In South Africa Today
Apartheid Mocks Trade Union Freedom
By ALAN BROOKS
SINCE the end of the Second World War, the labor movement in South Africa has been divided between two broad groups. On one side were those white workers and trade unionists who desired — and, helped by the Nationalist government, created — a white aristocracy of labor. On the other were those who sought to build a united labor movement, founded on the common identity of workers, without regard to race.
Initially these two tendencies coexisted within the South African Trades and Labor Council. But Nationalist politicians, for their own ends, instigated splits which soon destroyed the SATLC, and in its place came the democratic, non-racial movement, SACTU (South African Congress of Trade Unions), formed in March 1955, and the color bar TUCSA (Trades Union Council of South Africa — originally called SATUC).
The reactionary, pro-apartheid trade unions, largely white and exclusive in membership, now form the bulk of the sadly depleted trade union movement. They are a monument to racial prejudice, a warning to workers everywhere of the dangers of disunity; divided among themselves, their number and power are declining, and their ability to perform the true functions of trade unions has all but disappeared.
They fall into two groups. The South African Confederation of Labor (SACL) is openly pro-government, supports job reservation, denies trade union rights to Africans, and practises white supremacy in the industrial field. It comprises 33 unions with 195,000 members.
'IMPROVE IMAGE'
Slightly smaller, but much more active and influential in the international trade union movement in its efforts to "improve the image" of apartheid South Africa and to secure its return to the ILO, is TUCSA.
Started in 1954 as a body that excluded Africans, it has pursued a policy of the rate for the job as the best way of preserving white workers' privileged position. Not quite as ex-
treme as SACL, it has varied its tactics, promoting or abandoning the existence of small, splinter, white-controlled African "trade unions" according to expediency.
The leadership of TUCSA, seeking to bolster the declining white trade union movement by gaining for it a secure degree of international recognition, has also sought to bolster its waning bargaining power in relation to the employers by bringing under its wing separate, and suitably dependent, African unions which will not pose a threat to the hegemony of TUCSA.
This tactic, an unwilling admission of the latent power of the African working class, has proved almost disastrous to TUCSA. To its right wing members, the tactic has appeared to be the thin end of the black man's wedge. Some unions, including the large Typographical Union, have left TUCSA as a result. Nevertheless, the TUCSA leadership has stuck to its policy of enlightened self-interest, and got a majority vote for it at the TUCSA anual conference in 1968.
Since then, TUCSA has lost one fifth of its membership, white aristocrats of labor who are utterly opposed to any organization or recognition of African workers.
AFRICANS SUFFER
While the white workers squabble over the spoils, the lot of African and other non-white workers gets worse.
SACTU, their militant, non-racial trade union movement, has suffered severe blows. Its leaders and activities have been banned, placed under house arrest, imprisoned, forced into exile, even executed by the Vorster regime. But the ideals which inspired SACTU and the dedication which built it live on.
African workers are being more viciously exploited than before. Tuberculosis, malnutrition and other consequences of poverty are rapidly on the increase among Africans, whereas they have been virtually eliminated among the privileged whites.
In the background lies the vast machinery of oppression,
Impose Sanctions, Union Urges Trudeau
MESPONDING to an appeal addressed to it by the South African Congress of Trade Unions from its provisional headquarters at Morogoro, Tanzania, the UFAWU general executive board has written to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau calling on his government to impose a complete economic boycott against the Republic of South Africa. This boycott, the letter suggests, should be extended to "diplomatic relations, cultural and sports contacts, investments and military contracts."
The UFAWU letter also asks the Trudeau government "to demand an immediate and unconditional release of over 10,000 trade union and politic.il leaders, as well as an end to police terror and trialf, now going on in South Africa."
In condemning "the degrading and inhuman racial policies practised by the government of South Africa" as "an outright violation of fundamental human rights as denned by the constitution of the International Labor Organization, of which Canada is a member," the UFAWU was prompted by the appeal issued by the World Trade Union Congress, held at Budapest, Hungary last October.
This congress, to which the UFAWU sent its northern organizer, George Hewison, as an observer, gave its full support to action of the International Trade Union Committee for Solidarity with the Workers and People of South Africa in setting February 7 as a day of solidarity with all South Africans struggling against the Nationalist government's apartheid policies.
In particular, the congress called for trade union pressure on governments to give force to the UN general assembly resolutions of 1962 and 1968 for a boycott of all relations with South Africa by member states.
6 THE FISHERMAN — FEBRUARY 6, 1970
built over the years, and now being refined by its fascist architects.
One of the cornerstones is the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1956, which excluded African workers entirely from the established procedures of collective bargaining.
The act introduced "job reservation" — whereby non- white workers are kept out of skilled jobs. And it achieved a longstanding goal of the ruling Nationalist party — the emasculation of the labor movement by entrenching racial divisions. It made multi-racial trade unionism virtually impossible.
In South Africa, everything is divided according to race, even legislation. Thus there is a counterpart — for Africans only — to the Industrial Conciliation Act. It is the Native Labor (Settlement of Disputes I Act of 1953.
It makes all strikes and slowdowns by Africans punishable by a fine of $750 and up to three years' imprisonment. In the place of collective bargaining, it proposes works committees, staffed by white officials, to settle Africans' grievances for them.
Never intended for the defence of Africans' living standards or for winning improvements in working conditions, the system has virtually remained a dead letter. Only about 50 such committees have been established in the past 15 years.
Coupled with these direct anti-labor laws are the other regulations which force Africans into migrant labor, deny them permanence or security in the towns, and maintain a cheap labor reservoir which is tapped by labor bureaus throughout the country according to the demands of white farmers and industrialists.
The infamous pass laws are a key part of this system. Twelve to thirteen hundred African men and women are fined or imprisoned daily in South Africa under these laws! Every year, thousands are endorsed out of the towns, and forced to move to the overcrowded reserves.
Thus the African worker, backbone of the economy (75 percent of the labor force in manufacturing, 90 percent in mining, is African), is reduced to an anonymous labor unit, defenceless both against the exploitation of employers and against the tyranny of the state bureaucracy.
SINISTER ROLE
The international trade union movement must be on its guard against the attempts of TUCSA to undermine the international opposition to apartheid. TUC-SA's international activities are more sinister than its transparent domestic manoeuvres.
It is playing a major part in the Nationalist government's scheme, announced by labor minister Viljoen in June 1968, of sending workers abroad to pre-
• Apartheid regulations offend the eye at every step in South African cities. And the white supremacist unions go right along with them.
sent "a factual picture" of South Africa. TUCSA goes further than the South African government in seeking readmission of South Africa to the ILO, from which it has been excluded since 1963. But it shares the same function with the government of whitewashing apartheid.
A big step in this campaign was the tour made by leading TUCSA officials of five West European countries, Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and Britain, in 1968. The 17 international trade secretariats attached to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions have also been a major TUCSA target, with TUCSA in several cases securing affiliation to the international body of seg-gregated or unrepresentative trade unions (affiliated to TUCSA itself) in South Africa.
Further attempts by TUCSA to undermine the international opposition to apartheid and the whole sanctions campaign will meet with success unless the international trade union movement exercises the utmost vigilance and displays greater solidarity with South African workers by actually implementing the boycott which it, in common with the whole liberation movement in South Africa, instigated a decade ago.
END APARTHEID
Today, a war of national liberation is being waged throughout southern Africa.
South African freedom fighters have joined with their brothers in Rhodesia, Mozambique and South West Africa in a guerilla offensive that has raised the anti-fascist struggle dramatically to a higher plane. This is a struggle of workers and peasants, and it will continue until white supremacy has been destroyed.
So long as apartheid exists, a truly free, non-racial trade union movement will not take root in South Africa. This makes the overthrow of apartheid a matter of the utmost importance to the workers of that country.
Wherever the battle for freedom is waged, from the valleys of the Zambesi to the shop floors of the Cape, the costs will be high and the need for help from the international labor movement great, but the people of South Africa know that the prize is beyond value or price. They will not rest until it is theirs.
• Alan Brooks is organizational secretary of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
OSBORNE' Propellers
GIVE TOP (QUIET) PERFORMANCE ON THE BIG BOATS
Designed For Smooth Performance For Every Type of Vessel
"Osborne" Propellers Are Ruggedly Built To Give Lasting Service
PROPELLER CONDITIONING
We have the most modern propeller repair and conditioning shop in B.C. We give an experienced service in reconditioning, balancing, pitch change, increasing or decreasing diameters. For accurate propeller performance consult our specialists.
Western Canada's Leading Propeller Manufacturing & Repair Company
OSBORNE PROPELLER LTD.
1645 West 1st Avenue Phone 731-0461 Vancouver, B.C.