Sakhela Buhlungu argues that while white activists played an important role in the development of black trade unions, there were unequal power relations between them and black workers.
An assessment of the last three decades of unionism in South Africa and a celebration of COSATU’s 20th anniversary cannot be complete without mention of the role and place of white activists in the predominantly black movement that emerged in the wake of the 1973
Durban strikes. While white activists have a long history of involvement in black trade unions, this layer of activists played an immensely important (and controversial) role in the emergence and development of the post-1973 unions. Yet, their place and role has received little attention in debates about the development of this movement.
In a divided society such as South Africa before and during apartheid, one would have expected the role of middle-class white activists and intellectuals in what was, to all intents and purposes, a black working class movement, to have received more than just a cursory mention in political debates.
White activists in the unions
The early 1970s signalled the re-emergence of political mobilisation in general and working class organisation in particular. The emergence of the black consciousness movement in 1969 was the first of these acts of political re-awakening, followed soon thereafter by the Durban strikes which resulted in the formation of new unions for black workers. The other important political moment of the 1970s was the 1976 students uprising which, together with developments elsewhere in the country and in Southern Africa, gave a new impetus to political mobilisation. It was in this context that white activists and intellectuals entered the new union movement. Although they were few in number (not more than 60 at any given time) they were linked to a series of networks of which activists and intellectuals based at local universities and in many labour-supporting organisations specialising in such areas as research, union education and training and health and safety.
But what makes the post-1973 unions interesting is the fact that they attracted the largest number of white activists in the history of black trade unionism. Some of these unionists served in high- profile positions while others served in middle- level, and even administrative, positions of the unions. Unlike white unionists in previous decades, many of whom came from working class and activist backgrounds, almost all the unionists who joined the post-1973 unions were first generation activists from middle-class backgrounds. Nearly all of them had embraced activism and trade unionism as a result of their exposure to left wing, mainly neo-Marxist, ideas at university.
The origins of this brand of activism among young white activists can be found in two unrelated political events in the late 1960s. The first was the political fall-out between black and white students within the National Union of South African
Students (NUSAS), a national body of university students, and the subsequent withdrawal of black students to form their own organisation, the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO). Black students left because of frustration with their white colleagues who they accused of being ‘liberal’ in their approach because they were benefiting from the apartheid system.
The second origin of the new brand of activism among young white activists was the upsurge of student uprisings in Western Europe and North America. This “New Left” movement was characterised by an adoption of grassroots notions of Marxism and more egalitarian and participatory forms of democracy. For white activists in South Africa, “New Left” ideas and activism came at the right time when these activists were searching for relevance. On the one hand, these ideas made them reject their privileged status in apartheid society and prompted to search for more egalitarian models. On the other hand, these activists were uncomfortable with orthodox Marxism associated with the South African Communist Party and the Soviet Union because they associated it with Stalinism. In their eagerness to break with their past and shed the guilt associated with being part of a racially privileged ruling group, many of them went into denial about race and consciously sought to downplay its significance. For this reason they emphasised the primacy of class and class struggle and downplayed the necessity of the struggle for national liberation of black people. Although the majority of white activists responded in this way, a small group did associate themselves with the broader national liberation movement and the SACP. According to some of them, their “whiteness” ironically made it possible for them to become a “pampered elite”.
Unequal relations between black and white activists in the unions
In apartheid society a social distance existed between black and white people. But white union officials had rejected white society as envisaged by the architects of segregationist and apartheid policies, and associated themselves with the struggle to emancipate the (black) working class.
In the context of apartheid, this was a tremendous sacrifice, which meant that their own communities saw them as traitors. Some, such as Neil Agget, paid dearly for taking this stand through bannings, detentions and even death. Ironically, the social distance which existed between white and black people in general continued to exist between white officials, on the one hand, and black workers and officials, on the other.
The contradictory position was also a result of the fact that the majority of these officials came from middle class backgrounds. In apartheid South Africa this meant that they lived in middle class suburbs, which were racially and spatially separated from black residential areas. The class background of white officials resulted in them being accorded the status of a special category that brought resources and skills into the fledgling unions. This fact gave white activists enormous power in the unions. Through their networks they were able to initiate key debates, lend credibility to certain political positions (and deny it to others) and to create platforms such as the South African Labour Bulletin where they debated among themselves.
On the other hand, the power these activists wielded also led to suspicion and concerns among black union activists and leaders. According to Emma Mashinini, CCAWUSA founding general secretary, “the FOSATU leadership was dominated by white intellectuals, and although we valued the support of its unions we did not want to be swallowed by their way of thinking”.
The suspicions and concerns were reinforced by the different roles played by white and black activists in the unions. Although a few white unionists became involved as organisers, the majority occupied specialist or strategic positions as media, research, education and legal officers, or were appointed or elected as negotiators and branch and general secretaries. It was in these capacities that they played the role of strategising and packaging ideas into coherent programmes of action. Black activists, on the other hand, performed more mundane functions such as organising and clerical work. This resulted in an inequality of power relations and a division of labour whereby white officials, performed strategic and intellectual functions, which carried more political clout while black officials performed work that did not carry political weight. Black union intellectuals and the challenge to white activists in the unions
The association of intellectual labour with only white union officials does not mean that black intellectuals did not exist. But there were few black university educated intellectuals in the union movement. Although some of this can be ascribed to the failure of the education system to produce large numbers of black university graduates, this is not the sole explanation. Another reason is that from the beginning most of those black intellectuals who became involved in the resistance movement (and there were many of them) chose to channel their efforts towards national liberation politics. To them, national oppression, not economic exploitation appeared to be the most immediate obstacle to the fulfilment of their class aspirations. Thus, many gravitated towards movements such as the African National Congress, the Pan-Africanist Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement.
In addition to the contribution of university- educated intellectuals, different layers of intellectuals emerged organically from the ranks of unionised workers. Many of these played a dual role, namely, as intellectuals and as elected leaders of the movement. It was these unionists who, in later years, began to contest the dominance of white intellectuals in black unions
The contradictory position of white officials was also a source of their vulnerability. The social distance between them and black workers meant that they were unable to penetrate the world of black workers beyond the formal interactions defined by the requirements of their jobs within the unions. Although some white intellectuals often sought to groom a worker leadership which would not oppose their own politics, what occurred in the early 1980s was that a layer of assertive worker leaders and organic intellectuals emerged independently of white officials. This assertiveness by black unionists coincided with and was partly shaped by the resurgence of mass mobilisation outside of the trade union movement in the early 1980s. from about 1984 workers began to assert their own agenda, which was not confined to the workplace. This agenda was about issues such as rents, education, police harassment and, most importantly, political power.
In addition, a generation of young student activists who had been in the vanguard of school and youth struggles in 1976 and 1980 had joined the workforce and the union movement. The assertiveness of this generation, in many instances inspired by the black consciousness movement, radical politics and an uncompromising approach to the struggle catapulted them to the forefront of the burgeoning worker ’s movement. Incidentally, it was from within this group that the bulk of black organic union intellectuals were drawn. While in most cases they co-operated with white intellectuals for the good of the union movement, there were several instances when they challenged the power of these intellectuals.
One area of contest which pitted the white intellectuals against the new layer of black activist intellectuals was the so-called ‘workerist-populist debate’. ‘Workerism’ sought to confine union mobilisation to the shop floor, while ‘populism’, argued for linking shop floor struggles to broader community and political struggles. Populists were generally in favour of close links with the liberation movements. To a large extent, the workerism/populism faultline among union activists coincided with race in that most ‘populists’ were black while most ‘workerists’ were white.
The second half of the 1980s and the early 1990s saw a retreat by white officials from the union movement into specific policy-oriented areas. By this time post-apartheid South Africa was in sight and these activists carved a niche for themselves in the policy arena and in politics. It was this new- found niche which drew most of the old generation of white union officials out of the unions and into state institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), union investment companies and consultancy work. But many others reinvented themselves as members of the SACP and the
ANC. When the new political dispensation came into being in 1994, many of the former white union activists re-emerged as ministers, deputy ministers, MPs and top civil servants under an ANC government. By then they seemed to have abandoned their class politics and had come around to accept the ANC as a leading force in the ‘national democratic revolution’!
Sakhela Buhlungu lectures sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and was active in the unions in the 1980s and 1990s.
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