The Industrial Workers of Africa

An interesting  history of the early socialist movement in South Africa.

http://www.cssaame.com/issues/19_1/2derwalt.pdf

The International Socialist League was a revolutionary syndicalist organization, and not a Marxist group. As such, the International Socialist League held that racially integrated revolutionary industrial unions should overthrow capitalism and the State, replacing both with workers’ self-management of the economy . Hence, the organization must be situated within the context of the international revolutionary syndicalist movement of the early 20th century, a movement exemplified by the Industrial Workers of the World ( or I.W.W.) in the United States of America. It is for this reason that the International Socialist League sought to organize revolutionary industrial unions in South Africa, the most notable of which was the Industrial Workers of Africa. Founded in September 1917, the Industrial Workers of Africa was the first trade union for African workers in South African history...the organization developed a coherent analysis of racial oppression in South Africa, and advocated the removal of racially oppressive laws through industrial action. Although both the International Socialist League,  the organization probably never had more than a few hundred members, and the Industrial Workers of Africa were very small organizations, it is when we understand them within their international context — as part of a far larger revolutionary socialist current — that we best grasp their full significance.

...There is a strong tendency in the literature to present the International Socialist League as simply a chapter in the history of the Communist Party, a sort of Communist Party in embryo...Despite the common presentation of the organization as a mainstream Marxist organization, the ideological orientation of the International Socialist League was not based on classical Marxism, but, instead, on revolutionary syndicalism...In 1910, there were at least two revolutionary syndicalist organizations operating in South Africa. The first, as mentioned above, was a South African section of the I.W.W., which was active between 1910-1912. The second organization was the Socialist Labour Party. Also founded in 1910, the Socialist Labour Party was linked with the American party of the same name. The Socialist Labor Party in the United States advocated an interesting variant of revolutionary syndicalism, which was lucidly articulated by its key theorist, Daniel De Leon...both the South African I.W.W. and Socialist Labour Party had ceased operating by 1914. That same year, however, the nucleus of a new revolutionary syndicalist body, the International Socialist League, began to emerge...a minority of internationalist and socialist South African Labour Party members, previously grouped around a dissident War on War League and the War on War Gazette, resigned from the South African Labour Party, and helped found the International Socialist League in September 1915....The International Socialist League was also joined by former members and supporters of the South African I.W.W. and Socialist Labour Party...

...At its founding, the membership of the International Socialist League was largely based amongst immigrants from Britain, and to a lesser extent, the United States and Eastern Europe (notably, Jewish immigrants). Many of the founders of the International Socialist League were skilled workers...

...“All segregation schemes are doomed to failure. We must either lift the Native up to the White standard [of living], or sink down to his.” Equal wages and equal rights for all workers were the surest safeguard of decent conditions for all workers, as well as a just policy for the working-class as a whole. Given that workers all had the same interests, and given the inability of racist practices such as color bars on the job and in the unions to protect workers, the only realistic way forward for all workers was unification into industrial unions, and the lifting of African workers to the “political and industrial status” of the white; equal rights for all would help remove divisions between workers and lay the basis for socialism and freedom. Thus, socialism required a united struggle against capitalism and racism. Through such a policy the working-class could be united and mobilised for the struggle against capitalism and the State. At the same time, the International Socialist League argued that the pressures of industry were removing ethnic divisions between African workers: “capitalism was killing that more effectively than anything else.”...

...the International Socialist League condemned racial discrimination as unjust and as opposed to the interests of all workers — African, Coloured, Indian and white. The International Socialist League’s opposition to racism did not only, however, revolve around the limitations of racially exc lusive trade unionism and segregation. The International also ran articles critiquing the pseudo-science of “scientific racism” which held that the different races had  inherently different (and highly unequal) abilities...It also condemned a range of racially discriminatory legislation, including the pass laws. This approach was informed by the view outlined in The International in October 1915 that:"…an internationalism which does not concede the fullest rights which the native working-class is capable of claiming will be a sham …"

There is also no doubt that the International Socialist League’s anti-racism — a central part of its revolutionary industrial unionist creed — alienated many white workers and the organization faced increasing levels of violence and harassment....

...Indian Workers’ Industrial Union “on the lines of the I.W.W.” in Durban. The Industrial Union organized in a number of industries, including printing, tobacco, laundry and the docks. It also reportedly attracted waiters, mineworkers and the “sugar slaves” of the plantations...

The new union — the first trade union for African workers in South African history — was initially named the I.W.W., or the “Industrial Workers of the World,” ...The union’s name was slightly modified on October 11, 1917, to the “Industrial Workers of Africa,”

A leaflet prepared by a committee of two International Socialist League and two Industrial Workers of Africa members in October 1917, and issued in Zulu and Sesotho in a print run of 10,000 copies:

LISTEN, WORKERS, LISTEN!

Workers of the Bantu race: Why do you live in slavery? Why are you not free as other men are free? Why are you kicked and spat upon by your masters? Why must you carry a pass before you can move anywhere? And if you are found without one, why are you thrown into prison? Why do you toil hard for little money? And again thrown into prison if you refuse to work? Why do they herd you like cattle into compounds? WHY? Because you are the toilers of the earth. Because the masters want you to labor for their profit. Because they pay the Government and Police to keep you as slaves to toil for them. If it were not for the money they make from your labour, you would not be oppressed. But mark: you are the mainstay of the country. You do all the work, you are the means of their living. That is why you are robbed of the fruits of your labour and robbed of your liberty as well. There is only one way of deliverance for you Bantu workers. Unite as workers. Unite: forget the things which divide you. Let there be no longer any talk of Basuto, Zulu, or Shangaan. You are all labourers; let Labour be your common bond....Workers of all lands unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.

See link for the full article

The Online Picket Line

Why unions must set their own agenda in online campaigns
Knee-jerk assumptions undermine working class solidarity

I have been helping organize online campaigns in support of workers’ rights for several years now. The latest campaign I’m helping with concerns Zimbabwe. It supports a call by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions demanding that President Robert Mugabe respect workers rights.

Very few of the campaigns that I have been involved in may be considered controversial – at least they are not usually controversial within the labour movement. When you attack a company like Wal-Mart, everyone on the left has only nice things to say about you.

But campaigns like Zimbabwe and ones we have done in support of trade unionists in Eritrea and Belarus, have generated their fair share of critical comment.

More critical comments have come in about Zimbabwe than any other recent campaign. Despite this criticism, it is still one of the largest and most successful online campaigns I’ve been involved in.

There is only a minority of activists who have an issue with this sort of campaign. What they say, more or less, is: ‘Robert Mugabe, for better or worse, has made enemies of George Bush and Tony Blair. If they and their stooges in the media (CNN and Fox News) say Mugabe is a dictator, therefore Mugabe must be a pretty good guy. Any anyway, didn’t he do some kind of land reform?’

This argument reflects a larger failure of thinking and is a real problem for our movement.

Let’s start with Zimbabwe.

The call for an international online campaign of protest came from the organized working class in Zimbabwe. The only national trade union center in that country is the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).

It has all kinds of critical things to say about the Mugabe regime and as I write these words, it has called its members out in a general strike. Those unions in Zimbabwe are being backed by trade union movements all across Africa - in Nigeria, in Ghana, and above all in South Africa.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has taken a very strong stand in support of the ZCTU and against the Mugabe regime. They have done so for the same reasons that they are also struggling against the tyranny in Swaziland and for the same reasons that they played such a heroic role in the struggle against the apartheid regime in their own country. The South African unions feel so strongly about Zimbabwe that they have broken ranks with their partners in the African National Congress, whose leadership is wavering on Zimbabwe rather than taking a stand.

In other words, among African trade unionists in the front lines of the struggle against poverty, racism, neoliberalism and neo-colonialism, there is near-unanimity on the question of Zimbabwe. If this had happened in any other country, activists would not hesitate to lend their support.

A few years back I was involved in a similar campaign in support of free and independent trade unions in Belarus.These unions were being crushed by Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko. I learned about the issues there not from Belarussian unionists, certainly not from Fox News, but from progressive Russian trade unionists who were concerned that a neighboring country was plunging back into the dark days of Stalinist dictatorship.

Despite this seemingly clear-cut case, I got the occasional angry email from leftists in the West who had a kneejerk reaction – if the Bush administration didn’t seem to like the dictator in Minsk, ipso facto he must be some kind of progressive.

When Eritrea arrested trade unionists and jailed them in a secret prison in Eritrea a year or two ago, I had a number of angry emails from leftists who were vaguely convinced that the Eritrean regime was progressive and could not possibly be arresting innocent trade unionists.

I think that for many of the people who send these kinds of messages, Bush and Fox News are setting their agenda much more than they would like to admit. Rather than form independent judgments based on reading a wide range of media – and online media offers us lots of news that you don’t see on network television – these comrades are simply taking whatever agenda they see coming out of the White House and reversing it. If Bush says black, they say white. They are allowing the corporations and their political representatives to determine their politics. This is nonsense.

During the Cold War, we knew that Western opposition to Stalinism didn’t make the Soviet Union a workers’ paradise. One had to form independent judgments based on what was in the interests of the working class – and not be guided solely by opposing whatever the ruling elite seemed to be supporting.

In the post-Cold War world, we cannot afford to make that error. When workers appeal for our support, we need to look at the concrete situation in their country, and not make our decision based on what we think George Bush or Tony Blair would do.

An injury to one is an injury to all – and that’s true even when the one doing the injuring is no friend of George Bush. These are the ABCs of working class internationalism and they must be repeated from time to time and passed on to the next generation.

Eric Lee

Industrial Worker , journal of the Industrial Workers of the World , May2007

Zimbabwe Workers Struggle

Zimbabwe workers win court case , face violence

A court has dismissed charges against three top officers of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), ruling on March 29 that the government failed to present evidence proving the
union federation had violated "exchange control" regulations to affect the market. ZCTU secretary-general Wellington Chibebe, Elijah Mutemeri and Vimbai Mushongera were involved in an attempt to organize workers in the informal sector by founding a new organization, the Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Economy Associations (ZCIEA). The Zimbabwean police raided its office in 2005.

Informal workers are one of the most widespread but precarious sectors of the Zimbabwean economy. Through the creation of the ZCIEA, the ZCTU had sought to represent these often voiceless workers. Reportedly, the government saw the new organization as a potential rival political party, fomented by the British-based Commonwealth Council of Trade Unions. The British government is one of Zimbabwe’s most outspoken critics in the European Union and Commonwealth and its strong links to Zimbabwe’s labor movement are well known.

The inability of Zimbabwe’s government to prove its case in court and the court’s decision to stand by the law instead of the government’s desire to convict its opposition may signal a weakening of the government’s authority.

In a recent police report, the Zimbabwean police also complain about the judiciary’s independence and unwillingness to support the government’s repression of the opposition. The police has "no support from the judiciary who continue to either release accused persons on either free or make them pay very small bail, allowing them to go out and continue with their illegal activities," according to the report.

Police violence dogs "Stay-Away"

Zimbabwe’s government and paramilitary supporters used threats,intimidation, violence, kidnapping and murder to fight the April 3rd and 4th stay-away general strike called by the Zimbabwean trade union congress. Unknown assailants kidnapped one teachers’ union officer who remains missing, while others beat a television cameraman to death. The government is now demanding that all companies that did close their doors justify their actions in writing.

Preliminary reports say that the stay-away was not as successful as the opposition had hoped for. However, the ZCTU points out that, considering the widespread intimidation that prevailed, the level of participation in the action was impressive.

President Robert Mugabe, once hailed as the country’s liberator from colonialism, has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980. It is now in an economic and political tailspin. Mugabe blames Zimbabwe’s current crisis on his domestic opposition and on foreign interference. Despite the dire situation, the ruling party has already confirmed Mugabe as its presidential candidate for the 2008 elections.

An opposition movement for change formed in 1999, but has failed so far to mobilize enough popular support to force Mugabe out of power. Its activists have faced systematic police harassment and brutality.

May 2007 issue of the Industrial Worker , journal of the Industrial Workers of the World