Gavin Evans
IT is one of those abiding South African ironies that a=20 man who was banned and house-arrested for supporting=20 independent trade unions should become the key player=20 in rewriting the country’s labour law.
But in Halton Cheadle’s case, the story verges from the=20 familiar. There is no “it takes one to catch one”=20 script about the radical tamed by hard realities and=20 the temptations of power. In the 21 years since the=20 government of BJ Vorster turned the screws on him, he=20 has remained remarkably consistent, while the country=20 and its industrial relations law has been under=20 constant change, more or less in the direction he has=20 advocated for so long.
This week what he calls the “excellent” ministerial=20 legal task team he convened published its draft of the=20 new Labour Relations Bill in record time. When enacted,=20 it is expected to have a profound effect on labour=20 relations in South Africa, prodding management and=20 unions away from their adversarial past.
Its 45-year-old drafter-in-chief summarises the changes=20 it proposes as “decriminalising labour law, introducing=20 the principle of independent mediation services=20 conciliating disputes, and shifting the direction of=20 labour relations on the shopfloor towards a more co- operative mode”.
Its effect will be to place the industrial relations=20 milieu within a social democratic framework, though=20 Cheadle himself avoids the label. “You can use any word=20 you like. I’ve been associated with the left long=20 enough to know about the connotations of some words.”
Cheadle’s start in the world of labour came as a direct=20 result of his sporting prowess. As one of the country’s=20 leading young swimmers, he represented Natal, Transvaal=20 and Western Province in the late 1960s and would have=20 received his Springbok colours had it not been for=20 international isolation.”
The impetus to enter student politics came when we=20 didn’t go to the Olympics, I suppose,” he acknowledges.=20 It is certainly an aspect of his life that he has=20 maintained, along with a passion for rugby he shares=20 with several of his former Natal Nusas (National Union=20 of South African Students) comrades and current=20 academic and legal colleagues. “What can I say? I am a=20 South African man, and sport is part of what I am.”
As a young law student he was involved in setting up=20 the independent trade unions which later formed the=20 nucleus of the Federation of South African Trade Unions=20 (Fosatu). He later worked for the Textile Workers’=20 Industrial Union.
But the banning order put an end to all this and=20 prompted him to complete his legal training. “After=20 that,” he admits, “I became respectable”.He founded the=20 legal firm Cheadle, Thompson and Haysom and was later=20 appointed professor of law at the Centre for Applied=20 Legal Studies at Wits University, all the time writing=20 prodigiously on industrial relations.
His views sometimes put him at odds with what became=20 known as the “populist” tendency within the union and,=20 more particularly, the extra-parliamentary political=20 movement, who tarred him with the “workerist” label;=20 not that this was something that seemed to worry=20 Cheadle. Perhaps it is an indication of how much his=20 political critics have come around to his way of=20 thinking that he was appointed special adviser to=20 Minister of Labour Tito Mboweni.
Friends and colleagues describe him variously as=20 “brilliant”, “abrasive”, “independent minded”,=20 “arrogant”, “impetuous,” “domineering”, “courageous”=20 and “boyishly charming”, but all seem to agree that his=20 contribution to labour law in South Africa is=20
Recently he has extended his expertise to the realm of=20 human rights, and is widely regarded as having=20 “rescued” the Committee on Fundamental Human Rights at=20 the multiparty negotiations in 1993, by giving “teeth”=20 to the final document.=20
His contributions during this period came soon after he=20 suffered a personal tragedy when his daughter, Kate,=20 was killed in a motor accident.
He says his labour relations work at the constitutional=20 level is now over, and in future he will concentrate on=20 legal efforts in the realm of human rights.