The gains of the
Black miners' strike "LEADERSHIP, don't come back to us until you have a better offer from the bosses." These words from a strikers' fighting song illustrate rather well the determination of the Black miners, who have just waged a national three-weeklong action. They also confirm the the commitment to tradeunionism of one of the most exploited layers of the proletariat — migrant workers.
This explosion of activity by the mineworkers - and the capacity shown by the National Union of Miners (NUM), with 260,000 paid-up members, to organize this strike action — represented a massive challenge to a wages policy that constitutes a fundamental feature of the system of capitalist exploitation in the TONY ROUX
OW WAGES and dreadful working conditions are the characteristics of a system of exploiting
• Black labor that is more than a century old in the South African gold and coal mines. At the end of the nineteenth century, mining became a center for the spread of capitalist production relations. Immense profits were were piled up on the basis of big foreign investments and extensive use of Black labor power.
Very quickly, a small number of financial concerns carved up the mining property among themselves. In 1887, they set up their organization for the gold mining industry — the Chamber of Mines - which enabled them to develop a coordinated policy for recruitment and labor management.
Around this primary industry, whose production was essentially destined for export, a mode of capitalist exploitation took shape that was distinctive in its brutality. It was based on super-exploitation of African labor. Its two chief underpinnings remain the same today — an annually contracted migrant labor force (42% of Black miners come from neighboring countries), and regimentation of workers through the repressive apartheid laws.
The iwo poles of this chain of exploitation have been the concentration of "unproductive" elements in the native reserves (today in the Bantustans);
mining industry. and police control of the miners in closed "compounds" (nowadays singlesex hostels, in which 400,000 Black miners live).
The system of migrant labor makes it easier to keep the wages of Black workers to a minimum. The profitability of investments in mining has always involved keeping the material conditions of the Black miners at a miserable level.
Wage levels calculated for least profitable mines
There are many reasons for this. Given the conditions that determine gold prices, increases in production costs cannot immediately be passed on in the market price. Moreover, this primary export industry has no direct interest in increasing the buying power of Blacks. Lastly, the profitability of companies and consequently the setting of wage levels is calculated on the basis of the least profitable mines.
So the wages of Black workers throughout the industry are kept at a minimum that assures the viability of the least profitable mines. On top of this, for political reasons, the companies find it necessary to offer white workers wages three times higher.'
The system of migrant labor fills a specific function. Importing miners
from rural areas (in the Bantustans or neighboring countries) where their families reside, and the isolation of these miners in single-sex dormitories during the life of their contracts, enable the employers to acquire this labor power at a minimum cost.
Over the years, the agrarian crisis of the African reserves reduced the contribution of the domestic economy to the reproduction of labor power employed in the mines. But the apartheid system established in 1948, and the creation of the Bantustans in the 1960s, were designed to prop up this system of super-exploitation by tightening police control on the movements of Black labor. This made it possible for the mines to get a steady and sufficient influx of labor at low cost.
The Bantustans became, in fact, reser- The Rantustans hecame in fact reservoirs of labor power. The same is true of the neighboring Black states. For example, 60% of the workforce of Lesotho is employed in South Africa, most of it in the mines. The wages of these workers make up 52% of Lesotho's gross domestic product.
Ethnic division and repression
Confined to their single-sex dormitories for the duration of their contracts, Black miners are subject to the control of the company security forces and to maneuvers to divide them up along ethnic lines. (There is still a system of ethnic representation for workers, which is being challenged by the NUM.) Most of the mines have their own security forces, made up of former policemen or soldiers. This situation, and the brutal repression of past strikes, have long weighed heavily against organizing Black miners in a permanent way.
This special situation is characterized by terrible exploitation and repression, with the miners' families being rooted in sometimes backward rural areas, and they themselves being separated from the urban proletarian centers. However, in the general context of the politicalization of the oppressed masses in South Africa, this has not prevented the growth of class consciousness and unionization in this section of the industrial working class.
The effectiveness of this vast system of exploitation for the mine bosses is reflected quite glaringly in some statistics that speak volumes about the reality of South Africa. The great majority of Black gold miners (85%) are paid less than a living wage.
In February 1987, a South African 1. In an irony of history, it was in the midst of the Black miners' strike that the white parliament voted by 116 to 16 to abolish a 1911 law denying Blacks access to 13 professional categories in the mines.
SOUTH AFRICA university research center estimated that the minimum monthly living wage for a family was 419 rands [1 rand = $0.50]. At that time, underground miners in Category 4 earned 365 rands a month. More than half of the Black miners are in lower categories, and therefore get lower wages. According to the NUM, the minimum wage has been 238 rands in the gold mines and 225 in the coal mines. The Confederation of South African Trade Unions — Cosatu, the main trade-union federation — is demanding a living wage of 850 rands a month.
In most of the major mineral producing countries, workers in this industry get higher wages than those in manufacturing. Workers in the South African mines are worse paid (by at least 25%)
than workers in other industries.
Moreover, the South African mines are the world's most unhealthy and dangerous. They can be as much as 4,000 meters deep. Work goes on around the clock. And an average of 600 Black miners die in them every year.
What is more, the miners have watched their buying power being eaten away by inflation that rose to an annual average of 13.2% in 1973, and will probably reach 18% this year. From 1889 to 1897, Black miners' wages dropped from 78 rands a year to 58 rands, and then stagnated until 1970. This puts the 300% raise between 1970 and 1975 and the 30% one in the 1980s in perspective.
Taking into account the rise in inflation, the average wage of Black miners
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5
September 14, 1987 • International Viewpoint
SOUTH AFRICA was lower in 1986 than in 1983. The 30% raise demanded by the NUM would have only brought the average wage back to the level of 1984. And the incomes of the coal miners are still lower, making production costs in the South African coal mines the lowest in the world.
Enormous profits made by mining trusts
The contrast, therefore, is striking between these figures and the enormous profits made by the mining trusts. Marcel Golding, assistant general secretary of the NUM, noted that between 1975 and 1986, total profits in the gold mines went up by 44%. Dividends increased by 21%, capital expenditures by 106% and taxes by 38%? For the year 1985 alone, profits increased by 37%, and dividends by 38%. In 1986, owners of gold-mine stock collected 2,545 million rands in dividends, a sum greater than the total income of the 485,000 Black miners in the industry, who earned 2,484 million rands.
Entrenched behind apartheid, huge mining monopolies built up their power and their wealth on the exploitation of the Black workers. They then went on to extend their activities to other industries, becoming the most dynamic sector of local finance capital. The Anglo-American Corporation (AAC) is a prime example. This trust employs 80% of the miners who went out on strike.
The AAC alone holds more than half of the stock quoted on the Johannesburg stock exchange. It owns 15.9% of the total capital of the 137 main companies active in South Africa (including foreign and state concerns). It controls 600 companies around the world, and employs a total of 800,000 people. But it gets 85% of its income in South Africa and Namibia, where it owns 12 gold mines, 4 uranium mines and 15 coal mines, and has interests in Beers (diamonds) and in platinum.
"The net consolidated profit of the group increased again by 26% in the financial year ending on March 31, 1987, amounting to 1,500 million rands." 3
A contest between the biggest union in the Cosatu and the mining trusts, the Black miners' strike took on an importance surpassing its initial economic demands. It became a full-fledged test of the social relationship of forces. The outcome for the moment is a stalemate.
The strike started on August 9, when the NUM called on its supporters to stop work in 28 gold mines and 18 coal mines. The membership was previ6 ously consulted, as the law requires, and voted 95% for this type of action International Viewpoint • September 14, 1987 to back up their demands in the wage negotiations with the Chamber of Mines.
The NUM demanded a 30% increase in the minimum wage, while the bosses offered raises of only 13% to 23%, according to the various categories. In addition, the union called for a bonus for dangerous work, increases in death benefits to families of workers losing their lives in accidents from two years' to five years' wages, 30 days annual paid leave and a paid holiday on June 16 to mark the anniversary of the Soweto uprising. The union based its demands on the size of profits in recent years and the steady decline of miners' buying power in that period.
The involvement of 300,000 out of 530,000 Black miners in a three-week struggle is a clear indication of the extent of their combativity. Thousands of workers preferred to lose their jobs rather than give into the blackmail the bosses applied by closing pits. Mine production was halted or severely hampered in 44 out of the 46 mines where the NUM is recognized. The companies have kept their losses secret. But an independent body has estimated them at 17 million rands a day.
Longest strike in the history of Black miners' struggle
The strike was the longest in the history of the Black miners' struggles. By way of comparison, the big strike of 1946 lasted only five days. In recent years, conflicts in the mines have hardly lasted more than a few days. In most cases, repression and firings discouraged any inclination to continue the struggle.
This time there were sit-ins in the mines. In some places, workers' representatives took over miners' residences. "Take control of the hostels," was a slogan raised by the NUM to reinforce workers' self-organization and to challenge the bosses' control over the workforce.
In their strategy of taking a tough stand against the workers' demands, the bosses took the opportunity to close some of the less profitable pits. AAC's chiefs have been been anxious to maintain their "liberal image." They presented the conflict itself as "an indication of the process made by South African society toward normality." Nonetheless, they took the lead in using this pit-closure tactic.*
Mass firings are, moreover, a timehonored tradition in the "social relations" practiced by all the members of the Chamber of Mines. This conflict once again demonstrates the limitations of the "liberal" bosses' commitment to "democracy," once workers' protests begin to affect their profits.
On August 31, facing the intransigence of the bosses, the firing of 40,000 workers (14%) of the strikers, the arrests of several dozen others and clashes with the repressive forces (police and company security forces) that had left about a dozen workers dead and dozens of others wounded, the NUM accepted the management proposals that it had rejected a few days before and issued a back-to-work call.
The results of the strike for the workers, while not negligible, are meager. The mine bosses gave no ground on the central question of the higher wages demanded by the NUM. They agreed only to increase death benefits from two to three years' wages and to increase the pay for annual vacations from 55% of a month's wages to 65%.
The NUM leaders obviously accepted a compromise. But they do not analyze this result as a defeat. "The Chamber of Mines has not won, and we have not lost," NUM general secretary Cyril Ramaphosa declared, 'This is not a retreat, only a tactical sidestep, a rehearsal for next year, an experience for the future."S The relationship of forces remains so unstable and undecided that the mine bosses themselves are being careful not to crow over the outcome.
No doubt, a number of factors helped to determined the NUM's decision to end the conflict. This union was founded in 1982 and experienced mushroom growth. It had already engaged in many partial struggles and national days of action, as on the occasion of the accident at the Kinross mine last year. But this was still its first nationwide struggle for a major workers' demand against all the mine bosses.
A series of concrete, unifying demands
The union's first success was undoubtedly in managing to bring all of its forces into battle in a united way around a series of concrete, unifying demands — despite the differences in circumstances. But this success itself posed new problems for victory in the confrontation. In the last days of the strike, an uncertainty about the course of the conflict came out into the open, when Marcel Golding confessed to the press, "We are entering uncharted territory."
The mining industry is vital to the country's economy. Gold represents 45% of export receipts and coal 9%. So any prolongation of the conflict involved the possibility of a confrontation with the state apparatus. 2. Weekly Mail, August 14, 1987. 3. Le Monde, August 12, 1987. 4. Marchés tropicaux el méditerranéens, Paris, August 28, 1987. 5. Le Monde, September 1, 1987.
NUM leader Cyril Ramaphosa posed the question whether there was not a coordinated strategy by the Chamber of Mines "to smash the union at any cost, with the help of the state."
If the union had taken up that challenge, it would have meant a vast political and social confrontation with the state and the country's most powerful bosses. The perspective of a general strike in solidarity with the miners seemed hardly achievable in a situation in which, it should not be forgotten, the state of emergency is still in force.
Moreover, the NUM rapidly threw all its forces into the battle. All sections of the miners who could have been mobilized apparently were. It looked unlikely that other mines would join in. The NUM reportedly failed to extend the strike into the Gold Fields mines, a bastion of the most retrograde mine owners, where the union suffered severe repression at the time of a strike in 1985.
Growing opposition to totality of exploitation
Once the peak of mobilization was reached, it seems that the risks of erosion and massive firings impelled the union leaders to seek a way out of the conflict that would not compromise the gain for the miners that this mobilization represented. This national confrontation between the Black miners, one of the most exploited sections of the industrial proletariat, and the mining companies, the most monopolistic section of South African capital, revealed the major tendencies at work in South African society. It reflected the increasing role being played by the trade-union movement as a catalyst of working-class and popular aspirations for change. It is the growing opposition of the Black miners to the entire system of exploitation in force (migrant labor, low wages, bad living and working conditions, and racial discrimination) that explains why they rose up en masse in this fight for decent wages. Moreover, this is not the last that will be heard of this issue, because it is the campaigning focus of Cosatu for the current year.
The intransigence of the bosses will reinforce the convictions of the growing numbers in the independent trade-union movement who are convinced that the fight against apartheid, with its full democratic implications, is inseparable from a struggle against the system that assures the omnipotence of the capitalist monopolies. * 6. In an article in Cosatu News, March 1987, it was stated that "the living wage campaign is a fundamenta challenge to capitalism in South Africa."
SOUTH AFRICA / HAITI Mass upsurge arouses fears in Washington history of Haiti. It was a continuation of the movement THE MASS upsurge unleashed on June 22 was more history of Haiti. It was a continuation of the movement that forced Jean-Claude Duvalier to leave the country on February 7, 1986.1
But, at the time of the dictator's departure, the army tried to take a position of neutrality. Today it is in the front line against the masses. And, unlike Duvalier, the National Government Council (CNG) presided over by General
Henry Namphy is not isolated ANDY BROCK A STRIKE WAS called by the