1955 Massina went to the International Miners' Conference and also represented the CNETU at WFTU meetings. On his return to South Africa, Massina spoke favourably of his visit to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Rumania, concluding, 'South Africa has the iron curtain. We restrict entry and declare individuals prohibited immigrants.' Two years later, Massina was to be among the first SACTU-NEC members to be banned from trade union activity.
Therefore, for reasons of historical continuity and overlapping membership between the CNETU and SACTU, the latter's affiliation to the WFTU in mid-1955 can be easily understood.
Yet an equally important reason for this affiliation rests at the level of international politics. Instead of asking the question 'Why affiliation to the WFTU, the more compelling question was 'What would be the price to SACTU of affiliating to the IC17TUT Space prevents a complete review of the factors leading to the break-up of the WFTU into rival and antagonistic bodies, but in hindsight few could honestly deny that the ICFTU was a creation of cold war politics and an institutional means through which labour aristocrats could manipulate Third World labour movements in the interests of British and American imperialism.6
Having had almost six years to assess the ICFTU, those who came together to form SACTU in 1955 realized that affiliation to the ICFTU would be in complete violation of the principles laid down in SACTU's Constitution. As the next section will document, such an international affiliation would have rendered SACTU and the Black workers it represented helpless in the face of South African capitalism and Apartheid.
Before telling that part of the story, there is a certain irony regarding SACTU affiliation to the WFTU that deserves mention here. Lucy Mvubelo, the person who initially moved this affiliation in April 1955, was the only SACTU Executive member to break from SACTU and the Congress Alliance to join the reformist camp of the SATUC-FOFATUSA. She has subsequently become the symbol of anti SACTU and anti-progressive forces for the past two decades. Interviews with SACTU comrades reveal that few were surprised at her opportunism and willingness to sell-out to the workers' struggle for total liberation. Perhaps it was the lure of a privileged position, or the knowledge that she was not capable of enduring the wrath of the regime's inevitable repression against SACTU 7 - whatever the reason, only a short time passed before Lucy Mvubelo was exempted from the Minister of Labour's prohibition on African trade unionists travelling abroad to international conferences.
SACTU-ICFTU Relations and the Creation of FOFATUSA
Notwithstanding the SACTU affiliation to the WFTU, it is important to stress that SACTU always sought support from all international trade unions and federations. The 1960 General Secretary's report makes this point emphatically: 'We believe that we must obtain support from every possible source, otherwise we risk isolation.' The partisanship and political manoeuvring came solely from outside South Africa and SACTU-ICI`TU relations throughout this period must be understood accordingly.
The strongest measure of IC17TU solidarity for the Black workers of South Africa has been its principled call over a period of many years for a total boycott of South African products, leading to a complete isolation of the South African regime in the international community. It is to the credit of the ICI7TU that this stand has been consistently advanced in trade union circles throughout the world.
What is contradictory, however, is the fact that those coordinating bodies supported by the ICFTU inside South Africa - the SATUC (TUCSA) and the Federation of Free African Trade Unions of South Africa (FOFATUSA) - did not support the boycott campaign in words or in actions. Instead, it was SACTU and the Congress Alliance that had developed the boycott strategy, first within South Africa through the campaigns initiated in the mid-1950s, and in 1959 as an international appeal for solidarity. This contradiction between ICFTU theory and practice begs the question of the overall ICFTU position towards the workers' struggle in South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s.
The dissolution of the T & LC in October 1954 and the simultaneous creation of the SATUC on the fundamental premise of exclusion of African trade unions from its ranks, created the situation whereby international trade union bodies were forced to clearly define their political allegiances regarding the struggle of the oppressed Black workers and their organizations. The British TUC in 1954 agreed to 'temporize on basic principles' and support this exclusion of African trade unions, whereas, in contrast, the Australian trade union movement took a progressive stand and threatened to intensify blockades against South African products unless African trade unions were recognized in law.
The ICFTU did not become directly involved in South African trade union affairs until 1957; by this time many of the SACTU militants had been hindered in their day-to-day trade union work by the Treason Trial. M. Becu, then President of the ICFTU, made the first official visit to Johannesburg in 1957. He met with the SATUC Executive and scheduled the first ICI7TU team of Sir Thomas O'Brien and P. H. de Jonge to tour South Africa in June of that year. During this tour, SACTU presented the ICFTU with a memorandum stating its desire to cooperate with both international federations in creating united action against Apartheid. A second tour followed in 1959 and another in 1960. On the basis of these ICI7TU visits and subsequent events it is possible to piece together a picture of ICI7TU politics in relation to the aspirations of the African working class.
In general, the ICI7TU was willing to recognize and support SACTU if the former would be allowed to set the conditions. Short of this, the ICFTU was willing to slander SACTU as a 'Communist front' and commit its energies and resources towards the creation of an anti SACTU organization. They took that course of action from 1959 onwards. Although unsuccessful, the ICFTU nevertheless greatly disrupted the real workers' voice, SACTU, in the fulfilment of its policies and objectives.
In addition to official ICFTU visits, members of international trade union federations affiliated to the ICFTU made periodic tours of South Africa to investigate certain industries. Phyllis Altman recalls an International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) representative, a Mr Carron, entering the SACTU office one day in 1962, fully steeped in SATUC prejudice against SACTU. He was rude, paternalistic (not an uncommon trait amongst White trade unionists in the South African situation) and fully convinced in advance that SACTU unions existed in name only. SACTU President Leon Levy, although involved with the Treason Trial at the time, asked SACTU organizers to be at Head Office during the lunch hour to meet with the IMF representative.
Though at first he (Carron) said, 'I only have thirty minutes', the meeting lasted until 6.00 p.m. His initial anti-Communist polemics were ignored by SACTU comrades, who in turn took the opportunity to educate Mr Carron on the real problems facing African workers. Such incidents did not change the basic ICI7TU position but they do point to the arrogance and basic ignorance of South African realities imported by many trade union leaders from abroad.
The most important visit from the ICFTU was in 1959, when P. de Jonge and H. Millard scheduled a number of meetings with both SATUC and SACTU. SACTU leaders in Johannesburg and Durban clearly recall the tactics of intimidation. The ICFTU offered its support for SACTU - politically and financially - on two conditions: first, that SACTU agree to sever all ties with the Congress Alliance; and second, that SACTU divorce the economic and political struggle, that is, reject the goal of liberation and embrace reformist ends. SACTU's answer was unequivocal and consistent with its founding principles and Constitution: to accept economic concessions without struggling for the political emancipation of Black workers and citizens would be a betrayal of the masses and their aspirations.
Again, arrogance and ignorance by the ICFTU stand out boldly. The visit came shortly after SACTU's most successful National Conference in Durban in March 1959.8 Chief Lutuli of the ANC had further cemented the solidarity of groups within the Congress Alliance by calling on all ANC members to hold trade union cards and SACTU members to join the ANC. Phyllis Altiman remembers the ICFTU team being very upset when Lutuli's statement was repeated to them in meetings with SACTU; they totally misread the situation and furthermore failed to appreciate the suspicions Black workers held for trade union chauvinists of their kind. They came with 'inbuilt superiority complexes'.9
Stephen Dlamini, Durban SACTU Local Committee Chairman at the time, recalls being treated to dinner in an expensive Durban hotel by the ICFTU team. Not the usual fare for an African worker, the meal was gratefully accepted but not the intimidation and unconcealed bribery that accompanied it. After being promised trade union training in Uganda and given the 'no politics in the trade unions' line, Dlamini responded, 'Can I ask one question; Are you through?' He politely excused himself, 'with a full stomach'. 10
In Johannesburg, an evening meeting between the ICFTU and SACTU was arranged. Viola Hashe (Secretary, SACWU), who resided in Roodeport fourteen miles from the city, was present in violation of the regulations against the freedom of movement for Africans. At this time, too, security concerns were of great importance due to the atmosphere created by the Treason Trial. Phyllis Altman recalls driving Viola Hashe home late at night and fearing that she was being followed by the Special Branch. The ICFTU representatives, also in the car, later told the progressive politician Alex Hepple that Altman was just 4playing games' for their benefit. Anyone who fully appreciated the realities of repression in South Africa, which apparently did not include the ICFTU, would know that the dangers were indeed real.
Failure to sway SACTU from its position forced the ICFTU to look elsewhere in establishing roots in African trade unionism. The truly amazing developments that followed this 1959 visit point to the fact that the ICFTU and certainly the SATUC were becoming very anxious about the viability and increasing strength of SACTU. The only strategy remaining was to disrupt SACTU by creating an anti-SACTU African trade union coordinating body - FOFATUSA - that would be propped up locally by the SATUC. As Leslie Massina put it at the time, 'The ICFTU came to disorganize the organized.'
FOFATUSA emerged on the scene in October 1959, a few months after the completion of the ICFTU tour. A coincidence? Hardly. Although short-lived, FOFATUSA began as a result of many political forces: (a) the SATUC anti-SACTU position.. (b) in all probability money provided by the ICFTU; and (c) a Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) leadership looking for a base amongst African workers. As such, FOFATUSA combined national and international currents prevailing at the time. On the national front, the PAC Black nationalism had come to the fore following the confusion of the 1958 Stay-At-Home; on the international front, it was an abortive attempt to give the SATUC greater international credibility in the eyes of world trade union centres. 11
One cannot really speak of FOFATUSA as a legitimate trade union coordinating body for African trade unions and workers. More correctly, it was a collection of individuals who for various reasons had broken from the Congress Movement in the previous decade. Jacob Nyaose, FOFATUSA Chairman, had in the 1940s and early 1950s been with the CNETU but on many important issues deserted the progressive line of the Council. For example, in 1953, he and Gana Makabeni attempted to split the CNETU by refusing to boycott the Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act - a piece of vicious legislation-which African workers completely rejected. The splitters sent a memorandum to Cape Town to plead with the Minister of Labour not to implement the Act; they also promised not to defy the Act if their memo was ignored (which it obviously was). Nyaose's union, the African Bakers Industrial Union, was regarded by SACTU workers as nothing more than a mutual aid society. The importance of Nyaose was that he served as Minister of Labour in the PAC - beyond that, he had no mass following in the African proletariat. 12
Lucy Mvubelo and Sarah Chitja were the other key figures in the FOFATUSA Executive. Both had been with SACTU in the early years but had broken with the progressive movement in 1957. The strength of their union, the Garment Workers Union of African Women, was the only legitimate base among workers that FOFATUSA could claim. Both Mvubelo and Chitia were also greatly influenced by Dulcie Hartwell, Executive member of the registered Garment Workers Union, SATUC Secretary and staunch anti-SACTU trade unionist.
The crucial question is whether this anti-SACTU organization commanded the respect of the African working class. Only in a few townships near Johannesburg, where these three leaders could be assured of personal followings, did FOFATUSA have any substantial support. Whenever the body tried to extend its influence elsewhere it met with resistance from the workers.
In Durban, a SACTU-Congress Alliance stronghold, FOFATUSA meetings attracted more SACTU supporters who came to pose the real issues and Special Branch personnel than pro-FOFATUSA workers. In January 1961 Curnick Ndlovu, (SARHWU, SACTU) interrupted a FOFATUSA meeting and warned the ten persons in the hall that FOFATUSA was a splitter organization designed to create disunity within SACTU and the African working class; he also accused the South African Liberal Party of assisting in these efforts. In a later attempt also in Durban, Stephen Dlamini and twenty SACTU supporters walked out of a FOFATUSA meeting to the cry of 'Amandla Ngawethu' (Power to the People), leaving only three persons in the hall with Nyaose. When the PAC tried to hold a meeting in Durban, their leaders fled because of ANC-SACTU opposition. In Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, FOFATUSA had no following whatsoever.
These examples add weight to the major objection raised by SACTU to the formation of FOFATUSA. The 1960 Conference stated,
The tragedy of the South African Trade Union movement is that it is so racially divided and weak - a new racial body serves no purpose other than to divide and weaken the workers and can only confuse them. We have no knowledge of any campaign carved out by this body on behalf of the workers, particularly during the (State of) Emergency.
There is little doubt, therefore, that the SATUC and the ICI7TU were largely responsible for creating FOFATUSA. De Jonge and Millard had made it clear during their 1959 tour that a large amount of money (estimates ranged up to £30,000) could be made available for organizing African trade unions within the reformist confines of ICI7TU policy. FOFATUSA had no independent financial base with such a small membership, so it was more than idle speculation to suggest that the short-lived FOFATUSA was underwritten with ICFTU funds channelled through SATUC politics. The entire history of African trade unionism in South Africa shows clearly that such an organization as FOFATUSA was not indigenous but rather an artificial transplant, alien to Black working class sod. FOFATUSA did not succeed in holding one national conference, and in January 1966, after six years of inept existence, dissolved itself and called upon African trade unions to affiliate to TUCSA.
The South African Liberal Party (SALP) is also implicated in this fiasco. Following the banning of Phyllis Altman in 1963, she received in the mail a set of photostated documents revealing that the SALP was at one time considering a takeover' of SACTU. Written on official Liberal Party stationery, the documents spoke of 'wanting to get the "Commies" out of SACTU, and what is even more disgusting, '. . . with a little guile and some money it should be possible to crush SACTU. The strategy was apparently to organize a conference on the Swaziland border to coordinate these nefarious plans, but the ICF7fU refused to fund the conference as there was no trade union recipient to justify the expenditure.
Instead, and according to the documents, the ICFTU agreed to fund an organizer to work in the food and canning industry in the Cape province. Workers in this industry, however, remained totally committed to SACTU and the African-FCWU. Yet, from the point of view of the disputers, it was an obvious place to start after the heavy repression against SACTU organizers in the early 1960s.'
One final incident bears upon the ICFTU manipulations in these years. In the early 1960s, another ICFTU visitor came to SACTU Offices and in the course of discussion admitted that FOFATUSA had been a total failure. Instead of learning from this mistake, however, he asked SACTU to allow him to organize the unorganized motor workers in the Johannesburg area. His purpose was to show FOFATUSA and SATUC how to organize African workers. I beg you (SACTU) to leave these workers alone'. 14
These episodes combine to present a vivid picture of the role that the ICFTU played during SACTU's first decade. Their call for no politics in the trade union movement' was a disguise for a certain and limited type of political trade unionism that agreed not to fundamentally challenge the status quo. Trade unions are inevitably political organizations given the nature of social relations under the capitalist mode of production. This much is obvious. SACTU's politics have always been committed to liberation, not concession. Any African trade union in South Africa that fails to rest its policies and practice on the principle of self-determination and emancipation of the African proletariat from national oppression and class exploitation will never command the allegiance of the workers. This point above all others explains the failure of the ICFTU-SATUC-PAC-FOFATUSA initiative.
This should also go a long way towards explaining SACTU's decision in 1955 to choose affiliation to the WFTU, an international federation that has placed no conditions and forced no compromises on the workers' struggle.
The International Labour Organization (1L0) and SACTU
Like the CNETU before it, SACTU always took advantage of the opportunity to present the case of the oppressed Black workers before international forums. The ILO, a creation of the United Nations representing governments, employers and employee organizations, was never regarded by SACTU as a body that could effectively initiate the necessary changes being called for, but it could and did serve as an arena within which the truth about conditions under Apartheid could be brought to the attention of the world community. The South African government treated ILO sessions and resolutions with the same contempt it showed to all international bodies. Nevertheless, it is important to briefly summarize the SACTU initiatives which contributed towards the eventual expulsion of South Africa from the ILO in 1963.
SACTU's primary goal between 1955 and 1963 was to object to the total exclusion of African trade unions (and coordinating bodies) from representation on South African delegations to ILO conferences. Because the selection of delegates is left to the government, successive Apartheid regimes refused to even consider the selection of a SACTU representative. In other words, the majority of the South African working class could never present its case directly to the ILO. Instead, reactionary Whites-only unions, representing a small minority of privileged workers, annually mis-represented the true working class of South Africa. As Moses Mabhida points out, 'the White trade unionists make the world believe that an African is a bit of an imbecile, and as such, not capable of representing the opinions of his people or the African working class. This had to be proven wrong, and South Africa exposed for what she was. 15
SACTU each year called for the ILO Credentials Committee to unseat the South African delegation and instead force the government to consult with SACTU prior to the selection of ILO delegates. But SACTU placed equal emphasis on the preparation and presentation of detailed memoranda documenting the slave labour conditions inside the country, always tailoring the memoranda to fit the agenda items of respective ILO conferences. Until 1962, it was never the position of SACTU that South Africa should be excluded or expelled from the ILO; rather, the government should be pressured by that body to become a signatory to ILO resolutions and to make its workers' delegations representative of the working class at home. Because South Africa refused to allow SACTU personnel to attend the ILO conferences, the permanent WFTU delegate to the ILO was given the responsibility of presenting the SACTU case each year.
In 1959, SACTU's argument to the 43rd Session of the ILO struck a responsive chord with the Credentials Committee and resulted in a limited victory. Previously SACTU had always argued its right to be consulted on numerical strength alone. This argument failed in that the four coordinating bodies consulted by the South African regime (the SATUC, the SA Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU), the Coordinating Council of South African Trade Unions, and the Federal Consultative Council of SA Railways and Harbours Staff Associations - all colour-bar bodies) had a combined membership far in excess of SACTU. The 1959 memorandum pleaded the case differently, correctly asserting that SACTU was the 'most representative organization' in that its membership was open to all workers, regardless of race and hence consistent with Paragraph No. 5 of Article 3 of the ILO Constitution.
With this new information, the Credentials Committee ruled that SACTU was indeed the 'most representative organization' and in its final report stated, 'The Committee can see no reason why the objecting organization (SACTU) was not consulted. This is particularly so, since it would appear that the Congress is the only truly multi-racial body of all the trade union organizations concerned.'
The South African delegate to the ILO was forced to change his line of defence, admitting that SACTU was not consulted because SACTU 4consists partly of bodies which are not registered trade unions in terms of the relevant (South African) legislation', that is, African unions are not recognized under Apartheid laws. Mr Berlinson, Chairman of the Credentials Committee, recorded this admission in his final summary which recommended government consultation with SACTU in future ILO proceedings.
Berlinson's report, however, also reflected the powerlessness of the ILO by admitting that despite this decision, at the national level 'the Union of South Africa is entirely free to pursue its own policy and to frame its laws in the way it deems fit'. Assuming that this decision would be carried out subsequently, the Credentials Committee refused to unseat the South African workers' delegate, H. Liebenberg, at the 43rd Session. 16
Whether the ILO took this position regarding SACTU consultation because of the logic of SACTU's argument or because of increasing international pressure to do something constructive against Apartheid, the decision was predictably ignored by the South African government in 1960. The 44th Session of the ILO took place during the State of Emergency when many SACTU activists were in detention. During the Emergency and prior to the Geneva meetings, SACTU sent an objection to the appointment of a SATUC delegate as the South African workers' representative, referring of course to the 1959 ILO decision mentioned above. The government responded with its usual slander of SACTU, claiming that the latter was closely associated with organizations (e.g. the African National Congress) declared illegal 'by reason of their subversive activities'.
At the ILO Conference in 1960, the SATUC delegate made the truly remarkable claim that his organization, despite an official colour~bar against African trade union affiliation, had a liaison relationship with six African trade unions. This obviously referred to the bogus FOFATUSA and its largely paper unions discussed above. Mr Hannah, the South African government delegate, corroborated this TUC distortion and went so far as to say that 'non-White' unions are... entitled to take part in collective bargaining and do so.' This statement was totally untrue under the terms of the Industrial Conciliation Act (1956) and the Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act of 1953.
With SACTU comrades in jail, and no doubt with the manoeuvring by the Western powers, the ILO Credentials Committee reversed its decision of 1959 and accepted the argument that the SATUC was a ,multi-racial' centre; it concluded, '. . . if there were no legal obstacle concerning registration, the SATUC would freely open its doors to African workers with whom it has established positive trade unions.' This is tantamount to saying that if things were different, they wouldn't be the same.
Furthermore, the 1960 ILO Session ignored its 1959 ruling by failing to call on the South African government to consult with SACTU in the future. The ILO also agreed not to send any additional protests to South Africa regarding its policy of forced labour (a major agenda item at the 44th Session) because it would simply continue to ignore these protests. Despite this total compromise to Apartheid, SACTU continued during and after the Emergency to submit detailed information on oppression under Apartheid, especially information on the increasing victimization of SACTU organizers arrested and prevented from fulfilling their legitimate trade union tasks.
In December 1960 the ILO held its first African RegionalConference in Lagos, Nigeria. SACTU elected three delegates to attend, but again they were refused exit and re-entry permits. South Africa itself refused to participate and thus no one represented the toiling masses of South Africa at the inaugural conference called to discuss continental labour conditions. Only through Brother K.
Descan, President of the Printing Workers Union, Mauritius, were SACTU's views made known to the Conference.
SACTU's 13-page memorandum to the 45th ILO session in 1961, was a strongly-worded document which, in addition to briefing the international community on housing conditions, employment practices and a lack of vocational training opportunities for Black workers in South Africa, took exception to the SATUC 1960 claim of 'multi-racial' status. SACTU pointed out that the SATUC practised 'self-imposed' racial discrimination and that no legal obstacle prevented equal affiliation of African trade unions. The TUC was also chastised for rejecting all SACTU efforts at unity on the trade union front inside the country. Despite the fact that the ILO submission was necessarily incomplete due to the seizure of SACTU documents during the Emergency at home, the Credentials Committee returned to its 1959 position and called for government consultation with SACTU in the appointment of the 1962 ILO delegation.
Most significant at the 1961 meetings was a Nigerian government resolution calling for the expulsion of the South African delegation from the ILO proceedings. The South African government and workers' delegates spoke against the resolution but to no avail as it passed by a vote of 163 to 0, with 89 abstentions. A SACTU memorandum circulated to delegates at the Conference supported the resolution:
For too long have the interests of South African workers been represented by sectional trade union bodies, which themselves practise racial discrimination and are not qualified to speak on behalf of all workers. SACTU has lodged objections against this practice. The resolution asking South Africa to withdraw is an indication of the support which South African workers have among member states.... The resolution ... is the first step. It should be followed by the imposition of diplomatic, economic and political sanctions on South Africa.
The State of Emergency of 1960 and the three-month (April-June) ban on SACTU meetings in 1961 had obviously angered certain member states into demanding international action against Apartheid.
South Africa refused to voluntarily withdraw from the ILO following this 1961 vote and in 1962 again chose a delegation without consulting or including SACTU. At SACTU's 1962 Annual National Conference, it was agreed to follow the Nigerian initiative and call for the total expulsion of South Africa from the ILO instead of the usual appeal for the un-seating of the racist delegates.
One month before the ILO's 46th Session that year, SACTU again filed a detailed memorandum documenting: (a) the continued violations of ILO conventions by the government; (b) prohibitions against African workers' right to strike; (c) anti-trade union propaganda by government departments; (d) entrenchment of Apartheid in trade unions and related statutory Job Reservation in industry; and (e) the persecution of individual SACTU leaders under the notorious Sabotage Act of 1962 (see Chapter 12). A summary of this memorandum was sent to ILO member states calling on their delegations to vote in favour of South African expulsion at the June meetings. Not by coincidence the registered memorandum never reached the ILO office in Geneva, and the SACTU Management Committee was forced to launch an investigation with the Post Office in South Africa in August of that year. As well, Moses Mabhida, then residing in London, England, was refused a visa by the British government to attend the Geneva conference.
In 1963, SACTU updated the 1962 memorandum with additional data on the repression against its leaders and again called for the expulsion of South Africa. Under pressure, Senator Trollip, the South African Minister of Labour, ordered the Apartheid delegation to remain seated at the meetings, adding, 'The Government will not be forced to recognize SACTU for future nominations of workers' representatives.' But the African states in particular had had enough. They withdrew completely from the ILO proceedings and workers' representatives from all over the world staged a walk-out when H. Liebenburg, the South African workers' delegate, rose to speak. The remaining government and employers' delegates voted unanimously for South African expulsion. There were 57 abstentions as compared with the 89 two years before. In March 1964 South Africa withdrew its membership from the ILO.
Expulsion of South Africa by ILO member states expressed their collective disgust at Apartheid and the contempt South Africa showed to international bodies in general. By 1958, South Africa had ratified only eleven out of the one hundred and two ILO conventions. In 1964, when it left the ILO, the government had still not ratified Convention No. 87, concerning Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Strike, or Convention No. 97, regarding the Application of the Principles of the Right to Organize and to Bargain Collectively." Expulsion of South Africa was an important act of international solidarity with the voteless and voiceless workers of that country, but it could not be expected to change the nature and degree of class exploitation under Apartheid.
The Emergence of the AATUF and Continental Trade Unionism
A Trade Union movement in a colonial territory cannot divorce itself from the national struggle for political independence.
With these words, the then Prime Minister of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, opened the Accra conference in November 1959, where it was decided to form the All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF). This Preparatory Conference had been convened by a steering committee struck at the All-Africa People's Conference also held in Accra the previous year. At the 1959 meetings, national trade union centres from seventeen African nations and representing over 55 per cent of African trade unionists resolved to work for African trade union unity by remaining independent of both the IC17TU and WFTU. In the face of neo-colonial and imperialist ventures throughout the continent, the Conference set itself no small task:
... to banish every form of sterile partnership ... in order to achieve national unity, strengthen the All African Trade Union Federation and make an effective contribution to the struggle for African independence and unity, the development of the wealth of Africa in the interest of the African peoples, the economic improvement of the masses and the raising of their standard of living, and the establishment of true democracy, guaranteeing to everyone liberty, justice, social well-being and peace.
SACTU was selected as one of the nineteen bodies that would plan and convene the Inaugural Conference of AATUF in May 1960 in Casablanca, Morocco. The fifth SACTU National Conference pledged to support AATUF, and expressed the view that divisions amongst African workers could only be eliminated with the defeat of imperialism in Africa. SACTU also agreed with the decision that the new body should not be affiliated to any international federation, but later held to the position that AATUF affiliates should be free to maintain or establish such affiliations.
Rivalries between the ICFTU and the WFTU on the African continent provided the dynamics against which the success of AATUF would be assessed. As well, the American AFL-CIO was rapidly extending its influence into the African labour movement, challenging both the ICFTU and the British TUC (which was described as an arm of British imperialism by the American interventionists). Using money and, where necessary, the CIA, the US labour aristocracy began to carve out a sphere of influence on African soil that would later be embodied in the African-American Labour Centre (AALC), administered by the notorious Irving Brown from his office in New York City. 18
The decision to form AATUF coincided with the period of sharp decline in ICFTU influence in Africa. Its continental trade union membership had dropped from 25 to 7 per cent according to Workers Unity (February 1960). This can be partially attributed to the splitting tactics of the ICFTU in Nigeria and South Africa, for example, the ICFTU complicity in the creation of FOFATUSA as outlined above. Trade union journals in Africa and even in Asia featured articles exposing the ICFTU-17017ATUSA connection, ever aware of similar dangers posed to the independence of their own trade union movements. The Egyptian Confederation of Labour stated in 1959: 'African workers must unite more closely to strengthen brotherhood between workers and to the colonialists we say: "Hands Off Africa - Africa Must Be Free".'
The imminent formation of the AATUF led the ICFTU to call a rival conference in Lagos, Nigeria to coincide with the AATUF Preparatory Conference in Accra. This pattern of meeting and counter-meeting was to be repeated many times over the next few years. 19
1960 passed without the AATUF Inaugural Conference being convened. Organizers attributed this delay to 'imperialist sabotage', although the details of this charge were not specified. Another ICFTU African Regional Conference was held in October of that year in Tunisia. SACTU had been invited by Jack Purvis, ICFTU Regional Officer, during his 1960 tour of South Africa, but, as usual, SACTU representatives were unable to leave the country. After consulting with John Tettagah, head of the Ghana TUC and key figure in AATUF, SACTU circulated a letter to the Conference accusing the ICFTU of disruptive tactics in South Africa and objecting to the issuance of invitations to the SATUC and FOFATUSA.
Two months later, the Preparatory Committee of AATUF held its second meeting and claimed that more African trade union centres were abandoning their previous allegiances to the ICFTU and joining the AATUF. SACTU had token representation at these meetings in the person of Tennyson Makiwane, a South African journalist who later broke with the ANC.
The Inaugural Conference of AATUF was finally held in May 1961 in Casablanca. Delegates from thirty-three trade union centres in twenty-eight African countries attended; seven additional African states sent observers. SACTU was represented at the Conference by its two international representatives - Moses Mabhida and Wilton Mkwayi. The Credentials Committee's recognition of SACTU was challenged by Nana Mahomo, self-proclaimed PAC-F0FATUSA representative who also demanded the right to speak for South African workers. Mahorno's appeal was rejected following an address by Wilton Mkwayi who explained the position of the PAC and FOFATUSA; Mahomo then joined the delegation from the Rhodesian TUC as an observer .20
In the spirit of constructive criticism, the SACTU Management Committee had prepared a detailed analysis of the AATUF draft Constitution in advance of the Conference.
Firstly, SACTU objected to the use of the terms 'African Personality' and 'African Race' in the wording of the draft. The former was considered dangerous and misleading in that repeated nationalistic provisions of this kind 'can be disastrous to the workers of Africa, leading to an African chauvinism which misleads the workers ... from their basic interests of working class struggle and unity'. Similarly, the term 'African Race' should not be used where it might detract attention from the ultimate goal of total working class unity, regardless of race or colour.
Secondly, on the issue of international affiliation, SACTU encouraged AATUF independence from the ICI7TU and the WFTU as a pre-condition for maximum unity. This would ensure that the ICI7TU would not be able to use the AATUF to promote its interests throughout the African continent. SACTU strongly disagreed, however, with the proposed clause which disallowed international affiliation of AATUF members. The Management Committee explained that the net effect of this would be to drive ICFTU affiliates away from the AATUF, leaving the latter as a minority of progressive union centres from Ghana, Guinea and Mali. As SACTU stated,
By purposely excluding affiliates in this way, we are giving them just the excuse they want to stay out of any Federation. On the other hand, by ensuring that there is no obstacle of this kind to their entry into a Federation we shall be utilising the contradictions which exist between the ICFTU African affiliates and the rest of the XFTU and the imperialists, because these ICFTU African affiliates are forced to take up a determined stand - with all other African trade unions - against imperialism.
The AATUF Conference reflected the many contradictions existing within the African trade union and political spheres. Notwithstanding SACTU's criticisms and suggestions, the AATUF Charter read as follows on the international affiliation issue:
The Federation of All-African Trade Unions is an independent organization which rejects all foreign interference in African trade union affairs. It is composed of independent trade union organizations. Nevertheless, as a temporary measure, national trade union organizations belonging to central international trade unions at the time of the Congress are given a term of ten months in which to achieve disaffiliation.
This section of the Charter and the heated debate which surrounded it led to a walk-out by twelve pro-ICFTU delegations on the final day of the Conference, thus confirming SACTU's charge of sectarianism.
With certain important exceptions, colonialism in Africa meant that many national trade union centres did not have the long history of working class struggle and industrial unionism as SACTU did. Emergent leaders were in many cases from petty-bourgeois backgrounds, suddenly appointed to trade union positions following independence. Understandable as this is within the context of colonial history and underdevelopment, the new AATUF could not escape the consequences that flowed from these realities. 21
Six months after the formation of AATUF, SACTU-NEC members began to articulate these weaknesses and adjust their expectations of AATUF accordingly. Over the next two years SACTU encouraged the establishment of an AATUF Regional Office in Johannesburg and the calling of special conferences to grapple with the problems faced by African agricultural workers and mine workers. All of these proposals were beyond the resources or organizational capability of AATUF, and SACTU was in no position to offer tangible assistance to the fledgling organization.
Nor were the ICFTU and its African affiliates willing to struggle within the AATUF to overcome these initial difficulties. Instead, no sooner had the ink dried on the AATUF Charter than the ICFTU called a series of conferences in 1961 in Kenya and Dakar. Their intention was to form a rival continental body. Ahmed Tlili, Tunisian member of the ICFTU Executive Bureau, was the leading figure in these divisive tactics which resulted in the formation of the anti-Communist Pan African Federation of Trade Unions in January 1962. Delegations attended from Kenya, French Congo, Senegal, Gambia and a splinter group from Nigeria, and British and American labour attaches were very much involved in the background. John Tettagah, AATUF General Secretary from Ghana, correctly identified the impetus behind this move when he said, 'Western imperialism has decided to show its naked form to the African worker'22
Finally, the June 1964 AATUF Conference in Bamako found SACTU's two representatives - Mark Shope and Mate Mfusi -challenged by FOFATUSA's President Nyaose. Each group was required to present its case to the Credentials Committee. SACTU spoke first and took a trade union line, not bothering to go into a discussion of its relationship to the ANC and the Congress Alliance. Nyaose, on the other hand, took the opportunity to avoid trade unionism completely and launched into a pro-PAC speech, complete with photos of himself and Robert Sobukwe (PAC leader) heading demonstrations at Sharpeville. Swayed initially by this presentation, and ignorant of many internal South African issues, the AATUF Secretariat ruled that South Africa was a 'special case' and gave both SACTU and FOFATUSA the right to be seated.
Shope and Mfusi then talked Nyaose into challenging this 'special case' ruling and each group was given the right to address the entire AATUF delegation the following day. Shope changed his tactics and delivered a powerful speech analysing the political shortcomings of the PAC and exposing Nyaose (and FOFATUSA) in the process. The response was positive and SACTU emerged victorious; they were even offered invitations to visit African countries in attendance and mention was made by the Ghanaian and Tanzanian/Zanzibarian delegates of possible SACTU external offices in each country.
This SACTU success did not, of course, alter the nature of AATUF itself. In Shope's report to Head Office, he observed that many of the delegates were not representing legitimate trade unions. Furthermore, the level of discussion was considered very low as crucial policy documents were often passed without comment. This complements opinions expressed by Moses Mabhida about the problems with AATUF:
AATUF never really took off. It was in many respects a paper organization, but it was also a body torn between the Arab world and African trade unionism elsewhere on the continent. Where there was practical work to be done, AATUF simply had no financial strength and thus could not provide assistance to organize African trade unions properly.
Yet despite these weaknesses, SACTU consistently supported the principles and objectives of AATUF. It is no doubt fair to conclude that SACTU's participation greatly assisted trade union brothers and sisters in Africa to better appreciate the disruptive and manipulative role played by the ICFTU, the British and American trade union bodies in their imperialist designs for the entire continent.
The WFTU 7 February Campaign
The 1960 Sharpeville and Langa massacres in South Africa, coupled with the five-month State of Emergency, brought to the world's attention more clearly than ever before the nature of repression under Apartheid. The general session of the WFTU met that year and resolved: 'The fight of the workers and people of the Union of South Africa against the worst type of repression and exploitation built on Apartheid and racial discrimination has come to a point where individual support is no longer effective.' With this resolution, and in consultation with the SACTU Management Committee, the WFTU further resolved to form an International Trade Union Committee for Solidarity with the Workers and People of South Africa (Solidarity Committee).
SACTU's Workers Unity (April 196 1) issued a Special Supplement endorsing the idea of the Solidarity Committee and encouraging support from national and international bodies on a non-partisan basis, independent of international affiliation. To the credit of the WFTU, a special conference was called at Accra on 24-26 July 1961 where the WFTU, the Ghana TUC, the Central Council of Soviet Trade Unions. the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the General Confederation of Labour (France) (CGT), the All-India TUC, the General Union of Workers of Mali, the Nigerian TUC and SACTU (in the person of Moses Mabhida) combined to form the Solidarity Committee. An appeal was distributed to trade unions throughout the world, calling for a united front against Apartheid and in support of SACTU and the workers of South Africa. The conference and follow~up work was totally sponsored by the WFTU, and Mabhida, Wilton Mkwayi and Arnold Selby were the SACTU overseas representatives who worked tirelessly on the coordination of the campaign abroad.
Inside South Africa, the Management Committee and the NEC decided that the Solidarity Committee would be most effective if a given day were selected to launch the campaign. After considerable debate within the NEC, 7 January 1962 was selected to commemorate the beginning of the Alexandra Bus Boycott in 195 7. Because of difficulties in coordinating the internal and external work, the date was set back one month to 7 February.
Local Committees in Durban, the Transvaal, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town began the work of organizing locally for the February campaign, which was to be the beginning of a new thrust to organize the unorganized and to push harder for the demand for £1-a-Day. Funds from Head Office were made available to employ two full-time organizers for the campaign.
The 1962 National Conference minutes report that on 7 February 1962 100,000 leaflets were distributed on the Reef and placard demonstrations took place at all railway stations, bus stops and termini in Johannesburg. Slogans read: 'Join Your Unions Now'; 'Fight for a Pound a Day';'Abolition of the Industrial Colour Bar'. Another 5,000 leaflets were distributed in Kimberley and a mass rally in Port Elizabeth was regarded as a success. Durban held factory meetings, mass meetings and deputations were sent to employers' organizations demanding a national minimum wage; additional rallies were held on 8 February and 17 March. Most importantly, the Cape Town Local Committee, in addition to calling mass meetings and issuing 25,000 leaflets, presented SACTU's draft legislation for a National Minimum Wage Bill. The Minister of Labour described the proposed legislation as 'unfeasible, impracticable' and '(it) would fail to achieve its objects'. This was the first occasion that a Minister of Labour had ever been obliged to publicly respond to a campaign that began back in 1957.
Solidarity telegrams and letters poured into SACTU offices and protest letters from all over the world landed on the desks of MPS and Cabinet Members in Cape Town. SACTU singled out the letter from the Angolan workers of the Union Nationale des Travailleurs Angolais (UNTA) in exile in Leopoldville for special mention: 'We salute the heroes, the fighters and we bow our heads in memory of those who have died and those who will die for this noble cause.'
SACTU's emphasis following the launching of the campaign on 7 February was to concentrate on the primary industries where hundreds of thousands of African workers remained unorganized. Realistically, as past efforts had shown, not all industries could be tackled simultaneously, so it was the iron and steel and metallurgical industry with 200,000 workers of all races that received immediate attention by all local committees. As was so often the case, heavy repression under the Sabotage Bill prevented the realization of this objective .23
In assessing the Solidarity Committee and the 7 February campaign, it must be said that within the constraints of South African conditions the campaign was a limited success. In addition to bringing together SACTU internal work - organizing the unorganized, demanding a national minimum wage and mobilizing other constituent groups of the Congress Alliance - the campaign marked the first time in modern history that such a large part of the international trade union community responded in unity with the oppressed workers in South Africa. The principled support of the campaign by the WFTU also showed that the struggles of African workers need not be approached as an arena for cold-war politics but as struggles that stand on their own merit.
NOTES
1. Morning Star, of the Food and Canning Workers Union; Textile Unity, of the Textile Workers Industrial Union; and Truth, of the National Union of Laundry, Cleaning and Dyeing Workers. These papers represented both registered and African unions of each industry.
2. Morning Star, February 1956.
3 General Secretary's Report, SACTU 7th Annual National Conference, 1962.
4 For greater detail, see R. Lambert, op. cit.
5 Occasionally, progressive White trade unionists like Issy Wolfson and Vic Syvret were able to attend international trade union conferences, but even these persons were soon to fall victim to banning orders.
6 For an excellent expos~ of these issues, see D. Thompson and R. Larson, Where were you Brother? An Account of Trade Union Imperialism, War on Want Publication, London, 1978.
7 Lucy Mvubelo's husband was the victim of an attack by thugs (perhaps hired by the employers) as a result of his organizing work among Africans in the transport industry. It was at about this time that she broke with SACTU.
8 The ICFTU team had been invited to attend the 1959 SACTU Conference but refused because the WFTU had also been invited. Tom Mboya, the Kenyan ICFTU spokesman in Africa, had been invited to give the opening address at the Conference, but the South African authorities refused him an entry visa. These examples show that SACTU was far from being dogmatic on the international front.
9. Interview, Phyllis Altman.
10 Interview, Stephen Dlarnini.
11.The SATUC's exclusion of African trade unions was beginning to be an embarrassment internationally. Lacking even the facade of liberalism, the TUC regarded FOFATUSA as its 'official liaison' with African trade unions. It was this pressure from abroad, more so than a serious commitment to African workers, that led the TUC to drop its 'colour-bar' in the early 1960s. The name of the body changed at that time to the Trade Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA).
12.Is this an example of the ICFTU policy of 'no politics in the trade union movement'?
13. In all likelihood, these documents were sent to SACTU by a sympathetic worker employed in the duplicating office of the Liberal Party. His/her identity remains unknown.
14.Interview, Phyllis Altman.
15. Wilton Mkwayi and Moses Mabbida were SACTU's overseas representatives following their escape from South Africa during the State of Emergency in 1960. Mkwayi re-entered South Africa at a later date and is now serving a life sentence on Robben Island.
16. SACTU elected Moses Mabhida and Viola Hashe to present the case to the Geneva meetings in 1959, but they were both prevented from leaving South Africa. In the same year, Lucy Mvubelo (FOFATUSA) was allowed to attend the ILO meetings with a passport valid for two months.
17.The 1964 ILO Session passed a resolution calling on South Africa to repeal all
18 See Thompson and Larson, op. cit.
19 Once again, the South African government allowed Lucy Mvubelo to leave the country to attend the Lagos meetings.
20. Before leaving South Africa, Nana Mahomo had never been a trade unionist. Yet Moses Mabhida recalls Mahomo working closely with the American Irving Brown, the man most closely associated with AFL-CIO/ICFTU intrigues in the African labour movement.
21.Interview, Moses Mabhida.
22.The Nigerian TUC even wrote to US President Kennedy to lodge complaints against Irving Brown and ask that he be removed as US Ambassador to Nigeria.
23.Interview, Moses Mabhida.
[Contents] [Next Chapter]