and racial cleavages in the workplace and the labour movement. The docile, bureaucratic white unions tolerated by the government either ignored black labour or exercised paternalistic control over ‘parallel’ organisations for black workers. The political unionism which arose in the 1950s had been smashed by a ferocious state onslaught on the African National Congress’s labour ally, the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu), after the banning of the ANC in 1960.
Segregated toilets at Iscor in Vanderbijlpark, 1992 (W Matlala)
The rise and fall of Sactu formed an important ideological backdrop for the early metal unionists of the 1970s. Underpinning Sactu’s relationship with the ANC, and their joint political campaigns, was the theory of ‘internal colonialism’ formulated by the SACP chair, Michael Harmel, which came to dominate left thinking. This held that South Africa consisted of a former settler, now permanent, white middle class which exploited the mass of rightless, indigenous black people. The first stage of struggle was to eliminate racial oppression through a national struggle waged by a class alliance. After the defeat of the white minority government, working class interests would diverge from those of the black bourgeoisie and a new stage of working class struggle would begin. Trade unionism was thus important, but secondary, to liberation politics.2 As a result, the slow, painstaking construction of workplace democracy was neglected by the Sactu unions. Shop stewards committees were rare and in the main workers had little factory power. National solidarity was also poorly developed, and when the state, armed with new powers of detention without trial, cracked down on Sactu and drove its leadership into exile, the latter’s affiliates were severely weakened.3
The 1960s ushered in a period of industrial peace for the Nationalists, accompanied by a booming economy, unfettered by political unrest, and underpinned by a plentiful supply of cheap labour. In the unnatural industrial calm that followed, from the mid-1960s onwards, the structure of the South African economy changed: agriculture and mining declined and manufacturing, commerce, finance and services grew in importance; foreign capital flooded into the country, fuelling the concentration of capital in the South African economy within certain monopolistic companies and within certain industrial sectors, and many more Africans joined the formal economy.
It was in this context that the Nationalists turned their attention to consolidating the apartheid state. The state’s social engineering in this period rested on four pillars strengthened by a plethora of new laws. The first pillar was reinforced by the intensification of influx control measures and the redefinition of all Africans, however urbanised, as permanent residents of ethnic homelands. The second pillar of Nationalist reconstruction rested on the concentration of power in white, especially Afrikaner, hands. Heavy penalties were meted out to those whom the state suspected of furthering the aims of a banned organisation or of crossing the racial barrier. The third pillar was the apartheid welfare regime which separated all social services. Differentiated education institutions, health facilities, and pension services were created, and in all of these whites were allocated the highest proportion of the state budget whilst Africans were allocated the lowest.4 The apartheid workplace was the final pillar bolstering the apartheid regime. The most skilled jobs were reserved for whites whilst Africans laboured in the most unskilled, lowest paid, hardest, dirtiest, most tedious and dangerous jobs. The segregation of workplace facilities was reinforced by the Factories Act which dictated that employers provide racially segregated amenities such as change rooms, canteens and toilets.
Semi-skilled machine operator (Lesley Lawson)
By the mid-1960s, a semi-skilled labour shortage was in evidence. Until the 1960s, skilled white artisans had controlled the metal industry through powerful craft unions, but now white labour struck a compromise with employers whereby it agreed to tolerate the limited mobility of black labour in exchange for higher wages and the reservation of the more skilled grades of employment for whites.5 Employers mechanised, split up skilled jobs and began hiring large numbers of African semi-skilled machine operators; the graduation of many Africans from unskilled to semi-skilled work would, as Owen Crankshaw points out, have crucial implications for union organisation.6
The 1960s came to a close in a way that presented formidable obstacles for trade union organisation as worker power was at its lowest ebb since the onset of industrialisation. Working class power in South Africa had been unevenly built over 50 years in what Ross Martin terms ‘a history of quite extraordinary organisational instability’.7 White and black workers were polarised; African, Indian and coloured workers had been forced apart by differing organisational rights and urbanisation policies; and African workers were divided from each other through differential rights to reside in urban areas.
White unions went through the motions of negotiating minimum wages in industrial councils, knowing that their members commanded far higher rates of payment because of their scarce skills, and to protect their privileged status they barred black workers from training opportunities. As Peter Alexander observes, ‘“race” was not the only basis for divisions within the working class. “Skill” had a major impact on wages and trade union organisation.’8 Coloured and Indian trade unions, where they existed, expressed a similar lack of solidarity with African labour and were also badly weakened by the racial hierarchy in the workplace. Linked to the absence of workplace organisational power was black labour’s inability to participate in, or shape, the rules of engagement in industrial relations and political institutions.
Yet new possibilities were taking shape. The growth in all sectors, the emergence of many semi-skilled Africans and the development of monopoly capitalism had brought large numbers of workers together in production. These conditions would provide an organisational basis for the unions which would emerge in the 1970s.
The 1970s: new light
By 1973, the economy was slowing, and by 1978 it was in deep recession. For metal workers on the East Rand, these were ‘lean years’.9 Forced removals placed intolerable pressures on the overcrowded reserves, and huge numbers of desperate people flooded into the cities in search of work.
In this context, two ruptures changed the course of South African history. In 1973, a wave of spontaneous strikes erupted in the Durban industrial centre of Pinetown; an estimated 70 000 workers in different industries downed tools and demonstrated that beneath the quiescence of the 1960s rankled resentment at low wages and stressful working conditions in the face of flourishing industries and employer prosperity. (In the early 1970s, inflation eroded wages as labour confronted price rises of up to 40 per cent on basic goods;10 in 1973, the average African pay was R13 a week, well below the R18 stipulated by the Poverty Datum Line.) The strikes brought to the fore the inadequacies of South Africa’s dual labour relations system and signalled a reawakening of working class militancy – new trade unions were formed, including Mawu, which aimed to organise African workers. The strikes also shocked employers into realising that new systems of control were necessary and as a result the Bantu Labour Relations Act was passed, which introduced non-union management/worker structures known as liaison committees. It soon became apparent however that they were no substitute for union organisation, as strikes continued to erupt. Between 1973 and 1976, the number of African workers involved in industrial action each year never fell below 30 000.11
The next rupture in the fabric of the apartheid state occurred in 1976. In the economic boom of the early 1970s, industry experienced a shortage of skilled manpower, which pressured the state to provide better education for black people. An increase in the number of black high schools and of places at universities for black students led to a substantial increase in the number of black intellectuals, many of whom embraced the Black Consciousness ideology which was partly responsible for the student uprising,
