The Fight for African Trade Union

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PART 3 OF OUR SERIES ON SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY.

The alliance between South categories of jobs by a stateenforced colour bar), and the Afrikaner capitalist class began with the Labour Nationalist Coalition government of 1924.

(See 'Socialist Press' No 37).

This political alliance was further consolidated with the victory of the Nationalist Party in the 1948 elections. And it has held power ever since.

The Nationalists, led successively by Malan, Stridom, Verwoerd, and now Vorster, acting for both South Atrican and international capitalism have carried through a massive consolidation of State control of the working class in South Africa through police terror and the denial of basic democratic rights.

Racial segregation was enforced in industry. The Industrial Concil¡atic Act of 1956 enforced racial seET ition in trade unions and excinued African workers from participation in the machinery of trade union bargaining.

STRIKES FORBIDDEN

The Native Labour Act of 1953 forbade strikes by black workers and established regional Native Labour committees of civil servants to settle all disputes involving black workers and to direct workers to particular areas of employment.

The direction and control of the movement of labour was achieved through the notorious 'Pass Laws' which ensured that all black workers who became unemployed or engaged in any form of political activity could be swiftly located and returned to the African tribal lands (Bantustans).

Alongside industrial legislation came a battery of political controls.

The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 forcibly dissolved the Communist Party and established the legal framework for the arrest and detention without trial, or the placing under house arrest, of wide circles of white middle class liberal critics of government policy in addition to thousands of black militants and communists of both races.

The 1961 General Law Amendment Act gave the police unprecedented sweeping powers of detention and arrest without trial.

UNLIMITED

This legislation has been supple, mented by the Terrorism Act and now the State Security Act which gives the police virtually unlimited power to arrest and detain indefinitely without trial almost anyone.

The Act is being used for the save of arrests of black militants currently under way even though it has not yet passed through parliament.

Other legislation like the 1974 ¡ Riotous Assemblies Act gives the police widespread powers to ban meetings and has been especially wed against black Trade Unions.

This legislation is, of course, yust the legal facade of State terror, the cover for the widespread use of orture and intimidation by a police force many of whose leaders admirers of the methods of Hitler's Gestapo.

The economic result of this attor be been the maintenance of bo biats wages. In the mining adustre ice ratio o i white mages to In manufacturing and building the ratio is smaller but increasing: from 5:1 in 1965 to 6:1 in 1970. Black agricultural workers have lower living standards than they had 60 years ago.

On the basis of this massive pool of cheap labour, foreign capital flooded into South Africa during the post war boom. Return on investment was consistently higher than for other areas of the world.

In 1962 for example, the rate of return on US investment in South Africa was 19.9% compared with a world average rate of return of 11.1% FASHIONABLE Despite this it remained a fashionable idea among liberals both inside South Africa and in Еиторе that somehow racist repression resulting in the forcing down of wages was a hindrance to a profitable capitalism in South Africa - that the bourgeoisie itself had an interest in getting rid of racism!

The argument went that apartheid was causing a shortage of skilled labour since there were many Africans capable of filling skilled posts but were prevented by law from doing so even though no whites were available.

Secondly, it was argued, the low wages of the mass of black workers would cause an economic crisis 'sooner or later' since employers would not be able to sell their products.

On the question of skilled labour it is certainly true that from the outset of South African capitalism it has been the skilled white workers who have been most loudly opposed to the employment of cheap black labour where it would threaten their craft privileges.

PRIVILEGES

The 1922 General Strike was in defence of these privileges. Last month white miners threatened a strike against the owners' proposals to open up more jobs to black workers - in return for a five day week for the white miners.

A very similar dispute began the 1922 strike. The liberals used the behaviour of the white labour aristocracy as a cover to argue that it was the capitalists who were "really" in favour of breaking down the colour bar and were doing so.

But let's look at what really happens.

Last year on South African railways 15,000 jobs formerly reserved for whites were taken over by blacks.

The job of shunter was for example previously reserved for whites only. A shortage of whites forced management to take on black workers. But the job as offered to blacks was redesignated train marshaller.

No blacks are employed as shunters. Whereas the lowest paid shunter gets paid 190 Rands a month (about £130) paid train marshalle, the highest Rands a month (about £110).

By attempting to open up more areas of employment to blacks the employers are in no sense 'breaking down' racism.

On the contrary racism is directly used to force black wages as low as possible in jobs previously reserved for whites.

The essence of the apartheid system is not that certain jobs are reserved for all time for whites. Rather, whatever jobs blacks are employed in, their wages will be terror.

ABSURDITY

The idea that low black wages hinder the expansion of capitalism in South Africa is of course an absurdity. The employers do not have to sell all their products to low paid workers. They sell to other capitalists!

None of the produce of the South African gold mines, it is safe to say, is sold to the black semislave workers on whose labour the profits of the mining companies are erected. South African gold is sold to the international banks for the financing of world trade.

The world capitalist CriSiS and the falling off in world trade has seen, in recent months, a fall in the world price of gold. This has resulted in declining profit: : for the mining companies, unen ployment and renewed attempts to drive down wages.

UNDERSTOOD World (IWW) known as the "Wobblies") led by Klemens Kadalie — collapsed in 1930.

African workers outside the mining industry then carried through a number of struggles for unionisation in particular industries.

Militants faced the threat of imprisonment and deportation to the tribal areas and the 1924 Industrial Conciliation Act denied bargaining rights to Africans.

There was, however, a measure of success and some African unions joined in federation with white unions in the South African Trades and Labour Council.

RESISTANCE

In the post-war period the apartheid policies of the Nationalist government were greeted with a whole series of resistance campaigns including a wave of strikes in 1960 and mass demonstrations which were greeted with massive police violence — the notorious Sharpville massacre - and followed by the wave of repressive laws in 1961.

It was in the late '60s and early '70s that the current wave of militancy began to build up. It was assisted by two factors.

Firstly the growth of manufacturing industry. By 1971 manufacturing accounted for 23% of Gross National Product - equal to mining and agriculture combined.

This has resulted in the rapid expansion of a black working class permanently resident in the towns unlike the migrant contract workers in the mines.

GOLD Secondly, the fall in the world price of gold has forced the devaluation of the currency and increasing inflation. In this situation the attractiveness of South Africa to foreign capital is beginning to deciine.

In 1972 for example the average return on US investment in South Africa was 9.8% as opposed to 13% for the world as a whole.

It is mounting inflation that nas given the impetus to the new wave of struggles, beginning with the strike of mineworkers in Ovamboland in December 1972 for higher wages and for an end to the contract labour system.

SOLIDARITY

A key development in this strike was the solidarity shown by the Africans in the tribal areas which prevented the employers using their traditional tactic. of replacing strikers with new migrants. South African gold miners This was followed in 1972 by a strike for higher pay by Johannesburg bus drivers. It is significant that in both these struggles, strike action preceded and became the main impetus for the formation of trade unions.

INCREASES

In Johannesburg the employers were prepared to grant wage increases - which left the workers in any case still below the government's own calculations as to minimum subsistence wages and which the employers knew would be rapidly eaten up by inflation.

But the employers were in no way prepared to enter into any negotiations for recognition of a bus drivers union formed after the strike.

In early 1973 the struggle switched to Durban where transport fares had been recently increased. Brickworkers began a strike for wage increases and were followed by workers from the rubber, chemical, electrical and service industries.

At the height of the strike 50,000 black workers were on strike. In September 73 mineworkers at Carletonville near Johannesburg struck for higher pay and an end to the contract labour system.

The government encouraged the employers to take a firm stand. The police were called in, eleven workers were shot dead and the strike defeated.

In all these actions and many since, black workers have received no help from the white dominated trade unions.

In July last year Arrie Paulus, General Secretary of the all white Mine Workers Union told the Johannesburg Financial Mail that black miners were not entitled to more pay because:

"Hell, they got enough over the last year. What they earn now is a good wage for a black."

Most white unions are organised into the South African Confederation of Labour which gives complete support to the government's racist policies. The South African Trades and Labour Council continued until 1954 to include multiracial unions.

Kenamed as the TUC of South Africa it reversed its policy in 1965 and reallowed black unions to affiliate. Under pressure from the State and Union leaders abandoned this position in 1969 and since then has come out very strongly against any changes in the industrial colour bar.

But in that year the Native Labour Act made it quite impossible for black unions to operate legally. Rather than take up a fight the SATLC followed the advice of the British TUC to "temporise on basic principles and agree to membership of the council beil? restricted to the registered unions. (ie white unions only).

Black workers will get : no support from such bodies in the struggle for trade unionism - a struggle that in no way can be separated from the struggle against the whole edifice of apartheid, state repression, and capitalism itself in South Africa.

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SPOTLIGHT ON REFORMIŚM to Work' campaign, was advocated by Jack Jones and is now the policy of the TUC in Britain and of the European TUC.

As part of a socialist programme, the reduction of the working week is a way of defending all jobs and at the same time using technological advance to increase leisure time for the whole working class.

In this spirit Marx and Lenin Jones went on to explain the need to "reduce working hours to give everyone the chance of a stable job."

No mention, of course, by this architect of wage-cutting policies, of the defence of workers' interests and living standards. Not a single call was made for real wages to be maintained if the working week is reduced - "productive efficiency" sharing on full pay.

It is only on the basis of such a policy, taken from the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International, that the employed and unemployed can be united in a serious fight for jobs.

Trotsky writes:

"Trade unions. should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual

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Africa's privileged white work- ing class, (protected in whole