Political bans highlight the role of the trade unions in the anti-apartheid struggle
SOUTH AFRICA
W ITHOUT minimizing the
blow that has been struck against resistance organizations inside South Africa, there are some questions thrown up by the bannings. Why was COSATU not the main target? Are observers gravely wrong about the federation's significance in the South African struggle? Is it another occasion when a socialist delirium regarding the importance of workers' organizations has replaced accurate analysis?
At the same time, the two state of emergencies have already done their fearful work in the townships. Many of the organizations subject to the new orders have already had their officers hunted down, banned and gaoled. Organizations like the Youth Congress already lead a twilight existence. Why is it necessary to crush further some of these already cornered organizations? Why are they the target?
The place of COSATU in the struggle in South Africa today is of extraordinary significance. In 1987 COSATU members' living standards increased by 18% thanks to their struggles. This is a higher percentage than any other group of employees in South African, and means that workers in COSATU unions were the only ones to keep pace with inflation.2 Wage increases were rarely the only advantages of COSATU unions deals, and leading economic observers comment on the better conditions won by COSATU members as part of packages including wage increases. Union membership grows despite unemployment
Contrary to the declining trend in union membership elsewhere in the more developed world, South African unions increased their membership in 1987. The last reported figures (1986) gave 36% of the active population of South Africa as union members, despite a massive, if partly uncharted, unemployment rate. In 1986 there were just over 1 million days lost in strikes. In 1987 that grew to a staggering 9 million. Some of these strikes were, for the first time, directed at state employers (Satstransport, Iscor-Steel and the post office). More significantly, the huge number of days lost were distributed among ten major strikes, each representing a supreme effort 12 of organization and militancy in a society without a scrap of welfare rights and living International Viewpoint #141 • May 16, 1988
ON FEBRUARY 24 the South African government issued an edict "restricting"
17 organizations. These organizations — such as the
United Democratic Front
(UDF), the South African Youth Congress (SAYCO)
and the Azania People's
Organization (AZAPO) — are prohibited from carrying out or performing any activities or acts whatsoever"
In a separate clause, the Congress of South African
Trade Unions (COSATU was allowed to continue trade-union activities, but barred from political activities. These include:
calling for the release of prisoners from detention; calling for the restoration of illegal organizations, such as the African National Congress (ANC); calling for election boycotts or any other anti-government publicity campaigns;
commemorating the anniversary of any incident or riot, public violence or unrest "which has taken place at some time or other in the republic".
### PAUL SMITH under the shadow of the gun. A record like this would grace a period of full employment in a country with wellrooted civil rights. Under the second state of emergency and with the existence of mass unemployment, COSATU's record is extraordinary. And the South African state has responded by deciding to move against the workers' movement this coming summer with proposed legislation that cobbles together the whole list of employers' moans and groans against their increasingly powerful workforces.
The Labour Relations Amendment Bill includes clauses to render sympathy or solidarity strikes and strikes on the same issue within 15 months illegal; to further complicate the procedures for making a dispute legal; to end majority union rights to negotiate on behalf of the whole workforce and allow minority unions to register; to make unions liable for losses sustained during strikes; and to make consumer boycotts called by unions illegal.
### Major confrontations in the pipeline
If these and other clauses were not sufficient, the bill also gives the minister virtually unlimited powers to change relevant definitions of "fair" and "unfair" industrial practices should s/he feel fit. Botha's new approach to South Africa's business classes was further strengthened to the detriment of workers (including white workers) by his announcement of a cut in expenditure and a wages freeze in the public sector affecting nearly 1 million Black workers and half a million whites). This is to be coupled with a sell-off of state assets, Thatcher-style.
All in all, South Africa's labour movement is in for a major confrontation with the state in 1988.4 And Botha appears to be prepared to pay the price for his new policy of alliances with English-speaking business by risking further alienation of white workers from the Nationalist Party — at least for the time being — in order to prepare a confrontation with the Black unions.
So the importance of South Africa's independent trade-union movement seems to be fully understood by the authorities. The recent bannings were not, therefore, the chosen instrument to deal with the trade unions — they were aimed elsewhere. They really only hit the unions a glancing blow in respect of the extension of trade-union activi1. The Independent, February 25, 1988. 2. These and the following statistics are taken from the Financial Mail (South Africa), January 8, 1988. 3. Work in Progress 52. 4. Ibid.
FREEDOM
ty into the Black townships.
There is a debate today within the trade unions in general, and COSATU in particular, about how to move into the increasing vacuum in many townships. In reality, organization in the Black townships is on a much lower level than two years ago. State repression has accounted for much of this retreat. From that point of view, the latest bannings are the "icing on the cake". But the cake needs its icing! The regime is determined to completely root out any remains of "ungovernability" in the Black townships. In fact, this is critical to any longer term policy for "stabilization" of capitalist South Africa (with or without any reform programme.)
Without commenting here on some of the political strategies drawn out of the experience of the township rebellion by various sections of the liberation movement -whatever doubts one might have had about theories of "dual power" and the like — no one can doubt the depth and spread of that struggle in 1985-86.
Attempts to create a Black middle class
Since then, millions (perhaps when you add private investment, billions) of rand have flooded into the townships. Albeit a drop in the ocean with many failures (such as grotesque shacks erected without proper facilities and not based on any real infrastructure), there are some successful attempts to organize a more prosperous layer in many Black areas. The regime hopes to create South Africa's first real Black middle class, and these are the forces that the state is grooming to move into the political wastelands is has created in the townships through the destruction of township selforganization.
It is vitally important for the regime to persuade candidates to stand in the township municipal elections this coming October who are not in front of fighting organizations that would, at the very least, demand accountability and perhaps their very lives if the election boycott tactics continue. The masses in the townships were empowered by their own organizations in direct disproportion to those Black elements who saw a career, or at least relative privilege, through winning power in the local councils.
Botha prepared to see
Sharpville Six die
Botha was prepared to the brink of provoking a major internal and external backlash over the Sharpville Six for this very reason. (We can be thankful, in this case, that there was a relative autonomy of the South African judiciary from the state which allowed it to buckle under national and international pressure.) Botha himself, and his cabinet, are prepared to see the Sharpville Six die. What is involved is a cynical calculation that it is worth the risk in order to increase the cost of attacking "elected" officials in the townships. Botha will go to the edge and over to defend his Black mayors and officials. He has no choice. Repression alone will not suffice to deal with 15-20 million revolutionaryminded people!? Sharpville and the February bannings are therefore part of the same
What Botha's policy for the Black townships looks like in practice can already be seen in one area — the townships around Pietermaritzburg. (There is no possibility of a return to the halcyon days when Blacks "knew their place", Black middle class or not.) In Pietermaritzburg, nightly war is carried out by the KwaZulu "head of private army, Inkatha, against any and all radical groups and individuals. KwaZulu police back up unofficial efforts.® The whole grisly parade started with the killings of a British Tyre and Rubber shop steward, Simon Ngubane, and his companion Florence at the Lion River near Dur-
SOUTH AFRICA ban. COSATU, and its second largest affiliate NUMSA (Simon's union) are at the centre of the struggle to stop the war with Inkatha.
Recruitment of right-wing vigilantes
This is, in fact, the only realistic vision of Botha's future for the townships - the massive recruitment of right-wing vigilantes who conduct war against those who fight apartheid and oppose incorporation into the system via the local councils. Only the destruction of all attempts to organize independently from the state in the townships plus organized pro-state forces can guarantee a successful breach in the boycott. Perhaps more pertinently, it could stop 1 movement behind class-struggle candidates for the municipal elections should this option get off the ground (it is being increasingly discussed, including inside the
This is background for the discussion about moving into the communities that the trade unions in general, and COSATU in particular, are having. But already the methods of organization, accountability and democracy in leading unions are having an impact far wider than the union halls. The democratic accountability of many of the union structures is already having a considerable impact among the wider mass
The starting point for the debate inside COSATU, however, is the resolution passed at the second congress which resolved to build "disciplined and permanent alliances with other progressive and democratic forces within the country.... tion of the South African National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has developed a position elaborating this resolution, not unrcasonably pointing out that as the affiliate that proposed the original resolution they see it as their duty to set out clearly what they
In fact, their meaning could not be clearer: Apartheid is a fascist phenomenon shaped by the particular evolution of the country; the Bantustans are the "grand soand these conditions call for the broadest front of anti-colonial, imperialist, anti-racist and anti-fascist forces united for the destruction of apartheid. There are many references to the democratic and "patriotic" struggle of the resistance movements in World War II Europe, and particular emphasis is laid on the necessity to limit the struggle in advance. Spanish Popular Front leaders are favourably quoted: "the struggle in Spain was not between the dictatorship of the proletariat and bourgeois democracy, but between democracy S. Surveys of township and Black opinion appear regularly in a range of joumals including the Sunday Times January 1986, the Sowetan, etc. 6. See /V 133, January 25, 1988. 7. Work in Progress 51. 13 8. Resolutions of COSATU's founding congress. May 16, 1988 • #141 International Viewpoint
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SOUTH AFRICA and fascism, which was the enemy of not only the workers and peasants but also of all working people, all republican democrats and free thinkers...
The conclusion could not be clearer either: today the front to fight apartheid already exists. Any call for a new front would be erroneous and retrogressive. The task of COSATU is to pull in firmly behind the already existing UDF formation - if not through affiliation (which was explicitly rejected at both congresses), then through political centres being established for the express purpose of collaboration with the UDF in the localities.
Workers' organizations and the united front
Naturally, this schema will be affected by the current bans, and it is therefore not so significant now in relation to its practical details. Nevertheless, the approach described is more than a clue to the thinking and direction of the people concerned.
There is a different orientation to the issues of unity of the mass movement to that expressed by the NUM which can be discerned throughout COSATU and its affiliates. The argument runs that a new united front is necessary that would mark the arrival of COSATU into organized community and civic politics. In this view (again extant before the current restrictions), it would not be possible simply to hook the trade-union movement onto the back of the UDF trailer. The leading role of the workers' movement has to be reflected in a thoroughgoing reorganization of the united front of resistance to apartheid. Consequently, the workers' organizations need to alongside the sectoral organization of women and youth and, where appropriate, other sectors and groups, in a new alliance involving the UDF organizations but wider than the UDF today. Further, the axiomatic principles in some of the leading trade unions like internal democracy and accountability should be spread to other sectoral organizations where they do not presently
These discussions have only just begun, initial positions have barely been established. No long-term decisions have been made. The latest bannings and the battle against the trade union law (the bannings prohibit campaigning against any law) have inevitably forced themselves to the top of the trade-union agenda for the moment and have even brought to the fore other, more defensive, questions.
This is not to say that the balance of forces has tilted irrevocably in the regime's favour. Most commentators expect a huge reaction should the Sharpville Six be hung. South African armed forces are stalemated in Angola, and in 1987 only 35,000 turned out for the estimated military draft of 60,000. The white nationalist community 14 continues its political disintegration. And 1987 was not at all the worst year for the International Viewpoint #141 • May 16, 1988 organized Black working class. Nevertheless, the resistance movement is on the de-
- and that includes the unions — despite their high level of organization and social homogeneity. Among the defensive problems that are now posed is the unity of the workers' movement itself.
Recent events surrounding the split in the Commercial. Catering and Allied Workers' Union (CCAWUSA) and the ignominious reunification (organized by the lawyers of the contending factions) reveals something of the strains, even inside COSATU. Ostensibly, the Kganare faction set up a fusion with the Cape Liquor and Catering Union in order to create a majority in the union for the adoption of the Freedom Charter (while a COSATU commission was still investigating the divisions).
A welter of charges and counter-charges resulted in a schism in the union between the Kganare and Mtwa wings, and the decision of the COSATU Central Executive Committee in November 1987 to recognize the Kganare faction as the union. It was argued that this group was pursuing COSATU goals in the struggle for one union per industry, and that the opposition had factionally resisted the fusion. The problems was further compounded by the refusal to let COSATU representatives enter a Johannesburg meeting of Mtwa's wing to explain their position.
On the other side, it was claimed that the anti-fusion faction were pro the National Congress of Trade Unions (NACTU).1° Many of COSATU's affiliates looked on fearfully, blaming both sides for initiating a process that could start unstitching the whole federation and with it the major step towards the unity of the working class movement that COSATU represents.
Strains in the union federation
In the event, lawyers decided that CCAWUSA had to return to its only legal constitution of 1981 and hold a reunification congress on May 15 on that basis. Mtwa's faction are still aggrieved by the original COSATU decision to back Kganare (which was subsequently confirmed), although some agreement seems to be emerging that no motions on contentious political issues such as the Freedom Charter or relations with NACTU should be taken at the May meeting.
This division in one of the most effective unions in South Africa (they led the big OK Bazaars strike) is a nasty warning of some of the strains in the federation that are beginning to emerge."!
Defensive questions are also raised around the issue of NACTU itself. While it is true that NACTU leaders have traditionally pointed toward the Wester-oriented International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in relation to resources and so on, and that they remain hostile to COSATU's "non-racial" policy, following a black con-
### BUILD sciousness line, there are hundreds of thousands of workers organized in this federation. Observers agree that NACTU is not growing like COSATU, but still estimate that with its 400,000 members it is about half the size of the larger federation. In some industries like chemicals, the NACTU union is larger than its COSATU countherefore that the chemical workers' union (the CWIU) is one of the few COSATU unions to explicitly call for the implementation of the one industry, one federation"
of the founding COSATU congress. 12 This is an unhappy situation for the unity of the workers' movement in South Africa, especially when clauses in the Labour Law Amendment Act will increase the price of disunity by allowing for the recognition of minority unions in workplaces.
Added to all this is the problem of the very real head of legal steam building up against the trade-union movement with the of outright banning would represent a qualitatively new step in the situation. But the proposed labour laws appear to indicate that the regime is already committed to another track. Certainly the larger employers would not, at this stage, welcome the wholesale destruction of the centralization of the labour movement. At the moment it suits their purposes in terms of negotiation and the rationalization of agreements, and any such development
would raise renewed international outrage which could jeopardize their lucrative
South Africa does not play the same role in the international market as a small coun try like Chile. The whole drift of events since the first state of emergency was declared seems to indicate a different direction for the repression than the total destruction of the unions — they would, in any case, extract a high price from the economy before they were dug out.'3 Nevertheless, there was a real dialectic between the township rebellions, international interest and pressure and the expansion of the gap that already existed between the big employers and the regime into which the trade unions expanded. The space for legal and open action and organization was pushed wider and wider by the unions, particularly COSATU and its affiliates. There is obviously concern that the dialectic described is not forced into reverse.
The union movement in general, and some COSATU unions in particular, have played a big part in opening out their own political space over the years by avoiding premature confrontations, building very solid organization with many leadership levels, exploiting those contradictions that have opened between different sections of the ruling bloc and using the legal system extremely intelligently. (The latter is a feature of all struggles in which a democratic opening emerges under a repressive regime. But it is particularly apposite in South Africa, where a lot of the laws were promulgated for operation in the whites-only "island of bourgeois democracy", and therefore have a real and sometimes useful
But preparing the defence of the trade-union movement can also mean defending the right to exist as a movement with a class-struggle perspective. The new labour laws are also aimed at increasing the power of the union centres, taking away the initiative from the ranks and making every and any strike a matter of complicated deliberation. These are real dangers.
All of these issues and debates the united front of the South African masses can be constructed across industry and in the townships, or how trade-union unity can be preserved and extended, "offensive" or "defensive" questions — all of them are tied to the various sensibilities that exist on the place of the trade unions in the struggle
For example, the view that the South African regime is fascist gives the unions only a half-life and means that such structures can only be temporary and peripheral in the overall struggle for transformation; they can only come into their own in a post-apartheid, democratic South Africa; they could not be, they can not be, the vital crucible of change today. Consequently, it is suicidal to afford such organizations or their debates a strategic place, let alone a centre-stage position, in any strategy for the destruction of apartheid.
### Bannings underline importance of unions
Such an analysis can even flow into tactical choices today around the conduct of actual trade-union struggles with employers or the state, in the sense that acting to preserve the union as a fighting organization in the course of a particularly bitter struggle can seem a secondary priority when it 9. Duplicated document: the South African CP is here implicitly presented as the present proletarian 10. On November 17, 1987 Vivian Mtwa wrote: "We believe that in deliberating on the dispute another important factor should have been taken into consideration, that is, the acts of violence being carried out by the Kganare breakaway group. Prior to the last meeting of the commission the Kganare breakaway group took over our Cape Town office by force, which, amongst other acts, involved threatening officials and members with screwdrivers, stealing cash and our cheque book. Two days later hundreds of CCAWUSA members enraged by this act of thuggery re-took our office in a "The Kganare breakaway group's behaviour, apart from being a serious threat to unity, is a serious contra"Some CEC delegates have mentioned that we are anti-COSATU and critical of COSATU policies. From time to time we have levelled criticisms against certain undemocratic activities carried out by certain COSATU structures or individuals. We see this as our democratic right and it does not mean we are criticizing COSATU as a whole. Part of being a democratic or-
SOUTH AFRICA has no real future in any case. Certainly, whether or not to spend painstaking hours, days and months slowly building democratic workers' structures, accountability and education, depends on your view of the permanence of such structures.
On the other hand, the actual and living reality of the unions, built over fifteen years, has to be faced by everyone in South Africa today. They are now the only legal, national, mass fighting organizations in the country. (Individual church leaders are playing an heroic role, but churches are founded on other bases than the struggle in this world!)
Mapping out a new role for the trade unions
The trade unions' successes and their forms of organization are clearly an inspiration to all. COSATU and the union movement in general are seen every bit as a legitimate and valid instrument of resistance to apartheid as any other by the masses. Organized workers and their families see them as the centre of politics and life. Yet there remains a critical silence when it comes to mapping out an alternative role for the unions in the struggle to transform South Africa than the essentially peripheral role outlined in the views of those who subscribe to the view that South Africa is today a fascist state.
This is not a question of alliances; this is a question of perspectives. All in the liberation movement agree today that a central role is to be afforded to the working class. But there remain only the most embryonic ideas of how that can be achieved at the po-
Part of those embryonic ideas come from the initiation of the debate around the role of a complementary charter to the Freedom Charter: the "Workers' Charter" larly in the metalworkers' union, NUMSA This discussion continues in the exile journals and elsewhere. A future article will review this discussion. * ganization is to critically evaluate, and this in no way means being against the whole organization." 11. Among the problems of democracy and factionalism in COSATU is the case of the international conference organized by the ANC in Arusha, Tanzania. The intervention made there in COSATU's name, reproduced widely and circulated in the solidarity movement, defended a line that has never been democratically decided by the bodies of the organization. The person who made the intervention was never mandated to go to this conference to make this speech Those directly inspired by the ANC and the CP obviously represent the point of view of a part of the CO. SATU leadership, but this cannot be taken as its official line. It can be understood that events like these put a big strain on efforts for unity and collective discussion. 12. Policies adopted, pamphlet with resolutions passed at WIU conference in 1987. 13. Some employers, including the mighty Anglo-American, organized for union recruitment in some areas in the early 1980s in order to rationalize negotiations and with the utopian aim of building an allane with Black workers in defence of industry in 15 May 16, 1988 • #141 International Viewpoint
Philippines".
out by government and government-backed forces in violation of the law have become the most serious human rights problem in the
International
For some months, human rights movements in the Philippines — like the Task Force