UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, JOHANNESBURG
 HISTORY WORKSHOP
 STRUCTURE AND EXPERIENCE IN THE MAKING OF APARTHEID
 6 - 1 0 February 1990
 AUTHOR: Stuart Coupe
 TITLE: Apartheid and Secondary Industry : The Productivity
 Debate, 1955 - 1965
 RiCANA
APARTHEID AND SECONDARY INDUSTRY: THE PRODUCTIVITY DEBATE
 (with particular reference to the Witwatersrand)
 This paper is a preliminary outing in a proposed general
 history of South African industrial relations in the period 1956
 to 1979. Although the emphasis is on the development of new
 managerial strategies and practices with regard to industrial
 labour requirements, the period covered is that of 'high
 apartheid', after the Nationalist party's grip on the state was
 firmly consolidated and before it adopted the language of reform.
 It was a period during which measures central to the creation and
 maintenance of apartheid were designed to control and subordinate
 the black working class according to the "traditional labour
 pattern of society"1 in all regions of the country.
 Legal and administrative instruments created to affect the
 pattern of labour utilisation in industry included influx con-
 trol, labour preference and racially discriminatory industrial
 relations institutions; mainly adaptations and refinements of
 long standing methods of labour regulation. Employers tried to
 stamp their own interests on these policies, favouring some
 aspects and rejecting others in accordance with their company
 philosophy, the type of labour required, or as Luckhardt and Wall
 put it, "the unwritten laws of capital accumulation".2 Whites as
 a whole and Afrikaners in particular made tremendous economic
 progress as a result.3 This tended to undermine the little non-
 racial class consciousness which had existed amongst white work-
 ing men and women.
 The fighting tradition of the Garment Workers Union of South
 Africa during the 1930's and 1940's have been celebrated at pre-
 vious History Workshop Conferences.4 The academic collective for
 1- S-tax, 26/9/56. Report of speech by Senator de Klerk, Minister
 of Labour to Congress of the Afrikaanse Taal en Kultuurvereniging
 in Maritzburg. "It will be the Afrikaner's calling in the in-
 dustrial world to develop the traditional relationship between
 White and non-White and to perpetuate it in the field of labour".
 2. K. Luckhardt and B. Wall, Organise....nr Starve! The history
 of thfi South African Congress nf Trnrlei Unions. London, 1980: "No
 law forces employers to break strikes, import scab labour from
 the reserves or invite Special Branch police to victimise the
 workers".
 3. Statistical proof of this is given in J. Lazar, Conformity and
 Conflict. Afrikaner Nationalist Politics.1948-61. D.Phil, Oxford
 University, 1987, Chapters 4 and 5.
the 1987 Conference in the preface to the recently published
 selection of papers from that Conference call for the history of
 the white working class to be examined in its wider context.
 Should not our commitment to research with an
 independent agenda lead us to look at the
 rest of this working class and confront
 audiences with its peculiar and unpalatable
 character?5
 The opportunity presents itself now to rise to this chal-
 lenge by discussing the extent of white working class commitment
 to and support for apartheid. This will be attempted through an
 analysis of workplace situations; the conflicts and debates sur-
 rounding employers' attempts to increase the productivity of
 South African industry by altering the racial division of labour.
 This conceptual framework relies on the Marxian labour process
 studies of South Africa by Lewis, Webster and Crankshaw.6 They
 acknowledge that it is wrong to assume that industrial relations
 proceeded in a vacuum unaffected by wider political and ideologi-
 cal movements in the wider society, but inevitably given the
 parameters of their approach, leave this dimension relatively un-
 explored. To quote Crankshaw,
 The factors which do determine trade union
 strategy include a variety of non-class
 relationships such as the supply of labour,
 the form of the state, the organisational
 structure of the trade unions, the relation-
 ship between the leadership and the rank and
 file,and trade union ideology. This form of
 explanation [i.e. labour process] is able to
 specify how the relations of production set
 the parameters of trade union strategy
 without excluding the determining role of
 other social relationships.7
 4. e.g. Elsabe Brink's play, Factory Vrouens. compiled from plays
 written and produced by working women.
 5. T. Lodge, P. Bonner, D. James and I. Hofmeyr,(ed), Holding
 Their Ground. Johannesburg, 1989, p.iv.
 6. J.Lewis.Indnstrialisation and Trade Union Organisation in
 South Africa. Cambridge, 1983. E. Webster. Cast in a Racial
 Mould. Johannesburg,1985. 0. Cranhshaa.Traria Union Strategy and
 the Labour Process.TUCSA Trade Unions in the Transport and Build-
 ing Industries. M.A.Thesis, Wits, 1989.
 7. Crankshaw.OP. cit... p. 10.
Whilst Lewis' thesis is that it was the "process of in-
 dustrialisation which produced a fractured working class"8 he
 nevertheless concludes that, in the Garment Workers Union in the
 1950 's,
 Whilst the occupational structure made pos-
 sible continued non-racial alliance, politi-
 cal and ideological traditions determined
 the form of this alliance.8
 Thus the racial segregation of branches of the union and of
 workplaces has to be explored in terms of these political and
 ideological traditions, rather than arguing that the fragmenta-
 tion of the South African working class was simply the strategy
 of a divide and rule by the 'ruling class'. The relationship be-
 tween the state ,the broad range of capitalist interests and the
 working class is a matter for empirical investigation.
 Bones of Contention: Influx Control and Job Reservation.
 Representatives of industry continually laid the charge that
 the Nationalist government was interfering unnecessarily in an
 otherwise harmonious working environment. The government was ar-
 tificially protecting the white worker whilst at the same time
 protecting Africans with Section 10 rights through influx control
 (the Urban Labour Preference Policy) Thus establishment of viable
 manufacturing enterprises was, according to industrialists, ham-
 pered by various problems related to productivity of labour. In
 April 1958 Federated Chamber of Industries President Charles
 Marx, addressing fellow industrialists noted;
 It is already evident that the influx control
 regulations are causing the Natives to make
 demands that they never envisaged two or
 three years ago. They know that if they lose
 one job they will be sent to another. To add
 to the problem of this control induced labour
 shortage, employers are also finding that Na-
 tives refuse to work overtime Job reser-
 vation and Influx Control have a similar
 result. If hitherto happy employer-employee
 relationships are upset by regulations for
 which employers are not responsible and which
 they cannot ameliorate, it will be well nigh
 8. Lewis, OE... cit. . plO.
 9- liaid., P. 148.
impossible to deal with that aspect of the
 productivity complex which is now becoming
 the weak link in our economy.10
 As Posel's research shows Influx control policy in practice
 had a series of unintended consequences -11 The point made by
 Marx on the breakdown of labour discipline amongst Africans was
 amplified by another FCI officer, Mr C.P.C.Barclay, at a meeting
 of the Institute of Administrators of Non-European Affairs. It
 confirms Posel's conclusion that secondary industry in the 1950's
 demanded a differentiated labour supply with a definite bias
 towards raw' migrant labour prepared to work for the low wages
 offered.
 Today's Native eschews physical labour;
 economics may force the urban Native to do
 this type of work but it is not long before
 he hears of other less strenuous jobs and
 leaves. We fully realise that a surplus of
 Natives in urban areas brings about crime and
 other evils but where surpluses exist the Na-
 tives will usually be found to be urban Na-
 tives and not rural types. The latter are ab-
 solutely essential to fill such vacancies in
 heavy type of work... Urbanised Natives in
 these industries realise their indispen-
 sability and. become insolent. They even tell
 their foremen what work they are prepared to
 do and what not.12
 One state initiative pressed for by the FCI to deal with the
 latter was a government initiative to enforce labour discipline
 on township youth. The FCI's official journal, The Manufacturer,
 explained,
 Juveniles in urban areas especially if they
 have undergone periods of unemployment after
 leaving school ... in many instances have
 proven absolute menaces to the smooth running
 10. Industry and Trade. May 1958, p. 40 , The adverse effect on
 production of influx control and job reservation was a common
 theme, especially amongst Transvaal Industrialists.
 11. D.B. Posel, Infjnx Control and the Construction of
 Apartheid. 1949-63,, Unpub. D.Phil, Oxford University, 1988, pp.
 326-330.
 12. Transvaal Intermediate Archive, West Rand Administration
 Board records, 219/1/3, vol. 1, IANEA, Transvaal Divisional Com-
 mittee Meeting, 21/10/58.
of a factory...Potentially at least, urban
 Native juveniles form a labour pool of the
 best possible type of labour; they are not
 subject to disabilities and because of better
 schooling in the urban areas their adapt-
 ability and understanding of machine methods
 is much greater....Training to be given to
 the inmates of the Camp would be partly tech-
 nical and partly (of the utmost importance)
 disciplinary, social and moral in
 character.l3
 A Department of Bantu Affairs Report detailing the estab-
 lishment of new "Youth Camps' noted that "provision has long
 since been made for adult unemployed, either by sending them back
 to their home areas if they refuse to accept work, or by sending
 them to work colonies where an attempt is made to rehabilitate
 them".14 Thp Mnnnfactnrer welcomed the establishment of the cor-
 rective training camp at Elandsdoorn, 125 miles from Johannes-
 burg, to which 'won't works' could be committed for two years,
 "the threat of which has already assisted a number of Native
 juveniles to become more work conscious".15 However the content
 of the scheme was a grave disappointment in that "camp activities
 are of a predominantly agricultural nature".16
 The need for a growing pool of trained, competent and
 "discplined' labour, alongside the usual complement of unskilled
 migrants was considered crucial if South African industry was to
 make the transition to mass production manufacturing. This in-
 volved tumultuous changes in the division of labour which had to
 be fought out in particular with the various constituencies in
 the registered trade union movement.
 Judging by employers' rhetoric, the efficiency and produc-
 tivity of the white worker were entering a terminal decline in
 the late 1950s. The FCI blamed an unfree market in labour for
 this malaise.
 Much has been said about the slackness of the
 white worker....he need assume no respon-
 sibility and should the employer have cause
 13. The Manufacturer, March 1957, Report by C.D.C. Bain,
 Secretary, Non-European Affairs'.
 14. Department nf Bantu Administration and DRVRInpment Report.
 1958-a, UG51/1960, p. 24, 'Youth Camps'.
 15. The Manufacturer. November 1957, Report by C.D.C. Bain.
 16.
to reprimand him he merely resigns his posi-
 tion, secure in the knowledge that it is easy
 to find other employment. Unfortunately com-
 petition can only come from the very people
 apartheid is trying to debar: the non-
 European . 1 7
 Again it was the response of young workers which was singled
 out for particular attention.
 The youth of today can command virtually any
 reward without necessarily possessing either
 the qualifications or the application to
 their jobs which such rewards demand.16
 . Afrikaner youth were admonished at the 1957 national con-
 gress of the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut.
 Do not speak of the Native and the immigrant
 problems. We have only one problem- The lazi-
 ness of the Afrikaner people. The young
 Afrikaner of today is not prepared to use el-
 bow grease.1S
 A West Rand schoolteacher, Mr A.H. Uys, concluded from his
 own survey that there was general dissatisfaction among employers
 throughout South Africa with the character of their young white
 employees. He was told by "an employer" that if it were not for
 the law "which made it obligatory to employ Europeans he would
 employ Natives".20
 Perhaps these complaints about slack workers and lazy youth
 are perennial, but they reached a fever pitch as the effects of
 apartheid on the labour market became obvious. Saamtrek. the
 SATUC newspaper, noted the "veritable crop of accusations of in-
 efficiency, indolence and laziness".21 The white trade unionists
 whose members were under attack, rather than denying the charge,
 contended that the problem was essentially a political one.
 17. Industry and Trade. January 1956, p. 37, Address given by
 E.A. Wakeley-Smith of the Transvaal Chamber of Industries in
 December 1955.
 18. The Manufacturer. March 1957, Editorial, p. 5.
 19. Star. 26/9/57.
 20. Star, 8/7/58.
 21. Saamtrek. 5/10/56, Editorial.
 6
What exactly do the government think they are
 preserving when they shelter the European
 workman from any competition from the non-
 European in skilled trades? Do they really
 think that we who live in South Africa and
 are aware of the real situation, aware of the
 inefficiency which pervades all departments
 of life today, aware of the sloven-liness of
 the work executed will swallow the story of
 job reservation in order to preserve
 "standards of living". It would be more
 honest to tell the truth, that job reserva-
 tions are there to ensure a contented elec-
 torate of workers who enjoy a privileged
 position because of the colour of their
 skin.22
 A truth which, considering the policies of the unions them-
 selves, most of the registered trade union movement was happy to
 live with!
 Trade unionism and the White worker
 The South African Trade Union Council (known as TUCSA after
 1962) which formed in 1954 in opposition to the Industrial Con-
 ciliation Bill took a very similar line to the FCI, decrying
 government interference, defending the status quo in industrial
 relations. Its constituent unions from both the industrial and
 craft traditions with their commitment to Industrial Council
 agreements felt the government's overt racial protectionism was,
 at the very least, unnecessary. Although the industrial unions
 had an expanding black membership, debates in SATUC invariably
 revolved around how best to protect white living standards. The
 black workers in TUCSA unions were either Coloured or Indian,
 Africans being barred from membership, in the organisation's con-
 stitution. Blacks were only organised into the first instance to
 prevent undercutting, white workers were reassured. The way
 these debates were conducted was greatly infuenced by a desire to
 remain legal and respectable in the prevailing political climate.
 In the discussion on the I.C. Bill at the 1956 SATUC Conference,
 the President T.C. Rutherford admitted that "the great moral in-
 justice to non-white workers has been soft-pedalled" reason being
 that
 We knew that any contention that the non-
 white worker was not getting a square deal as
 far as human rights are concerned would not
 impress the government in the slightest
 degree.23
 22. AEU Monthly Journal. March 1958, Editorial.
In the craft union sector the slogan of "equal pay for
 equal work' was a sham claim to protect the interests of workers
 regardless of race as many union practices, designed to
 frustrate outsiders from qualifying as artisans, gave the
 employers a carte blanche to pay Coloured, Indian and African
 workers at lower grades of work much less. Whites were warned
 not to give blacks de facto access to skilled work.
 More and more of late the leaders of the
 trade union movement have found it necessary
 to appeal to apprentices and young journeymen
 to REFRAIN from passing their knowledge and
 skill to UNQUALIFIED persons by allowing them
 to do the active work while the qualified man
 adopts the role of supervisor.24
 Employers would be tempted to replace them altogether;
 I would like to inform members that it is be-
 coming increasingly common practice for some
 of our members to allow their Natives to do
 the work. If, for some reason or other, the
 members are discharged they then complain.
 This development seriously embarrasses the
 union when investigating dismissals on behalf
 of members concerned.25
 At the operative level the feared process was already well
 advanced in the private sector by 1965, with the "rate for the
 job' declining in one East London firm from R36 a week to R6.50 a
 week.26 Nowhere was the downward pressure on wages more severe
 than in the clothing and textiles sector.(see below)
 A portion of white workers were already solidly behind the
 Nationalist race protection strategy as a result of the intra-
 trade union struggles which began in the late 1930s. Three
 federations which had been formed out of the break up of the
 Trades and Labour Council between 1948 and 1950 catered for these
 23. Saamtrek. 23/3/56.
 24. Saamtrek. 7/10/55, Address to South African Boilermakers
 Society Congress by T.C. Rutherford.
 25. AEU Monthly Journal. August 1960, Report by J. Faure, Na-
 tional Organiser.
 26. Daily Dispatch. 25/3/65, Report from TUCSA Conference, East
 London.
workers, principally white operative and supervisory workers on
 the mines, railways and municipalities where the Industrial Coun-
 cil system did not operate. They were the South African Federa-
 tion of Trade Unions, the Co-ordinating Council of South African
 Trade Unions and the Federal Consultative Council of South
 African Railways and Harbours Staff Associations.27
 These unions responded with militant, sometimes hysterical
 racism to alterations in the racial division of labour. In the
 mining sector the mine workers, reduction workers and engine
 drivers pledged solidarity with their Northern Rhodesian brothers
 on the Copper Belt in their struggle against African Advancement
 policies, "the first engagement in a battle which could spread to
 South Africa".28 Sure enough the mid-1960s they had to confront
 an "alleged manpower shortage"20 i.e. shortage of whites to fill
 reserved posts. The 2000 member South African Engine Drivers and
 Firemens Association spelled out the position of the unions to
 the right of TUCSA.
 Our Associations, catering as they do for
 white operative employees can never consent
 to the suggested solution to the labour
 shortage, knowing as we do that at the first
 sign of depression or even a halt in the
 present expansion, it will be our members who
 will be swelling the ranks of the
 unemployed,with non-white labour firmly
 entrenched. Remember "a job once surrendered
 to non-white labour can never be
 recovered".30
 After 1956 sections of the Nationalist oriented trade union
 movement maintained an expansionary momentum. The amended In-
 dustrial Conciliation Act made it possible for Yster y Staal, an
 organisation with its base amongst ISCOR operatives to apply to
 the Industrial Registrar to make fundamental changes in its scope
 so that it could potentially take in practically every white
 worker in the metal industry.31 Nationalist agitators right up
 27. These unions had a combined membership of 133,000 in 1955
 which went up to 145,000 in 1958; Lewis, op. CM t. . p. 158.
 28. Confederation News. 24/1/55.
 29. The Indicator. January 1965, p. 10.
 30. The Indicator. April 1965, Editorial by Ken du Preez,
 General Secretary.
 31. S-Lsx, 30/11/57.
to Ministerial level were not slow to spot their opportunity as
 the following observations from the General Motors plant at Port
 Elizabeth in 1956 demonstrates.
 1 went through the plant and noticed the high
 degree of racial integration on the job.
 Afrikaner girls doing work a few feet from
 Coloured men who in turn were doing identi-
 cally the same work as Afrikaner men.
 Africans and Coloured were doing the same
 jobs in the same places and were actually in-
 terchangeable in practice. GM says it doesn't
 care about skin colour, it just wants good
 labour. There is in any case an absolute
 shortage of white labour,European labour
 turnover of over 100% as year led the company
 to hire more and more non-Europeans for more
 and more jobs. This led to numerous com-
 plaints by white workers, one so vehemently
 expressed that it brought the Minister of
 Labour Senator de Klerk to the plant. To GM
 officials he seemed to understand their
 problem and offered no specific objections to
 the policy. Yet at a National Party rally in
 Port Elizabeth de Klerk made a rabble rousing
 speech about the threat to European living
 standards and culture etc.32
 The move to organise white workers in Port Elizabeth's motor
 assembly plants sent the alarm bells ringing in SATUC's regional
 office.
 The prime movers seem to belong to Yster y
 Staal from Pretoria. These people are apply-
 ing for job reservation to apply to these as-
 sembly plants .... claiming that the previous
 attempts to organise these workers failed be-
 cause attempts were made to form mixed
 unions. At present the Amalgamated Engineer-
 ing Union and the Motor Industry Employees
 Union have the matter in hand because it af-
 fects them more than anyone else. I have sug-
 gested to the MIEU that they organise a ?
 Coloured section, at any rate to prevent them
 becoming organised by the wrong people.33
 32. University of the Witwatersrand Archive, Prof. L.H. Samuels
 Papers, 6.6, Unpublished paper on the South African Bureau of Ra-
 cial Affairs by E.S.Munger, Stellenbosch, March 1956, p. 8.
 33. Church of the Province of South Africa Archive, William Cul-
 len Library, University of the Witwatersrand, Records of the
 10
In fighting a rearguard action against Y & S the craft
 unions abandoned much of the widely vaunted struggle against the
 Industrial Conciliation Act, dragging the established trade
 union further to the right.
 T.C. Rutherford presided over this policy orientation in the
 early years of SATUC;
 The tragedy of the movement in this country
 is that a large proportion of our members,
 and even a number of leaders in the Movement,
 comprise people who have been driven off the
 land. They still retain the innate conser-
 vatism of the people of the land and prefer
 to rely on the promises of the capitalists of #'
 their own language and cultural ,lj-
 groups....They remain part of the movement, **
 and due consideration must be given to their
 views, even at some considerable sacrifice on
 the part of the rest of us in the "*
 meantime... .We must cultivate the confidence
 of of our inexperienced but nevertheless im-
 portant group of colleagues, by heeding their
 ultra-conservative traditions.34
 It seems that this conciliatory approach met with little or
 no success. The government patronised and encouraged their sup-
 porters in the trade union movement and held conservative craft
 unions at arms length for offering opposition, however loyal, to
 the proposed amendment of the Industrial Conciliation Bill. The
 Amalgamated Engineering Union's response, for example, was hardly
 confrontational. In applying for an exemption to retain its small
 coloured membership in the Cape, the General Secretary wrote that
 "the amendment of our constitution to conform to the requirements
 of the new Industrial Conciliation Act is receiving our attention
 and it has already been decided that from a given date, no Non-
 European applicants will be accepted into membership".35 Yet not
 Trade Union Council of South Africa, Part Two, 1955-86, Eastern
 Province Region, Mr Ledger, Eastern Province Regional Organiser
 to Hartwell, Gen. S e c , SATUC, 20/8/59.
 34. CPSA, WCL, Records of the Iron Moulders Society, Minutes of 1
 the 11th Biennial Meeting, 2/12/55, Official Opening, p. 5. '
 35. CPSA, WCL, TUCSA 2, Dal, E.H. McCann, Gen. S e c , AEU to Sen.
 de Klerk, Minister of Labour, re: Industrial Conciliation Act No. '
 28 of 1956, 13/8/57.
 11
only did the union have an official, Vic Syret, banned under the
 suppression of Communism Act for acting as Secretary to the
 'Non-European Metal Workers' Joint Committee',36 but found the
 Department of Labour was allowing Y and S to encroach onto its
 organising terrain. The appointment of Y and S officials L.J van
 den Berg and J.A. Kruger to the National Apprenticeship Board was
 considered a particular affront as "neither of them has served an
 apprenticeship, and they represent a union which caters for
 employees in occupations which are mainly unskilled, and at the
 most the Union's potential membership of apprentices could be no
 more than 80". 3?
 A protest to the dept of labour concerning the erosion of
 SATUC members'representation on state bodies earned only a savage
 and sarcastic.rebuke.
 The government will not allow its policy on
 labour matters to be formulated for it by an
 organisationwhich speaks for only a minority
 of workers... Your council is only one of
 four trade union federations which the
 Department consults from time to time on mat-
 ters affecting workers.38
 Perhaps to strengthen its hand against this kind of
 criticism, SATUC cautiously tried joining the other three federa-
 tions to form the South African Confederation of Labour in Oc-
 tober 1957. However the consensus within the SATUC NEC was to
 give only nominal commitment to the new body which contained hos-
 tile elements.39 Dulcie Hartwell and Johanna Cornelius picked out
 Gert Beetge as a dangerous opponent. At the time Beetge was
 launching the White Building workers'Union in direct opposition
 to the craft unions in the building industry. He had been ex-
 pelled from the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers in 1950 for
 witchhunting 'communists' in the wake of the Suppression of Com-
 munism Act. An implacable Afrikaner nationalist, later a founder
 36. Saamtrek. vol. 123, 7/1/55.
 37. CPSA, TUCSA 2, Dal, File 1, Ralph Budd, Chairman and Pro-tem
 secretary, AEU, to Dulcie Hartwell, Gen Sec, SATUC. 13\10\55.
 The majority of Y and S members were production machine opera-
 tives; it is of interest that Budd refers to them as unskilled,
 as the usual designation of this work was 'semi-skilled'. It is
 difficult to disentangle an objective definition of skill from
 this ideologically charged work situation.
 38. CPSA, WCL, TUCSA 2, Da60, J. Hannah, Secretary for Labour to
 Hartwell, 16/2/57.
 39. CPSA, WCL, TUCSA 2, Cal.l, NEC Meeting September 1957.
 12
member of the Herstigte Nasionale Party as well as passionate
 trade union organiser, Beetge made a particularly unpleasant bed-
 fellow for any union with black members.40 Any advantages gained
 greater trade union unity were soon outweighed by pressure from
 the other affiliates to remove the right of veto of constituent
 bodies. Fearful of being bound by pro-government sentiment SATUC
 withdrew in early 1958.41
 The Industrial Unions
 For SATUCs industrial unions, negotiations over wages and
 conditions in Industrial Councils were the mainstay of union ac-
 tivity. Faith in this bureaucratic style of trade unionism was
 strong amongst even affiliates of steadfastly non-racial South
 African Congress of Trade Unions. The Natal based Textile Workers
 Industrial Union argued;
 The Industrial Council can do great things.
 We want more money and the bosses want more
 profit. But we sit down and discuss these
 problems. There is a good atmosphere at our
 talks. Let us fight like gentlemen here and
 have a cup of tea after the meeting.42
 Only a savage wage cutting campaign, initiated in person by
 Philip Frame as Chairperson of the Industrial Council in 1957,
 gave momentum to a campaign for democratisation and exposed .the
 failure of the established system to offer any protection from an
 assault on black workers' living standards.43
 In the clothing industry in the late 1950s all the forces
 described were at work. Attention was focussed on the industry by
 the attempt of the Minister of Labour, Senator Jan de Klerk to
 enforce Section 77 of the Industrial Conciliation Act despite the
 opposition of both parties to the Industrial Council. De Klerk
 was part of a clique of Nationalist leaders who had cut their
 political teeth on the Rand as party organisers for whom an unam-
 biguosly racist appeal had brought the fruits of success. Rob
 Davies44 and Dan O'Meara45 stress the importance of economic
 40. Interview with Gert Beetge, by Suzanne Gordon, 13/6/86.
 41. Lewis, OP. cit.. p. 158.
 42. Rob Lambert, Political Unionism in South Africa. the South
 African Congress of Trade Unions. 1955-65. Unpub. Ph.d., Univer-
 sity of the Witwatersrand, 1969, p. 295.
 43. UdA, pp. 298-314.
 44. Rob Davies, Capital. State and White Labour in South
 Africa.1900-1960. Brighton, 1979
 13
issues in cheir account of the defeat of the United Party-Labour
 Party axis in 1948, but this was inextricably infused with an ap-
 peal to an exclusive Afrikaner identity. Du Pisanie, the MP for
 Germiston elected in 1948 explicitly rejected the 'bread and but-
 ter" approach to white working class politics.
 I asked [the workers] what they could pos-
 sibly gain by only concentrating upon money
 and so-called other benefits... while at a
 given moment they are robbed of their
 nationhood, their national pride, their white
 skin and their Christian religion.46
 However in the struggle over job reservation in the clothing
 industry this approach went sour and the contradictory class com-
 position of the Nationalist movement was temporarily exposed.
 TJlfiL Clothing Industry: A Guinea Pig for Jnh Reservation
 The situation in the clothing industry on the Rand became
 extremely volatile as low wage zones emerged beyond the jurisdic-
 tion of the Industrial Council. Production in these areas was to
 be based entirely on non-union African labour. Clothing manufac-
 turers were gained exemption from the terms of the Industrial
 Council agreement; it was possible for companies to apply direct
 to the to the Department of Labour despite the opposition of the
 Council.47 Central to the clothing industry controversy was the
 successful application of Vekawerksklerefabriek for exemption. It
 was widely publicised that the directors of Vekawerksklerefabriek
 were leading Nationalists, champions of the white workers'
 cause48.
 The Department supported Veka's application for exemption
 for its Standerton factory in 1954 and listed disadvantages of
 situating in the area.
 45. Dan O'Meara, VolkskapitaHsme. Cambridge, 1983.
 46. Star, 6/9/52.
 47. CPSA, WCL, Records of the Garment Workers Union of South
 Africa, Bch8, Uncontrolled Areas, Secretary for Labour to Acting
 Secretary, Industrial Council for the Clothing Industry, Trans-
 vaal, 15/12/54
 48. House of Assembly Debates, 6-10 June 1955, pp. 7147-7259.
 14
The employer has to rely on the services of
 natives between the ages of 13 and 20 years
 because the older natives treat work in a
 clothing factory with contempt. He states
 that the'youth have very little sense of
 responsibility with the result that your
 production is very low during the first few
 years of training.49
 Looking back however Mr. A.J.J.Wessels, the Managing Direc-
 tor cited very different difficulties encountered in the training
 and supervision of black workers.
 The problem of the trainer foreman was at
 first made more difficult by the general at-
 titude of the white towards the non-white. As
 a matter of fact this problem was the
 greatest of all. Instinctively and uncon-
 sciously the white foreman resented the ad-
 vent of the new worker. It took years to sur-
 mount this difficulty. Colour consciousness
 one has to accept as part of our social
 heritage; but colour discrimination cannot be
 allowed to perpetuate if one is serious about
 the building of an efficient workforce.50
 The the Garment Workers Union administered a parallel union
 for African women led by Lucy Mvubelo. The following extract from
 a report by that union on conditions at Veka in 1955 reveals that
 foremen were engaged in abuses far too systematic to escape
 management attention, which contrasted sharply with Wessels'
 stated efficiency norms.
 Workers clock on, and if they are late they
 are flogged by means of machine belts. Whip-
 ping is done by the European
 supervisors....Women workers also get the
 thrashing from these male supervisors. The
 employer had informed the wage board that he
 paid aid for some workers, but, I would state
 that these boys are living in a hovel, an old
 bioscope with broken windows and doorless.51
 49. CPSA, WCL, GWU, Bch8, Sec. for Lab. to Acting S e c , Ind.
 Council for Clothing Ind., Tvl., 15/12/54.
 50. National Management and Development Foundation, Conference on
 The Economics of Increased Bantu Wages And Productivity, an ad-
 dress by Mr. A.J.J. Wessels, 3/10/61.
 51. CPSA, WCL, GWU, Bch8, Garment Workers Union of African Women,
 Report of the Visit to Charleston and Standerton, 17/11/55.
 15
In 1958 women from the Veka Factory wrote to the- Garment
 Workers union of African Women "in distress". A newly employed
 white supervisor had persecuted and assaulted a 15 year old girl,
 who had been working in the factory for two years, for alleged
 faulty sewing. The other sixteen women in the workteam followed
 the girl outside in sympathy, only to find themselves immediately
 locked out and arrested. The ensuing court case, in which the
 women were being defended by Oliver Tambo, had already cost over
 100 pounds. Asking for financial solidarity the women added that
 "we live in a very poor community and as you have heard we are
 only paid 15 shillings a week which is not enough to buy food for
 ourselves, let alone maintaining a family".52
 The "unfair competition" from uncontrolled areas resulted in
 an exodus of clothing factories from the Witwatersrand, despite
 the fact that the Garment Worker's Union had acceded to wage
 reductions for beginners to levels prevailing in the Cape.sa
 The position of the Germiston based Nationalists in the
 ranks of the Garment Workers Union who had campaigned against the
 leadership of Anna Scheepers and Johanna Cornelius was completely
 undermined by the rapid collapse in size of the Transvaal cloth-
 ing industry, which simultaneously reorientated itself towards
 black labour. Both factions had in 1956-7 mobilised through meet-
 ings, marches and work stoppages. Du Pisanie, the mentor of the
 Nationalist garment workers, urged the immediate implementation
 of recommendations of the Industrial Tribunal, which were soon
 overturned in a court case brought by the Garment Workers Union
 of the Western Province.54 Of all the representatives who were
 called to give evidence, only the Germiston branches of the GWU
 supported the racial demarcation of tasks.55 Members there were
 hostile to the entry of coloured women into the industry. Du
 Pisanie told a meeting of 150 workers in late 1957
 52. CPSA, WCL, GWU, Bch8, E. Dlamini, M. Nyandeni and E. Ndlovu
 to Lucy Mvubelo, 16/4/58.
 53. Germistnn Advnnats, 7/9/56.
 54. CPSA, WCL, GWU, Bch3.1, Verbatim report (Afrikaans) by J.
 Coetzer of a meeting of white Garment Workers, Market Hall, Ger-
 miston, 4/12/57
 55. Report by the Industrial Tribunal to the Hon. Minister of
 Labour on Reservation of Work in the Clothing Industry, 2/10/57,
 pp. 25-6
 16
It is a blessed scandal, it is a really mean
 thing for leaders to do to reduce workers
 wages. They sold the workers to the bosses.
 They do their utmost to chase out whites and
 replace them with coloureds. They have failed
 because you, the white workers of
 Germiston,did not play ball... The demarca-
 tion of work will remain. The law on apart-
 heid will be carried out in all industries.66
 Scheepers and Cornelius went to considerable lengths to pla-
 cate white prejudices without jeopardising their overall control
 of the union. Pre-empting the passage of the Industrial Concilia-
 tion Bill, the segregrated branches of the Union were changed
 into constitutionally separate unions bound together in a Federal
 structure.67 They also steadfastly followed up reports of
 breaches in factory segregation.58
 Du Pisanie's crusade to save white women workers from the
 followers of "Stalin, Lenin and Sachs"59 peaked at a time when
 white production workers were a dying breed in the industry. By
 1959 attendance at meetings had swollen to 2-3,000 as unemployed
 white garment workers, though still government supporters, vented
 their fury at. Minister de Klerk's failure to safeguard their
 jobs.60 In the boom of the 1960s new avenues of employment opened
 to white women and the job reservation agitation faded into noth-
 ing.
 Change in State -Capital Relations. Style or Content?
 Organised industry and the Nationalist government, although
 both elements of the ensemble of ruling forces in South African
 society, had a particularly uneasy relationship during the
 premierships of Strydom and Verwoerd.Afrikaans-speaking
 capitalists, as recipients of government patronage, were largely
 an exception, although in the heat.of the 1960 Emergency the
 Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut put its name to a memorandum from all
 the main employers organisations calling on Verwoerd to address
 "Native grievances".61 The older established English-speaking
 56. CPSA, WCL, GWU, Bch3.1, Verbatim report...
 57. Rand Daily Mail. 20/4/56.
 58. CPSA, WCL, GWU, Bch4, Job Reservation, Second Meeting of the ?
 Provisional Central Executive of the Garment Workers Union of [i
 European Employees, 19/5/56.
 59. CPSA, WCL, GWU, Bch3.1, Verbatim Report
 60. Star. 24/3/59, Rand Daily Mail. 11/4/59, 24/4/59.
 17
business sector developed its own style of liberal rhetoric, a
 current of thinking reflected in influential liberal academic
 publications of the time. Whilst highlighting the injustice in-
 volved in racist white labour practices this view played down or
 ignored the stake of the mining industry in particular in the ra-
 cial oppression of Africans. South African Industry and Trade's
 Editor at the time Ralph Horwitz portrayed Sovernment Ministers
 with entertaining invective, as racist monsters whose ignorance
 of and disregard for economic laws was having a catastrophic ef-
 fect on South African industry.62 A readership survey revealed
 that of a total readership of 18 to 20,000 executives throughout
 industry, 97% reviewed the Editorial coverage favourably83.
 Public criticism of Government policy by captains of in-
 dustry reached a peak in the months after the Sharpeville mas-
 sacre and the assumption of Emergency powers to repress popular
 mobilisations organised by the PAC and the ANC. Afrikaners
 within the ranks of principally English speaking employers or-
 ganisations were placed in a difficult position. There was
 little toleration of dissent in the Afrikaner community at this
 time. S.W.J.Liebenberg, a Past Vice president of ASSOCOM wrote to
 the organisation's executive thus:
 There is so little unity these days in any
 sphere of South African life that to destroy
 that which remains would be a sheer act of
 vandalism no other association has
 achieved this either on economic or cultural
 grounds. It is for this reason that I for-
 mally make this appeal to ASSOCOH not to
 destroy that which we in the Afrikaans com-
 munity hold so dear...Those who break into
 the news continuously with no apparent reason
 but to secure publicity and make a nuisance
 of themselves in Government circles surely
 seem incapable of assessing the damage they
 are causing the Association and the embar-
 rassment which Afrikaans-speaking members
 find themselves placed as a result.64
 61. S_tai, 3/6/60, Industry's Plan to Safeguard the Future.
 62. Industry and Trade. Editorials. Particularly August 1954,
 February 1955, April 1955, November 1955, June 1956, August 1956,
 September 1958 and March 1959.
 63. Industry and Tradn. March 1959, p. 47.
 64. Cape Province Archive Depot, Records of Assocom, Executive
 Council, Minutes of Meeting, 17/10/60.
 18
In fact this reponse reveals a degree of hypersensitivity as
 speakers at employers gatherings often couched their arguments
 purely economic terms and claimed to be avoiding party politics.
 As the sixties wore on there was an absolute decline in direct
 criticism of Government policy both in management journals and on
 public occasions, but this can only partly be attributed to the
 faster economic growth cutting the ground from under the feet of
 earlier arguments. The confrontational approach to government had
 proven counterproductive and inflamed white sectionalism as the
 letter quoted above suggests. Moreover the electoral trend in the
 Republic was consolidating rather than reversing the political
 hegemony of the Nationalist party. The Transvaal Chamber of In-
 dustries reorientated its approach to Goverment to the extent
 that in 1971 a circular was imbued to reassure members that ef-
 fective lobbying of Government was continuing.
 The Physical Planning and Utilisation of
 Resources Act and the early concepts of In-
 dustrial Decentralisation the effects of
 which had a particularly deleterious impact
 on industries in the Pretoria\Witwatersrand\
 Vereeniging Industrial complex have always
 been a subject with which the TCI as well as
 the FCI were deeply involved...The Industrial
 Planning Committee researched the whole sub-
 ject very thoroughly and made a series of
 submissions...The silence on the part of the
 Chambers may well have led to the belief that
 there was a lack of activity in this conten-
 tious sphere but, in actual fact, nothing
 could be further from the truth.65
 The Physical Planning Act sought further than any previous
 measure to force employers on the Witwatersrand to use less
 African labour. The Council of Reef Municipalities made represen-
 tations for this legislation to be implemented as early as 1955;
 It was stated that the overall ratio in
 Springs, for example, is 2.7 non-Europeans to
 every European, while in certain industries
 it is 28 to one. The latter type of industry
 causes an unnecessary burden on the local
 authority which has to provide housing for
 the non-Europeans employed.66
 65. Natal Chamber of Industries, documents collection, Transvaal
 Chamber of Industries, Circular to All Members, 20/7/71.
 66. ?i.ai, 6/10/55.
 19
The Act was doomed to failure however because whites were no
 longer interested in the jobs on offer and companies were able to
 battle with the influx control authorities for exemptions.
 Rapidly expanding companies filled the labour gap by employing
 coloureds and Indians, although these workers, having greater
 mobility than Africans, were frequently dissatisfied with the
 conditions of service offered. One Company, Domani Stainless
 Steel (Pty) at Wadeville, Germiston were advised by personnel
 consultants to improve renumeration and co-ordinate their staff-
 ing policy or face continuing chaos on the labour front.67
 By the late 1960s influx control was being enforced with
 draconian rigidity and employers found that there workers were
 being constantly harassed. Management at Stewarts and Lloyds
 (Eagle Tube Works) brought a particularly harsh case to the at-
 tention of other Germiston Industrialists.-
 On 21st November 1967 an employee was sent to
 purchase food 200 yards from the works. He
 was arrested for not being in possession of
 his I.D. without being given an opportunity
 to return with the patrol van to fetch it. He
 had already been sentenced to 90 days or a
 R30 fine when the card was produced in court
 the following morning. A protest lodged with
 the Department of Bantu Administration and
 Development resulted in a warning to the com-
 pany not to dispatch Bantu employees on er-
 rands or face the consequences.68
 Official dissapproval could also take the form of refusal to
 cater for an expanding class of factory workers.
 Mr C.E. Jarvis, of Hume Pipe Co. Ltd. said
 that his company had to recruit an additional
 200 non-European employees who could not be
 accomodated in their compound. He had made
 arrangements through the Non-European Affairs
 Department of Johannesburg City Council to
 accomodate them in Katlehong, but recorded
 that no cooking facilities or other amenities
 were available in the accomodation offered.
 There was no water borne sewerage. Difficulty
 DID exist in recruiting non-Europeans under
 these conditions.ee
 67. NIPR/CSIR C/Pers 184, R.H.Blake (ed), Labour Turnover: An Tn-
 vestiffation. September 1970.
 68. TIA, Town Clerk, Germiston, 492/45/22, Germiston Industries
 Association, Minutes of Monthly General Meeting,' January 1968.
 20
The debate and dispute between the state and private
 capitalist interests remained over a wide range of issues, but
 was conducted at a more discreet level in the 1960s. A further
 reason for this was the emergence of a potentially severe threat
 to the technologically advancing capitalist econdmy; that of in-
 ternational opprobium resulting from the application of apart-
 heid. The threat to foreign investment and contacts upon which
 the whole economy was critically dependant spawned the South
 African Foundation to act as a PR shield deflecting the demand
 for sanctions, from "enemies abroad".
 69. Ibid., September 1964.
 21