government. The same year, it passed
South Africa’s first Industrial Relation Act.
This enshrined an industrial colour bar
and race-based job reservation, higher
“civilised” wages for white workers, and
an industrial conciliation system which
expressly excluded black workers and their
unions.
This reconfiguration of relations
between the state, capital and white labour
saw white workers much more thoroughly
incorporated into the ruling social alliance
than before. But the wages of whiteness
they now enjoyed came at a price: the
1924 Act placed controls on organised
labour, notably by limiting strike action,
and led to the bureaucratisation of trade
unions. White labour was effectively co-
opted into state-controlled structures of
power and the working classes even more
firmly divided along racial lines, diffusing
challenges to the interests of capital.
Workers co-
opted into a
ruling alliance
Is this starting to
sound familiar?
When the
National Party came
to power with its
apartheid policy
in 1948, race-
based policies were
intensified. The
powerful social and
economic engineering
of the state, the
suppression of black
resistance, and steady
economic growth
during the 1950s and
1960s were, in Dan
O’Meara’s words,
“good for every
white’s business”.
Some whites certainly
moved up and out of
the working class.
It was from this view that scholars in
the 1970s concluded that white workers
no longer existed. Yet the actual material
advantage of the NP’s pro-white policies
was spread very unevenly. Apartheid’s
major beneficiaries were a new class of
urban Afrikaner financial, industrial and
commercial capitalists. In fact, the 1950s
and 1960s saw inequality within the white
Afrikaans-speaking population grow.
Blue-collar workers remained a relatively
stable section of the Afrikaner labour force
at around 40%, with about 400,000 or
29% of South Africa’s economically active
white population organised in unions. And
while on the surface it might have been
all bonuses and braais, race-based status
in fact simply masked workers’ class-
based insecurity. Especially, less skilled
white workers or those protected by job
reservation were rendered vulnerable and
dependent on the racial state.
This was dramatically revealed in
the 1970s. Stalling economic growth,
skyrocketing inflation and, from 1973, the
potency of African labour discontent saw
the NP suddenly develop a willingness
to compromise. Then came the Soweto
uprising of 1976, and the reality of labour
turmoil spilling over into the political
sphere. Desperate to forestall this, the
government announced its intention to
reform (even as it sharpened its repressive
tactics).
In July 1977, a commission of inquiry
into labour legislation was appointed to
investigate and make recommendations
regarding all existing labour legislation.
After a protracted process, the Wiehahn
Commission, as it became known,
recommended the scrapping of jobreservation and the legalisation of black
unions.
To be sure, government still sought
to control these unions through tight
regulations. But it had set in motion a
process it could not control. New black
and multiracial unions grew rapidly, and
in 1985 Cosatu was formed and embraced
liberation politics. The balance of power
had been dramatically inverted.What did black unions
mean for white workers?
For white workers, the Wiehahn reforms
marked the withdrawal of state protection
in the labour arena. They stripped away
the veneer of their race-based status
and privilege to expose their class-based
insecurity. Since 1924, their position andidentity had relied on the exclusion of
Africans from the privileges of industrial
citizenship. Labour reform ended this.
Of course, the workplace did not
change overnight. But black workers
started to advance into jobs once reserved
for lesser skilled whites, and training
for skilled work opened up to black
apprentices. Some whites embraced
multiracial unionism, and this was
successful in some industries. But the
majority of established white unions
collapsed as employers opted instead to
bargain with black unions representing
much larger sections of the workforce.
Meanwhile, reform had little impact
on the position of middle-class and
professional whites, and political apartheid
continued. The NP hoped it could restrict
reform to the industrial sphere and
depoliticise the struggle. So it effectively
threw its working-class supporters underthe bus in order to safeguard white rule for
the rest. Of course, the whole scheme in
time proved futile.
To start to answer our opening
question: for white workers, therefore,
1994 was not the turning point –
Wiehahn was. They were confronted with
democratising change more than a decade
before the official end of apartheid. The
redesign of labour relations started to
unravel their privileged position – both
in the workplace and in their relationship
to the state and the broader white body
politic.
Moreover, this coincided with the
introduction of neoliberal policies which
have since impacted white and black
workers alike. Take the example of Iscor.
Amid its economic struggles, the apartheidArrests as the 1922 strike turned into an armed revolt as
22,000 workers challenged the power of mine owners
and the legitimacy of the state that supported them.ANALYSIS