Address by Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of the Congress of South
African Trade Unions (COSATU) to the Russell Tribunal on Palestine
5-6 November 2011, District Six Museum, Cape Town
EMBARGOED Until 5pm
As with all other aspects of South African life - political, social,
economic - the life of a worker (and the working class) in apartheid South
Africa was determined by that worker's "race". Workers were privileged or
disadvantaged depending on the racial classification they were given by the
state. While the entire working class was exploited by White capital, Black
workers were discriminated against while white workers were a labour
aristocracy with a range of rights that were denied their Black
counterparts. And, among Black people, "African" workers were more
disadvantaged than "coloured" workers who were more disadvantaged than
"Indian" workers.
It must be remembered that the exploitation of Black labour in South Africa
depended not only on the exploitation of the individual Black worker but of
the entire Black working class. Thus discrimination and disadvantage
permeated the Black working class as a whole. The Group Areas Act of 1950,
Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of 1951, Bantu Authorities Act of 1951,
Native Laws Amendment Act of 1952, Bantu Education Act of 1953, Reservation
of Separate Amenities Act of 1953, Natives Resettlement Act of 1954, Natives
(Prohibition of Interdicts) Act of 1956, Extension of University Education
Act of 1959, Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959, Urban Bantu
Councils Act of 1961, and the Bantu Homelands Citizens Act of 1970, all
targeted the Black working class in its entirety in order to keep it
subservient, exploited and subjugated. These laws did not apply directly to
the White working class.
Palestinian workers do not fulfil the same purpose for apartheid Israel as
Black workers did for apartheid South Africa, and they are not exploited in
the same manner as Black workers were. Nevertheless, Palestinian workers and
the Palestinian working class are, as Black workers and the Black working
class in South Africa were, oppressed and exploited simply because of their
"racial" and "ethnic" background. As apartheid South Africa attempted to do
with the Black working class, apartheid Israel too seeks to humiliate and
degrade the Palestinian working class, robbing it of its dignity and
attempting to beat it into submission to a cruel, racist system. There are
two major differences between the situation we faced under apartheid, and
that which Palestinian workers and the Palestinian working class face under
Zionist Israel. First, that while the South African apartheid state and
White capital remained till the very end entirely dependent on Black labour,
the Israeli state and Israeli capitalism have divested themselves of this
dependency. Second, and following on the first, is that while in apartheid
South Africa the state attempted to keep Black people "in their place" so
they could be pliant workers that were easy to exploit, the apartheid
Israeli state wishes to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian working class and
the Palestinian people more generally.
Allow me to turn now to some of the specific ways in which Black workers
were oppressed and exploited in South Africa on the basis of their "race".
As mentioned, the conditions for Black workers were highly discriminatory,
disadvantageous and degrading. The apartheid government ensured - through
the institutionalisation of racism and with the active complicity of White
capitalists - that Black workers were allowed only certain types of labour
intensive jobs or low level clerical positions, paid a menial wage, and not
allowed to be promoted to higher positions which were reserved for Whites.
The apartheid workplace was highly racialised and politicised, and
employment conditions - in both the public and private sectors - were
dictated by the colour of one's skin. The experience of the apartheid
workplace regime was one punctuated by unfair dismissals, abuse and beatings
of both parent and children by bosses, discrimination and humiliation of the
young and old alike. In the farms, there was a life of hunger in the midst
of plenty. Racial divisions and a racial hierarchy among workers were
reinforced by repressive laws such as the job colour bars and the Industrial
Conciliation Act of 1956. The latter excluded Africans from the definition
of "employee" under the law. The act also regulated trade unions, banning
non-racial unions and requiring unions to have all-White executives, with
separate branches for Black workers. It legalised the reservation of
skilled jobs to White workers only, as the Bantu Building Workers Act of
1951 had done in the construction trade. Thus a white worker earned more
than a black worker with the same skill level and the same job description.
We can highlight five elements of the apartheid workplace that made its
experience unique: the racial division of labour; the racial segregation of
facilities; the racial structure of power; the migrant labour system; the
pass laws; the colour bar; the Group Areas Act and the Bantu education
system. Understanding these elements of labour segregation is important to
understand the role and impact apartheid had on the working class and Black
South African in the workplace.
The racial division of labour meant black workers were restricted to menial
jobs, and were assistants to white artisans, even if the former were more
skilled. White workers monopolised more skilled operating and artisan jobs
and mid-level and senior managerial positions. This gave birth to a grading
system based on colour and ethnic lines where workers were paid and
positioned within the work environment according to their skin colour.
Another key defining feature of the apartheid workplace was the racial
structure of power in terms of which a Black person was, by definition, a
servant of a White man no matter what position she/he held in the formal
hierarchy. Any White worker had the right to issue instructions to any Black
worker, thus blurring the line of managerial authority or demarcation. Black
workers thus often had to do work that was not part of their job
description, e.g. make tea or buy cigarettes for White workers. This
structure of power also had a strong gender dynamic. Black women were rarely
able to hold even basic clerical or desk jobs. In the manufacturing and most
other sectors, they were paid less than a man for the same work.
Another characteristic of the apartheid workplace was the segregation of
facilities. This characterised the mining, manufacturing and service
industries where Black workers were excluded from certain benefits and basic
facilities. Separate amenities for Black and White workers included separate
canteens, change houses and toilets. This form of segregation was legislated
under the Factories Act, and underpinned by the Separate Amenities Act of
1953.
Entrenching racialised labour practices was the migrant labour system which
further differentiated between Black migrant and urban workers. These two
categories of workers were allocated different positions in the workplace.
Migrants from the Bantustans were preferred for the most dangerous and
heaviest unskilled jobs, while local, urbanised Blacks were recruited for
"softer jobs". The migrant labour system disrupted the social fabric of many
rural societies, and forced young men from these areas to the city in search
of employment. Many of them ended up in the mines. The result was that
African men were forced to live away from their families except for three
weeks in a year, and to live in under-developed, over-crowded single-sex
hostels. Migrant workers were regarded as "foreign labourers", and were
harshly treated and exploited - even more so than Black urban workers. The
entire system was designed to ensure that the "White economy" was sustained
through a massive pool of cheap labour.
The Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act of
1952, commonly known as the Pass Laws Act, made it compulsory for all
Africans over the age of 16 to carry a "pass book" at all times. This
dompas, as it was known, contained its carrier's employment details and
other identification information. Employers often entered behavioural
evaluations on the passes. The pass also documented permission requested and
denied or granted to be in certain areas and the reasons for seeking such
permission. The humiliating practice of the pass laws represented an immense
obstacle in terms of employment. The livelihoods of many Black South
Africans were dictated by the pass laws which thus played a crucial role in
segregating the South African population and severely restricting the
movement of Black - especially African - people. Africans were required to
carry pass books when outside their "compounds" or "designated areas". Any
White person could ask an African person to produce their pass, and failure
to do so often resulted in arrests.
This law formed an important pillar of what was called "influx control"
which strictly and harshly regulated the movement and settlement of
especially African people in urban areas. The effect was not unlike that
faced on a daily basis by Palestinian workers whose movement is restricted
and curtailed through the much cruder checkpoints, apartheid wall, road
closures, curfews, and so forth.
The Group Areas Act also helped regulate the lives of Black workers and the
Black working class more generally. This legislation assigned different
"racial" groups to different residential and business areas. The purpose was
to exclude Blacks from living in the most developed areas, which were
reserved for Whites only. It had serious and profound implications for Black
workers, causing them to travel long distances from their homes in order to
work. Blacks were regularly forcibly removed for living in the "wrong"
areas. The Group Areas Act, together with the various acts that established
the Bantustans and forced Africans to be "citizens" of those Bantustans,
ensured that Whites owned 87 percent of the land in South Africa and Black
people owned only 13 percent. The comparison with Palestinian Bantustans
which are defined by Israeli settlement infrastructure and Israeli military
control is not misplaced here. Of course, in the Palestinian case there is
the more insidious objective of forcing the indigenous people to leave the
land completely, thus cleansing it of their presence.
One of the most important instruments of apartheid that had deep long-term
objectives and effects was the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which was the
foundation of the apartheid system. It aimed to keep Black South Africans
"uneducated". Its major provision was the enforced separation of races in
all educational institutions. The policy of Bantu education was aimed at
directing Black - particularly African - youth to the unskilled labour
market, and to provide a large pool of labourers at low cost to South
African capitalists.
The Nationalist Party regarded education as a key element in its plan to
create a segregated society. Apartheid's architect, Hendrik Verwoerd, made
this clear when he said:
There is no place for the Bantu in the European community above the level of
certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child
mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd.
Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life,
according to the sphere in which they live.
The apartheid government ensured that by giving Black students inferior
education, in a language not their own, White South Africa would be supplied
with a continuous pool of cheap labour, workers willing to do menial jobs
for low salaries, and fulfil the needs of White citizens, the apartheid
state and White capital.
In essence, blacks and whites under apartheid lived separately and
unequally. Black children grew up in terrifying conditions, in townships
where tarred roads and electricity were a privilege, where a pit latrine was
normality and only had the most dilapidated and resource strapped schools to
attend and hospitals to go to.
This separate and unequal development is demonstrated by the simple fact
that my late father and mother and my eleven siblings do not know their
exact birthdays. I also do not know exactly when I was born. At my baptism,
the priest took a guess and gave me the birth date of December 20, 1962. To
this day, my family doesn't celebrate birthdays because we never knew when
we were born. This experience is one that is shared by many black South
Africans born under apartheid.
Meanwhile, our white counterparts stayed in secure suburbs with big houses
and big yards, attended the best schools with all types of sporting codes,
had access to the best healthcare facilities and more opportunities of
attending some of the country's good universities.
The precious gift of childhood innocence was robbed from us as black
children growing up in the Bantustans and various townships across the
country. By the 1980's, military vehicles and soldiers armed with heavy
artillery had become an integral picture of township life. Under the state
of emergency, gunshots and police invasions into our homes substituted the
lullaby. The loss of innocence and childhood pleasures by black children in
South Africa is similar to the experience of Palestinian children growing up
under occupation, with constant sight of military vehicles and heavy
weapons. The ears of Palestinian children have become accustomed to sound of
bombs and grenades from the Israel army.
Clearly, apartheid was a well-planned and oiled machine of racial
segregation, designed from the very beginning to oppress, exploit and
dehumanise Black South Africans, especially Black workers and the Black
working class. While there are a number of differences between the situation
of Black South African workers and Palestinian workers, the oppression and
exploitation faced by the Black South African working class and the
Palestinian working class resemble each other in many respects, while the
Israeli Jewish working class resembles the White labour aristocracy in South
Africa.
We will not forget that the Israeli trade union federation Histadrut, which
serves the racist Israeli state and the Jewish working class like White
trade unions in South Africa served the racist state and the White working
class, actively collaborated with the South African apartheid state. Iskoor
steel company, 51 percent of which was owned by Histadrut's Koor Industries
and 49 percent by the South African Steel Corporation, for example,
manufactured steel for South Africa's armed forces. Partly finished steel
was shipped from Israel to South Africa, enabling the apartheid state to
escape tariffs. Other Histadrut companies such as Tadiran and Soltam were
equally complicit in supplying South Africa with weapons. Histadrut also
helped build the electronic wall between South Africa/Namibia and
neighbouring African states in an attempt to keep our liberation fighters
out. This wall was, in many ways, a precursor of Israel's apartheid wall.
Black South African workers - especially a mine-worker like myself - who
bore the brunt of South African racial capitalism, and understood the
purposes and mechanisms of apartheid, know that when we talk about the
conditions faced by our Palestinian comrades we are talking about apartheid;
when we see the controls on the movement and residence of Palestinians, it
reminds us of group areas and Bantustans; when we see the elaborate Israeli
attempts at humiliation of Palestinians, it reminds us of the daily
humiliation and assault on dignity that was our lot - every day of our
lives. That is why we know that the South African working class will never
be free until the Palestinian working class - and that of the rest of the
world - is liberated.
Contact:
Phindile Kunene (Shopsteward Magazine Editor)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
1-5 Leyds Cnr Biccard Streets
Braamfontein
2017
P.O.Box 1019
Johannesburg
2000
South Africa
Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24
Fax: +27 11 339-5080 / 6940
Mobile: +27 79 167 9544 or 82 494 2409
E-mail: phi...@cosatu.org.za
