METAL THAT WILL NOT BEND
National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa 1980–1995
Kally Forrest
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg
2001
Copyright © Kally Forrest 2011
Copyright © Photographs as credited in captions
First published 2011
ISBN 978-1-86814-534-8 (print)
ISBN 978-1-86814-712-0 (digital)
Wits University Press and the author have made every reasonable effort to locate, contact and acknowledge copyright owners. Please notify us should copyright not have been properly identified and acknowledged. Any corrections will be incorporated in subsequent editions of the book.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordan ce with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
Edited by Monica Seeber
Cover design and layout by Hothouse South Africa
Printed and bound by Ultra Litho (Pty.) Ltd.
Insimbi Ayigobi, Metal that will not Bend, is a National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa slogan.
Acknowledgements
A lengthy book such as this inevitably means a long, and mostly solo, journey. Along the way however I met extraordinary and powerful people who lent me important support at different times.
The story of course belongs to the numerous people that I interviewed and their union colleagues. These soldiers of the metal unions freely shared with me their experiences, struggles, sufferings, victories, jubilations, thoughts and analyses of the unions’ role in the period they participated in. Their narratives and observations were astute and at times inspirational, even when it was painful for them to revisit such memories. For many, it was the first opportunity to return to these intense, exciting and fraught times, and for most it was an important moment. I feel honoured to have been part of this. These were, after all, people who richly contributed to creating a new democracy in South Africa and who assisted in forging critical worker rights and improved conditions and wages for thousands of racially oppressed and impoverished South Africans.
My thanks go to Numsa office bearers both past and present for setting me on a course of tracing a fascinating history of courageous and creative workers and officials who achieved an astounding amount in a very short period. Some of them gave particularly generously of their time. Numsa’s Jenny Grice deserves special mention for her invaluable assistance which, over the years, was given extensively and promptly.
I am also grateful to a number of academics. Sakhela Buhlungu originally encouraged me to write Numsa’s story and his assistance was critical in certain phases of writing while Glenn Adler continued to give enlightening input even after his departure to the US. My appreciation goes to Professor Phil Bonner who guided me back into an academic mode of thought and writing after years outside the field. His insights and suggestions on the structuring of the history gave it a manageable and readable shape.
The production of a book is never an author’s alone; numerous people are involved in its completion. In this regard I would like to thank Drew Forrest for doing an excellent job of reducing an overly long PhD, Monica Seeber for her careful editing and Lisa Aarons Platt whose layout made a dense manuscript into an attractive book.
Special thanks go to the photographers who have brought this book alive. These photos are of great historic interest, and some are of outstanding quality. Indeed many of the photographers – such as Cedric Nunn, Eric Miller, Anna Zieminski and Paul Weinberg – have gone on to become famous in their own rights. I owe a special debt to William Matlala for marking Numsa’s visual history over so many years.
I also thank the historical documents department of the University of the Witwatersrand for granting me access to many rich photos, and Lucia Mshake for her valuable research in unearthing photos from the Eastern Cape.
I should also like to express my gratitude to Numsa, to Atlantic Philanthropies and to the University of the Witwatersrand for their financial assistance which made this book possible.
My children, Robert and Alex, grew up as I laboured on this history, and Numsa became a household word. My deep gratitude goes to Melvyn who has given me friendship and support in numerous ways including feedback on the manuscript. And my thanks go to the many friends who gave me support along the way.
I owe a huge debt to the union movement for its nonracialism in action, for welcoming me as a person seeking change in South Africa. Workers have always warmly embraced my contribution, and I give this book back to them so that the story of their struggle in these critical years of South African history will never be forgotten.
Introduction
A furnace is like a large oven powered by electricity. The heat from the mouth of the furnaces … makes you weak. The white hot light is so bright that you cannot look into the furnace without a mask to protect your eyes.
Your job is to hook an overhead trailer full of molten metal and pour the metal into the mould. The job is very dangerous and you are given no training at all, but just sent in with the others. A hooter blows in the factory when we are going to cast; casting is a serious business … After about two months you get the hang of the job, but before that many are sacked because they recoil from the fires.
(Lesley Lawson)
It was this job I did for seven years, the work of a furnaceman. But inside the foundry they call you a ‘cast-boy’ … Casting is hard work and you must work very fast, there is not time for rest … If I broke the rhythm and didn’t work for two or three days, my whole body would ache.
We were not given proper safety boots and overalls … There are many accidents at the furnace when we pour and when we carry pots. Very often the molten metal falls out of the pots and burns us. It can burn you from the waist down, mostly on the legs. We only have boots on and when the metal spills, it gets into your boots. There is no way you can escape the danger of burning. We could use coats, arm covering, gloves and boots, but the firm does not give them. We are two and sometimes four people carrying a pot, if someone is not experienced we will always spill. You have to pick up the pot very high to pour it into a big mould. I have been burned so many times I can’t count … Other workers were badly injured and even killed by boiling metal.1
Mandlenkosi Makhoba’s grim recollection of conditions in an East Rand metal firm, Rely Precision Castings, during the apartheid era in the 1970s, vividly captures why this history has been written.
Since the late 1800s, labour has loomed large in the history of industrial South Africa, and in the desire to control the movement of labour to urban areas lay the seeds of apartheid. By 1948, when the National Party took the reins of government, the foundations had already been laid for an economic and political system which allowed for white-controlled capitalism to flourish by extracting superprofits from black labour. Over the years, from the early twentieth century, black workers had made many attempts to organise, and they fought some impressive battles, but it was only in the 1980s that their unions came to wield genuine power, and to offer real protection to people like Makhoba.
In the early 1980s, when this account begins, a small politically independent section of the trade union movement blossomed. It reinstated the