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An organisational innovation which contributed significantly to the growth of Mawu was an organic structure known as the shop stewards council. This had been mooted by Fosatu as early as 1976 in the wake of the Soweto uprising⁶⁴ and echoed Gramscian ideas of the coming together of factory councils composed of elected delegates from all industries in an area. Gramsci believed these area committees would become the ‘emanation of the whole working class’. They would maintain a discipline that would enable all work in an industrial area to come to a halt and would ultimately spontaneously assume power.⁶⁵ They answered Gramsci’s question about the kind of structure that was appropriate to socialism (see Appendix). Although probably not drawing directly from this source, Mawu’s leadership would have been familiar with Gramsci’s ideas.

The first council arose in Pietermaritzburg where, said Fosatu Worker News in 1982, ‘it has discussed all major policy issues in the area for some time and has been responsible for much of Fosatu’s growth’.⁶⁶ It was on the East Rand in the Katlehong/Germiston/Wadeville area, though, that the shop stewards council put down its strongest roots and made the deepest impression on Mawu’s organising drive. These structures operated outside factory, affiliate and Fosatu constitutions.

The Germiston shop stewards council, or Katlehong local, developed in response to a capacity problem in Mawu where only one organiser, Mayekiso, serviced the fastest growing area in the country. The council brought together stewards from Fosatu factories across industries to debate strategies and learn from each other. The local was formed in 1981 when three unionised factories existed in the area but only one of them, Henred Fruehauf, was properly organised – the shop stewards councils allowed factories in which the union had insufficient capacity to organise, to get assistance from the shop stewards of more organised factories. The Katlehong local was near enough for workers from other industrial areas to also attend. It was also accessible to workers from factories in Wadeville, and Alrode in Alberton, who were mostly housed in the nearby townships of Katlehong, Natalspruit and Vosloosrus. The Council met in the Fosatu offices on the outskirts of Katlehong, in a bare hall called Morena Stores (an important venue, as there were few large sheltered spaces available for township meetings). Its main aim was, according to Fanaroff, ‘to assist the union recruit members, to build union structures in the factory, and help with basic education about trade unionism.’⁶⁷ Fanaroff refuted academic Mark Swilling’s claim at the time that the formation of councils was the reaction of workers to bureaucratic trade union organisers, and explained that:

We took the decision that the way to organise was to get the workers to go out at lunchtime and organise all the other factories in the area and to help workers who were on strike because Moss couldn’t do everything. That was where it started … It started with Henred (Fruehauf) who went through the whole process – liaison committee, strike etcetera. There was a chap called (Johnson) Nonjeke and Ramodile especially in the leadership there. They were very active and Moss used them as his organisers and that was the first local. A Henred worker owned a car which took shop stewards to other plants to recruit during lunch hour.

The Katlehong local created sub-committees to organise one street at a time, and by the end of 1982, 23 factories, with shop stewards representing 7 000 workers, had joined the union.⁶⁸ Shop stewards also began educating and recruiting on trains, in hostels, shebeens and township meetings. Mawu organiser Dumisane Mbanjwa recalls that ‘once you achieved something in one plant, the plant next door a few kilometres down the road would hear about that. There would be a flow of communication between the two plants and then you would move in and organise that plant, and then the same thing would happen again.’⁶⁹

Henred Fruehauf shop stewards meeting (Bernie Fanaroff)

In this way, Mawu created a powerful grassroots movement and the Katlehong local became the centre of working class activity. Initially three shop steward office bearers were elected, all from Mawu, but by 1982 four office-bearer positions had been created, two held by Mawu and two by the Chemical Workers Industrial Union.

The 90 stewards in the local met every two weeks and between meetings when the chairs of shop stewards committees held planning meetings to discuss organising progress, plan the agenda and take emergency decisions. The local was divided into areas to keep track of recruiting drives. Commented Mawu organiser, Richard Ntuli: ‘These area committees were strong. In Wadeville there were three or four factories in Wadeville south, and then there was Wadeville centre, and that was another area committee. They elected their own chairperson and secretaries and they would report what happened at different companies.’

One of the councils’ important responsibilities was to build worker solidarity across factories and industries. An executive member explained: ‘We must have a Fosatu local to bring workers together, to make common decisions and to control what’s happening in that certain area. Workers are encouraged to see beyond their own union to the struggle of the workers as a whole.’⁷⁰ For the first time, workers began to draw up collective demands on industry-wide matters, such as how to fight the metal industrial council agreement and tackle unemployment. Mawu’s first joint shop stewards council, the Witwatersrand Shop Stewards Council, attended by 230 stewards from 66 factories, formulated a platform on retrenchments and urged Seifsa members to halt inhumane job cuts.⁷¹ Seifsa responded by drawing up guidelines for retrenchment procedures, but insisted that retrenchment was not an issue for plant negotiations and advised its members that negotiations should take place at the industrial council alone.⁷²

A Mawu shop stewards council meeting in the Transvaal (Wits archives)

Workers across the country watched the Katlehong local with intense interest and the idea spread rapidly. ‘Shop stewards councils are playing an increasingly important role in Fosatu,’ reported Fosatu Worker News in May 1982. ‘In many areas, they are taking the lead in organisational drives and are the main forums for discussing important policy issues.’ The Springs local was formed in August 1981,⁷³ and others sprang up in Benoni, Uitenhage, Brits, Pretoria, Elandsfontein and Richard’s Bay, often spearheading organisation in areas before individual union branches were formed.

Soon different councils in an area were getting together. In Mawu, this inspired stewards to bring together workers from sub-sectors, such as the foundries, and to link worker representatives from the same company in different parts of the country in ‘combine committees’.⁷⁴ In 1982 shop stewards from Henred Freuhauf plants in Driehoek, Wadeville, Pinetown and Isithebe, all at different wage levels, set up a combined committee to coordinate wage talks across plants.

In July of the same year, 1980, Mawu began coordinating its entire Transvaal organisation through joint shop stewards council meetings. As a Katlehong council member explained: ‘We are faced with the problem of building solidarity amongst us. When we face a problem then they (the workers) must know it’s a struggle, not an insurance that I just come, and I am helped. Then to give them that understanding – that they are a certain class … that they have to fight …’⁷⁵

The Katlehong shop stewards council was a practical and creative response to an organisational problem but its effectiveness reverberated far beyond an ingenious way of dealing with a capacity problem. It was a revolution in union organisation – the councils were organs of workers’ power. As Mayekiso explained: ‘The shop stewards council became the backbone of the union. The council became the place where the workers could feel their power – the slogan an “injury to one is an injury to all” became a reality there.’⁷⁶ For the first time, workers were tasting working class power not merely through rapid growth in union numbers, but also by mobilising, discussing, sharing, resolving problems, formulating tactics and giving support and solidarity.

Imbongi Lawrence Zondi, a worker at BTR Sarmcol (Debbie Bonnin)