New Dispensation is in Tatters - Marxist Workers Party

Originally published in Inqaba ya Basebenzi No. 2 (April 2021).

Business International is a journal which advises the bosses of the multinationals on what tactics they should use to protect their profits. Recently, they gave some advice to the bosses in South Africa, which shows how they have been taken unawares by the rising movement of the workers. This is what they said:

The latest wave of labor unrest points out why firms should resist the temptation to promote hand-picked black ‘spokesmen’ that lack credibility with the rank-and-file, and should instead accept strong, effective unions. First, black workers are increasingly in a position to enforce sanctions against companies refusing to acknowledge their leaders. Second, unless factory leaders are seen to be getting a better deal for their constituents, the way will be open for more militant political activists to take over.

On Monday morning, 16 February, 188 Greyhound bus drivers came out on strike in Johannesburg. By the afternoon, 176 had pleaded guilty and been sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. (12 who stood trial were later acquitted). Those sentenced had their prison-term suspended for five years provided they returned to work. If they take any form of action in this period (go-slows, refusing to obey orders or strikes) they will be hurled into prison.

Once again the Botha government’s promises of a “new dispensation” are proved to be lies. Instead we can see what the regime’s plans for industrial peace consist of. Workers must accept the bosses’ terms and trust the racist officials to settle their grievances – or be thrown into jail.

What the government has in store is shown by the refusal to register unions because their constitutions were “non-racial”, and by the press leaks concerning new industrial legislation.

These leaks showed the regime was looking for ways to give the Industrial Registrar absolute powers over all trade unions – unregistered as well as registered – and that it was considering:

banning unions in the Bantustans;
prohibiting unions from working with township organisations;
bringing unregistered unions under state control;
no donations to unions to be allowed.

The regime also wants to ban all independent trade union education and clamp down further on migrant workers taking strike action.

Yet at the same time the big employers are forced to recognise that they have to negotiate with the trade unions – and with trade unions which have the support of the workers. While the regime continues mechanically with the well-tried methods of repression, big business is looking for new ways to drug the struggle on the shop-floor.

What this means is that the Wiehahn strategy of the ruling class is in tatters, and that the ruling class is divided on how to respond.

This is the direct result of the explosive struggles of the workers over the recent period. These struggles were a decisive rejection of the Wiehahn strategy to chain the growing trade union movement.

In the process, there have been huge advances in the strength and confidence of the trade union movement. Among the achievements have been:

wage increases of up to 70% at Ford in June 1980;
in response to these gains in the Eastern Cape, the struggle of motor workers in Pretoria to organise and win higher wages;
wage increases of 60% at Kellogg’s, plus recognition of the union;
the recognition of SAAWU at Chloride in East London;
that the strike at Post raised the question: who controls the press? MWASA President Zwelakhe Sisulu (now banned) said the choice facing revolutionary journalists was whether to be “collaborative propagandists or revolutionary propagandists”.

Most important of all, trade union membership has nearly tripled, rising from 3% to some 7% of the African industrial workforce. Whole towns are becoming strongholds of the trade union movement. Workers are streaming to the trade unions asking to be organised.

Here is revealed the explosive potential of the trade union movement in South Africa! If a rise in the percentage organised to just 7% has such devastating effects on the ruling class, then the mass of the working class organised around a clear programme will represent an unstoppable force!

This is what the ruling class fears. The apartheid regime, and the capitalist class that it represents, cannot tolerate a movement of the united working class. One of the main reasons for the banning of ‘Post’ and controls on the press has been the regime’s fear of strike reports which, it claims, are creating a “revolutionary climate” in South Africa.

Those trade union officials who led their unions into the trap of registering under the Wiehahn strategy should now openly acknowledge that this was wrong. Nor is there the way forward through relying on the so-called “liberal” elements of big business: what can be won from them must be used, but without illusions.

At this time, the central task is to organise the unorganised workers. As yet, only about 200,000 African workers are organised, and those are largely the non-migrant section. Millions of workers still wait to come into the unions, including the most decisive section of all, the migrant mineworkers from all the countries of Southern Africa. The organisation of the unemployed, together with the employed, must be taken forward.

By taking-up and combining all the pressing demands that workers are fighting for in factories throughout the country, the trade union movement can become a movement of millions. A central plank in this programme is the demand for a national minimum wage of R90 a week, with further increases linked to inflation.

Organised into the trade unions in its millions on the basis of a fighting programme, the working class will become a giant power. Building this trade union power, and at the same time struggling to build the ANC as its own mass political movement on a socialist programme, the working class will gain the means to smash apartheid and sweep capitalist exploitation from the face of South Africa.

For a trade union movement uniting all workers!

For a mass ANC with a socialist programme!