report begins. Mayekiso of Mawu reports that Mawu membership in the area is 10 000. Factory after factory gets reported. The details of the various strikes are given. The problems of strikes are the main concern. The speeches are all different. Most are militant, some are cautious. But overall the message is very much the same. The strike is our only weapon. We are fighting for our rights and we need strong organisation.69
The power of the shop steward councils lay in their flexibility and ‘action-oriented, task-based approach’, according to Greg Ruiters.70 Standing outside constitutional structures, councils were unfettered by the normal chain of union accountability where factory representatives reported to the BEC, which in turn reported to the NEC. Their power lay in the commonality of factory grievances which allowed for the formulation of shared strategies and the building of unity.
As actions continued to erupt, the Katlehong council began organising solidarity action for striking workers and new factory struggles. An organiser explained: ‘The council is not to solve individual factory problems like a dismissal … we discuss disputes like strikes … how can we help those workers.’71
At times the council focused on a particular struggle because of the company’s strategic or symbolic importance. At the Germiston firm Litemaster, a union stronghold where workers were fired, the council decided that a defeat would set back workers in the whole area, and it raised R2 000 in donations from workers to help dismissed comrades during their three month dispute. Litemaster members also launched an overtime ban to demand their reinstatement and workers in other factories put pressure on their managers to contact Litemaster. On top of this, the local decided that the union should take an unfair labour practice case to court. It made it clear that if none of these initiatives succeeded, workers would stage demonstration stoppages in all organised factories. Not surprisingly, management climbed down.72
Some council leaders won employers’ grudging respect. Katlehong local chair Richard Ntuli became, in effect, a full-time shop steward during the strike wave, as management allowed him to play the role of roving troubleshooter. ‘Litemaster started to trust me and any problem they had they would call me to sort it out. There was a strike at MacSteel and I asked management if I could go and sort it out … So I started going to all the strikes in Wadeville.’73
Most wage strikes failed, but workers at TMF and McKechnie Brothers won increases largely because of the local’s support. The council chair called emergency meetings from time to time, as an organiser Richard Ntuli described: ‘There were discussions about how to keep people solid, united, and stewards visiting those factories on strike … encouraging them, explaining to them how to keep themselves united and how to push management. I think that’s why we won factories like McKechnie and TMF.’74 When the union won a victory in one factory, workers set out to organise those nearby and soon committees were formed to organise one street in the factory zone at a time.75
As more workers struck, managements began to employ a new policy of dismissing all strikers, recruiting scabs and then re-employing selectively which enabled them to weed out activists. At National Springs (NS), the council adopted a three-pronged strategy when it fired 380 strikers: it used community contacts to dissuade workers from scabbing; then shop stewards in other companies approached their managements to apply pressure for reinstatement; and finally it built solidarity across unions by, for example, asking Naawu members to refuse to handle NS products. The anti-scabbing tactic was so successful that the company was forced to recruit non-unionised coloured workers.76 In response the council started a campaign to recruit coloured workers. Fosatu Worker News described the response of unsuspecting strikebreakers:
Mawu and Fosatu have become so strong in the Wadeville area that management has found it very difficult to recruit scab labour to break strikes. At Metal and Chemical Industries they tried to recruit scab labour from the pass office on the morning of the strike. Workers were not told they were being brought in to break a strike. When the truck-load of new recruits arrived and saw the striking workers outside the factory, they all jumped out and ran away. The company then began negotiating.77
Through the shop stewards councils, a core of activists emerged to become informal organisers who worked closely with Mayekiso. They included leaders such as Basner Moloi, Katlehong local chair between 1981–1982 and Fosatu regional education chairperson; metal shop stewards Johnston Nonjeke, Wiseman Zondani, Richard Ntuli, David Sebabi, Andrew Zulu; and CWIU’s Ronald Mofokeng.78 They advocated short stoppages averaging two-and-a-half days because strikes, pickets and strike funds were illegal and the danger existed of police using the Internal Security and Riotous Assembly Acts to arrest strikers and union officials. They discouraged longer strikes in the VW mould, as East Rand workers had fewer skills and less bargaining power. Of the longer strikes, only the 1981 action at Scaw succeeded.79
Workers at an annual general meeting of Mawu held at Wattville Stadium in Benoni on May Day 1982 where 2 000 workers attended in contrast to 100 the previous year. The leadership reported that the Transvaal membership had grown from 6 000 to 10 000 in a year (Numsa)
These activists assisted workers to conduct strikes in a disciplined and united way, and to return to work immediately the company agreed to negotiate. Richard Ntuli spoke about how he guided workers to think tactically:
After the third meeting there was a deadlock and workers decided to go on strike. I tried to stop them but it was their democratic right. As a shop steward I was there to guide them not to stop them. We just had to make sure they didn’t dismiss workers. Then Wednesday the workers just came out. Then at the end of the day I said: ‘Let’s go back to work’, so we knock off when we are on duty rather than leaving when we are on strike. This was about at 3 o’clock … so they went back.
The following day we went back to the table and came and report and workers decided not to go back to work again in the morning. Then we decided to go on full strike and they told us we were dismissed and he went off to prepare money. Then I said: ‘Hey guys let’s go back to work again’ so we were back at the machines when he came back with the money.
Pyrrhic victory?
In August 1982, Mawu’s AGM reported that the Transvaal membership had grown from 6 000 to 10 000 in a year and 2 000 workers attended the AGM in contrast to a hundred in the previous year.80 Yet the union was realising that even with shop stewards councils, the strikes could not be properly managed. Said Fanaroff: ‘Until April [1982], we won every strike. Then we started losing. The recession wasn’t the main reason; employers were no longer confused … The first time workers struck, the employer gave in; the second time he gave them the benefit of the doubt; by the third he had decided to smash them and knew how to do it.’81 Mawu now had mass membership without organisational structures to support it which allowed employers to crack down. A Mawu AGM report complained that stewards were left to face management ‘without planning or experience.’82
The symbol of this employer backlash was a strike at Anglo American Scaw Metals in Germiston. Scaw’s chair, Graham Boustred, was the driving force behind Seifsa’s ‘industrial council only’ wage bargaining stance. A strike at the factory the previous year had won reinstatement of a worker after a racial incident, as well as the informal recognition of Mawu. But the parties remained deadlocked on plant bargaining.83
In April 1982, Scaw workers decided to establish the principle of plant bargaining by demanding a minuscule 10c an hour increase at plant level while industrial council talks were in progress. Mayekiso recalled: ‘They said: “Why should we be represented by people who are not taking a mandate from the workers? Now we are the force, but the employers can’t talk to us. Let us take
