Читать книгу Metal that Will not Bend - Kally Forrest - Страница 33

Just as Alusaf opened up northern Natal, Highveld Steel and Vanadium Corporation was the catalyst for expansion in the Eastern Transvaal, particularly the Witbank-Middelburg industrial complex.

In 1981, Mawu developed the notion, driven by Fanaroff, that the way to grow the union’s power and to build socialism was to take control of the coalfields and the power stations in the Eastern Transvaal in order to ultimately cripple the economy. He explained: ‘If you’re looking for a power base to start to put pressure on the apartheid government, you control all the electricity generation then you’re certainly in a good bargaining position … we were going to seize power by organising the coal mines, and the power stations and steel plants, and that would be the heart of the economy.’

The long-standing management strategy at Eskom and Iscor had been to break the power of white unions and shift to low-wage black labour. To this end, Iscor withdrew from the engineering industrial council during the Second World War and set up its own bargaining forum.³⁰ In the post-war period, a decentralisation strategy was adopted to insulate power and steel workers from the influence of the strike-prone Rand. After 1955, Eskom power stations were built in the coalfields of the Eastern Transvaal, and Iscor moved to Vereeniging. They were serviced by labour from the African reserves.³¹

In the early 1980s, Mawu’s first target was Highveld Steel, Witbanks’s largest employer. A group of liaison committee members made contact with Mawu and David Sebabi was sent to organise. Highveld Steel worker and later Mawu and Numsa organiser Frank Boshielo recalls that the only union recruiting Africans at Highveld was a black parallel of SABS: ‘I was assigned by two other guys to go and look for a union and we didn’t know where to go. We saw Mawu in the newspaper, especially in Durban, so we phoned the Mawu head office in Durban. Then we met someone who was working for Textile [Fosatu affiliate] and he connected us with Mawu in Benoni and we met the branch secretary.’³²

As at VW, a group of mainly clerical workers with greater mobility established a network of activists. Union education and recruitment took place chiefly in Highveld’s hostels, and Boshielo’s hostel room became a contact-point. By the end of 1982, Mawu had recruited the majority of black workers. Arbitrary dismissals were a prominent grievance, and the union first won credibility by demanding dismissal and grievance procedures. After initially refusing union recognition on the grounds that Mawu was not party to the industrial council, the company signed an agreement in 1983.³³

Highveld Steel’s activist shop stewards soon fanned out to other parts of the Eastern Transvaal. Steel and Alloys workers in adjacent Middelburg heard of developments at Highveld and sought out Boshielo. Said one shop steward:

Strike ballot at Highveld Steel in 1984 (Bernie Fanaroff)

Steel and Alloys was seriously resisting the union … what surprised me was that people were hired this week and next week they were all fired. I complained once … they thought I was a troublemaker and so they wanted to co-opt me on to the liaison committee and when I arrived there was a small cake and cool drinks and choice assorted biscuits once you finished your cake … then SABS was introduced into the company but I didn’t join and I saw that SABS treated blacks different from whites, and in their meetings was also a big cake and biscuits, and dismissals went on. Then we decided to find a militant union.³⁴

The steward described how, when Boshielo visited the hostel, he was besieged by questioning workers whose chief anxiety was the danger of being fired if they signed up. The company initially insisted that the union recruit ‘50 per cent plus one’ of its 4 000 workforce, but eventually granted recognition when the union had enrolled 1 800 members. The word even spread into remote areas. An organising drive at a Highveld Steel colliery in Roossenekal sparked an approach in 1982 from workers at American-owned Tubatse Ferrochrome in Lebowa, and Mawu used this as a bridgehead to organise Anglo American mines in the area.³⁵

At the same time, the union began organising Eskom power plants, first in Germiston and then, through the efforts of Highveld Steel workers, in the Eastern Transvaal. Many plants were situated near ‘tied mines’ which fed coal directly into generators. If the union wanted to control the power plants, it needed to control their collieries. By 1983, Mawu had made significant inroads into mine and power workers but was plagued by difficulties in gaining access to mines.³⁶

Highveld Steel worker and later Mawu organiser, Frank Boshielo (Numsa)

In 1983, Mawu’s grand plan began to unravel. The National Union of Mineworkers, with access to the mines, quickly picked up 20 000 members.³⁷ Commented Fanaroff: ‘We heard from workers that when Bobby [Godsell, from Anglo American] heard that Mawu was organising the mines he suddenly dropped his opposition to NUM, so we couldn’t get into the plants but the NUM could.’ He also conceded: ‘I’m bad at getting together big groups of people … Cyril [Ramaphosa, then NUM general secretary] put together a big team and hit the ground with a lot of resources and access as … well I don’t like taking risks … and you needed to. He was a very good manager.’ The 1984 split in Mawu also set back its Eastern Transvaal project. Fanaroff recalls that the leader of the breakaway union, David Sebabi, ‘told his homeboys that Moss and I were agents of the state and Moss nearly got killed up there at Driehoek in the chrome mines.’

Compounding this was the ongoing fear of white farmers intent on driving out the union. Fanaroff remembered: ‘Moss and I were convinced that the farmers were going to kill us on the way home at midnight. There’s nothing between Burgersfort and Middelburg and every time we got to Middelburg we’d give a sigh of relief. That road past Roossenekal and out was very lonely, through the mountains.’

Mawu stopped organising in the area, although the Eskom plants remained loyal to it.³⁸ The Eastern Transvaal debacle was a rare case of an unsuccessful and irretrievable outcome.