to inter-union conflict was to merge, and he revealed that Naawu had given him a mandate to initiate merger discussions.22 In early 1986, serious talks began. But they were far from easy. East remembers ‘tremendous differences between ourselves and Mawu and Naawu – it seemed at the time that the gap between us was almost unbridgeable’. Abie Masabalala, a Micwu official, recalls Sauls standing up at an IMF meeting and declaring: ‘You know we never trusted you people because we didn’t believe you were a true trade union; you people believed in begging.’23
So delicate were the talks that the smallest issue derailed them. Ekki Esau related how, even after merger agreement, the name of the new union became a stumbling block: ‘Mawu came up with a name that was the same acronym as Mawu, so we walked out!’ Unions feared being swallowed up and losing their identities, names and organisers, while senior officials worried about their jobs. Workers kept things on course, however. ‘We stated all we wanted was for workers to unite,’ said Mawu shop steward Joseph Sepetla. ‘We were not worried about names and positions.’24
One of the early differences was over whether the new union should straddle the entire metal industry or focus on a specific sub-sector. Micwu favoured the latter, Naawu and Mawu the former. These problems were raised at regular meetings ‘with the parties represented mainly by one official each. This facilitated discussion and made it relatively easy to deal with the non-political and administrative matters.’25 These included matters such as constitutional structures and meetings of the new union, affiliations, regional areas, membership, national office bearers, composition of the secretariat, salaries and benefits, assets and industrial relations principles and policies.
One of Micwu’s fears arose from the agreed principle that all resources would be shared in the merged organisation. Micwu had carefully built up resources and assets while knowing that Mawu ‘had no financial resources; in fact it had a deficit’.26 East recalls: ‘We had celebrated our 25th anniversary in 1984 and we had accumulated enough to buy our own building. The senior officials had cars, so the merger would mean a serious change in the way we operated. We would have to throw money into the common pool. What would happen to money and our conditions? There was resistance from staff and the executive committee.’
Despite these reservations, there was respect for Mawu and its way of operating. Esau remarked, ‘They were bankrupt but they were prepared to take a stand – our union didn’t take a stand. We never had one strike. Our members could just walk out any time and get more money. The black worker was underpaid, overworked and treated like a piece of dirt.’
They kept unity talks in perspective by focussing on the conditions of workers. As East relates, ‘We tried to keep worker rights as the prime issue. In the end that argument won the day. If we can build on our strength, reduce conflict between workers that employers are using, then let’s go for it.’
An important breakthrough was the inclusion of 2 000 members from Macwusa, the highly politicised union which had broken away from Numarwosa during the Ford strikes. The relationship between Macwusa and Naawu had worsened over the years, particularly after Macwusa scabbed on 10 000 striking Naawu workers during industrial council negotiations, claiming that the council was ‘an apartheid vehicle geared to please management’.27 There were further clashes when both unions began organising Sigma in Pretoria. The decision by the IMF unions to approach Macwusa was also strongly based on the need to consolidate a union presence in the fragmented and poorly organised components sector, whose members laboured in small manufacturing outfits and garages.
Macwusa’s leadership did not enter merger talks willingly, as Numsa unionists recall:
[Macwusa’s] leadership did not come into merger talks, only the shop stewards, and they just used to come and listen and not take part. I think it was a strategy not to be seen as taking part in these talks. The comrades knew that Naawu was more dominant, and they knew they would be swallowed … But it disadvantaged Naawu in factories where there was a perception that there was no democracy, that the leadership would take decisions and shop stewards were just conveyor belts for decisions by leadership … Pebco would have a meeting and take positions, and then Naawu leadership and shop stewards would challenge where these decisions were taken. Then Naawu comrades would accuse township people of having the influence of Macwusa.28
Another breach was healed when the United Metal Mining and Allied Workers Union of South Africa (Ummawosa), a small breakaway from Mawu, brought 6 000 members into the new union. In line with Cosatu’s union unity resolution, other Cosatu affiliates also handed over membership falling within the metal unions’ scope. The General and Allied Workers Union (Gawu) and the Transport and General Workers Union surrendered small numbers of workers, while the CWIU contributed to the merger in tyre and rubber.
Some merger initiatives miscarried. One of the biggest sticking points in unity talks was the issue of paid-up membership. Some unions had no national structures and few financial procedures, and could not prove their membership. Numbers were important because it had been agreed that the new union would take on one organiser for every thousand members. Saawu could not prove membership, and Dube complained:
I couldn’t tell whether Saawu had members within the metal and engineering industries, or whether they had members in the textile industry, or whether they had members in another industry, or no members at all because gatherings in the townships would fill a hall, and yet there are only seven paid-up members … that is when we realised that after all they didn’t have members, because they couldn’t submit membership numbers.
Ike van der Watt, president of the South African Boilermakers Society (SABS), chairs a bargaining council meeting (Bernie Fanaroff)
Saawu defaulted on three deadlines to supply membership details, and was told it was welcome to join Numsa at a later stage.
More telling was the failure to bring in the South African Boilermakers Society (SABS), a white craft union with which Mawu and Numsa sometimes cooperated, most notably in a rare nonracial strike at Highveld Steel in 1984. The SABS was the one established union prepared to work with independent metal unions and the only Tucsa affiliate whose expulsion from the IMF had not been demanded by Fosatu 1982.29 It later left Tucsa in protest over the latter’s refusal to cooperate with unregistered unions and its support for the closed shop which, SABS argued, barred workers from joining unions of their choice. SABS general secretary Ike van der Watt, the IMF Council chair when Fosatu had walked out in 1980, had endorsed unity between the emerging and established unions and worked hard to resurrect the IMF Council.
Former Mawu organiser Geoff Schreiner believes SABS’ absence from the unity process was significant. ‘The boilermakers under the leadership of Van der Watt were serious players. I don’t think we were sufficiently sensitive to the concerns of the boilermakers and their particular constituency, and so we never really won them over. I think there was a group in the union who could have made a greater commitment.’30
Numsa was launched in May 1987 at a three-day congress in Crown Mines, Johannesburg, at the height of the state of emergency. The labour movement’s sense of siege was graphically captured by Naawu’s vice president, John Gomomo. Opening the congress, he declared that metal workers were under attack as never before, that tens of thousands had been retrenched in the previous five years, that key union leaders had been detained, and that organisers had been killed in attacks on Cosatu in Natal. He reminded delegates of the recent bombing of Cosatu’s Johannesburg headquarters, Cosatu House, and of the police siege of the building earlier that year when documents and correspondence dealing with union activities were ransacked and destroyed. ‘The only guarantee for the safety of our movement,’ Gomomo concluded, ‘is strong structures and workers’ control of our organisation.’31
