COSATU President Sidumo Dlamini's article on the ANC Centenary
Chiefs of royal blood and gentlemen of our race, we have gathered here to consider and discuss a scheme which my colleagues and I have decided to place before you. We have discovered that in the land of their birth, Africans are treated as hewers of wood and drawers of water. The white people of this country have formed what is known as the Union of South Africa - a union in which we have no voice in the making of laws and no part in their administration. We have called you, therefore, to this conference, so that we can together devise ways and means of forming our national union for the purpose of creating national unity and defending our rights and privileges"
These are the words which were used by Pixley Ka Izaaka Seme in 1912, making a clarion call on African people of different classes and strata to unite behind an idea to form the African National Congress whose primary tasks would be to unite the African people to fight the colonial rule which had dispossessed them of their land and turned them strangers and slaves in the land of their birth.
It was a call for unity amongst African people to reverse the defeat suffered by the separated African people which included the Hlubi in 1873; Gcaleka and Pedi in 1877; Ngqika, Thembu, Mpondo, Griqua and Rolong in 1878; Zulu in 1879; Sotho in 1880; and Ndebele in 1893.( pp.1 - The struggle for liberation in South Africa - Govan Mbeki)
On the 8th of January 2012, the ANC will turn 100 years. It will be joining the galaxy of the universe's precious and iconic objects that have lived beyond a hundred years and have stood the test of time giving hope to different generations of the dispossessed and oppressed African people.
This is a rare and an outstanding achievement which many organisations and particularly liberation movements all over the world do not live to see.
The formation of the ANC on the 8th January 1912 marked the realisation of a possibility that had long existed in the minds of many.
Shortly after the formation of the Afrikaner Bond in 1879, Africans in the Cape, in 1881 formed Imbumba Yabamnyama as a response against an attempt by the Afrikaner Bond and English-speaking colonists who had combined in a determined attack on the African franchise and access to land.
Later, Africans in the Free State, Natal and the Transvaal formed, independently of each other, Native Congresses, while Cape Africans formed the South African Native Congress in 1898. In 1902 Dr Abdullah Abdurrahman established the African Political Organisation (APO).
Although the membership of the APO was open to all, in practice it became an organisation for Coloureds. In Natal, Mahatma Gandhi formed an Indian Congress in 1894.
On the 24th -26th March 1909 the South African Native Convention met at the Waaihoek location in Bloemfontein to consider the draft constitution which had been adopted at the whites-only National Convention. The meeting decided that the convention would continue as a permanent body, and Dr Walter Rubusana was elected as its President. From this organisation would emerge on the 8th January 1912 the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), later renamed the African National Congress (ANC).
The formation of the ANC marked the emergence of a united response by a generation which had defined its mission as that of uniting all African people to free themselves from economic and political oppression which dated back from 1652 with the arrival of white settlers.
This was a generation that had made a resolve to continue a fight left by the courageous forbearers who daringly fought the enemy to the bitter end. They were galvanized into a united force by a call that "the demon of racialism, the aberrations of the Xhosa-Fingo feud, the animosities that exist between Zulus and the Tsongas, between the Basutos and every other Native must be buried and forgotten ... We are one people".
The formation of the ANC in 1912 marked the coming to life of an idea whose time had come and was unstoppable!
The ANC represented an anti thesis of the Union of South Africa which Pixley ka Izaaka Seme described as "a union in which we have no voice in the making of laws and no part in their administration ....where " Africans, in the land of their birth are treated as hewers of wood and drawers of water"
It is estimated that in the first meeting of the ANC which at the time was referred to as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) the number of African workers in the country had risen from 15 000 in 1890 to 19 000. During this period whites had a monopoly of the best paid jobs, and of entry into skilled trades. They were given positions of authority over blacks.
The relatively high standards of life and wages enjoyed by White workers represented in reality, a share in the super profits made by the white capitalists out of the gross exploitation of Blacks and Africans in particular.
Herein lies the intersection between the class and racial character of the South African contradictions which resulted to the natural and mutual relationship between the ANC and the labour movement.
We have always understood that the oppression of black people as race was a precondition for their exploitation as a class.
It is in this context that the progressive labour movement has always seen the ANC as a political home in which together with all the other oppressed and all freedom loving South Africans we shared the trenches in the fight against Colonialism of a Special Type and apartheid.
Workers had first-hand experience of the mercilessness of colonialism and apartheid in the farms, in the mines and in factories.
As the ANC turns a hundred years, we remove our hats to pay homage to the visionaries and the courageous generation who built it as a movement of the people represented foremost by Pixley ka Izaaka Seme, John Langalibalele Dube, Solomon T. Plaatjie, Josiah Gumede, Alfred Xuma, Sefako Makgatho, Tengo Jabavu, J. Langa Dube, D. Dwanya and T. Mapikela and many more.
To us as COSATU, it comes natural that we join millions of ordinary South Africans to celebrate the 100 years of this colossal movement which has demonstrated resilience from all kinds of political weather surviving unimaginable enemy's attacks but remained unshaken, giving hope to millions of our people that victory was certain!
We have every reason to celebrate the 100 years of existence of this bulwark against colonialism and Apartheid because as workers of this country we have travelled side by side with the people's movement in every turn in the development of our liberation struggle.
We are proud to have been part (and continue to be part) of the revolutionary contingent led by the ANC which occupied the front ranks in the liberation struggle and acted as a deadly arsenal that gave a final blow which brought down and defeated the abhorrent colonial and apartheid system.
As the late president of the ANC Chief Albert Luthuli said when he described the relationship between SACTU, our predecessor and the ANC and the role of SACTU in the liberation struggle when he said that:
"SACTU is the spear, ANC the shield...
"No worker is a good member of Congress unless he is also a Trade Unionist. No Trade Unionist is a good Trade Unionist unless he is also a member of Congress...."
Up to this day we remain guided by a perspective articulated by Chief Albert Luthuli when he said that:
"I am glad that SACTU has not listened to the ill advice that they should not be interested in politics. There is a Zulu saying that if you are pricked by a thorn you also have to use a thorn to get it out. Workers are oppressed by political action; they must take political action in reply.
"While the South African Congress of Trade Unions must thus pursue an independent policy in the interests of the workers, it must also participate unreservedly in the struggle to mobilise the people behind their demands as embodied in the Freedom Charter and must cooperate with all other organisations engaged in this struggle."
Today as we celebrate 100 years of our glorious movement, we walk with our heads and shoulders high knowing that together with millions of South Africans we built this movement into a deadly fighting instrument in the hands of the oppressed. There is no political milestone reached by our movement without a quantitative and qualitative contribution by the progressive labour movement.
Millions of COSATU members remain committed members and activists who like our forbearers in SACTU naturally join the ranks of the ANC mobilizing the people behind the vision embodied in the Freedom Charter.
It was clear from the onset when the ANC was formed that the plight of black and African workers in particular would constitute its integral focal thrust.
A protest petition against the 1913 Land Act to the Prime Minister, dated 14 February 1914 (hardly two years after the ANC was formed), from the Reverend John Dube, the first President of the South African Native National Congress on among others expressed the following concerns ".... We do not see how it is possible for this law to effect any greater separation between the races than obtains now. It is evident that the aim of this law is to compel service by taking away the means of independence and self-improvement. This compulsory service at reduced wages and high rents will not be separation, but an intermingling of the most injurious character of both races... even supposing a little protection were there, the wrongs which might be suffered in that line are as one to a hundred in comparison with what we must now endure from the rapacious farmer who seizes the opportunity to raise our rent and reduce our wages".
This expressed the relationship between the national content and the class content of the National Liberation Struggle. It is this consistent political outlook of the ANC dating back over the years which has created a natural affinity and an organic relationship between itself and the workers. It is this outlook of the ANC which we continue to fight for and to defend at all material times.
Our relationship with the ANC is so integral and organic that the victories of the ANC are our victories too; the ANC's heroes are our heroes too, attacks against the ANC have always meant an attack on us too!
For an example when the ANC was banned on 30 May 1960, 10 days after the Sharpeville Massacre many of SACTU leaders who were also members of the ANC were also banned, imprisoned and some were killed.
This effectively made it operationally impossible for SACTU to operate and had an effect of crippling SACTU as an organisation.
The Apartheid regime understood that if they were to hit hard on the ANC, they had to cripple the workers organisations. Workers' organisation has always been a kernel around which the liberation movement built its life.
In 1961 when the Congress Movement called a strike against government which had proclaimed a republic, the success of that strike was reliant on SACTU mobilizing its members for a stay away. As Bunting noted later "wherever workers were organised into trade unions there was a favourable response to the strike call."
Our organic relationship with the ANC also extends to MK activities. Amongst the members of the Luthuli Detachment some of whom participated in the Wankie Spolilo operation which was the first MK group to have physical combat with the enemy were trade unionist such as comrade Eric Mtshali , Justice "Gizenga" Mpanza, Archie Sibeko, Mark Shope etc. and they were amongst the first to receive military training in the Soviet Union. (The Wankie and Spolilo Campaigns - Rendani Moses Ralinala, Jabulani Sithole, Gregory Houston and Bernard Magubane).
This was later to be also seen with the intensification of the struggle in the 80's when MK activities became integral to the trade union activities leading to many MK operations directly linked to strengthening workers struggle at the point production.
As later testified in the TRC by the commanders of the MK units, amongst others the unit called "Operation Butterfly", testified that the limpet mines which exploded on 27th September 1985 and at OK Bazaars, and Game in Durban West Street, was directed at the dispute between unions and management which was refusing to accede to workers demands. (Truth and Reconciliation Commission - application by comrade Qonda Msomi and Sihle Mbongwa.)
The ANC has always maintained that "the armed struggle must be based on, and grow out of, mass political support and it must eventually involve all our people. All military activities must at every stage be guided by and determined by the need to generate political mobilisation, organisation and resistance, with the aim of progressively weakening the enemy's grip on his reins of political, economic, social and military power, by a combination of political and military action." (1978 Politico-Military Commissions Report contained what was later popularly referred to as the Green Book).
This political coherency and dynamism between the ANC and the trade union movement was also seen when CWIU led successful stay ways in the then PWV region in 1984 which disrupted SASOL that was completing a process of privatisation.
Sasol had become a symbol of South African independence, it was South Africa's answer to the oil embargo and through these struggles the apartheid project was disrupted.
As workers we have always stood ready to be the first in the line of fire when moments of action called. It is not a mistake that among the first members of the ANC to be executed by the Apartheid Regime in March 1964 were trade unionists, comrade Vuyisile Mini, who served as a secretary of the Metal Workers union.
It is also not a mistake that a substantial number of the ANC leaders who were in the Treason Trial were trade unionist. Amongst these were comrade Lawrence Nkosi, Billy Nair, Lesley Masina, Harry Gwala, Curnick Ndlovu and many others.
In the Rivonia Treason Trial again most of those arrested as part of the MK high command were trade unionists. These included comrade Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi and many others.
This is the extent to which our history and that of the ANC are intertwined and that is why the late ANC president comrade Oliver Tambo would say that when we speak of each other "we speak of and to our own". Each one of us is a mirror which reflects each other's strengths and weaknesses.
The leadership of the ANC has always been conscious about the role of the workers and the working class in the Liberation Struggle and they have always maintained a perspective which has guided this movement over the years. This perspective was best articulated by ubaba uWalter Sisulu when he wrote in the August 1955 issue of SACTU's Workers Unity:
"The victory can only be won and imperialism uprooted by forging strong ties of alliance between the liberation movements and the trade union movements, by correcting any misconceptions that the trade unions had nothing to do with politics. Similarly, political leaders must know that the struggle of the people depends on the workers, and therefore it must be their duty to organize workers into trade union movement"
This means that a strong relationship between SACTU and later COSATU and the ANC meant that the liberation movement had a historically proven resilient force within its ranks.
It meant that there was a force which by virtue of its location in the country's production process and because of its own first hand experiences of exploitation had every reason to fight the white establishment which was a symbol of racial oppression and class exploitation.
This means that our relationship with the ANC has always been predicated on an understanding that a programme to win national liberation and democracy required placing workers at the centre of such a struggle as the most reliable force.
As Karl Marx put it: "of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie..., the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.
The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.
The lower middle class , the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative.
If by any chance they are revolutionary , they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat , they thus defend not their present , but their future interests; they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat" - Karl Marx . It is for this reason that whilst the ANC is characterised as a broad church which harbours different class forces but its core interests and constituency is the working class. In the Strategy and Tactics adopted in the 52nd National Congress this working class orientation is described thus "The vision that the ANC pursues is informed by the morality of caring and human solidarity. The kind of democracy it pursues leans towards the poor; and it recognises the leading role of the working class in the project of social transformation. Recognising the reality of unequal gender relations, and the fact that the majority of the poor are African women, the ANC pursues gender equality in all practical respects. In this context, the ANC is a disciplined force of the left, organised to conduct consistent struggle in pursuit of a caring society in which the well-being of the poor receives focused and consistent attention".
It is for this reason that we continue to defend this strategic outlook of the ANC to ensure that the ANC does not "behave like a shapeless jelly-fish with a political form that is fashioned hither and thither by the multiple contradictory forces of sea-waves" The ANC is overwhelmingly of the working class which occupies the front ranks in the national democratic revolution and its programmes shall always reflects this dominant character without underplaying the other class interests. A strong political affinity between the ANC and the labour movement derives from the fact that the formation of the ANC in 1912 had taken place under conditions in which there was more systematic oppression, more complex and consolidated colonial conditions which were imposed by the formation of the Union of South Africa inaugurated in 1910 which was constructed on the bases of an alliance between white British and white Afrikaners capital and working class against blacks in general and Africans in particular.
The historical basis of this is among others derived from the period which heightened the momentum towards the formation of the ANC in 1912. This is the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 which marked the consolidation of wage labour which had been occasioned by the discovery of diamond fields in 1867 at Kimberly and Gold fields at the Witwatersrand in 1886.
This process of proletariansation in 1800s was insulated by a battery of political legislative framework to enforce the process of wage labour.
These included legislations such as the Franchise and Ballot Act (1892), which on among others imposed a labour tax of 10 shillings on any African male who had not worked outside his district for at least three months in the year. The designers of the Glen Grey Act expected that poverty and starvation would force Africans from the reserves to seek employment on the white farms and the mines. The Act brought the conditions for Africans in the Cape into line with those in the Afrikaner Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, where no equality existed between Africans and Afrikaners in state or church.
Part of the laws which preceded the 1910 Union of South Africa also included the Natal Legislative Assembly Bill (1894), which deprived Indians of the right to vote; the General Pass Regulations Bill (1905), which denied blacks the vote altogether, limited them to fixed areas and inaugurated the infamous Pass System; the Asiatic Registration Act (1906) requiring all Indians to register and carry passes.
This means that by 1910 the gold and diamond mining Capital had already usurped enough political power and hegemony placing them at a strategic and advantageous position to influence and impose political processes and government policy that could advance their strategic objective of profit maximization.
They had a tried and tested experience of using political authority to maximise chances for economic gain. This formed the bases upon which a link between Capitalism and the special economic and political colonial structure of the South African society was erected. White capital like any capital needed to maximise their profits but that had to be derived using political legislations that oppressed and economically excluded blacks and African in particular.
As Karl Marx put it, "to obtain surplus value, the owner of money must ...find ...in the market a commodity whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value -a commodity whose process of consumption is at the same time a process of the creation of value . Such a commodity exists -human labour power".
For the exclusive white capital that emerged from the alliance formed out of the 1910 Union of South Africa this human labour power was to be not just any labour power but black and African Labour power, which was to be subjected to extreme forms of exploitation after the abolishment of slavery on 1 August 1834 in the Cape (even though Cape Administration delayed the abolishment by four months).
The Union of South Africa used its political authority to create economic opportunities in which the allegiance of the white working class was to be bought through institutionalized exploitation of black labour to avoid any possibility of exploiting white workers and therefore antagonizing the white working class, whose allegiance to the colonial state would be critical in sustaining colonialism of a special type and Apartheid.
In this context they set in motion a process of policies and rules which subjected blacks and Africans in particular to extreme exploitation as cheap labour which ensured profit maximization for white capital and maintained high living standards for ordinary white population.
The Union of South African represented the consolidation of a direct relationship between racial oppression and class exploitation directed at benefiting whites at the expense and at the exclusion of blacks.
This became a sustained political and economic objective which the union of South Africa pursued by all means and at all costs.
Several pieces of legislation marked the establishment of the Union of South Africa as a state in which racial discrimination laid the bases for the exploitation of African workers as a class. These included the following among others:
The two important statutes which were passed in the very first session of the Union parliament in 1911- the Mines and Works Act which reserved certain occupations in the mining industry for whites only and thus laid down the principle of the industrial colour bar.
The second piece of legislation passed during the same session of parliament was the Native Labour Regulation Act. In terms of this Act the government armed itself with powers of control over the movement of Africans.
Not only was the movement of Africans from one area to another strictly determined by this law, but their vertical mobility was to be strictly controlled through subsequent legislation which condemned the African worker to a position of menial labourer.
By controlling the movement of African labour the government was able to create a pool of cheap labour in the Native reserves which could be drawn upon to satisfy the needs of employers in the ‘white areas' - be they the mines, manufacturing industry, commerce or the farms.
The effect of this was two-pronged. Firstly it entrenched the practice of migrant labour, by creating a situation where only the labourer was permitted to take up employment in the ‘white areas' while his family was left in the reserves.
The adoption of the migrant labour system gave rise in turn to the compound system of housing labour, which had first started in the diamond, gold and coal mines.
When the secondary and tertiary sectors developed in the twentieth century they also housed their labour in compounds, which went under the name `hostel` to make them sound more respectable.
The ruinous effects of the migrant labour system on the social and family life of Africans have been well documented.
The second effect of the Native Labour Regulation Act was to render African workers a faceless mass of undifferentiated labourers and to eliminate competition for jobs in the various sectors of the economy by making it a criminal offense for Africans, but not for whites, to break a labour contract. This resulted in the adoption of an average standard wage for the ‘Native'. And the wage level on the mines became the model for all sectors of the economy.
Most important, was the Natives Land Act (No. 27) of 1913 which separated South Africa into areas in which either blacks or whites could own freehold land: blacks, constituting two-thirds of the population, were restricted to 7.5 percent of the land; whites, making up one-fifth of the population, were given 92.5 percent.
The act also stated that Africans could live outside their own lands only if employed as labourers by whites.
In particular, it made illegal the common practice of having Africans work as sharecroppers on farms in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
It saw the speeding up of land dispossession from the Africans, the introduction of poll tax and intensification of pass system.
All these were aimed at accessing cheap labour, maximizing profits for white capital and have the white population protected in the laager of exclusive privileges.
The African people who were deriving their living from the land were now forced into becoming wage -earners who lived away from their family so that the employer would not have to pay for the maintenance of the workers wife and children.
The democratic, co-operative basis of tribal society was broken down, and the entire African people turned into a right -less community of impoverished peasants and underpaid forced labourers in White-controlled farms, mines and factories.
All this marked the beginning of a process in which the colonial government was intensifying oppression but at the same time slowly digging its own grave.
It resulted to increased poverty, lost of hope despair, anger and resentment against the white establishment and all put together created the material bases for the black and particularly African populace to look for a way out, which the formation of the ANC IN 1912 pointed out.
The content and form of these legislations had inevitably increased the anger of the workers and made everyone to realise that white rule came with workers exploitation. Since the inauguration of the Union of South Africa in 1910 and with the subsequent launching of the ANC workers intensified their struggles, fighting at the work place and also in their communities.
On the 16 December 1919 the Cape Native National Congress, jointly with the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU) and Industrial Workers of Africa, held a meeting at Ndabeni location resolving to approach both the government and private employers to increase the wages of African and Coloured workers.
The Cape Native National Congress played a leading role in the strike that ensued as a result of the unwillingness of employers to raise wages. The strikers involved fell into three groups: African dock workers employed by the Railways; African and Coloured workers; casual and general labour employed by the Railways.
The President of the Congress in the Cape, Rev. Z. R. Mahabane, wrote a strongly worded letter to the press in reply to a statement made by Mr Girdwood, the Port Superintendent of Cape Town, saying that "Mr. Girdwood had the effrontery to suggest that at the outside a couple of pounds a month would cover the gross living expenses of the average raw kaffir ... The truth of the matter is that even this "raw kaffir" can never in these days of profiteering subsist and support his family at home and pay his taxes on a sum of 40s. per month. Mr Girdwood's horse (if he has any) could not subsist on that amount.
Five leaders of the Congress were involved in the ‘bucket strike' of municipal workers that took place in Johannesburg in 1917. These included D. S. Letanka, L. T. Mvabaza, N. D. Ngojo, R. Cetyiwe and H. Kraai - the last two formed the Cape Town branch of the Industrial Workers of Africa (IWA) - were arrested together with S. P. Bunting and H. C. Hanscombe of the International Socialist League. They were charged with instigating the ‘bucket strike'.
When the ICU later set up offices in the Northern provinces it was welcomed by some of the leaders of the ANC like J. T. Gumede, R. Ngcayiya, Selope Thema, and L. T. Mvabaza.
The founding of the Afrikaner Broederbond in 1918 and of Sanlam as well as of Federale Volksbeleggings, which was formed as a result of decisions taken at the Ekonomiese Volkskongres in 1939, represented the main landmarks in the rise and development of Afrikaner capital. Occupying the commanding heights in both government and civil service, Afrikaners were able to make use of parliament to pass legislation that would favour capital accumulation.
The white rule and exploitation of blacks was deepened with the coming into power of the Pact government under Hertzog which introduced the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924 which excluded black workers.
Through the Industrial Act and other related legislation the Hertzog Pact government adopted the white labour policy whereby the white working class became a front to defend white's privileges at the expense of blacks and African in particular. They were bought by the ruling class with unearned remuneration drawn from the surplus value created by African labour. The way was now open for the ruthless exploitation of the Africans.
Workers naturally joined forces fighting side by side under the leadership of the ANC against these laws. In 1948 when the National Party of D.F Malan assumed power, it introduced influx control regulations meant create labour pools to control the flow of labour to every sector of the economy.
It set up the labour bureau which issued every African with a Dom Boek (reference book) which showed the name of his or her employer.
This tied down a worker to an employer, however bad his conditions of employment were, for fear that if he lost his job he would be endorsed out of the city to the reserves. It meant that inexhaustible supplies of labour were dammed up in the reserves and only released in regulated doses as they were wanted for specific employment. It also meant that government delivered the African worker bound hand and foot to capital for exploitation.
It is these laws which further brought workers closer to the ANC in the townships and in the rural Bantustans to fight the apartheid. It was during these battles that the ANC put emphasis on instilling a need for its members to join trade unions.
This blossomed over a long period of time into the mushroom growth of the trade-union movement of the 1980s, which has culminated in the formation of the biggest trade-union federation - COSATU - that the country has ever known.
From the beginning of the 1950s the ANC was actively involved in the working-class struggle in two significant respects that were to influence the course of the struggle for liberation.
Firstly, in 1953 the government amended the Industrial Conciliation Act and brought in apartheid to ensure that trade unions would be organised on a racial basis. War Measure 145 of January 1942, which had been renewed from year to year, was incorporated in the Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act of 1953.
This provided for workers committees to make representations to employers, thus slamming the door on the recognition of African trade unions.
The differences which arose in the trade-union movement as a result of the compulsory enforcement of apartheid by the government led to the formation of two trade-union federations. One, TUCSA, fell in line with government policy not to admit Africans in its membership.
The other, the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) - COSATU's predecessor - was openly opposed to the government`s racial policies. The ANC actively assisted in its formation and worked with it in the Congress Alliance.
Secondly, the ANC spared no effort to show to its members and to the public generally the symbiotic relationship between the oppressed and exploited working class and itself in the struggle for liberation.
It is this role of the ANC in leading and integrating the workers struggle into the National Liberation struggle and of consciously placing the working class at the forehead of the struggle which on among others earned it the vanguard position in the National Democratic Revolution.
We have been with the ANC through thick and thin, shaping the workers struggles and the liberation struggle into a single continuum.
When the ANC entered the period of active resistance 1940s it on among other revolutionary forces tapped into the militancy of the workers. Given discontent at the mines a conference was convened in 1941 under the auspices of the ANC and in that conference a decision was taken to form an African Mineworkers Union.
The union embarked on a campaign to claim a minimum wage of ten shillings a day. The demand fell on the deaf ears of the mine-owners and the government, whose primary concern was to keep the costs of producing gold low so that they could raise the level of profit and taxes.
After the union had been making representations for a number of years to no avail, the workers voted at a meeting in April 1946 to go on strike.
The Smuts Government acted swiftly and brutally crushed the strike of 70000 African mine workers, forcing them at bayonet point from the compounds to go to work. Some 12 workers were killed and 1 200 wounded.
This was followed by fascist-inspired practices, wherein government opened its programme of trampling human rights underfoot by passing the Suppression of Communism Act in 1950.
The Act, which was purportedly intended to crush Communism, carried clauses of a sweeping nature that destroyed everybody's right to free association and expression.
It was the realisation of this fact which induced the ANC to share the platform jointly with the Communist Party on May Day 1950 to protest against the Suppression of Communism Bill, which parliament duly passed into law. During the course of protests in various parts of the Reef, the police killed eighteen Africans and wounded many others.
After the May Day killings, the National Executive Committee of the ANC held a series of meetings to discuss and decide on the form protest would take against the brutal murder of defenceless workers.
The NEC called for a stay-at-home for 26 June 1950. After the 26 June 1951 observance of Freedom Day, it was recommended that a campaign be launched jointly by Africans in the ANC, together with Coloureds in the South African Coloured People's Organisation and Indians in the Indian Congress.
Consequently a Joint Planning Council, consisting of Dr J. S. Moroka, Walter Sisulu (President-General and Secretary-General respectively of the ANC), J. B. Marks of the ANC, and Dr Yusuf Dadoo and Yusuf Cachalia of the Indian Congress, recommended that a Defiance Campaign be launched against unjust laws on 26 June 1952.
Among other trade unionists comrade Lesley Mesina, the first General Secretary of SACTU, became the deputy volunteer in Chief for the then Transvaal area. This was a period which marked unity of the leadership "by bringing about maximum agreement, understanding and unity of purpose on a common programme", the isolation of "defeatists and factionalists", and the strengthening of organisation.
It was a period in which all had come to a realisation that political rhetoric; sloganeering, uncoordinated acts of resistance and poor organisation and discipline were not adequate to effect any significant transformation of South African society.
It was a period which set the stage for a more intimate working relationship and, ultimately resulted to a structured alliance. Trade unions had themselves made their own assessment about the limitations and failures of their own struggles in the 1940s which saw right-wing racism in the Trades and Labour Council, the formation of the racially exclusive African Trade Union Council and resurgent African nationalism.
This was a period which resulted to the convening of the Congress of the people in 1955. The report of the credentials committee at the initial launching conference of the COP campaign in Natal in September 1954 shows that there were 98 worker delegates out of a total of 309 - 21 from trade unions and 77 from factory committees.
It was a period which came with political clarity and in which more emphasis was put on building coherent political consciousness across all the formations of the congress alliance.
As comrade Billy Nair who was the Executive member of the Natal Indian Congress and the Secretary of SACTU in Durban in 1955 put it when he said that "So in the course of training and development of the worker (by SACTU organisers) we put to use all the experience and education we had in earlier years in imparting to the worker a new type of consciousness, i.e. class-consciousness. So that the worker could think not of mere trade unionism for the sake of it, that is merely to gain higher wages and better working conditions, but that he was also to liberate himself politically, free himself from all types of oppression, exploitation by his employer and oppression by the ruling class . . .. The policy declaration of SACTU made it quite clear that the trade union and the political struggle of the workers had to be fought side by side.
When COSATU was formed in 1985 we took from the political perspective held by our forbearers and we continued in the traditions of the congress movement.
As we mark hundred years of our glorious movement we continue to base our strategy and tactics on this perspective.
We were ourselves born from the womb of political and organisational experiences derived from the 50s which prepared the labour movement for the militancy seen in the 1973 Durban Strikes and it is this continued militancy which characterised COSATU when it was born at the eve of state of emergency in 1985. COSATU's formation represented a considerable advance for the ANC and SACP. Its leadership was dominated by individuals who either were, or shortly became, supporters of the ANC alliance or members of its underground. Moreover, it had the potential to deliver organised working class power for revolutionary objectives on a scale unprecedented in South Africa. (Conscripts to their age: African national congress operational strategy, 1976-1986, by Howard Barrel, 1993, Chapter 9, Tactics of talks, tactics of confrontation - the road to Vula, July 1985 - December 1986).
From our very inception we became the target of harassment, arrest and assassination by the Apartheid regime. As if to receive the baptismal of fire we were launched on the eve of the state of emergency and two years after our launch our offices were bombed by the Apartheid regime as they later testified in the TRC. All this was done because of our political association with the ANC which we have never hidden even when we were condemned bell book and candle as an organization.
When COSATU was formed white capital had amassed enough economic power. Records show that at the time the South African economy was virtually owned by three huge conglomerates - Sanlam, Old Mutual and Anglo American.
In the production sector, 2.7 per cent of enterprises controlled over 50 per cent of our country's total turnover; 6.3 per cent of all enterprises employed over half of the national workforce; and a mere 6 per cent had 85 per cent of all fixed assets. The level of concentration in South Africa was virtually unprecedented and the trend to ever greater concentration was increasing each year.
By 1987, four companies (Anglo American, Sanlam, SA Mutual and Rembrandt) alone controlled 80 per cent of all shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Of these companies, Anglo American alone controlled 55 per cent.
It was because of these material conditions that from the very onset we challenged the economic agenda of the apartheid state through the anti-privatisation, fuel-price and anti-VAT campaigns. The apartheid state grudgingly came to the table to discuss these matters, leading to the formation of the National Economic Forum, the predecessor of NEDLAC. This concession was historic, as it forced the apartheid government to negotiate economic policy. It stopped attempts fundamentally to restructure the economy on the eve of the democratic breakthrough.
The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the Alliance programme of action from 1994, started in vigorous debates within the liberation movement as a whole leading to the ANC adopting it as its electoral platform in 1994.
We raised our concerns we noticed that later when the ANC assumed power there was a qualitative shift away from key elements of this progressive vision, notably through GEAR. The concerns we raised were based on our understanding of what the ANC stood for when it was formed in 1912 - which was to construct a country that was an antithesis of the 1910 Union of South Africa.
As we celebrate 100 years we are still confronted by a reality that more than 80% of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is accounted for by the large banks and the few companies in the traditional sectors: mining and energy. All these companies are white, private, and capitalist-owned and they are increasingly being foreign-owned.
There is significant foreign ownership of many of these companies. SASOL is about 30% foreign-owned and Arcelor-Mittal is 65% foreign owned. Massmart is 60% foreign-owned, Shoprite is 35%, Truworths is 50%, Foschini is 40%, JD Group is 40%, Lewis is 30%, Pick ‘n Pay has less than 10% Spar under 20% and Mr. Price and Woolworths 20%. ABSA is 56% foreign-owned whilst Standard Bank is at least 40% foreign owned.
The fact that major conglomerates such as Anglo-American have shifted their headquarters and listed abroad is an indication of the increasing foreign and imperialist ownership of the means of production in South Africa.
In short, economic power is still very much concentrated and has increasingly become externalized. The drive towards foreign ownership, combined with private ownership of the Reserve Bank, deepens the transformation of the South African economy away from working class control. The centenary celebrations must mean a reversal of this painful reality of our economy.
This economic reality translates to a situation in which African people remain at the lower end of the ladder has created serious resentment amongst the sections of the working class. This is manifested in all spheres of life.
It is for this reason that since the 1994 breakthrough we have remained consistent in emphasizing that the Liberation Movement must use its position of political incumbency to create a sustainable economic power base for the majority of the blacks and Africans in particular.
We continue to argue that the liberation movement must conduct a meaningful discussion about how the Alliance should relate to the state under conditions in which there is a disjuncture between the dominant capitalist ideological outlook of the ruling class which continuously permeates to the ANC as the ruling party.
As we celebrate the centenary of our movement we are all called to pause and asked if the 1994 breakthrough created a political leverage that could allow our movement to push for qualitative economic transformation or whether it unintentionally created conditions under which the struggle for economic transformation will require a separate political process?
Our movement has once again reached a stage of decision. It is a decision about how we should seize the strategic initiative and lead the liberation struggle to new heights at the apex of which will be political liberation which must give meaning to our economic freedom. This struggle must be led by none other than the ANC itself. As COSATU we are prepared to continue working with the ANC to take our liberation achievements to logical conclusion.
The 100 year celebrations must inspire our people to know that our ANC will once again direct the struggle such that the dream articulated in the Freedom Charter that "the people shall share in the country's wealth" becomes a reality.
If we ignore this responsibility to qualitatively transform economic ownership and transfer economic power to black people in general and Africans in particular the blood of those who died in the Bhambatha wars, in the miners' strike, in the Sharpeville Massacre, who were hanged in the apartheid gallows, those who died in 1973 Durban strikes, those who died in MK combat uniform will continue to stink and smell on our noses as it haunt us until we bow our heads in shame!
Issued by COSATU, January 4 2011
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
