NOTE: I recently found the laid-out print-out of this old piece, which I wrote as an undergrad student. It had been intended for local magazine Unrest, which I co-edited; Unrest later merged into Workers Solidarity. At the last minute, I withdrew the piece and sent in a replacement. I’m not in 100% agreement with all of what I wrote (nor the style), but then again, its from 30 years ago.
Syndicalism on the Rand 1910-1913: The rise and fall of the IWW (SA Section)
Lucien van der Walt (1994, unpublished)
Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might,·
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right
(IWW song )
REVOLUTIONARY UPSURGE
Before 1917, Anarchist, and particularly anarcho-syndicalist (revolutionary anarchist trade unionism) groups and ideas predominated on the revolutionary Left, a fact admitted even by Stalinist historian Hobsbawm.
South Africa was no exception to the global tide of worker revolutionism. Fierce class war regularly took place between workers – black and white – and the boss class.
MILITANT SA UNION
In 1910, the Industrial Workers of the World (South African Section) (IWW(SA)) was established by militant activists. It was an affiliate of the international Industrial Workers of the World, a revolutionary syndicalist body with branches in the United States, Australia, Argentina, Chile, and Sweden.
Growing out of the Industrial Workers Union (IWU), a union for unskilled Whites sponsored by the racist craft unions of the time, IWW (SA) emerged when the craft unions turned their attention to setting up the Labour Party (an affiliate of the Marxist “Second International” )in time for the 1910 Union elections.
Now craft unionism, exclusivism, and reformism were roundly damned by the new revolutionary leadership of the union, who declared for the class war and direct action.
ON THE STREETS
IWW(SA) operated like a union federation, with branches established for workers as diverse as sweetmakers and municipal tram conductors and drivers. It was these tramwaymen who opened up the next phase of struggle, when, in January 1911, they won, with the solidarity of other public [sector] workers, a lightning strike against the Johannesburg City Council.
After the remarkable success of this strike against the appointment of an unpopular work
inspector, the tramway IWW(SA) tramway branch grew rapidly. Perhaps this alarmed the
municipality who reneged on their promises of no victimisation, and set up an enquiry into the dispute. When IWW(SA) organised pickets and boycotts of the hearings, the council responded by arbitrarily firing 2 militant IWW(SA) tramwaymen.
This parked off a general strike by Johannesburg public workers, and huge crowds gathered in the streets in solidarity. Alarmed, the municipality out 4000 mounted and foot policemen, who attacked street gatherings with pickhandles, banned public gatherings with a law from Kruger’s Republic, and used scabs. Despite worker defiance and physical retaliation, the strike was eventually broken.
In 1911 and 1912, however, the fight was not over. IWW(SA) militants bust up election meetings of councillors, using the very pickhandles seized from the police in the streetfights of May. However, there is little record of IWW(SA) after 1912.
LESSONS OF STRUGGLE
But we can still learn from the experiences of IWW(SA). Firstly, IWW(SA) remained small, mostly because it never, in spite of its fierce anti-racism, got round to the black majority of workers. At least some IWW(SA) veterans realised this failing, and helped organise the Industrial Workers of Africa, the first Black trade union in South Africa [in 1917].
We can also learn that the law , which we are supposed to respect and uphold, is the tool of the boss class. For example, the firing of the two workers in May by the municipality violated State industrial conciliation law, but no one arrested or assaulted the councillors. This legal bias remains true today.
REVOLUTION AND UNIONS TODAY
It is a sad fact that the militant unions of the 1980s are becoming increasingly bureaucratic and reformist, instead of democratic and anti-capitalist. Nor has syndicalism re-emerged in the new union movement although the 1980s “workerists” certainly had some syndicalist leanings.
The way forward from this impasse is in our view for anarchists to work amongst the union
rank-and-file to build a revolutionary current in the existing unions where necessary, and to build anarcho-syndicalist structures where possible, notably amongst farmworkers.
Lucien van der Walt 