COSATU targets one million members MORE THAN one and a half million Black workers went on strike on May Day this year. This is undoubtedly the most significant stoppage in the modern history of the Black workers' movement in this country. The call for the mobilization, issued by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), demanded among other things that workers should not work on May 1. For several years, along with the upsurge of a new union movement, actions have taken place to mark this
The impact of the strike movement was also confirmed by employers sources. The management of the South African industrial and mining conglomerate, Anglo-American, calculated absenteeism to be 83%, whilst the Association of Chambers of Commerce noted that in some places 80% of businesses - above all those owned by Indians - had closed. Over and above the differences in the mobilization according to region, these figures illustrate the progress toward the unity of the oppressed and exploited, African, Indian and coloured, in the present course of mobilizations in South Africa.
May 1 was also the date for united demonstrations held by the various organizations struggling against apartheid - the most striking example being Soweto, where 20,000 people symbolic date for workers. TONY ROUX
A recent enquiry carried out by a study group on questions of work linked to the independent trade union movement — the Labour Monitoring Group (LMG) - testifies in detail to the scale of this strike move. ment. Notably, the report confirms that under pressure from their employees a certain number of bosses are already in favour of recognizing May 1 as a holiday. Even so, the great majority of bosses maintain the attitude summed up in the adage "no work, no wages".
The strike movement has clearly developed in the principal industrial areas of the country. These four metropolitan regions amount to only 4% of the total area of the country, but in the mid-1970s they concentrated within them 85% of the country's industrial production and 70% of its national product. Some 40% of the economically active population were employed there. This illustrates the extent of the geographic concentration of the industrialization process in South Africa, resulting in the high degree of concentration of the Black proletariat.
The LMG enquiry on the rate of participation in the May 1 strike in these four major industrial regions of the country again brought out that in the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vaal (PWV) zone the number of strikers was highest: 1 million, of which 209,000 were miners. Leaving aside the mining sector the rate of stoppage is estimated at 67% in this region, whilst 90% of Indian traders shut up shop in some areas. The PWV region is a zone of high concentration of industrial activity and of employment. It is also the area where in November
International Viewpoint 16 June 1986
1984 a two-day general strike (stayaway) took place with considerable success. (See IV No. 74, April 22, 1985).
The region of Port ElizabethUitenhage, in the Eastern Cape province, saw the biggest percentage of strikers: about 99% of African workers and "a significant" number of col oured workers.
In the Durban Zone, there were 160,000 strikers - a rate of 61% of the total with African workers representing 68% of strikers and Indian workers 31%. Finally, in the Eastern Cape province the sum of strikers was only 15% of the total. But here a strong disproportion between African workers (51%) and coloured workers (8%) was noticeable.
met. The mood of unity and comba tiveness in the Black workers' movement shows up clearly in this initiative.
At the Soweto meeting Winnie Mandela, the wife of the imprisoned African National Congress leader, declared that the situation had forced her people "to declare the year 1986 the year of liberation. You are the power of this country", she added, "l ask you to close ranks and prepare yourselves for the final assault."
In his speech the secretary general affirmed "that whether the government likes it or not we are going to make May 1 a holiday". He issued a major indictment of the prime minister of KwaZulu, Gatsha Buthelezi, (leader of the Inkatha organization based mainly in the Zulu population), who has just created a rival union to COSATU.
The same day in Durban, in front of 70,000 people, the leaders of Inkatha in fact launched a new union
The victims of apartheid increase daily (DR)
- the United Workers Union of South Africa (UWUSA). It presents itself as a movement sympathetic to free enterprise, denouncing "political unionism" and the "socialist" tenets of COSATU, and opposing the withdrawal of foreign investment.
The Durban demonstrators carried a coffin with the name of COSATU written on it. The launch of UWUSA is the result of a clear wish to divide the Black workers' movement, and to block the development of its radicalization. It corresponds to the interests of a sector of Zulu small capitalists which has grown up as a result of the social differentiation among the oppressed during the last decades, and which has been the main beneficiary of the development of the "autonomous" government of the bantustans. The union is an attempt to turn certain prejudices against the united movement of the oppressed masses. A war machine against COSATU
Already this organization is being sponsored by institutions linked to North-American trade unionism = the AFL-CIO. Moreover, on April 10, Simon Conco, the general secretary of UWUSA and member of pseudo-parliament of KwaZulu, went to the United States to obtain financial help from North American trade unionists.
The makeup of the leadership of UWUSA is quite indicative of the project of the union. According to the Weekly Mail of May 9, 1986, to be very me l way too, it contains several Zulu businessmen, and officials of Inkatha and certain municipal councils of Black townships.
Paradoxically, the only important defector from COSATU - the exleader of the North Natal Paper, Wood and Allied Workers Union (PWAWU), Mhlaba Gumede — is not a member of the executive. This is not surprising since UWUSA has received the support of certain bosses who are hoping to make it into a war machine against COSATU.
If it is difficult as yet to assess the impact of the founding of UWUSA on the independent Black trade union movement, it must nonetheless be noted that the figures for participation in the respective public meetings organized for May 1 do not reflect in the least the relationship of forces.
Of the 70,000 people who were brought together in Durban by UWUSA about 10,000 were the occupants of hostels for single workers and only several thousand more were workers. According to Jerry Ntombela, president of COSATU for North Natal 8 province, out of the 10,000 activists in the union in this region only about 20 have joined UWUSA. Nevertheless, the two main unions could find themselves competing to sign up the least well paid and presently unorganized sectors. Effectiveness of democratic organization
It is true that a number of those organized by COSATU in the Natal region, and in sectors such as metalworkers and carworkers, are also affiliated to Inkatha. Even so, this does not guarantee automatically the success of UWUSA. On the level of trade union organization in the workplaces and the struggle for the workers' demands, it is these same union members who in the last years have had experience of the effectiveness of democratic organization at the base and in the shop stewards' networks, and for the most part put their contidence in COSATU.
Moreover COSATU has seen its numbers increase by 30% since its foundation last December, and today it claims 650,000 members.
A good example of the workers' involvement in the ranks of COSATU is without doubt a meeting on May 1 that was held in a township in North Natal, which brought together 3,000 workers in a zone situated in the heart of the traditional base of Inkatha.
What is more, this represents a real challenge to the local institutions set up by the regime and administered by
Inkatha - such as the municipal council of this township which had decided to prohibit the meeting. This very council, it so happens, contains several important members of UWUSA.
It is therefore far from apparent that UWUSA can build itself as a real union in the workplaces. This ground is already partially occupied in some sectors, and it must increasingly be so with the application of the resolutions of COSATU's founding conference. These provided for expanding the union into areas which are presently unorganized, for example, agricultural and building workers, and the unification of the components of COSATU d into single-industry unions.
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The pace of the development of the independent trade union move-
S ment in the workplaces will condition its ability to resist both racist power and attempts at division from Inkatha,
A but also the place that it will occupy in future anti-apartheid mobilizations.
The first test of this will be that of the 3-day strike anticipated for the anniversary of the Soweto revolt of mid-July 1976.
In this context, the question of union fusions to create a single union for each branch of industry, takes on a major importance. In this respect some advances have been recorded.
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All these fusions will prepare the yc way for a strengthening of the union sti movement, as well as for a deepening of its roots at the base, across the network of shop stewards. At present be
COSATU has set itself the objective of at a million members by the end of 1986.
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Recent advances give hope that this se objective will be achieved.
Keeping law and order' in Johannesburg (DR)
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International Viewpoint 16 June 1986