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Before the 1980s, the auto industry was based mainly in the Eastern Cape and was dominated by large assembly plants. In 1985, these plants contributed 71 per cent of Naawu’s paid-up membership.¹ Largely dependent on auto assembly were the smaller tyre and rubber, and auto component sub-sectors. Tyre and rubber logically fell into auto components but it always remained more strongly linked to the assemblers sector.

Auto was smaller than other sectors in Numsa, in particular engineering. On Numsa‘s formation it had 24 000 members compared to motor’s 40 000 and engineering’s 70 000. Yet it occupied a strategic position in the Eastern Cape and national economy which enabled these workers to wield considerable power in the metal sector.

In the early 1980s, Numarwosa/UAW began to expand into other centres, particularly the northern Transvaal, where manufacturers such as Toyota, Sigma and BMW had moved in a cost-cutting exercise. Previously, auto assemblers had set up plants next to Port Elizabeth’s working harbour where parts were shipped in; now the ‘just in time’ production system pioneered by the Japanese eliminated the use of warehouses to store excess supplies. This meant that components were flown directly to plants when required and it thus became possible for assemblers to relocate factories from harbour cities to the major markets of the Transvaal. Component manufacturers followed suit.²

Workers in BMW factory in Rosslyn: manufacturers such as Toyota, Sigma and BMW moved from Port Elizabeth to the northern Transvaal in a cost-cutting exercise in the early 1980s (Abdul Shariff)

For some Eastern Cape employers, this move to the Transvaal was also prompted by the volatility of labour relations and the sharp rise in wages in the region, whereas Northern Transvaal, by contrast, had an abundance of unorganised, low-wage labour. For Crouch, the mobility of capital is ‘the great weakness of labour … which no amount of organisation can offset. Capital unlike labour can change its form, go away, move to sectors or countries where it can be more profitably employed whilst labour comprises individual human beings who need constant subsistence and can only move to alternative employment and across geographical distances in search of employment with great risk and difficulty.’³ Even labour’s most powerful weapon, the strike, he contends, cannot withstand capital’s resources and mobility. Naawu was, however, fortunate in that capital relocated within the same country and, undaunted, it began to organise the Transvaal plants. The aim, explained Naawu’s Les Kettledas, was twofold: to improve the lot of Transvaal workers and to equalise conditions: ‘We said, listen, you can run wherever you want to, we’ll be there. And that’s how we started organising in the Transvaal so that we could balance everything, raise conditions of employment to about the same level, so that there was no incentive for Eastern Cape people to run to the Transvaal.’

In 1979, the union sent Kettledas, its Eastern Cape secretary, to organise in the Transvaal.⁴ But conditions were tougher there. There was no industrial council and the mass of African workers were excluded from the official bargaining system. Numarwosa/UAW was forced to fight for recognition and bargaining rights company by company, without the possibility of extending improved conditions to the unorganised through industrial council agreements. Workers had little exposure to unions and there were no experienced coloured unionists, as in the Eastern Cape, to help.

Nevertheless, Africans were ripe for organisation, and within six months Kettledas had recruited substantial membership at Bosal in Koedoespoort, BMW in Rosslyn and Datsun in Pretoria. These formed the basis of a new Naawu branch. Adler was hired in 1981 to set up offices in Pretoria and to be ‘responsible for the Transvaal region’. With a Fosatu organiser from Benoni, Martin Ndaba, he began organising assembly plants, which were massive: ‘… you walk for 30 minutes from one side to the other. The smallest was 600 workers in Brits, and the largest was Volkswagen with 6 000 workers’. The two men also targeted small labour-intensive component factories where workers endured ‘terrible conditions’.

Workers in high spirits after the Naawu Transvaal AGM in May 1983 (Paul Weinberg)

Naawu was launched in the Transvaal through a strike at Sigma Motor Corporation in April 1981, following a rash of smaller stoppages in the Pretoria area. Influenced by the R2 living wage campaign in the Eastern Cape, 4 500 workers at Sigma spontaneously downed tools and demanded a R2 an hour increase, the recognition of Numarwosa and the suspension of the liaison committee. Management stonewalled talks and claimed that the union had agreed to participate in the liaison committee, in exchange for access rights and stop order facilities, until such time as it proved majority support.⁵ The huge strike, on a scale unheard of in the region, was a baptism of fire for the new branch. Adler recalled that it was ‘the first time I’d come across a corporate organisation – huge. We negotiated with nine or ten people on the other side, and they’d present documents and research, and quote us from things overseas. Anglo American; very sophisticated.’ The union submitted signed stop-order forms as proof of majority support, to which management reacted by ordering strikers to return to work or face dismissal. Rejecting the ultimatum, the strikers were fired en masse.⁶

The situation became extremely tense when the company began to recruit scab labour in local townships where the union conducted mass meetings. Adler recalls the importance of a vital facility: ‘There was a Mamelodi [township adjacent to Pretoria] community hall. Without access to that hall it would have been a major problem.’ After one mass meeting, fired up workers stoned passing vehicles and a worker, Paulus Mahlangu, was shot dead by a panicking motorist. The union condemned Sigma for ‘helping to create a situation in which this tragic incident could occur.’⁷

Sigma strikers marching through Pretoria, a very unusual occurrence (Wits archives)

Militant workers at the funeral of Sigma worker Paul Mahlangu shot dead while on strike by a panicking passing motorist in 1981 (Wits archives)

Despite mass meetings and a union pamphlet blitz aimed at winning support in the townships of Mamelodi, Atteridgeville and Mabopane, strikers started drifting back to work. Sigma reported that it had re-employed 1 500 and recruited 1 500 newcomers. Ten days later Sigma agreed to negotiate but refused to re-employ several hundred strikers, including 18 members of the ‘Committee of 20’ nominated to spearhead negotiations. Thus Naawu’s factory committee was destroyed and it had to rebuild its base. A number of disillusioned fired leaders abandoned Fosatu and joined Macwusa, which had moved into the plant. Adler recalled that winning majority support in the huge plant ‘continued to bug us for ages.’ In addition, Sigma only granted a 40 per cent per-hour increase which was far adrift from Naawu’s R2 per-hour demand.

But the strike was not an unmitigated disaster. The union won recognition. Industrial action had raised its profile and highlighted the potential power of unions. Adler commented that a worried management ‘were so relieved to find a negotiating partner and to settle – because it was their first big strike. Out of this came the consolidation of the union presence in Pretoria, and the setting up of a shop stewards committee and shop steward facilities. And we got access to these plants …’

Or at least some of them. The 1984 dispute at BMW illustrates Naawu’s uphill battle in the Transvaal, where employers had learned little from earlier recognition conflicts in the Eastern Cape.

The BMW assembly plant in the Rosslyn industrial zone north-west of Pretoria, employed 1 500 workers who mostly commuted from the Bophuthatswana homeland. UAW had started organising it in 1978 and a year later had recruited more than half the workforce.⁸ Yet the company refused to concede basic union rights, including shop steward recognition and union access, and insisted on a liaison committee. This provoked a seven-year battle which ended in the bitter 1984 strike.⁹

BMW informed workers that it saw no need for a union, as ‘we have the internal mechanism to handle the labour situation satisfactorily.’¹⁰ It added, patronisingly: ‘Dr von Koeber [managing director] says … there are hundreds of trade unions in South Africa, and he cannot be expected to deal with all of them.’¹¹ In reality, Naawu was the only union organising in the plant.

At least four strikes took place at BMW before the showdown of February 1984. In 1983, management agreed to recognise Naawu, but the following year refused to negotiate wages and offered a 10c an hour increase in response to the union’s R3,50 demand.¹² A wildcat strike followed and a panicking management agreed to wage talks. Before the next meeting, BMW announced that it would only negotiate wages later in the year, and that workers should not suffer as a result of a strike ‘caused by a few irresponsible people.’¹³ This was the final insult and the plant came to a standstill.

BMW women workers at a strike meeting (Paul Weinberg)

BMW ended negotiations, closed the factory and began disciplinary hearings against 19 workers, mostly union leaders. It launched a union-bashing publicity campaign using newspapers, radio and TV to put its propaganda across. Leaflets were dropped from helicopters on township residents while the company declared that, ‘It was becoming impossible for BMW to regard the union as a reasonable discussion partner in this matter of resuming production … Management would like employees to know that we believe that Naawu does not represent your true feelings on this matter. In future we will communicate directly with you and we are looking forward to your loyal support.’ Incredibly, it also invited strikers to an evening of football and music features together with ‘a discussion on the strike at BMW’ – to nil response.

Naawu negotiators were nevertheless alarmed at the company’s determination to break the union. At a key meeting workers recognised the threat. ‘It was one of the few times,’ remembers Adler, ‘that the stewards made the tactical decision to let the strike go because I felt it was the only way we could get BM to change their position and this was correct.’ After a ten-day lock-out, 1 500 strikers returned en masse – but they had made their point. Renewed wage talks led to increases of between 33c to 50c an hour, bringing the minimum to R2,73 per hour.¹⁴ The company had finally conceded that Naawu spoke for its workforce.

The new Transvaal branch had shown a tactical understanding in the game of power akin to its counterparts in the Eastern Cape. Adler commented that Naawu’s experienced national organisation was an important prop in disputes of this kind, ‘There was a level of organisational capacity which was admirable, so in the situation at BMW there were discussions in the union about it. There was a management committee at the provincial and national level where these issues were discussed.’ The union’s sophistication in countering the resistance of a large German multinational raised its profile and extended its influence deep into the fabric of the auto sector. Oganisation spread rapidly and between 1981 and 1984 six new branches were formed.¹⁵ Owing to the size of assembly plants, Naawu established a branch in each company it organised.

Naawu’s expansion had assailed the fragmented apartheid state. It built a national union which had challenged the state’s cheap labour policies by protecting exploited black labour. As a previously coloured union, it had also built the unity of auto workers across apartheid’s ethnic barriers.