shocked … so we decided we are just wasting our time in Tucsa.
It was at this point that Sauls decided to sound out WPMawu on the question of unity. Foster recalls Sauls convening a meeting in 1976 with other unions at the US consulate in Johannesburg. Foster, who had socialist leanings, viewed the attempt with suspicion. It was a later initiative from the IMF to form a southern African coordinating committee that ultimately brought the Cape unions, as well as Mawu, together. Foster recalls: ‘When Alec [Erwin, of Mawu] came to IMF meetings and started to talk about workers’ control, we realised we had an affinity.’
EAWU organiser and later Mawu Western Transvaal organiser Petrus Tom (Wits archnives)
The IMF Southern African Coordinating Council also forged links between these unions and another dissident Tucsa affiliate which emerged in the 1970s, the Engineering and Allied Workers Union (Eawu). It was started in the mid-1960s as part of Tucsa’s African Affairs Committee of the Sheet Metal Workers Union. Sactu bitterly opposed its formation, viewing it as Tucsa ‘splitting tactics’ and Sactu historians Luckhardt and Wall claimed that ‘it never really got off the ground’.69 It did, however, get off the ground when it was expelled from Tucsa and received help from the Urban Training Project (UTP). EAWU grew in strength, and by 1974 its paid up membership was 3 000; its signed up membership was 9 000 by 1976, by which time it was financially independent.70
An EAWU organiser, Petrus Tom, was successfully organising large numbers of engineering workers in the Vaal branch in the industrial areas of Vanderbijlpark and Vereeniging in the Transvaal. Mawu, too, was beginning to organise in the area, and the EAWU branch developed a respect for its way of working, accountable to the membership through mandates and report-backs in order to ensure worker control of the union. It clashed with the Springs head office by accusing it of laziness, and in 1981 general secretary Calvin Nkabinde dismissed Vaal officials, who joined Mawu, taking the branch executive with them. Meanwhile Nkabinde had brought EAWU into Fosatu in 1979 on its formation. But he often refused to implement Fosatu policy and was critical of its white leaders, and in 1982 EAWU was expelled from the federation. This enabled Mawu’s Vaal branch to recruit widely and win recognition in former EAWU factories.71
These ex-Tucsa unions brought a distinctive tradition to Numsa which would contribute significantly to its organising methods, bargaining choices and administrative style.
In Tucsa: Motor Industry Combined Workers Union
Whilst Numarwosa/UAW, WPMawu and Mawu were drawing closer in the 1970s, another union, the Motor Industry Combined Workers’ Union (Micwu), viewed Mawu, and to some extent Numarwosa, as competitors.
Micwu was a coloured union which, in the 1970s, had remained in the Tucsa fold. Tucsa’s commitment to black trade unionism over three decades had been erratic, often instrumental and progressively more determined by the policies of the apartheid state. It admitted and expelled, or partially expelled, African and coloured unions from its ranks according to the political exigencies of the day. In the 1950s, when it was competing with Sactu, it grudgingly accepted mixed race unions. It was a moderate non-political federation which upheld free market principles and was principally engaged in orthodox union wage bargaining.72 Out of a desire to prevent black workers from falling into communist clutches, it decided to organise black workers in the 1950s and supported the US-backed Federation of Free Trade Unions of SA (Fofatusa). When Sactu leaders were jailed, killed in detention and forced into exile in the early 1960s, it offered no support.
The 1956 Industrial Conciliation Amendment Act which prohibited African workers from joining registered trade unions, had forced coloured and Indian union members into segregated branches controlled by a white executive. This was why Micwu’s coloured workers were originally members of unions parallel to the white Motor Industry Staff Association (Misa), a clerical union, and the Motor Industry Employees’ Union of South Africa (Mieu), a union representing artisans in the motor industry. Both were affiliated to Tucsa although the ultra-conservative Misa later withdrew in opposition to the federation opening up membership to coloured workers. Coloured and Indian workers were permitted to join Mieu as ‘B’ class members, but the white union later introduced coloured parallel membership and represented them on the industrial council.73
By the mid 1960s, grand apartheid was at its height. As the government grew in confidence so Tucsa moved to the right and a number of its unions threatened to disaffiliate unless it mirrored government separatist policies. In response Tucsa expelled its black trade unions in 1969.74 Its attitude to the emerging nonracial unions of the 1970s was characterised by the same antipathy it had demonstrated to Sactu.75
After Tucsa expelled its black unions, Mieu’s white executive instructed its former coloured members to form their own union, and the result was Micwu, registered in 1970 as a Tucsa affiliate. All its members were artisans, concentrated in Natal and the Western Cape, although later in the 1970s the union extended its scope to include clerical workers. The union soon picked up members in the Eastern Province, the Transvaal, and the Northern Cape, where it established regional offices which operated independently, although the head office formulated policy. By the end of the 1970s, its membership profile differed, depending on the province. In the Western Cape and Natal, coloured and Indian artisans predominated; in the Transvaal and the Eastern Cape a mixture of blue and white collar, mainly coloured, mechanics and mechanic assistants were in the majority; whilst in the Transvaal, from the late 1970s onwards, African repair assistants and petrol pump attendants started to join in numbers. Micwu’s leaders, however, remained mainly coloured and conservative, in the Tucsa tradition.76
In all its factories the union relied on closed shop agreements negotiated in the motor industrial council. This meant that all qualified coloured and Indian artisans, motor trimmers, panel beaters, diesel mechanics, auto electricians and vehicle bodybuilders were automatically members. As motor industry artisans worked in small firms scattered across the country, the closed shop enabled the union to build membership with minimal staff and resources. It also meant that little active organisation or recruitment was necessary. There was minimal contact with members (the contrast with the Tuacc unions and their emphasis on worker democracy was sharp). Members joined by filling in a stop order form which was forwarded to the industrial council. Servicing of membership by officials usually entailed a phone call to the employer. No active workplace committees existed, and strikes were unheard of. A former Micwu general secretary, Des East recalls:
We didn’t have a system of shop stewards. This we introduced just before we merged into Numsa [in 1987]. When we took on clerical workers they were the ones who started coming to meetings. Artisans only came to meetings when they were worried about their medical aid, they didn’t need any protection in the workplace. If the employer did anything they didn’t like they’d walk out. When the clerical workers came with their problems, the artisans would stay away from meetings. When Africans came into Micwu, general workers and labourers, then the clerical workers who had now reached a nice level of wages stopped coming to meetings. It was the person with the problems that attended the meetings.77
In fairness, Micwu’s African membership was mainly unskilled and spread across the country in small workplaces, which hampered industrial action. Many were petrol pump attendants and employers countered any talk of action by threatening to install self-service pumps.78
Unlike Mawu, Micwu was relatively well off. It relied on an efficient industrial council administrative system to which companies submitted membership subscriptions accompanied by a list of members’ names. Its financial standing allowed it to fund all its activities, to occupy well equipped offices, and to employ skilled staff. It built a sound administration which boasted good filing systems including records of membership and of the benefit payments to which each member was entitled.79
Micwu bargained in the National Industrial Council for the Motor Industry (Nicmi) which was formed in 1952. By 1979 employer parties to Nicmi consisted of the South African Motor Industry Employers’ Association (Samiea) and the South African Vehicle