Micwu worked well with the white unions on the council. As East recalls: ‘We would be a united voice. The negotiations were led by the president of Mieu. He was very racist and conservative but he gave the workers a voice. We always worked together in a collective spirit but not on training, that’s where employers always tried to split us.’
Misa and Mieu took a decision not to train coloured workers, and over time this took on the force of law. In fact, the Apprenticeship Act of 1922 did not prevent workers of any colour from signing an apprenticeship contract with an employer, but artisans fell under the apprenticeship board and the Act provided for apprenticeship committees consisting of organised white labour, employers and the department of labour. Mieu and Misa used their seats on the committee to block employer applications to recruit African apprentices.81 Micwu was excluded from the committees (except in Natal).
Over time, coloured and Indian workers received training by other means. As white artisans moved into white collar jobs, job reservation for coloured and Indian workers was barely enforced, and they were often trained on the job. But African workers were still excluded, an injustice in which Micwu collaborated. ‘We were coloured nationalists in those days,’ commented the former Micwu regional secretary in Natal, Ekki Esau.
In the 1970s, Tucsa, again following the government’s lead, reopened its ranks to unregistered unions and advised affiliates to form African parallels. Thus in the late 1970s Micwu, observing changing trends, decided to recruit Africans into a parallel union. Commented Esau: ‘Micwu formed a parallel union for African workers in about 1978 because we were a registered trade union and weren’t allowed to take in African members at the time. Immediately the new legislation [the Wiehahn laws] came in 1980 we changed our constitution to take in African workers.’
In the 1970s, however, Africans were second class members who could not be party to a closed shop or reap the benefits of the industrial council system. In organising African workers, Micwu ran up against Mawu, which was beginning to organise vehicle body building firms in the Transvaal. Rivalry in some larger companies turned nasty as employers and the state strove to undermine Mawu’s emerging shop floor structures by promoting liaison committees, industrial council bargaining and the recruitment of African workers by Tucsa registered unions. At Henred Freuhauf on the East Rand in early 1980, for example, where Mawu had majority support, management invited Micwu into the factory to address workers. Mawu shop stewards recall this response:
[Ron] Webb [general secretary Micwu] was called in to address workers asking them to join his parallel union. The meeting was held on the factory premises during working hours. The workers emphatically rejected him. Management also tried to persuade workers to either choose Webb’s parallel union or a company union rather than Mawu. Webb also informed management that Mawu caused strikes, sought disruption and received money from Russia and East Germany. The workers refused to resign.82
By the close of the 1970s much greater cooperation existed in the auto and engineering sectors. In the motor sector, however, deep divisions remained.
Unity and organisational space
The independent unions (Mawu in the Transvaal, Micwu and WPMawu in the Western Cape and Natal, UAW/Numarwosa in the Eastern Cape) had survived but remained small, mainly local, isolated and fragmented. Mawu, for example, had organised just a tenth of the 500 000 metal and engineering workforce.83 Unity was limited, and the unions’ power to promote a broader social agenda was insignificant. Administrative capacity, particularly in Mawu, was weak. It was the launch of Fosatu in 1979, and the coordination and solidarity it offered, which altered the terrain.
Numarwosa had remained outside any federation since its withdrawal from Tucsa in 1976. The idea of forging a new federation arose when its leadership raised the possibility of merging Numarwosa and UAW. It arrived at the view that only through a unified national federation could the independent unions survive and grow in the face of a hostile state. In Durban it had made contact with Tuacc through the IMF Council, where it discovered unionists with a similar sense of isolation and similar goals. As Erwin explained: ‘We felt isolated and we believed a national movement would give us greater protection. Some people claimed unions like Numarwosa were bureaucratic because they were well run, but we began to see that a union didn’t have to lose its militancy if it was run properly. We believed we could learn from their style of unionism.’84 Tuacc had already debated the possibility of a broader federation, so when Numarwosa broached the idea of unity it resolved to play a spearheading role. Tuacc proposed a tight federation with common policies underpinned by the principles of workers’ participation and political independence. A feasibility committee was established.85
The Western Province Workers Advice Bureau and the UTP unions decided to keep their distance, the Western Cape grouping expressing a fear of Tuacc dominance and arguing that workers should take the lead otherwise unity could only boost the power of officials.86 For the UTP unions, black leadership and the tightness of the proposed federation were sticking points.87 But when a number of African UTP members discovered that their leaders had not reported to them on the unity moves, they approached the feasibility committee independently and the result was that the Glass and Allied Workers Union, Paper Wood and Allied Workers Union, SFAWU and a section of Eawu joined Fosatu.88
Sauls also approached WPMawu, which entered the new federation and supplied its first president, Joe Foster.89 Micwu, however, was not interested. Explains East: ‘We were still part of Tucsa. We were not in the IMF … and we were not organising the same membership. But we just didn’t like their leadership – Fred Sauls and Joe Foster.’
The groupings at the core of the unity thrust also decided to submit recommendations for the reform of labour laws to the Wiehahn Commission. It was an important moment in cementing their bond.90
Two years later, in April 1979, three registered and nine unregistered unions representing 45 000 workers launched Fosatu. It was the first national labour federation in South Africa committed to building power through structures that ensured policy was controlled by worker leadership. Policy dictated that the president and vice-president should be full-time workers and that worker representatives to Fosatu structures should come from organised factories. It was a centralised federation which bound affiliates to common policies and shared organising, administrative and educational resources. It was committed to nonracial industrial unions based on worker control, shop floor organisation, independence, international worker solidarity and trade union unity.91 Sauls viewed it as ‘the major achievement’92 of the 1970s, and in the 1980s, in the new environment of the Wiehahn reforms, it would give a major boost to the weak black union movement.93
Mawu delegation to Fosatu – Mawu’s first Transvaal organiser, Ellison Mohlabe, is standing in the back row first left (Bernie Fanaroff)
In the same year, another development gave the new unions a shot in the arm. On the strength of the Wiehahn Commission’s recommendation that Africans be allowed to join registered unions, three laws were promulgated between 1978 and 1981.94 They granted Africans union rights, including admission to industrial councils and the right to legally strike. The legislation also created the new category of unfair labour practice, to be defined by an industrial court. A national manpower commission would monitor the new system and advise the government.95
The Wiehahn laws were a major achievement for the independent unions. Their understated organising methods had manoeuvred the state towards reform rather than repression and had thereby opened up new organising spaces. Tarrow has explored why contentious politics only emerge in particular periods of history and why social movements sometimes flourish and at