Originally published in Inqaba ya Basebenzi No. 16/17 (January-June 1985).
by Richard Monroe
Once again – in the Transvaal in November, in the Eastern Cape in March, and then again in the Transvaal in May – the stay-away (or general strike) has been brought to bear as a weapon in the struggle.
The two-day November strike in particular, involving up to a million workers in SA’s industrial and financial heartland, was the most important political action in the whole history of the labour movement.
These displays of the power of the working class have terrified the bosses and the government – even forcing concessions, such as the settlement of the Simba-Quix dispute and the temporary freeze on rents.
Taken together with the general ferment in society – the uncertainty of the ruling class, and the huge and near-insurrectionary mass struggles taking place up and down the country – they are a clear indication of a new stage in the unfolding of the South African socialist revolution.
But many battles have yet to be fought – by organised millions rather than hundreds of thousands – before the revolution can be victorious. In the process, the general strike will become an increasingly vital tactic. It will be indispensable for the workers’ movement to have a crystal-clear conception of how to use this weapon most effectively, and its place within the struggle to transform society.
Its increasingly obvious importance is already provoking intense debate about general strike tactics in the unions and among the youth.
Thus, despite the huge success of the November action, some union leaders have expressed caution about repeating it, or extending it on a wider basis. On the other hand, many workers argued for carrying forward the momentum with an ‘all-out’ general strike.
In November, the unions, youth and community organisations combined in a concerted mobilisation. But in the Eastern Cape strikes many of the unions held back from official participation – leaving the initiative to PEBCO.
Uncertainty over tactics has also been revealed in the protest at the murder of Andries Raditsela. At first, the unions called a two-hour national stoppage; at the last minute, under pressure from below, the Fosatu regional committee extended this, to a call for a one-day strike in the Transvaal.
Stored within the fighting traditions of the labour movement internationally is an immense wealth of experience on the use of the general strike – on successes and setbacks. Every activist in the workers’ and youth movement should try to get hold of this experience, study, absorb, and apply it. Here we can only draw out some of the main lessons.
Just as the strike is an indispensable weapon in the daily struggle against the employer, so mass and general strike action is indispensable for the working class in preparing to lead the struggle for power.
Not only can mass and general strike action wrest concessions from the ruling class. More important still, they give a sense to the working class of its own strength, and at the same time’ test the forces of the enemy.
Through mass strike action, as the great Marxist Trotsky wrote, “various groups and strata of the proletariat announce themselves [and] signal to one another… Only through these strikes … does the proletariat rise to its feet, assemble itself as a unity, begin to feel and conceive of itself as a class, as a living historical force.”
Fresh Layers
The recent general strikes have also reaffirmed how a lead taken by the organised workers (particularly with the assistance of the youth) can draw huge fresh layers of the unorganised into action – and, through that, into organisation.
But any generalised strike action is a serious matter for the working class. The collective power of the working class to withdraw its labour is a fundamental threat not only to the profits, but also, ultimately, to the survival of the ruling class.
Because the SA ruling class has such limited room for manoeuvre in making concessions to the workers’ movement – because it must defend the cheap labour system at all costs – it views general strike action with the bitterest fear and hostility.
Hence the same threats are repeated time and time again: docking of wages, mass sackings – and, behind them, the threat of the murderous state machine.
In the struggle to end oppression and exploitation, the workers are prepared to make huge sacrifices – provided that the purpose of each collective action is explained, and linked to a clear strategy and goal. This is what needs to underlie the working-out of general strike tactics.
It would be fundamentally wrong, for example, in preparing and organising general strike action, to draw any distinction between so-called progressive and reactionary bosses – or between the bosses and the regime. On the contrary, the collective responsibility of the whole ruling class for the system in South Africa needs to be emphasised and emphasised again.
The apartheid regime is the fundamental defence of the bosses’ system of cheap labour, and any attack on it is inevitably an attack on the bosses also.
Only on the basis of this understanding, and all the implications which flow from it, can the working class prepare itself to lead the struggle for power.
On the lessons of the November general strike, “Fosatu sources” are reported by the Financial Mail[1] as saying,
…the organising committee was too small, and its members did not have sufficiently clearly defined ideas of their functions, responsibilities and limits. Fosatu will in future be wary of the terms on which it co-operates with organisations made up of activists who are not directly answerable to a constituency…
…the stay-away weapon is unlikely to be used by Fosatu again … except in the case of an ‘absolutely immediate, clear-cut objective’.
It would be entirely correct for the trade unions to maintain that the actions of the working class cannot be determined by the requirements of middle class political leaders. In the 1950s middle class Congress movement leaders called the workers into stay-aways, and then called-off the actions – turning on and off the tap of the workers’ movement in vain attempts to arrive at political compromises with the ‘liberal’ bosses.
But in the case of the November strike, the middle class UDF Transvaal leadership did not initiate the strike call – it merely gave it support after it had been called.
Moreover, the only guarantee against attempts by middle class leaders to manipulate the workers’ movement for its own ends, is for the organised working class to establish its political leadership in the struggle through assuming control of the UDF on the basis of a programme and strategy to rally all the oppressed.
In fact the real pressure for the November action came from the union membership (as Fosatu sources themselves state in the same Financial Mail article):
…its constituency has also widened to include increasingly politically-concerned workers. The federation structure made it inevitable that workers concerned about the roots of township and educational unrest would pressure their leadership to act. [Our emphasis]
If there was additional pressure from outside the union movement, it was the pressure of the youth organisations – who, in that, were reflecting the urgency felt by the working class masses themselves, and particularly the non-unionised workers.
The youth movement is a priceless asset for the working class movement, with its fearlessness and adventurousness complementing the solid foundations of organisation which have been built in the factories, mines, docks, etc.
It was the combined strengths of the organised workers and the youth which made the November strike such a success in raising the confidence of the working class in its own power, thus fuelling discussion about further and escalated action.
It would be a big mistake for any leader of the democratic unions to imagine that it will be possible to renounce the weapon of the stay-away. Indeed, attempts to do so by the unions themselves’ would only drive workers and youth to find other leadership, for political strike action. It will be useless to complain, in that case, that the leadership concerned is “not directly answerable to a constituency”.
Wells-Up
In the nature of things, the mood for general strike action cannot be tested by calling national referenda or putting matters to the vote in conferences well ahead of time. It wells-up among the unorganised as well as the organised, and is reflected through the activists in the workers’, youth, etc. organisations. Despite the difficulties involved in assessing mood and working out tactics, the leaders of the trade unions cannot escape that responsibility.
In the Eastern Cape it was in the context of a near-insurrectionary ferment in the townships that a mood for general strike action asserted itself and, because the unions stood aside from mobilising it, expressed itself in PEBCO’s call.
The Eastern Cape general strikes were also successful – but they did not have the same force, or leave the same sense of a new and higher achievement of unity in action, as was the case in the Transvaal. Had the trade unions involved themselves fully in preparing and organising the actions, they could have had a more tangible direction, and clearer demands. The outcome would have been a greater sense of organised power and common purpose among the workers and youth.
Victimisation
It is true that the state, by its victimisation of the Transvaal regional strike committee in November, signalled that, in future, members of such open committees are likely to be arrested before, rather than after, organising a strike. Undoubtedly the trade union leadership – which is of necessity wholly in the open view of the repressive state – must protect itself against unnecessary reprisals.
At the same time it is vital that the trade union movement is fully involved in deciding on, preparing, and organising, general strike actions – along with the youth and other activists. The means must be developed for representatives of the trade unions, youth organisations, etc., to meet systematically, but secretly, together to plan coherent strategy.
The importance of this mobilisation of combined strength of workers and youth is shown also by the results of the strike call to protest Andries Raditsela’s death. Called by the unions alone, and not with the added forces of the youth, etc., it fell short of the success of the actions in November and March.
Undoubtedly, against the propaganda of ‘failure’ in the capitalist press, Joe Foster was correct to point to the measure of success that was achieved at short notice – with at least 130,000 workers responding nationally to the call, and the funeral attended by many thousands of workers.
But the response of the working class was by no means so overwhelming, whether within the Transvaal or outside it, as was the case in November. In November even the capitalist press could not hide the overwhelming success.
The lesser response of the workers was not because the bosses or the regime were taking a tougher attitude than in November. On the contrary.
Knowing that mass struggles were continuing unchecked, more or less nation-wide, despite the vicious repression of the police and the army, they realised that they must supplement repression with subtler tactics of trying to ‘limit the damage’.
In fact spokesmen for SATS, one of the toughest employers in the land, admitted before the strike in May that they would be unlikely to take reprisals – of the kind meted out by the Sasol bosses in November. The bosses were hoping that the union leaders themselves would play the role of limiting and containing the movement.
Strength
But in any event, if the need for general strike action arises, the only recourse at the disposal of the workers against sackings, shootings and massacres is to their own organisation and strength – and in no wise to the goodwill or ‘restraining hand’ of any section of the employers.
The statement, issued by the Fosatu regional Transvaal executive together with the one-day strike call, for one additional day of strike for every worker shot was entirely correct.
But for that threat to be effective, it would have been necessary to make thorough and determined preparations – otherwise it would be exposed as mere bluff, and increase the boldness of reaction.
In contrast to November and to March in the Eastern Cape, there was no attempt to enlist the revolutionary energy and determination of the youth to mobilise for the May action.
The hundreds of thousands of leaflets and posters distributed by the youth in November were a vital factor in the solidity of the strike.
The call by Fosatu for a two-hour strike was also questionable. The problem with strike calls limited to a matter of hours is that they do not really signal to the working class the strength of its forces, they do not have the same ability to galvanise the unorganised workers, and they do not seriously test the state of the enemy.
The working class is inspired most to sacrifice when it sees a clear purpose, and clear gains to be made, in doing so.
In Italy the powerful Italian Communist Party has over the last years frittered away the energy and morale of its members and supporters through endlessly repeated ‘demonstration’ strike calls, sometimes of only half an hour or ten minutes duration. In the end workers are bound to say: ‘What’s the point. What are we gaining, at the expense of merely irritating the bosses?’
Confuse
When general strike action is limited to a ‘demonstration’ effect, and repeatedly called on such a basis, it can in the end only confuse and divide the workers’ movement and give heart to the ruling class.
While Raditsela’s funeral was a powerful demonstration of the workers’ anger, in the end, the unfortunate consequence of the May strike call was to follow up the hugely successful November strike… with something that fell far short of it.
After the November strike, Inqaba stated the view that the best possible follow-up would be a call for a two-day national strike.
In our view, subsequent events have confirmed this. The mood for further and more widespread action clearly existed after November 5-6 not only in the Transvaal, but in the Western and Eastern Cape at least.
While such a call would have become more difficult the closer that Christmas approached, events this year have created again and again conditions for such an action: after the shootings in Uitenhage, and at the time of the mass sackings of mineworkers.
Conditions for mobilising such an action are likely to recur in the months ahead.
A successful national general strike would represent a huge and qualitative leap forward for the workers’ movement. Never before has this been achieved. In the 1950s, and in 1976-77, though national strikes have been called, they have been solid only in one region or another, and never everywhere at once.
Such a call, thoroughly prepared, would be a real test of the strengths and weaknesses of the workers’ movement on a nation-wide basis. Its success would give an enormous impetus to the confidence of the working class in its own power – the power whose development at the head of all the oppressed can alone make the South African revolution.
But why not a call for an ‘all-out’ general strike – as was raised in some quarters of the movement last November?
If ‘all-out” means simply ‘everybody out’, then who could disagree? But if this was intended to mean a call for an indefinite general strike, until victory or defeat, then, in our view, the call is mistaken.
Undoubtedly, such a call will sooner or later come on the agenda of the struggle. Moreover, should such an action be called at any time by the workers’ leadership, supporters of Inqaba would throw themselves into ensuring its greatest success.
But an indefinite general strike inevitably is a total confrontation between the working class on the one hand, and the capitalist class and its state machine on the other.
Without labour, the factories grind to a halt, docks and transport are at a standstill, and food, power and other necessities can be distributed only with the agreement of the workers. Even were all white workers to scab on such a strike, the overwhelming majority of production would soon come to a standstill.
Such a strike would almost certainly evoke, on the one hand, all the efforts of the ruling class to crush it by repression – and, on the other, would depend for its effectiveness on nation-wide uprisings in the townships and the countryside on a scale many times larger than that of the last months.
Two Powers
In practice, an indefinite general strike, to the extent that it is effective, creates two different powers confronting each other in society: the power of the ruling class (reduced to the power of its armed state machine), and the hugely expanded power of the working class.
The country, under such conditions, would become ‘ungovernable’ by the ruling class.
But this immediately poses sharply in practice the question ‘WHO IS TO RULE SOCIETY?’
If the working class is not in a position to take power and the capitalists are not willing to make concessions, a very dangerous situation unfolds.
The strike movement cannot remain at white heat indefinitely. Within a week or two at the most, the masses would have to feel that the action is getting somewhere, or they begin to doubt that it is worth the cost. Progress begins to be measured very concretely. The working class has to obtain and distribute food once the stored supplies in the townships run out.
The necessary actions involved drive the working class again and again to test its power against the enemy in a struggle to reorganise society and take hold of the levers of production itself.
If this does not happen, eventually the capitalist class will recover itself and inflict a severe defeat on the movement. The workers, having given their all in the strike, will be a hundred times more reluctant to embark on such a venture again.
Thus a failed indefinite general strike can serve as a turning-point, opening up a period of reaction, under which many of the previous gains made by the workers come under attack, and can be taken away.
Under certain conditions, the capitalist class may try to effect a ‘compromise’ when faced by an indefinite general strike – but, given their limited room for manoeuvre and the challenge posed by such a movement in SA, this cannot be counted on.
Thus the ‘all-out’ general strike raises the stakes of the struggle to their highest point – and is a risky undertaking unless thoroughly organised and prepared by a leadership with a clear perspective and strategy for the taking of power by the working class.
Democratic Organs
The working class needs to be prepared, not simply for making the country ungovernable by the ruling class, but for taking on, defeating, and smashing the murderous capitalist state machine of apartheid – and replacing it with its own democratic organs of power.
These organs begin to take shape in the strike itself and the movement that accompanies it: in the democratic organising committees which form in the workplaces, townships, etc., to plan strategy, maintain communications, regulate food distribution, and so on. But they can become linked together into an alternative state power – the democratic state of the working class – only through an all-out struggle to overthrow the existing state machine.
All this depends on a long period of prior preparation – of deliberate mobilisation of the power of the working class through a series of partial and limited actions in order to prepare the movement for revolution. The crisis of capitalism and its regime are creating the objective conditions for this preparation to occur – but to end in victory it must be undertaken consciously.
An all-out general strike would have to move forwards towards a mass armed insurrection against the regime, or face the prospect of defeat. Its course would be determined by the extent to which, beforehand, and through the experience of preliminary skirmishes and huge battles, the masses in their overwhelming majority were prepared for a fight to the finish, and confident in a leadership which could take them to the end.
It is for this reason that, at this stage, Inqaba has put forward the call – under appropriate conditions – for a national general strike called for a limited duration (one, two, three days, etc. – the exact length is not the decisive question).
If properly prepared, such a strike would be a big step forward in cementing unity in the workers’ movement, in testing the balance of forces, and in drawing new layers into organisation. It would be a dress rehearsal for future battles that lie ahead. It could be enormously important in strengthening the unity between the workers’ and youth movements, which will become even more crucial in the future.
For maximum success in even a limited general strike, what is indispensable is a clear programme of action around which the largest forces of the workers can unite. Each potential general strike situation emerges out of specific issues and events. But there are nevertheless demands which are to the fore continually – for a national minimum wage linked to rises in the cost of living, for work and homes for all, etc.
Action
It is such demands which will rally the unorganised and weaker sections of the class into action.
With the imminent formation of a new federation, an even greater responsibility for perspectives, programme and strategy will fall to its new leadership. This applies also to the need for clarity on the tactic of the general strike, and the determination and will to use this tactic.
It is important for all activists to discuss the lessons of the general strike actions of the last few months, in order to prepare the movement for the bigger and more bitter battles which lie ahead.
© Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2021).
[1] 26 April 1985
