Transition from Below: Forging trade unionism and workplace change in South Africa
by Karl von Holdt
(University of Natal Press)
The South African labour movement was one of the key players in the struggle — against apartheid and for a better life for black South Africans. Indeed, the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (Cosatu), including unions like the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), was a recurring nightmare for politicians, security police and big business alike. In a perceptive and well-written case study of Numsa unionism at a single site (Highveld Steel at Witbank), veteran labour journalist and scholar Karl von Holdt highlights the many contradictions of organising under apartheid and in the new South Africa, and gives context to the present tensions between the unions and the ruling party.
This study is a continuation of important research in labour history done back in the 1980s and early 1990s, in particular the classic work of Eddie Webster, Cast in a Racial Mould (1985). Webster’s work demonstrated brilliantly the links between race and class in the South African iron and steel industry. Von Holdt, formerly editor of the South African Labour Bulletin and more recently Webster’s PhD student at the University of the Witwatersrand, has taken his ground-breaking research further, showing how Numsa unions operated at Highveld Steel, one of South Africa’s most important producers of base metal products.
Building on Webster and based on numerous often brutally frank interviews with workers, Numsa shop stewards and officials, as well as those non-Numsa figures who were willing to talk to him, Von Holdt presents a powerful history of the dramatic, often violent history of trade unionism in the 1980s and 1990s. He shows the tensions within the union as well as the forces from outside that made the labour movement an integral element in South Africa’s transition. He also documents the tensions that emerged after 1990 over the role of unionists in the run-up to 1994 and in the new dispensation.
This is very much a post-apartheid work. Under apartheid no progressive scholar would have admitted to the deep divisions — and often overt violence — within the trade union movement. There were clearly deep tensions between sections of Numsa workers at Highveld Steel. In particular, Von Holdt presents the conflict between militant Pedi migrant workers housed in hostels and local township dwellers. This was not, as in other areas, an ideological conflict between conservatives and radicals, but rather among radicals. The Pedi migrants came from an area that had long been a centre of radical resistance (as historian Peter Delius has shown) and were among the most militant of workers. Many were ready to strike at a moment’s notice and to enforce the strike ruthlessly, regardless of whether it conformed to Numsa standards and practices. Numsa shop stewards often found themselves in tension with these hardliners.
By all accounts, Witbank and its environs was a tough town, with tough people. At Highveld Steel, there was a tightly run racial hierarchy, with special privileges accorded to white workers. Black workers were — Von Holdt indicates — seen as “servants” of white workers: if a white worker demanded you go to buy him cigarettes, you did so. If you refused, you were in deep trouble. And management would, for the most part, back white workers. In reaction to this, Numsa labour militancy was high. For the least reason black workers would go on strike. Terms of labour agreements between workers and capital were frequently ignored, since black workers regarded them as illegitimate products of apartheid law. And strikes would be enforced, often by means of the preferred weapon of the hostel dwellers, the sjambok.
Workers went on strike for many reasons. The period Von Holdt covers is the 1980s, when trade unionism was also part of a larger social movement of resistance. Though some union activism was based on issues particular to Highveld Steel, much of it was directly related to the politics of national liberation. Workers downed tools to protest the killing of activists, to register anger at a South African Defence Force attack on African National Congress bases in neighbouring countries, or to commemorate key days in the “struggle” calendar. Clearly, they saw Highveld Steel as part of the apartheid system and seemed quite willing, even eager, to risk their jobs in the cause of liberation.
While Numsa shop stewards tried to maintain discipline, hostel workers took a more militant line. There were constant tensions between them until 1990, and at times the migrants even saw the shop stewards as sell-outs. This persisted into the 1990s, when new issues emerged.
When the ANC and South African Communist Party were unbanned, and in particular after 1994 national, provincial and local government elections, many Numsa leaders at Highveld Steel moved into politics. Their degree of involvement can be shown by the following statistic: of the 19 (of 30) ANC councillors in Witbank’s town council, 12 were trade unionists by background, nine from Numsa. This move, and the shift of many other union leaders into management positions or private business after 1994 weakened the role of the union in Witbank.
Von Holdt’s study highlights — and often challenges — many of the burning issues in the study of South African labour. His book reprises the perennial tension for a trade union anywhere: the bread-and-butter issues of a particular union in a particular industry or factory versus its role as a political movement representing the working class. This tension in South Africa has been a reality since the 1970s (or before, if one considers the history of early black unions and the progressive white unions of the 1930s and 1940s). Von Holdt shows how by the late 1980s this either/or tension had become a both/and — both a union representing workers and part of the liberation struggle, though not without tensions.
Most of all, perhaps, the book highlights the tensions of transition not only for Numsa, not only in Witbank, but also for the whole Cosatu structure. Suddenly the struggle was over (or so it seemed). Now it was a time of labour-management agreements independent of unions, which has has serious implications for the future of trade unionism as classically understood.mmm
Von Holdt has produced a book that will probably become a classic of labour history. Detailed yet never boring, it is carefully constructed and well-research-ed. Some may object that it is one-sided (from the workers’ point of view) but he can hardly be faulted for the unwillingness of many in management or the white unions to talk to him.