Steel worker and later Mawu and Numsa organiser Frank Boshielo recalls that the only union recruiting Africans at Highveld was a black parallel of SABS: ‘I was assigned by two other guys to go and look for a union and we didn’t know where to go. We saw Mawu in the newspaper, especially in Durban, so we phoned the Mawu head office in Durban. Then we met someone who was working for Textile [Fosatu affiliate] and he connected us with Mawu in Benoni and we met the branch secretary.’32
As at VW, a group of mainly clerical workers with greater mobility established a network of activists. Union education and recruitment took place chiefly in Highveld’s hostels, and Boshielo’s hostel room became a contact-point. By the end of 1982, Mawu had recruited the majority of black workers. Arbitrary dismissals were a prominent grievance, and the union first won credibility by demanding dismissal and grievance procedures. After initially refusing union recognition on the grounds that Mawu was not party to the industrial council, the company signed an agreement in 1983.33
Highveld Steel’s activist shop stewards soon fanned out to other parts of the Eastern Transvaal. Steel and Alloys workers in adjacent Middelburg heard of developments at Highveld and sought out Boshielo. Said one shop steward:
Strike ballot at Highveld Steel in 1984 (Bernie Fanaroff)
Steel and Alloys was seriously resisting the union … what surprised me was that people were hired this week and next week they were all fired. I complained once … they thought I was a troublemaker and so they wanted to co-opt me on to the liaison committee and when I arrived there was a small cake and cool drinks and choice assorted biscuits once you finished your cake … then SABS was introduced into the company but I didn’t join and I saw that SABS treated blacks different from whites, and in their meetings was also a big cake and biscuits, and dismissals went on. Then we decided to find a militant union.34
The steward described how, when Boshielo visited the hostel, he was besieged by questioning workers whose chief anxiety was the danger of being fired if they signed up. The company initially insisted that the union recruit ‘50 per cent plus one’ of its 4 000 workforce, but eventually granted recognition when the union had enrolled 1 800 members. The word even spread into remote areas. An organising drive at a Highveld Steel colliery in Roossenekal sparked an approach in 1982 from workers at American-owned Tubatse Ferrochrome in Lebowa, and Mawu used this as a bridgehead to organise Anglo American mines in the area.35
At the same time, the union began organising Eskom power plants, first in Germiston and then, through the efforts of Highveld Steel workers, in the Eastern Transvaal. Many plants were situated near ‘tied mines’ which fed coal directly into generators. If the union wanted to control the power plants, it needed to control their collieries. By 1983, Mawu had made significant inroads into mine and power workers but was plagued by difficulties in gaining access to mines.36
Highveld Steel worker and later Mawu organiser, Frank Boshielo (Numsa)
In 1983, Mawu’s grand plan began to unravel. The National Union of Mineworkers, with access to the mines, quickly picked up 20 000 members.37 Commented Fanaroff: ‘We heard from workers that when Bobby [Godsell, from Anglo American] heard that Mawu was organising the mines he suddenly dropped his opposition to NUM, so we couldn’t get into the plants but the NUM could.’ He also conceded: ‘I’m bad at getting together big groups of people … Cyril [Ramaphosa, then NUM general secretary] put together a big team and hit the ground with a lot of resources and access as … well I don’t like taking risks … and you needed to. He was a very good manager.’ The 1984 split in Mawu also set back its Eastern Transvaal project. Fanaroff recalls that the leader of the breakaway union, David Sebabi, ‘told his homeboys that Moss and I were agents of the state and Moss nearly got killed up there at Driehoek in the chrome mines.’
Compounding this was the ongoing fear of white farmers intent on driving out the union. Fanaroff remembered: ‘Moss and I were convinced that the farmers were going to kill us on the way home at midnight. There’s nothing between Burgersfort and Middelburg and every time we got to Middelburg we’d give a sigh of relief. That road past Roossenekal and out was very lonely, through the mountains.’
Mawu stopped organising in the area, although the Eskom plants remained loyal to it.38 The Eastern Transvaal debacle was a rare case of an unsuccessful and irretrievable outcome.
Expansion into Brits
Roused by news of East Rand upheavals and of union activity around Pretoria, activists in Brits, 50 kilometres from Pretoria, began organising a large factory in their area, B&S. This recognition struggle signalled a new trend in Mawu – the trial of strength.
The trial of strength is regarded as the classic strike although it is the least used form of industrial action as it is highly risky. It involves prolonged action in which employers and strikers suffer huge financial losses which finally drives them to a settlement, and it is usually employed as a weapon of last resort. Comments Richard Hyman: ‘It is normally regarded by all concerned as sufficiently momentous an event to be planned with some care and launched only after intensive efforts at peaceful resolution of the question at issue.’39
At B&S, the ‘momentous’ nature of the showdown was not fully appreciated until workers had spontaneously downed tools. With little preparation on how to fund the strike, workers improvised as it unfolded. Thus the maintenance of strike solidarity for more than a year became critical.
For Crouch, the trial of strength exposes workers to heavy losses. He points out that strikes amongst workers new to unionisation are often long and bitter and caused by employers refusing recognition. He sees this union strategy as an expression of weakness, as by leaving work strikers lose their means of support while the employer has the power to dismiss them and recruit new labour. Workers consume their income almost immediately so their staying power declines rapidly. In contrast, the capitalist with more resources experiences a slower rate of weakening.40
Tarrow believes however that it can be a benefit. ‘For people whose lives are mired in drudgery and desperation, the offer of an exciting, risky, and possibly beneficial campaign of collective action may be a gain.’41 Fantasia takes this further and sees the positive spinoffs of spontaneous militancy, especially at a local level, as ‘the ultimate base of working class power.’42
The B&S strikers were indeed in a weak position, with little prospect of forcing management’s hand. The longer the strike lasted and the more impoverished they and their families became, the more futile the trial of strength tactic appeared. But this is where Crouch’s argument weakens. He fails to place the trial of strength in any context, so its power cannot be assessed. In the B&S case, although the workers had little prospect of finding alternative employment, the strike welded large sections of their communities together. Through union networks, support was elicited from left-leaning white university students and intellectuals, as well as workers elsewhere in the country. Protracted ordeals like the B&S strike taught powerless and poorly educated people lessons in the exercise of power, and ways of using power in future battles.
The Brits industrial area, on the border of the Bophuthatswana homeland, fell under government’s ‘deconcentration’ policy launched in the 1960s. Through a system of incentives including tax breaks and generous wage subsidies, the aim was to create industrial zones, often on homeland borders, to stem the flow of Africans to white cities.43 Union-free and hidden, many of these companies allowed workers’ wages and conditions to fall below survival levels.
