Build Links with South African Trade Unions!

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Magazine of the Workers IN SOUTH Africa the movement of independent, non-racial trade unions, organising black workers, has become one of the major sources of opposition to apartheid. With over 160,000 members, a strong base in the industrial sector, and firmly established structures among the rank and file, these trade unions have become a power in the land.

In this country a campaign to build solidarity with independent, non-racial unions has long been waged: through the Anti-Apartheid Movement and SACTU (the trade union wing of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party); as well as through some sections of the TUC, the Labour Party, etc.

The main planks of this campaign have been:

boycott of South Africa, disinvestment of foreign capital from South Atrica, the channelling of all support for independent 50p Capitalist Crisis and Socialist Alternative' , a detailed study of the breakdown of the boom, by Bob Sutcliffe. 50p plus postage from PO Box 135, London N10DD. Bob Fine argues case for direct union-to-union trade unions through SACTU.

While some success has been achieved along these lines, events have taken place which are beginning to lead a substantial minority in the solidarity movement to seek to modify the approach.

The most significant development has been that many of the independent non-racial unions in South Africa are now calling for direct links with " unions internationally - including unions in this country and are actively exploiting all channels available to them to forge such links.

For example, the largest of the independent trade 'Advertisement CAPITALIGT :R:::3 + SOHAIAT ALTER*1: 1/3 CAPITALI6: CRISIS * AN CAPIT4A!: union federations in South Africa, FOSATU (the Federation of South African Trade Unions) has an explicit policy of calling for links at all levels with sisterunions in other countries: and they call for trade union missions to go over to South Africa at their invitation to learn what is actually happening in the struggle, to offer specific assistance, and to provide a firmer base for solidarity action.

During the Glacier Bearing strike, MAWU (the Metal and Allied Workers' Union) extended an invitation to shop stewards from Glacier in Glasgow and Kilmarnock to visit them, and one shop steward did go. At an earlier date a shop steward from BL at Rover, Solihull went over at FOSATU's request.

Similarly; when the Western Province General Workers' Union was engaged in a long and bitterly fought. meat workers' strike, they invited representatives to come over from this country - though the invitation came too late to be put into practice.

Recently, SAAWU (the South African Allied Workers' Union) have asked through the IUF (the International Union of Foodworkers) that a trade union delegation go out to South Africa as a fact-finding mission designed to build support for them in their bitter dispute with Wilson Romptree.

Floodgates

As far as I know, this request is still being considered by the T&G.

The difficulty facing the solidarity movement here is that these calls for direct links violate or appear to violate its major traditional priaciples: namely that South Africa should be 'boycotted' and that all support should be channelled exclusively through SACTU.

That is why at their recent AGM, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, содtrary to the views of a minority, reaffirmed its opposition to all links of this nature. They argued that black workers themselves do not want • them; that they are not necessary since the oppressiveness of apartheid is well known; that they would prove to be a source of real danger to the union movement in South Africa (which they say is underground semiclandestine); that they would open the floodgates for all kinds of reactionary elements to enter South Africa with the nod and wink of the apartheid regime; that they would constitute a breach of the boycott policy which is crucial in order to isolate South Africa internationally; and that it is sufficient for trade unions here to work through SACTU, since SACTU represents the independent, non-racial trade union i movement as a whole.

Whatever the force of these arguments in the past, the facts no longer support them. As far as what black workers themselves want, it is cleat now that their representative organs are calling for direct links with British unions at all levels.

Clout

It is also clear that these unions do not find such links unnecessary oI impossibly dangerous (though there are very real dangers which should not be underestimated).

The fundamental problem with the intended visit of Sirs and Duffy was not just that two right wingers were going to South Africa (after all, the unions there wish to make contacts at all levels), but that their visit was not countenanced by any independent, non-racial union in South Africa. Rather, they had been invited by the executive of the IMF (the International Metal Workers' Federation), without even informing, let alone consulting, their non-racial affiliates.

When Sirs and Duffy implied that they had been directly invited by black clear and simple: have nothing to do with South Africa. Any substitute for such a position must be equally clear and simple.

The alternative being proposed is as follows: support all links between South African trade unions and unions here which are organised by or favoured by genuine, independent, non-racial unions in South Africa.

The only difficulty with such a principle concerns how to decide what constitutes a bona fide independent, non-racial union. For there are many unions in South Africa which are overtly racist (like the white unions), and many which are more subtly racist but are tied hand and foot to the apartheid state (like those in TUCSA).

For the time being there is a convenient way of making the necessary distinctions. We can safely treat all those unions which participated in a recent solidarity agreement in Cape Town in August of this year as independent and non-racial (they include FOSATU, Western Province, Food and Canning, SAAWU, etc, and exclude TUCSA).

There are going to be some difficulties in decid-.

ing which unions are bona fide: but these can be overcome in consultation with known militant unions in South Africa and with the exile movement here. In ANOTHER 'homeland' has been given its 'independence' from South Africa.

Ciskei, practically a desany case such distinctions cannot be avoided without unwittingly isolating black workers alongside the legitimate struggle to isolate apartheid.

Those who advocate boycott do not, of course, wish to isolate the struggles of black workers. In reality they have never supported Rather they have sought to channel all solidarity action through SACTU.

It has been the traditional policy of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and a policy with considerable influence in the TUC, to recognise SACTU as the sole legitimate representative of the South African trade union movement and to seek to mediate all solidarity through them.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s SACTU was indeed the non-racial, independent union umbrella in South Africa. In the 1960s it was heavily suppressed by the state and went underground. The late ' 60s were the dark ages for black unionism: its leaders were murdered, arrested, exiled or banned, and its membership declined to around 16,000.

Since the mass strikes of 1973 in Natal the trade union movement has risen again from the ashes; and it has done so in a number of diverse organisational and political forms. It is no secret that many of the unions which have emerged in the last ten years have done so quite independently of SACTU and not infrequently have major polițical disagreements with SACTU over the most appropriate way of building non-racial trade unionism.

The net result of this history is that many of the open and legal unions in South Africa (whose independence and opposition to racialism cannot be doubted) will not work through SACTU, partly because they have major differences with SACTU and partly because they find it dangerous to work with an organisation which is underground and illegal. Whatever our views on these divisions, the reality is that they exist.

They mean that support channelled exclusively through SACTU cannot be a substitute for direct contact with other independent unions on the ground.

With unions in South Africa calling for direct links, and with union groupings here beginning to respond (e.g. Oxford Trades Council and the T&G 5/293 branch at Cowley have come out in favour of building direct links with BL workers in South Africa), Anti-Apartheid, SACTU, and thei sympathisers in the TUC will find themselves in an invidious position if they provide an obstacle rather than a stimulus to such

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