A triple oppression
SOME WOMEN have become prominent symbols of the South African people's challenge to the apartheid system. What is the specific place of women under this racist and repressive system? Are there women's demands that are beginning to be raised in the course of the struggle
SOUTH AFRICA had to return to their jobs in the urban area within 28 days. Prior to this, they were able to take breaks from their employment, and one survey shows that the average time they remained with their families was anything from three to eighteen months. (3)
The general pattern of life on the bantustans is for the women, children and men past working age to be living together. Most estimates show half the able-bodied male workforce to be absent at any one time. The tribal system still influences how life is organized in these "Black homelands". In the traditional tribal system, the important decisions are taken by men. In the situation when the women are, in fact, playing the role of "head of the household" this creates tensions.
Whether it is a case of deciding which crops should be planted when and where, or whether an ill child should be taken to hospital, these decisions cannot wait for the annual four-week visit. Rural doctors quote cases of children dying because women do not dare agree to sending them to hospital without consent from their husbands - too far away to be reached in time. (4) Yet it is women who are forced to take the major responsibility for looking after the family. This means that they have to take on not only all the traditionally female tasks connected with cooking, cleaning, and so on, and in the most arduous conditions drawing water from wells and carrying home firewood, but they also have to support the family materially. The remittances sent home by the migrant workers are not enough.
As fewer and fewer rural families have land or cattle, this often means that the women are forced to find work. This can be as super-exploited workers in the factories that have moved close to the bantustans under the government's policy of "decentralization" , as daily or seasonal farmworkers, or in the informal sector.
The sort of work done in the informal sector, selling beer and vegetables or making and selling brooms and baskets, is extremly time-consuming and shows very little return on the amount of time invested. But for many it is the only way to earn money and so constitutes one of the
1. Black is used today in the sense of non-white. In other words, Coloureds, Indians and Africans in the racist classification consider themselves as oppressed, that is Black.
2. Cited in 'Work in Progress' No. 27, 1983
3. 'WIP, No. 27, "Aspects of family breakdown" by Sheena Duncan. Famity Life" by Joanne Yawitch. 'WIP' "Apartheid and
7 against apartheid and exploitation? PHILOMENA O'MALLEY
It is not easy to look at the particular place of women in South Africa because racial categorization tends to submerge social stratification, and the oppression of women is shaped by the overall complexity of racist institutions.
South Africa is a developed and industrialized country. Because the racial segregation originating in the colonial era has continued there are a social superstructure, prejudices and ways of life that date from the history of the country. The continuation, in certain cases, of a very strong sexual division of labour in rural families, and sometimes also in urban areas, creates particular contradictions in the present crisis of South African society and the struggles for emanci. pation.
A thorough examination of the position of women would imply showing the differences between the position of "Coloured", "Indian" and "African" women. The differences range from an African woman left to look after the family on a bantustan [tribal homeland], while her husband works hundreds of miles away living in a hostel in one of the urban areas; to women living in outlying townships and travelling to work as cleaners, maids, factory workers or to other low-paid jobs in white areas. Or a Coloured or Indian woman working as a teacher, sécretary or salesgirl and living in an area reserved to her "race"
All these women experience apartheid in a different way. An effective challenge to women's oppression would require breaking down the barriers that exist so that experiences could be shared and joint demands formulated. But this will not happen separately from unification of the popular movement in general. It is not easy to overcome a century of racial
International Viewpoint 9 March 1987 segregation, repression and prejudices.
Black women in South Africa suffer a triple oppression. (1) As well as the oppression by race and class, there is the specific oppression of women in the reproductive sphere and their super-exploitation at work. The repressive laws of the apartheid regime have partly destroyed the traditional African family and caused new problems for women. The family in crisis
A study on the family in Work in Progress (WIP), No. 27, 1983, showed quite clearly that the family as an institution is in crisis for the whole of South African society. One indication of this is the rise in the divorce rate for all sectors of the population since 1977: up by 149% for Coloureds, 73% for whites and 74% for Indians. The nuclear family of mother, father and children is not very often a reality for most Blacks in South Africa. In Soweto, for example, 60% of children live in single parent families, and it is estimated that 60% of African children in urban areas are "illegitimate". (2)
The form taken by the Black South African family today is largely a result of the workings of the apartheid system. The system of bantustans and migrant labour and the restrictions on Black families settling in the white urban areas create impossible problems for women.
Some 57% of African women are imprisoned in this life on the bantustans, in which conditions have worsened in the last twenty years. Since the introduction of a one-year contract system in 1968, male workers have
largest areas of economic activity. Younger women may also leave the bantustans in order to go into the illegal underground or the cities, which seem to offer better opportunities, often returning from time to time to leave another illegitimate child at home.
Women are employed in the bantustan industries in appalling conditions. The financial inducements for the employers to move their factories to the bantustans include the ability to fix wages without reference to the minimum set by the wage boards. One sweet manufacturer lowered wages from 48 rand per week to 40 rand per month in the course of "decentralization". (5) Around half of the workers in the "bantustan industries" are women, driven to accept the conditions by their desperation to earn an income for their families.
Agricultural work is a traditional sector of African women's work. However, between 1960 and 1980, one and a quarter million Blacks were moved off white farms towards the bantustans, in line with the apartheid system and the controls on the workforce as well as because of the increasing mechanization of farming. Subsequently, many of the men returned as single migrant workers without their families. Some women still work in agriculture, often as seasonal or daily labourers. Of the 18.7% of African women who are registered as agricultural workers, many are domestic servants on farms. A striking feature of Black women from both the rural and urban areas quoted in the WIP study is the aggressive reaction to the way they are treated by men and the marked reluctance to marry again if they are widowed or divorced, putting into question the usual assumption that the restoration of the traditional Winnie Mandela, one of the best known fighters against apartheid (DR)
family structure is the general aspiration of women whose families have been divided by apartheid.
In urban areas too women are faced with a long and arduous day of work both outside and within the home. Here one of the main problems is the overcrowded conditions in which they have to live. In one study of 22 women workers working in the laundry industry, only one lived alone with her husband and children. (6)
The lack of family housing for Blacks was severely aggravated by the government's decision to freeze all building of family housing for Blacks in urban areas between 1968 and 1978. The estimates of the number of people forced to live in one four-room house in Soweto in the late 1970s varied from 7 to 29!
It is not surprising in this situation that many people attempt to build their own homes in the shanty towns that spring up around the main urban centres. But the state policy of systematically destroying the shanty towns destroys these families' attempts at any sort of life together. Women are sometimes forced to abandon their children because a single woman can often find some sort of lodging, with relatives or friends, unavailable to a woman with children.
This overcrowding turns the "family home" into a site of conflict and tension when added to the other strains of urban life - crime, poverty and increasing unemployment. Alcoholism and wife-battering are common results of this situation.
Black women working in urban areas carry an equally heavy burden to their sisters in the bantustans. The mass entry of Black women into the waged workforce is relatively new, but has recently risen extremely rapidly - by 51.7% between 1973 and 1981. Black women, as the last section of the South African population to enter the workforce, are usually coming in at the bottom to replace the Black men or white and Coloured women who are moving upwards. This means that they are in the most labour-intensive, low-paid and monotonous jobs.
Since 1970 the percentage of African women workers in agriculture has dropped by over 27%, and risen in manufacturing, commerce and, most importantly, services (by 16.4%, more than a half of African women workers are now in this sector). Included in the service sectors are those Black women working in domestic service.
In 1980, one-third of African waged women workers were domestic servants. Nevertheless, there is an overall decline in the number of domestic servants as the effects of the economic crisis on the white bourgeoisie makes servants' wages more frequently an area for economies. In 1946, 93% of all service workers were domestic servants, while in 1970 they accounted for only 71%. However, this decline is offset by the fact that employment in the service sector as a whole is increasing as many tasks previously carried out in private homes are moving into the market sector (for example the growth in dry-cleaning services, laundrettes and so on). African women in domestic service
Domestic servants are either resident on the employers' premises or live out in the Black townships. In both cases they are low-paid and work long hours. Average wages by 1980 had risen to around 50 rand per month, although some highly skilled women servants might receive 80 to 100 rand. (7) Although livein servants usually work longer hours, including weekends, women who have to travel to and from the Black townships may spend 3 to 4 hours per day travelling. This type of domestic service is tending to increase as the stricter controls on Blacks living in white areas is making it more difficult to find accomodation for livein domestic workers. On the other hand, the prospect of accommodation provided can be an attraction to women.
5. 'South Africa Labour Bulletin', December 1983, introduction by Jacklyn Cock. One rand is equivalent to 2.09 US dollars at current exchange rates.
6. 'WIP', op. cit.
7. 'Segregation and Interpersonal Relations', Eleanor Preston-Whyte, "The nature of domestic service", page 167. International Viewpoint 9 March 1987
All women working in the white areas are faced with this long travelling time, added to their day at work and their work in the home. Many African women workers are in jobs not that different from the tasks they performed as servants. Whether in the commercial or service sector they are likely to be at the bottom of the pile, as cleaners or canteen staff. Jobs as sales assistants, secretaries and bank clerks - those where contact with the public is the major feature - tend to be given to Coloured or Indian women. This is an indication of how racial and sexual stratification both play their role in job segregation.
African women's entry into the industrial workforce is taking place at a rapid rate. In 1970, 3.5% of African women were in this sector, representing 6.2% of the manufacturing workforce. In 1980, 10.7% of African women were in manufacturing.
Within this general category they are concentrated in the clothing and food sectors particularly, but to a lesser extent in the leather, wood and chemicals industries. (8) Whether they work alongside men or not, women are subject to blatant discrimination. In one factory women who chatted to their fellow workers, even while continuing to work, were subject to disciplinary action, and had to sign a book when they went to the lavatory. This discipline did not apply to men. Adrienne Bird, an organizer of the National Automobile and Allied Workers Union, writing in the South Africa Labour Bulletin of July/ August 1985, cited a case of women workers who earned between 22 and 33 rand a week, while men in similar jobs earned 49 to 52 rand per week. One woman who asked for a rise was told to go and sleep with men in a nearby hostel to step up her earn. ings!
It is the women in the production industry, living in urban areas who are best placed to participate in the popular movement challenging the apartheid system. Although noteworthy efforts have been made to unionize domestic workers - for example the 40,000-strong union af•filiated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which was formed in October 1986 - it is women in production, in collective workplaces, who will constitute the backbone of women's participation in the independent trade-union movement, a movement which has a special importance in the struggle of the Black population in South Africa.
One measure of this movement's ability to effectively represent the Black working class as a whole will be its response to the particular
International Viewpoint 9 March 1987
Women unite against rape ON MAY 3, 1986, 59-year old Maliwe Glass was raped and assaulted in the Port Alfred African township. A man was identified and arrested as the rapist. Later that day he was set free without being charged.
The following day, the Port Alfred Women's Organization (PAWO), grouping most of the township women, held its regular meeting. There they decided that, as women, they would protest against the police attitude to the rape. At the same time they decided to protest against the arrest of five students, which had occurred two days previously while they were collecting money for school funds.
PAWO decided to organize a stayaway from work starting on May 5, until the rapist was arrested and the students released. They asked white women to contact them so that they could explain the reasons for their action. The stayaway was supported by all the African women, but no Coloured women from the nearby township. Almost all the women were domestic servants, with some factory and shop workers.
On the Tuesday of the stayaway three PAWO members and several other leaders of community organizations were arrested. PAWO women were released, but a woman youth leader was held for two weeks. During this time she was interrogated about the stayaway. The police refused to believe the women had organized it.
After two days the Employers Federation approached the township civic association to discuss the situation. PAWO rejected any attempt by men on either side to negotiate: "Rape is not a men's issue", they said.
The response from the white women remained unsympathetic for a week. Only then did a delegation of white women go to meet PAWO and show some understanding of their situation. After this communication was established the women decided to go back to work. The rapist, known for his previous attacks on women, was given a police escort during the stayaway, but was eventually charged with assault. His house has been burnt down and he no longer lives in the township.
The stayaway was important in building the confidence of the women in themselves and their young organization (launched in March 1986). It brought the rape question into the open and increased community consciousness of it as another form of oppression and an attack on women's rights and dignity.
problems of Black women workers: low pay, unequal pay, grossly inadequate maternity rights and childcare provision, sexual abuse and discriminatory treatment at work, and the continuing assumption by their male fellow workers that it is normal that women carry the burden in the home.
One forum in which some of these problems were aired was a workshop organized by COSATU's forerunner, FOSATU, in July 1983, addressed by four well-known women trade-union activists, and reported in the South Africa Labour Bulletin of December 1983. The speakers outlined the position of Black women in industry as being in the worst-paid and most insecure sectors of the economy and in the least skilled jobs. This means that their bargaining power is relatively weak because of the ease by which the employers can find other women among the high numbers of unemployed who will accept any conditions in order to have a job. (9) Maggie Mugubane, general secretary of the Sweet, Food and Allied Workers Union, pointed out that women's willingness to accept such conditions is also a potential point of conflict and divison between male and female workers, and illustrates the necessity for the independent movement to challenge the conditions of women workers to maintain unity in its own ranks.
Speakers also raised questions such as the fight for maternity benefits, against unsafe contraception and the use of sexual harassment by foremen and employers to bully women workers, which are the beginning to be taken up by some unions.
Tembi Nabe (an organizer for the Metal and Allied Workers Union) frankly confronted the problems of women's double or triple workshift. She described the household life of the average woman worker as endless rounds of providing tea and food for her husband, looking after the baby, the fire, the ironing and so on while her husband feels free to watch television and read the newspaper "always with his little darling bottle of whisky beside him ... When he gets to bed he then starts to demand another overtime from you (the third overtime). If you refuse him, that's when the divorce starts, and then his "little darling' makes him think to batter you."
8. 'SALB', December 1983.
9. In the 1980 census 78% of African women were classified as "not economically active". As well as the very young and very old, this includes "housewives" who are inhibited from taking jobs because of their domestic responsibilities.
9
Black women in industry are in the lowest paid unskilled jobs (DR)
sentiment and a desire to take concrete action.
Fedtraw has 23 affiliated organizations, most affiliated to the UDF, and some 50 local branches in Soweto alone. Its three main areas of activity before the state of emergency were rents, the school boycott and against military presence in the townships.
Under the state of emergency Fedtraw has had to ease up a bit on its work, in particular suspending plans to relaunch Feosaw (Federation of South African Women). But Fedtraw patron, Albertina Sisulu, believes women's groups must be and are maintained "so we are not caught sleeping when the state of emergency is lifted". (13)
Susan Shabangu, an organizer for the TGWU present at the conference,
A later speaker, Lydia Kompe of the Transport and General Workers Union, referred to the same problems in raising the lack of women's participation in the trade unions, even in unions with a majority of women members they are rarely in the top leadership. She also pointed out the fear of sexual attack that makes women wary of going out at night, and the problems of husband's jealousy or lack of understanding of why women want to be active in the trade unions.
Maggie Mugubane raised the possibility of women organizing in a women's caucus or other structure in the unions to help women gain more confidence.
COSATU, the "superfederation" of well over half-a-million workers, committed itself at its founding conference in November 1985 to fight for women's rights on all these fronts. (10) FOSATU and its affiliated unions, before the creation of the COSATU, had already started to fight on some of these questions, such as for a minimum living wage and equal pay, rejecting the notion of a "family wage" for men, and for the retention of protective legislation so that women could not be forced to do nightwork or overtime, along with a reduction in the working week.
The problem of how to deal with redundancies is more difficult, the unions having the traditional position of "last in, first out" , which, as everywhere, tends to discriminate against women. (11) But the fight for maternity rights, including paid maternity leave to count towards seniority, which does not exist in South Africa, would go some way towards resolving this problem.
Women workers are also women of their communities, and the links of trade-union women with other women's organizations will be important in the progress towards the women of South Africa creating a 10 movement which can speak for them on all fronts. Given women's central responsiblility for the household, the forms of struggle of the Black communities - boycotts of the schools, rent paying or of white commerce - require a particular involvement from women. Women in the community associations
The "triple oppression" they suffer often means that they are the leastorganized section of the residents in the townships, and therefore the least involved in taking the decisions on these forms of action. Yet it is the woman who, to provide the food on the table as expected, will have to do her shopping in the township, rather than in cheaper big white supermarkets, or else risk confronting the young men "supervising" the boycott.
Women are organizing at the level of the community. The Fedtraw (Federation of Transvaal Women) was one organization participating in the National Assembly of Women in Johannesburg on August 9, 1986. (12) This conference brought together 1,200 women of all races and of diverse backgrounds, although unfortunately no trade-union speakers were invited as such. The assembly was organized by around 30 organizations, some linked to the white liberal current, but others affiliated to the United Democratic Front (UDF). This assembly adopted a number of resolutions on women's right to work and training, social security for all, obligatory child maintenance payments, an end to discrimination against pregnant women, release of those arrested during the school boycott, redistribution of land and so on. It was characterized by a clear anti-apartheid agreed that rent and education were important subjects for women and that women are becoming more mobilized around community issues. Both the Fedtraw activists and the unionists agreed that women were becoming increasingly politicized under the impact of events: as mothers of children boycotting schools, household managers involved in rent or consumer boycotts, residents protesting against military presence in townships, as wives whose husbands lose their jobs and as workers suffering a special discrimination.
Fedtraw women both in urban and rural areas are involved in agricultural • clubs, buying cooperatives, sewing clubs and health education, even under the difficult conditions of the state of emergency, which makes meetings difficult and has forced some activists to go into clandestinity.
Black women in South Africa are beginning to organize to make their voices heard and raise their particular needs as women. This is beginning to have an impact within the independent trade-union movement, which is starting to act on such demands as equal pay and maternity rights, and in the communities, where women's committees and groups are starting up so that women can come together. Women's issues are on the agenda and it is increasingly recognized that a move. ment fighting for the emancipation of the South African people from the racist and repressive apartheid society has to fight for all sections of the people.
10. See "Resolutions of the founding congress of COSATU" in International Viewpoint' No. 93, February 24, 1986.
11. For a discussion of the problems this poses, see Adrienne Bird, "Organizing women workers in South Africa", 'SALB', July/August 1985.
12. This is National Women's Day in South Africa, the anniversary of the 1956 women's demonstration against the extension of the pass laws to women.
13. 'Weekly Mail', Johannesburg, August 8-14, 1986.
International Viewpoint 9 March 1987