steward structures and renegotiating grievance procedures to ensure that workers had a voice, and the upshot was the signing of an unusually sophisticated agreement in which Ford agreed to full-time shop stewards on full pay – a precedent soon followed by VW.62
The strikes signalled that workers would inevitably turn their newfound confidence and factory power to the voicing of wider political grievances. They also alerted other employers to the danger of dealing with ineffective worker structures. Among other workers in the Eastern Cape, and elsewhere in South Africa, these workers’ militancy and victories were watched with keen interest.63
At the time that Numarwosa was breaking out of the Tucsa mould, another coloured union, the Western Province Motor Assemblers Union (WPMawu) was challenging Tucsa’s leadership. Formed in Cape Town in 1961 by coloured workers, it soon won recognition at Austen Motors, Chrysler and British Leyland. Natie Gantana, a Leyland worker and president of WPMawu, recalled that at this stage the union ‘had a sad history because it had a sad executive. It was recognised by law and the company but it didn’t operate in the workers’ interests … The leaders were management guys – they didn’t want to put up a hard fight … The shop stewards were senior blokes, inspectors and charge hands, and the blue overall guys never qualified to be shop stewards.’64
A persistent worker grievance was that union leaders negotiated better pay rises for higher grades at Leyland, including themselves. A small group of union activists campaigned house to house and at a general meeting members passed a motion of no confidence in the executive. They formed an interim executive committee, suspended a proposed merger with UAW, and voted out the old executive in 1972.65
In the same year, Joe Foster, a printworker, was appointed national secretary (Tucsa’s secretaries were not elected) and began restoring worker control through accountable shop stewards. Foster commented: ‘We believe very strongly in participatory democracy, in grassroots democracy. We, the executive and officials, could run the union efficiently like a business if we wanted to … but we don’t think things should run that way. We believe that a future democratic South Africa should be run by the people, that the workers should participate in the running of the country.’66
WPMawu broke with Tucsa in 1972 and tried to convince Numarwosa to do likewise,67 but the latter followed only four years later. Sauls recalls why it left:
When we started looking at our relationship with UAW and the direction in which the union was going our affiliation to Tucsa and the IMF [International Metalworkers Federation] became important issues.68 In our discussions the question arose that if the UAW does not fit into Tucsa there must be something drastically wrong with that organisation. We had discussions with Tucsa unions at annual conferences to see how they viewed the bringing in of African workers into the Tucsa fold … when we had feedback from this, we were shocked … so we decided we are just wasting our time in Tucsa.
It was at this point that Sauls decided to sound out WPMawu on the question of unity. Foster recalls Sauls convening a meeting in 1976 with other unions at the US consulate in Johannesburg. Foster, who had socialist leanings, viewed the attempt with suspicion. It was a later initiative from the IMF to form a southern African coordinating committee that ultimately brought the Cape unions, as well as Mawu, together. Foster recalls: ‘When Alec [Erwin, of Mawu] came to IMF meetings and started to talk about workers’ control, we realised we had an affinity.’
EAWU organiser and later Mawu Western Transvaal organiser Petrus Tom (Wits archnives)
The IMF Southern African Coordinating Council also forged links between these unions and another dissident Tucsa affiliate which emerged in the 1970s, the Engineering and Allied Workers Union (Eawu). It was started in the mid-1960s as part of Tucsa’s African Affairs Committee of the Sheet Metal Workers Union. Sactu bitterly opposed its formation, viewing it as Tucsa ‘splitting tactics’ and Sactu historians Luckhardt and Wall claimed that ‘it never really got off the ground’.69 It did, however, get off the ground when it was expelled from Tucsa and received help from the Urban Training Project (UTP). EAWU grew in strength, and by 1974 its paid up membership was 3 000; its signed up membership was 9 000 by 1976, by which time it was financially independent.70
An EAWU organiser, Petrus Tom, was successfully organising large numbers of engineering workers in the Vaal branch in the industrial areas of Vanderbijlpark and Vereeniging in the Transvaal. Mawu, too, was beginning to organise in the area, and the EAWU branch developed a respect for its way of working, accountable to the membership through mandates and report-backs in order to ensure worker control of the union. It clashed with the Springs head office by accusing it of laziness, and in 1981 general secretary Calvin Nkabinde dismissed Vaal officials, who joined Mawu, taking the branch executive with them. Meanwhile Nkabinde had brought EAWU into Fosatu in 1979 on its formation. But he often refused to implement Fosatu policy and was critical of its white leaders, and in 1982 EAWU was expelled from the federation. This enabled Mawu’s Vaal branch to recruit widely and win recognition in former EAWU factories.71
These ex-Tucsa unions brought a distinctive tradition to Numsa which would contribute significantly to its organising methods, bargaining choices and administrative style.
In Tucsa: Motor Industry Combined Workers Union
Whilst Numarwosa/UAW, WPMawu and Mawu were drawing closer in the 1970s, another union, the Motor Industry Combined Workers’ Union (Micwu), viewed Mawu, and to some extent Numarwosa, as competitors.
Micwu was a coloured union which, in the 1970s, had remained in the Tucsa fold. Tucsa’s commitment to black trade unionism over three decades had been erratic, often instrumental and progressively more determined by the policies of the apartheid state. It admitted and expelled, or partially expelled, African and coloured unions from its ranks according to the political exigencies of the day. In the 1950s, when it was competing with Sactu, it grudgingly accepted mixed race unions. It was a moderate non-political federation which upheld free market principles and was principally engaged in orthodox union wage bargaining.72 Out of a desire to prevent black workers from falling into communist clutches, it decided to organise black workers in the 1950s and supported the US-backed Federation of Free Trade Unions of SA (Fofatusa). When Sactu leaders were jailed, killed in detention and forced into exile in the early 1960s, it offered no support.
The 1956 Industrial Conciliation Amendment Act which prohibited African workers from joining registered trade unions, had forced coloured and Indian union members into segregated branches controlled by a white executive. This was why Micwu’s coloured workers were originally members of unions parallel to the white Motor Industry Staff Association (Misa), a clerical union, and the Motor Industry Employees’ Union of South Africa (Mieu), a union representing artisans in the motor industry. Both were affiliated to Tucsa although the ultra-conservative Misa later withdrew in opposition to the federation opening up membership to coloured workers. Coloured and Indian workers were permitted to join Mieu as ‘B’ class members, but the white union later introduced coloured parallel membership and represented them on the industrial council.73
By the mid 1960s, grand apartheid was at its height. As the government grew in confidence so Tucsa moved to the right and a number of its unions threatened to disaffiliate unless it mirrored government separatist policies. In response Tucsa expelled its black trade unions in 1969.74 Its attitude to the emerging nonracial unions of the 1970s was characterised by the same antipathy it had demonstrated to Sactu.75
After Tucsa expelled its black unions, Mieu’s white executive instructed its former coloured members to form their own union, and the result was Micwu, registered in 1970 as a Tucsa
