The Fruits of the 1973 Durban Strikes: A Powerful Black Trade Union Movement. Are they still on track or are they off the rails? by Johann Maree

Short Bio

Johann Maree was one of the founders of the Western Province Workers’ Advice Bureau in 1973 that became the Western Province General Workers’ Union and later the General Workers’ Union. He served on the Editorial Board of the South African Labour Bulletin from 1976 to 2008 and was chair of the Board from 1978 to 2006.

He worked at the University of Cape Town from 1972 until his retirement as an Emeritus Professor of Sociology in 2008. From 1980 onwards he was in charge of the Industrial Sociology undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

Abstract

The 1973 Durban strikes, when 60 000 Black African workers went on strike, was an event of great historic significance. It changed the course of South African history.

This paper is going to argue that the fruits of the 1973 Durban strikes was the emergence of a permanent and strong trade union movement out of a temporary upsurge of Black workers’ anger and action in the form of a massive strike wave.

The organisation of Black workers into trade unions was carried out by mainly White students and academics at the Universities of Natal, Witwatersrand and Cape Town, although there were also Indian students like Omar Badsha and Jay Naidoo as well as former South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) members.

The paper proceeds to ask the question whether the unions adhered to the principles and practices that were established during the founding and early growth period of the unions during the 1970s and early 1980s. These principles included democratic worker participation at workplaces through the establishment of shop stewards’ and other committees, as well as the participation of workers in formulation of policies and strategies of the unions at democratic union meetings. In addition, the unions maintained a firm policy of independence from political movements, the reason being to ensure that advancing worker interests remained their primary objective.

The conclusion the paper arrives at is that the unions did not remain on track and went off the rails. A number of reasons for losing their direction are advanced.

But it is never too late for the unions to learn from their past mistakes and set off on a new path that will primarily serve the interests of the workers they represent.

Proposal

The 1973 Durban strikes, when 60 000 Black African workers went on strike, was an event of great historic significance. It changed the course of South African history.

This paper is going to argue that the fruits of the 1973 Durban strikes was the emergence of a permanent and strong trade union movement out of a temporary upsurge of Black workers’ anger and action in the form of a massive strike wave.

The organisation of Black workers into trade unions was carried out by mainly White students and academics at the Universities of Natal, Witwatersrand and Cape Town, although there were also Indian students like Omar Badsha and Jay Naidoo as well as former South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) members.

What it achieved in the first place was to give birth to a powerful Black African trade union. The seeds of Black trade unionism were already being sewn in Durban before the strike. Stevedores at Grindrods in the docks were being organised by Dave Hemson. Black worker in the textile industry were also being organised due to the initiative of Harriet Bolton of the registered Textile Workers Industrial Union (TWIU). She first employed Dave Hemson and then Halton Cheadle to organise Black workers into a separate union that became the National Union of Textile Workers (NUTW).

However, the strikes gave birth to two more industrial unions in the metal and chemical industries, the Metal and Allied Workers’ Union (MAWU) and the Chemical Workers’ Industrial Union (CWIU). Alpheus Mthethwa started organising metal factories. This led to the formation of MAWU in 1973 with Mthethwa as the union’s first secretary. In the chemical industry it was Omar Badsha who organised the chemical workers into a union that became the CWIU. Badsha was the first secretary of the union. Another union also emerged, the Transport and General Union (TGWU) which was actually a general in spite of its name.

The unions also grew rapidly as a result of the Durban strikes. Over time these unions sprouted into a powerful Black trade union movement that came together and formed the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) in 1979, and subsequently the much larger Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in 1985 which also included unions with mainly Coloured members and one union that was predominantly White. Jay Naidoo was elected as the first general secretary of COSATU.

The paper proceeds to ask the question whether the unions adhered to the principles and practices that were established during the founding and early growth period of the unions during the 1970s and early 1980s. These principles included democratic worker participation at workplaces through the establishment of shop stewards’ and other committees, as well as the participation of workers in formulation of policies and strategies of the unions at democratic union meetings. In addition, the unions maintained a firm policy of independence from political movements, the reason being to ensure that advancing worker interests remained their primary objective.

The conclusion the paper arrives at is that the unions did not remain on track and went off the rails. A number of reasons for losing their direction are advanced. The first is that, as unions grew larger and expanded across the country into different provinces, it became increasingly difficult to maintain democratic worker participation. The unions had to establish a hierarchy of committees from branch to provincial to national levels. As the levels rose, workers had less and less say while union officials and office bearers’ interests started dominating.

Workers’ voice was reduced further with the formation of COSATU when a complete political realignment took place. The FOSATU unions abandoned their policy of independence of the workers’ movement to one of subordination to political movements, the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). In practice, political parties have members from different classes, not only working class, with the upper classes usually playing a dominant role. And, as we have seen in the case of the ANC, cadre deployment and cronyism resulted in large scale corruption with state money meant to support the working poor and unemployed flowing into the coffers of the wealthy corrupt comrades.

It has also been the case that, the SACP has increasingly taken control of COSATU unions. Research has shown that, the higher up the hierarchy of committees goes in the unions, the greater is the proportion of Communists on the committees. To some extent, the White students and academics who launched and led the unions in the 1970s, with the author (me) included, had a hand in this. Marxism and the class struggle were firmly put forward in training and educational material, thereby providing a platform on which SACP members could build. However, what is disturbing is that it is Communism of a century ago that is being promoted including the Leninist and Stalinist centralisation of economic and political power of the state. The fact that it failed as evidenced by the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as the lessons to be learned from that failure are blindly ignored. An ideological goal is being pursued regardless of the fact that it is dysfunctional and doomed to fail. The reality is that it is the working poor and unemployed who suffer most as the South African economy gets into deeper and deeper trouble without the growth and employment creation so urgently required.

But it is never too late for the unions to learn from their past mistakes and set off on a new path that will primarily serve the interests of the workers they represent.