Metal that Will not Bend. Kally Forrest
union members fought on. They faced a very different adversary from that confronting the trial of strength strikers at VW a year earlier. B&S was a small family business in which members of the Back family behaved as a law unto themselves. Workers could not appeal to a parent company or outside union movement, nor to other workplaces in unorganised Brits. Back family members felt personally affronted by the disloyalty of the strikers, Adler described their attitude:
The conditions were terrible and the management was paternalistic … they recruited all their domestics from B&S workers or family of B&S workers. But the mother of one of the strikers was a domestic in the family’s house in Johannesburg and the family would talk, so we were getting these nightly reports as to what was going to happen in the factory the next morning. It was a great intelligence system. And the family was really hurt by these people turning on them – they’ve been there for years, they taught them everything they knew, how could they bite the hand that fed them? At times it got quite dangerous; in particular the one son was a bit mentally unbalanced and had a gun and he drew that in discussions at the gate.
Mawu knew that strike solidarity was the key as a long dispute would deplete workers’ resources and family pressures could result in falling morale. The shop stewards committee became the instrument for sustaining unity and solving workers’ daily problems. Mawu’s Transvaal branch was under severe pressure from the East Rand strikes, so Naawu gave stewards support where it could. A member of the B&S shop stewards committee gave a heart-rending account of how members managed:
Some of us had savings and we lived on these and also shared them out. Also people in the community were initially willing to help us out, as well as some of the other workers in the area. We decided that people should report every day … We began discussing how we were harassed by management, and how workers in other factories were also harassed … we would take examples of people’s experiences and get workers to talk and comment. We discovered that if we want to survive here we will have to stick together, as this will be the only way to keep the organisation strong. If we depart, then it would all break up and people would be weak if they were alone. We spent a lot of time asking people how they felt about the dismissal – whether they thought it was unfair – finally we all agreed it was unfair and we all decided to stick together.
We discovered it was possible to motivate the people, and not to separate ourselves from one another by being Xhosa or Tswanas, finding that each and every one of us is useful to the others … by sharing information and our feelings about the situation in the factory, the bad conditions … this type of discussion helped a lot because it showed people that if they went to another factory, the situation would be exactly the same …
The committee planned to get help from the local churches. We got all the people involved in this by asking each one of them to take a letter to the church in their area. We also planned to get help from other workers in the area. We had no idea we would be out for so long … there were a few problems when we started getting money from outside as some of the workers did not trust that they were going to benefit – they thought that the money would just go to the committee. This led to a lot of discussions where we explained exactly how the money was going to be used. We explained that we were all in the struggle. Some of us had real problems with transport, and some of the money went into making sure that those who wanted to come to the hall, could. One day I would come, and the next my neighbour would.
B&S strike meeting in a Brits church hall. L-R Bosch shop steward Levy Mamabolo flanked by Mawu organiser Peter Dantjies on his right
There were some problems especially emergencies; people who could not pay for treatment, kids who were sick. The way we dealt with this was to all come together and make a contribution from our savings … also the committee found that people were complaining that their families were putting them under a lot of pressure, telling them to go back to work. The problem is that some of us are the only member of the family with a full-time job and consequently the families had to make sacrifices for this struggle. This is why we are so close now. We would send a few of the committee members to talk to the whole family and explain the struggle and what it was all about.
Each day we report what we have heard about the factory – you see many friends were working there and they tell us exactly what is going on. Sometimes the workers would ask where the organisers were and whether they had forgotten us, as they did not come here very often. We had to explain that they were very busy and that they were proceeding with the industrial council and the court case. When two committee members were arrested under the Intimidation Act, and the charges later withdrawn, this gave us faith in the union that something could be done for us.
Some of us do not eat properly and cannot feed our children like we used to; some of us have sent our children away to our parents. Many of us have to sell our belongings, such as clothes, bicycles and watches, and some of us had goods repossessed. We have now spent all our savings, some of which we had saved for many years and were hoping to buy better things for our children. Some of us have had to sell our goats and cattle and this was very difficult as we sold them for very little.
People have changed through all the discussions. We have come to realise what it is to sacrifice and stick together and to trust one another – that an injury to one, is an injury to all.54
As the dispute dragged on, new survival strategies evolved. Said Dantjies: ‘We approached furniture shops to delay HP [hire purchase] payments until the dispute was settled, and we got sympathetic doctors to come out and attend to sick workers and families, and we raised money for food parcels – there were some people at Wits who were very helpful with this.’
strike in Brits in 1984 (Paul Weinberg)
Mawu bolstered the workers’ struggle by going to the law. It asked the Industrial Court to reinstate on the grounds that the company had committed unfair labour practices, particularly by victimising union members, and it claimed R850 000 in wage arrears. The Back family’s response was to sell the company to Gundle Industries, which settled in September 1983, before the case came to court. The new owner reinstated all workers, recognised the union, and gave R200 000 towards lost pay.55
The length of the strike, and the publicity surrounding it, spread the union word – a process ironically strengthened by the company’s use of Bophuthatswana Radio to urge a return to work.56 Levy Mamabolo, a worker from a Brits components factory, Bosch, was one of those who learned of Mawu through the B&S. He and others ‘went from one township to another wherever Bosch workers lived, to recruit. We were determined to recruit 50 + 157 of Bosch workers and force the bosses to negotiate with us.’58 Meanwhile, Naawu was organising the nearby Firestone factory where, in September 1983, workers struck for a R2 living wage. The following year saw a successful wage strike at Alfa Romeo.59 Brits was fast becoming a union town.
Moving into homelands
As Mawu mushroomed in the early 1980s, workers in semi-rural decentralised ‘growth points’, many in homelands, began approaching it. South African labour law did not apply in the homelands and their governments bitterly opposed union or political activity. In Bophuthatswana, South African unions were banned under anti-union legislation; in Ciskei, where no formal ban was in force, unionists’ houses were stoned and burned and striking workers detained under security laws; KwaZulu was not actively anti-union but provided no legislation for protection of workers. Industrial council negotiations, wage board hearings, department of manpower inspections and access to the Industrial Court were not permitted.60
American owned KwaZulu factory, Tidwell. After a wage strike which led to mass dismissals Tidwell re-employed workers, who found their starting rate had dropped from R25 to R18 a week. In an out of court settlement with the union Tidwell paid five dismissed shop