some quite good debates, but they were all in these vast general meetings, but people were doing them because they were desperate for information and desperate for any kind of help …with the battles they were fighting in the factories. They were usually three or four days. We used to run them in the Germiston office where the alleyways always smelt of dagga and urine … you took your life in your hands to go to the toilets! … People sat in these great lines of benches, and then there weren’t enough so people would be sitting around on cupboards.90
This hunger gave rise to marathon sessions called ‘siyalalas’ (‘we sleep’), where delegates would continue throughout the night. These evolved partly because of the lack of late night public transport and partly because workers had limited time for education, as time off work to attend training was rare.
Matthew Ginsberg describes formal union education as technical in nature and designed to impart skills and improve political understanding; and he asserts that the role of white intellectuals was contested by grassroots black intellectuals in leadership.91 The political input was indeed contested, but on technical matters there was a high degree of consensus. They agreed, for example, on the principles of workers’ control and strong factory floor organisation under shop-steward leadership. In highlighting areas of dissent, Ginsberg misses an important strategic goal underlying the input of technical skills: Mawu was keen to bring improvements to the factories, both as an end in itself and as an organising and recruiting tool, and shop stewards required practical skills to do this – politics alone would not grow the union. The nature of the political input provided by white intellectuals was at times controversial, but there was a meeting of minds on the need for the union to keep a low political profile so as not to attract state attention. Even Kubheka, a strong critic of the anti-populist, anti-ANC/Sactu position advanced by white intellectuals, was comfortable with the union’s organising strategies. ‘The comrades did a lot of good work under the circumstances. By drawing a line between labour and politics, for a period, the state did not closely watch and interfere with those people … That period gave comrades time to build very strong structures which were later instrumental in creating the period which we have today.’92 He also acknowledged that the political controversies never spilled over into factory structures, saying that ‘debates were held between ourselves who were in the offices, and the students and some of the lecturers’.
Union media also played an important educational role. Publications such as Fosatu Worker News, Umbiko we Mawu, South African Metalworker and Naawu News disseminated information about the unions’ activities countrywide and educated workers on union policies and campaigns, labour laws and international working class struggles. These publications were designed to be accessible to people with low literacy levels and reflected the leadership’s cautious stance on open engagement with liberation and anti-apartheid politics. They did however encourage worker identification with the national working class movement. Both Mawu and Naawu also made effective use of the press to inform the public of workers’ grievances and as a tool to keep members informed, especially during disputes, as well as to win over recruits.
These unions also promoted working class culture as an educative and unifying weapon. Activities included workers’ culture days at the University of the Witwatersrand; the promotion of workers’ choirs and the production of records and audio cassettes for sale; encouragement of workers’ theatre and plays for performance across the country (and, in the case of The Long March, abroad); and the publishing of workers’ writing (booklets and pamphlets which briefed workers and their communities on disputes, boycotts and other struggles). Mawu and Naawu took the task of creating a hegemonic working class movement seriously in the broadest Gramscian sense and, through their efforts, created a powerful feeling of belonging in metalworkers.
Education was directly linked to organisation and organising campaigns which made it hugely relevant to the aims of growing the unions and retention of membership. The separation of these functions was to emerge as a challenge and tension in Numsa’s later educational efforts. As Bird explained:
In the early days education and organising were just the same thing, undifferentiated; when you went to the factory gates you did both, and you did one through the other. There was this sense that ‘alright we’ve organised and we’ve got committees all over the place, and they’ve got this thin understanding, can you make it deeper’. And that’s the time when they started to appoint education officers. And so there started to become the split between organising and education. And always the further it got away from organising, the more the relationships became an issue … you should be deepening and helping to build organisation in general. But there were always problems about if there’s conflict between education and organising, the education one would fall away … every time there was conflict, education suffered. So there’s the feeling that we’ll create more distance, and then we’ll be able to have a decent education programme. It won’t get cancelled every time there’s another meeting that’s called.
The combined effect of these educational drives was to give a huge boost to union growth. Major policy decisions crucial to growth, such as the decision to register, were always preceded by NEC and other educational meetings. ‘To exercise power’, Mawu organiser and later Numsa general secretary Enoch Godongwana pointed out, ‘you have to understand the issues’.93
Chapter Three
Power in unity: 1980–1987
Our union organises mostly metal workers … This has made it easier to assist our workers efficiently with problems they face in the metal industry,’ explained a Mawu booklet. ‘At the same time our union does not believe in encouraging workers to become splintered in their organisations. That is why our union has always tried to work in close cooperation with other industrial unions which share our principles and to fight for broader working class unity.’1
From the outset, the independent unions, through the coordination of Tuacc, had a vision of strong industrial unions where a national worker unity, and identity, could be forged. Bringing workers together in large industrial unions meant uniting people who were racially, ethnically and regionally divided across urban and rural areas and bantustans. Organisation nationally would restrict employers’ ability to exploit racial and regional differences in wages and working conditions. In view of the country’s highly monopolised economy which brought many workers under the same ownership and linked them through interconnected production, this strategy made further sense.
Organising by industries also brought power. Strike action across the auto sector, for example, could paralyse it, force concessions, and ultimately enable the union to raise issues of industrial restructuring. It was for these reasons that the Fosatu unions adopted union unity as a central policy at its founding congress in 1979.
National auto union
The launch of Fosatu in 1979 strengthened organised workers and helped to draw the unorganised into its industrial affiliates. Also, the federation was better placed to take up non-factory issues at local and national levels. As a ‘tight’ federation, it provided common resources to affiliates and helped them build membership. Regional councils were set up to ensure cooperation; they and unions were frequently based in the same buildings. According to Fanaroff, ‘We used to share organisers. The Fosatu secretary in each region was the organiser of last resort. It was share and share alike, we shared photocopiers, benches, desks, cars, organising, strikes.’2 Fosatu gave workers a concrete vision of unity in action, and was a model for future unity moves.
National Union of Automobile Workers Union (Naawu), United Automobile Workers (UAW) and Western Province Motor Assembly Workers’ Union (WPMawu) at a joint motor conference. L-R Alec Erwin (Fosatu); Johnnie Mke (UAW); Joe Foster, James Campbell (shop steward) and Natie Gantana all of WPMawu; and Brian Fredricks of the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) (Wits archives)
Numarwosa, which had first mooted the formation of Fosatu, was the first union to embark on industrial union unity. When Numarwosa set up its parallel