By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG, July 28 — Barely has a day passed in the last week that the songs and the sound of dancing feet of striking workers has not resounded through the streets of the PWV capital and other major centres. Researchers say that already this month strikes have amounted to 233,000 work days, compared to 63,000 in July last year. In coming weeks the big guns of South Africa's working class movement, the metalworkers and mineworkers, are likely to join the fray.
The militant mood among workers was clear on a bitterly cold Johannesburg morning on July 25 outside COSATU's Braamfontein offices. Thousands gathered for a protest march to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the infamous John Vorster Square police headquarters.
The march, organised by COSATU's PWV region, brought together all those taking strike action in the region. The crowd listened attentively as representatives from each union or workplace outlined their situation and called for solidarity between those in struggle.
Workers murmured their understanding as each speaker explained the details, shouted their outrage as the excesses of management were revealed and laughed loudly as the bosses' stupidities were derided.
The biggest, and most vocal contingent were the Pick 'n Pay workers. They were joined by hundreds of workers from Checkers/Shoprite, Gallo Records and a number of other workplaces.
Workers remain incensed at the behaviour of the police in the first week of the Pick 'n Pay strike. A young Pick 'n Pay worker told the crowd that three workers remained in hospital. "They have been bitten by dogs and one lady has been shot. They said it was a rubber bullet but it was not. Some of our comrades who were arrested are still in jail. Please stay away from Pick 'n Pay. Don't buy at Pick 'n Pay. Don't buy at Checkers/Shoprite. We need your support."
COSATU assistant general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi rejected claims that workers should not fight for their rights because it would undermine "investor confidence". He said workers were demanding a living wage, democratisation of the workplace and an say over how companies are run.
"We are not going to accept an argument that says that in order to have investor confidence, in order to create more jobs for our people, workers should tighten their belts, should accept poverty wages and accept racism from the bosses."
The 7000 striking workers converged on the JSE — "the gambling house of the capitalists" as Chemical Workers Industrial Union organiser John Appollis described it to everyone's amusement — to demand that the employers meet their demands and refrain from using the police against them.
COSATU general secretary Sam Shilowa then spoke. He dismissed claims that strikes undermined the government's Reconstruction and Development Program. On the contrary, he said that the workers were strengthening the hand of government in bringing about change. He said employers did not know what the RDP meant and that apartheid still exists in the workplace. An August 8 PWV stay-away would go ahead if the disputes in the region were not resolved by the end of the month, he said.
Vavi and Shilowa's comments seem to have been related to press reports that morning that quoted Nelson Mandela as saying the recent strikes could frighten away investors and slow down the implementation of the RDP.
The Johannesburg Star quoted Mandela as saying, "Workers of a particular faction have their own interests. They forget that we have 5 million people unemployed. We want them to have jobs, not tomorrow, today. In order for them to have jobs, the RDP must be launched in earnest. We need investment urgently."
Only a week earlier, Mandela had publicly supported workers' right to strike, questioned the use of police in industrial disputes and called on employers to engage in honest and genuine negotiations.
On July 27, the South African Communist Party (SACP) issued a statement rejecting as "self-serving and hypocritical" big business' claims that workers should not strike because it would reduce wealth available for reconstruction.
Big business had "squandered profits for decades" instead of investing productively, the SACP said. "It is extremely unfair to present COSATU workers as an employed elite taking resources away from millions of unemployed. In a country where there is virtually no social security net, it is precisely employed black workers who are supporting millions of unemployed."
The SACP said it was disturbing that some in the ANC leadership echoed views similar to those of big business, and there were "tendencies to demobilise mass participation and to dampen popular expectations on the grounds that these will 'frighten foreign investors away'".
The SACP conceded that "an unending spiral of unrealistic wage demands" would not be economically or socially sustainable, but this was not the case with the current strikes. Redistribution and reconstruction lay at the heart of the strikes, the SACP concluded.