Metal that Will not Bend. Kally Forrest

at Hammanskraal near Pretoria and Isithebe in KwaZulu, wages and conditions were often so bad that some workers said they would rather not work.⁶¹ In 1984, for example, the starting rate for an ordinary worker in an Isithebe metal factory was R15 a week. Management actions were frequently arbitrary. American-owned Tidwell Housing, for example, told workers not to come to work because of stocktaking and gave an assurance that they were on full pay, but later docked their wages. After a wage strike led to mass dismissals, re-employed Tidwell workers found their starting rate had dropped from R25 to R18 a week.⁶²

      Some Fosatu unions, such as the National Union of Textile Workers, avoided expanding into homelands because of the repressive conditions.⁶³ Mawu, on the other hand, was guided by members’ organising initiatives. Commented Fanaroff: ‘David Lewis described us as having ‘optimism of the will’. We’d get carried away by the sheer power of growing the union, not like Johnny Copelyn, (General Secretary NUTW) a disciplined, careful, well thought-out, strategist.’ Expansion into the homelands was often a spin-off from organising a neighbouring industrial zone. Fosatu’s drive in Richards Bay, for example, spilled over into Isithebe.

      In its early organising efforts, Mawu was careful not to provoke the KwaZulu homeland authorities or the homeland police. This would change when KwaZulu chief minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi started to view the union’s sway over Isithebe as a threat, but Mawu was able to consolidate before political violence in the province erupted. Bophuthatswana, by contrast, was almost impossible to organise.

      Most homeland industrial zones were small, but government incentives had lured some large concerns to Isithebe. Again, Mawu played a pioneering role on behalf of other Fosatu unions, overcoming their misgivings by arguing that a single union was in a weak position. It believed that worker power could only grow from ‘the visible presence of trade unions and the threat of strong organisation’.⁶⁴

      Workers from Isithebe border industry factories on a Sharpeville Day stayaway and protest (Cedric Nunn)

      Without the space offered by registration and a statutory industrial relations framework, the union found itself back in the 1970s in the homeland area of Isithebe – but in an even more hostile setting. Mawu therefore targeted companies that it had already organised elsewhere in South Africa where labour legislation existed. This strategy allowed it to piggyback on worker rights that it had won in a company outside the homeland in order to demand the same rights inside the homeland. Organiser Willys Mchunu recalls targeting Henred Fruehauf and other companies into extending rights enjoyed by employees in other plants. The organisation of an entire company within a particular metal subsector would then have a logic of its own. For example, Henred, which manufactured trailers, resisted granting a wage increase because its competitors, who were not organised, would undercut them. This forced the union into organising the entire trailer industry. ‘This is how for example we ended up organising in Letaba [Lebowa homeland]. So it was only the industrial union logic that got us there a lot of the time,’ commented Fanaroff.

      As in Richards Bay, the broad strategy was to operate as a general union, using ‘borrowed strength’ or secondary industrial action by workers not party to a dispute. Crouch comments that: ‘to outside observers these (sympathy actions) often seem like outrageous interference’ and that such solidarity is illegal in some countries, including Britain. He asserts that there is little reason for moral outrage, however. ‘It is through combination that workers become powerful so there is an absolute logic in borrowing other workers’ strength.’ Mchunu recalled an Isithebe engineering company, Kempher Limited, firing its workforce after a recognition battle. In what he viewed as a watershed victory, the company climbed down after sympathy strikes erupted at other companies in the industrial zone. Organiser Mike Mabuyakhulu describes the effect of the strategy:

      Our tactic was to rely more on the workers’ strength, and solidarity action was a big weapon because companies were located on one industrial site so it was easier to use the clout of workers. So we organised even in the textile industry because there was no other union but Mawu there in those days. By organising across industries for unions in Fosatu, we were able to create our own base, and employers became more and more scared because they knew if they fired people, they would face solidarity action which would hit all of them in the end.⁶⁵

      In was thus, in the early 1980s, that Mawu and Naawu built power through industrial action and forced recognition and collective bargaining on employers in factories, across industrial areas, and ultimately all over South Africa.

      The torrent of worker militancy had, in its raw spontaneity, much in common with the direct action Fantasia considers necessary for the exercise of real union power. It is only when workers act independently of established collective bargaining practices and engage in direct action that they form new associational bonds that serve as the basis for social movements. Workers were not bound by institutionalised bargaining arrangements, and thus had the freedom to stage militant actions which drew in others in ever widening circles. There was a new confidence and determination to take control of their working lives. With every action, and each successful outcome, workers were further empowered to develop innovative methods of struggle to overcome obstacles.

      Strikes, which alerted unorganised workers to the presence and power of unions, were central to the upsurge. In factories such as Sigma and BMW in Rosslyn, B&S in Brits, Alusaf in Richards Bay and Kempher in Isithebe, action served as bridgeheads into new areas.

      Even in remote rural areas with little tradition of labour activism, workers were ripe for unionisation. While they were subject to diehard management regimes, they were able to draw on high levels of worker and community support and dedicated leadership in maintaining unity, often in protracted trials of strength. Workers were drawn from adjacent communities which were characterised by a close-knit dependency and a reliance on these small industrial zones for limited job opportunities. The need to solicit solidarity was often not necessary. This unconditional support gave these struggles an independence and self-sufficiency that was not as evident in urban struggles where workers were drawn from disparate communities.

      The countrywide mobilisation of metal workers also had a wider political significance. Through the organisation of clusters of workers across the country around similar concerns, the union made deep incursions into the apartheid divide and rule landscape. Workers were divided from each other in workplaces, hostels, townships, regions, decentralised zones and Bantustans in the apartheid state’s attempts to shore up racial capitalism and white domination. Naawu and Mawu’s national mobilisation was a direct challenge to this splintering of working communities.

      These disputes also fuelled a new locus of power evidenced in a growing political consciousness. This awareness was expressed when workers experienced their exploitation at work on a continuum with their political oppression. Industrial action had shifted worker issues beyond the factory and into communities and, in the case of the pension strikes, into negotiations with capital and the state.

      Common to most disputes were high levels of unity which at times transcended ethnic divisions, and formidable levels of loyalty to the union accompanied by immense personal sacrifice. News of such struggles aroused other workers to reach similar levels of militancy which had the effect of showing the potential of cementing these unions into national industrial centres of power. A remarkable amount had been achieved in a short time.

      Workers, however, still mainly experienced their solidarity at an individual factory level, and sometimes at an industrial area level. The challenge now facing the unions was how to mobilise workers in the metal sector around national demands in order to effect changes to the entire industry.