African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers
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Item Stay-aways and the black working class since the second World War : The evaluation of a strategy(1979-04) Webster, E.C.There is a widespread belief, among some who hope for change in South Africa, that if only all Blacks withdrew their labour, the whole structure of South Africa would collapse. It is a subject which has received little academic attention. It is my intention in this paper to examine this notion in three parts.. In Part I a brief history of stay-aways between 1950 and 1961 will be given. In Part II its reemergence in Soweto will be examined. In Part III the limitations of the stay-away as a tactic of working-class action will be discussed and contrasted with the more wide-spread plantbased action of the 1970s. (This is not meant to imply that limitations do not exist in plant-based action.) The Namibian general strike of 1971-2 is excluded from this analysis as its relative degree of "success" demonstrates the uniqueness of that situation - viz. the existence of a reasonably self-sufficient rural base to which striking workers could withdraw. Yet even in Namibia workers could ultimately, says Moorsom, not escape the major contradiction in their strategy "that although access to peasant resources considerably expanded their power to prolong resistance, they could no longer, as a matter of inescapable necessity, opt out of wage-labour indefinitely - the platform of the strike committee embodied a tacit acknowledgement of the irrevocable necessity of wage-labour."Item A profile of unregistered union members in Durban(1978-09) Webster, E.C.The role and potential of trade unions among African workers has moved over the last five years from a peripheral to a central issue in industrial relations in S.A. Government attitudes have changed from a determination to exclude African trade unions by promoting an alternat. in-plant committee structure, to the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation with a clear indication on the part of the Chairman that trade unionism is a right for all workers (1). Some employer associations have chanqed from outriaht hostility to support in principle for the right of African workers to negotiate on the same basis as non-Africans (2). Although the antagonism or indifference of the registered trade union movement continues, the decision of TUCSA in 1973 to allow African trade unions to affiliate, signals a growing awareness among the more far-sighted registered trade union leadership that the future of the trade union movement lies with Coloured and African workers (3). The growing internationalization of industrial relations in S.A. through the publication of employers "codes of conduct" as a response to the increasing pressure on foreign investors to withdraw, is further evidence of this change (4).Item The 1949 Durban 'Riots' - a case-study in race and class(1974-08) Webster, E.C.This paper was written as a response to the somewhat abstract discussions that sometimes take place in university seminars on the relative weight of class, race and ethnicity in explaining human behaviour. It rests on the assumption that conceptual clarification has limited value, unless conceptual analysis is followed by a concrete historical or sociological analysis of a particular social situation. The Durban 'riots' of 1949 was chosen as a case-study because it has been widely used by 'separate development theorists' as an example of the inevitability of conflict between the races, without any attempt being made to relate this conflict to the political economy. This paper is an attempt to develop a theoretical franework that recognizes the embryonic and partial nature of class formation in a 'plural society' through the notion of class 'suppression', but nonetheless attempts to derive a meaningful frame of reference for explaining a class based act. In Part 1 I will introduce the theoretical framework. Part II, III and IV is an attempt to give a portrait of the participants in the riot, analysing their composition, motives and how activity was generated among them. Here a note of caution needs to be introduced. I am still at a tentative stage in my research in two crucial areas; firstly, on the 'consciousness' of the participants I have to date only had access to written material such as newspapers and reports. These sources are a partial perspective - this includes in particular, the official Government Inquiry into the riots. Hopefully I will have a fuller picture when I have extended my data-gathering to interviews of participants. Secondly, I realise that in a crucial area of my argument among the African traders I am still at an early stage of research. Part V tries to place the conflict in a wider perspective of the social structure.