including Dorbyl, Borg-Warner, Bosal and National Standard. Port Elizabeth followed suit, with recruiting gains at Willard Batteries, Autoplastics and Dorbyl. Uitenhage shop stewards also helped other emerging unions, including the NUTW and the Sweet Food and Allied Workers Union (SFAWU).53
John Gomomo, a recruiter for UAW and later a Numsa office bearer and Cosatu president (W Matlala)
By the end of 1979, UAW had significant membership at six Port Elizabeth factories and had won recognition at VW, SKF, Ford and General Motors, including stop-order facilities. It had become the first genuinely national union in the new union movement, with branches in Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage, Durban and East London and a presence in large plants in Pretoria.54
One of Numarwosa/UAW’s critical contributions was the building of strong black leadership for the new union movement. Much of it was developed in day to day factory struggles and by the end of the 1970s it was managing large-scale industrial action. Sauls recalls the impact of unionisation in the Eastern Cape by the early 1980s:
They [trade unions] have had a tremendous impact on the area. Companies are multinationals but I can say their attitudes have definitely changed. What is important to me is that people around Uitenhage and PE have really been made aware of the role of trade unionism … during the strike at VW [in 1980], the church people, without our approaching them, have sent circulars to some of the churches telling them that they must address themselves to the conditions under which their congregations are living and working. First it was the Eveready strike, then it was Ford, now it’s the strike at VW. Since then, a lot of people are sitting up. We’ve at least reached the stage where the balance of power across the negotiating table is more or less equal: we don’t have to beg or plead any more. They [workers] realise where the power is: it’s not across the negotiating table. The power is in the capital of management and in the labour power of workers on the floor.
The 1978 strike at British battery manufacturer Eveready was the first legal strike in South Africa for twenty years. Numarwosa’s 320 members, mostly coloured women, struck to demand recognition. Gloria Barry, a former Eveready worker and later vice-president of Numarwosa, recalls that ‘the conditions that these women worked under in Eveready were very bad … once the production lines started, they couldn’t leave to go to the toilet! There were boxes put down and they had to relieve themselves on the line.’55 During the strike the company called in the police, used scab labour and fired all the strikers, who continued striking for a further six months without success and suffered for years from a blacklist used by local companies.
Thozamile Botha, Ford Cortina Struandale worker and Pebco leader (EP Herald)
The Eveready defeat made a deep impression on the emerging unions. It hardened their attitude to the official bargaining system by highlighting that a legal strike did not protect workers from dismissal or police action and that union registration did not guarantee bargaining rights.56 It also underscored the limits to the strategy of organising foreign-owned companies. One useful consequence of the strike, however, was the strengthening of ties between Numarwosa and Tuacc. Tuacc’s Alec Erwin visited Port Elizabeth during the dispute and was impressed. ‘They lost but that had nothing to do with the way they organised it. The strike convinced me we had a lot to learn from them.’57
A series of strikes at Ford in 1979 provided some salutary lessons which forced the union to examine its policy of political independence. The first strike began in October 1979 at the Cortina Struandale Plant when Thozamile Botha, a trainee draughtsman and leader of the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation (Pebco), resigned because the company was putting pressure on him over his political activity. Workers distributed pamphlets warning that ‘if he [Botha] is not here at noon today, tools down everybody’. Port Elizabeth was emerging as a centre of African resistance to apartheid, and Botha was addressing rallies of 10 000 people. At noon, 700 African workers gathered on the company’s lawns for Botha to address them. Ford’s personnel officer urged them to return to work and asked UAW’s John Mke to translate. When workers heard their union president talking management language, Mke’s days as a worker leader were over.58
The irony was that UAW supported the workers’ demands; after the strike ended with Botha’s reinstatement, it negotiated full pay for strikers. Countering Pebco’s accusations that it had sold out the workers, Sauls retorted angrily: ‘It was clear to us: Pebco used this to show their control over workers. And they succeeded. They could get all the workers out and keep them out for three days. It was then clear that Botha was not pursuing the interests of the workers. He did not ask the question about the lost pay.’ In a press statement, Numarwosa organiser George Manase restated the union’s policy: ‘We are fighting for the liberation of the black people … we should operate on our area – trade unions – and politicians in theirs. We must work on parallel lines. These militant radicals interfere with us.’59 Other BEC members endorsed his view, while Sauls reaffirmed the need for unions to maintain their political independence.
Women strikers from Eveready in Port Elizabeth receiving food parcels and strike pay of R10 each from Danny Leen (left), organising secretary of the National Union of Motor Assembly and Rubber Workers, in November 1978 (EP Herald)
The leadership of UAW and Numarwosa were not, however, apolitical. They rejected racial divisions and were concerned to build workers’ awareness of themselves as able to overcome exploitation and a sense of inferiority to whites. In the mid-1970s, as they linked up with unions elsewhere, they began to develop education programmes which cast workers as an oppressed class. Their perspective would bring them closer to the leaders of Mawu.
The Pebco stoppage triggered a spate of strikes at Ford in which UAW negotiated on workers’ behalf and when the company fired 700 strikers it demanded reinstatement. At this point the power struggle between UAW and Pebco resurfaced, with a group of dismissed workers electing an independent Pebco committee, later the Ford Workers Committee, to negotiate with management. Eventually, an embarrassed US government intervened and Ford agreed to reinstate the strikers.60
The Ford dispute raised issues for the UAW leaders, who were clearly out of touch with worker militancy. When they told workers that Ford was open to partial reinstatement, they were accused of being sell-outs and likened to hated community councillors.
A few months later, the Ford committee launched the rival Motor Assembly and Component Workers Union of South Africa (Macwusa), committed to fighting for rights in the townships as well as in factories. Over time, Macwusa recruited members in Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and Pretoria, although it never overtook UAW and Numarwosa membership.61
Some of the 700 Ford workers leaving the Ford Struandale assembly plant after a meeting in November 1979. Management considered workers to have terminated their service (EP Herald: Siphiwe)
WPMawu delegation to Fosatu launch in 1979 (Joe Foster front left) (Wits archives)
The Ford disputes forced the UAW to examine its organising strategy. It concluded that organisers and factory representatives did not meet members often enough and that it had failed to build strong factory structures, allowing militants to view it as a management–government puppet. The weakness of the liaison committee strategy was also
