by Guy Arnold
The Anglo empire spread like an octopus over Southern Africa: diamonds and iron ore in Namibia; copper, nickel and diamonds in Botswana; copper in Zambia; diamonds in Angola and Zaïre. In West Africa, gold and diamonds in Ghana and Sierra Leone, while it had other companies throughout the world. Cheap labour in South Africa was the key to Anglo wealth. The homelands and the pass system physically separated the miner from his family, so that he need only be paid enough to cover his own subsistence while his family eked out a marginal existence in the homeland. ‘The apartheid system was created by the white settler community to keep black labour cheap and under control, and to parcel out black labour, and the spoils from its exploitation, among competing white settler demands.’12 By the early 1970s, part of a deliberate policy, less than 25 per cent of the labour in the gold mines was from South Africa. Instead, migrant labour was drawn from the surrounding countries – Malawi, Lesotho, Mozambique and Botswana – since such miners were easier to control than local labour and if they went on strike could always be sent back home. In 1975 the average annual earnings of Africans in mining and quarrying was approximately US$800, compared with US$1,100 in manufacturing. In contrast, white workers earned more in mining than in manufacturing: US$6,600 against US$5,300. But the bottom line, as Oppenheimer was on record as stating publicly, was simply: ‘Black nationalism is a major danger to the unity, security and prosperity of South Africa.’13 For all his progressive talk, Oppenheimer’s interests were best served by the status quo.
EXTERNAL PRESSURES FOR CHANGE
At the beginning of 1971 the US Polaroid Corporation sent a four-man investigating team to South Africa. The Corporation had been criticized for supplying photographic equipment for the production of identity cards carried by black South Africans. A group of employees, calling themselves the Polaroid Workers Revolutionary Movement (PWRM), demanded that all contacts with South Africa should cease. Instead, the Corporation sent a team of two white and two black employees on a 10-day tour of South Africa. As a result of their findings, Polaroid decided that it would no longer trade direct with the South African government, that there had to be a dramatic improvement in salaries and other benefits for non-white employees and that non-whites should be trained for senior jobs. It would also set aside part of its South African profits for non-white education. Polaroid was urged by black South Africans ‘not to walk out’ of the country. One of the consequences of what came to be called the ‘Polaroid experiment’ was that other foreign companies began to pay attention to differentials and to pay better wages to black employees in defiance of apartheid practices. The South African government faced a dilemma. It registered its official anger and alarm that Polaroid should attempt to interfere with its domestic policies but it was no more anxious than employed blacks that the company would withdraw and feared that a wrong move in relation to Polaroid could trigger off a foreign company exodus.14 In Britain, meanwhile, a campaign had been mounted against Barclays Bank DCO for its involvement in South Africa, signalling a new trend in both the United States and Britain where students and activists targeted firms operating in South Africa as supporters of apartheid.
In mid-January 1973 African factory workers in Durban went on strike for higher wages and by 8 February 65,000 African workers in Natal were on strike with 100 factories affected; about 16,000 of the strikers were employed by the Durban City Council. On 6 February 20,000 textile and engineering workers joined the strike and organized protest marches. The police, who until then had refrained from direct action, began to make arrests and use tear gas to disperse the strikers. About 350 strikers were arrested and fined R50 or given 50 days in prison though later R35 or 35 days in prison was suspended for three years. Shortly after the Durban strikes, the government faced a much greater challenge in the form of the Adam Raphael revelations about the low wages paid by top British companies to their black workers in South Africa.
In March 1973 the low wages paid to black workers in South Africa were brought to world notice by the journalist Adam Raphael writing in the Guardian.15 The immediate result of the Raphael revelations was some relatively substantial pay increases for African workers. On the other hand, the actual position of the African urban wage earner remained unchanged. He was without rights or security and hemmed in by discriminatory legislation and customs that were unaffected by the wage increases. Overseas firms, it was clear, could do little to change the laws in South Africa but a considerable amount to alter customs and conventions, which formed a major part of the structure of apartheid. Raphael revealed that the majority of British companies in South Africa were paying substantial numbers of their African workers below the officially recognized subsistence levels. He investigated 100 British companies and showed that in some cases they were paying wages that were low even by South African standards. The minimum subsistence level (Poverty Datum Line – PDL) had been set at £10–£11 a week for an African family of five. This represented the lowest level calculated at which to avoid malnutrition. As a Research Officer for Johannesburg’s Non-European Affairs Department put it, ‘If your income is below the Poverty Datum Line your health must suffer.’ British companies whose subsidiaries were paying below the PDL included such well-known names as Associated Portland Cement, Tate and Lyle, Metal Box, Courtaulds, General Electric, Reed, Chloride Electrical, Associated British Foods and British Leyland. Some companies claimed that the low wages they paid were supplemented by feeding and housing benefits, which were provided free. But Whites Portland Cement (70 per cent owned by Associated Portland Cement) paid an extra 76p a week to workers living outside the Lichtenberg Plant compound while African workers in the plant earned £3 a week. Of the British companies that replied to the (Raphael) investigation, only three – Shell, ICI and Unilever – were paying all their employees above the PDL. No British company was paying over £13 to £15 a week, the figure calculated as the Minimum Effective Level (MEL) needed for an African family to lead a decent life as opposed to the PDL, which did not allow for medicine, education, savings, holidays, furniture, blankets or other similar necessities.
The Raphael revelations provoked reactions ranging from anger and surprise to contrition. Jim Slater of Slater Walker promised an immediate investigation into conditions on the company farms and said he would raise wages. Whites Portland Cement said it wanted to raise wages but could not do so because of the competition situation. Considerable action followed in face of widespread adverse publicity. Chloride Group said it would drop its profits to raise wages. Slater Walker increased wages by 100 per cent and its action led to widespread reforms in the timber industry. Whites increased pay following a South African government increase of £1 a ton in the price of cement. A major debate took place in Britain and 100 Labour MPs signed a motion ‘noting with disgust the low wages paid by British firms’. On 4 April it was decided that a House of Commons Sub-Committee should look into the wages and conditions of African workers employed by British firms in South Africa. The South African government made it clear that the Sub-Committee would not be allowed into the country, even before a formal request had been made. During a foreign affairs debate, Dr Muller, the South African Foreign Minister, said his government was not concerned if British companies wished to improve wages but was concerned when attempts were made to send a parliamentary committee to South Africa to investigate a purely domestic situation. This would be interference in South African affairs.16 Arthur Grobbelaar, general secretary of the Trade Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA), said in reaction to the Guardian report: ‘British companies are no worse than German, American or any other foreign firms. They are all just as bad as, or worse than, South African companies.’ In Bonn a list of 24 German firms in South Africa, alleged to pay their African workers below the PDL, was published. On the whole German firms came off well, but only in comparison with their competitors. In Washington the State Department issued a booklet setting down guidelines for payment to black workers by US firms in South Africa. It advised a wage of a
t least R100 (£57) a month, which was above the PDL and aimed at reaching the MEL. Congress was to be asked to legislate concerning 320 US companies known to pay their black workers in South Africa less than the subsistence level. The Bill was to be introduced by Charles Diggs, the black Democrat Representative who was leading the wages campaign in the US.
This wages row reopened the debate on whether all investment in South Africa should be stopped and existing investments be withdrawn. Pressures to stop or withdraw investments were mounted in Britain by the National Union of Teachers (NUT), Scottish local authorities, the British Council of Churches (BCC) and the WCC Programme to Combat Racism. Chief Buthelezi criticized these advocates of withdrawal and said this was a good way to precipitate revolution. Reg September, the chief ANC representative in Europe, welcomed the campaign for higher wages but said that logically it had to be linked to investment. Helen Suzman objected to investment withdrawal and said: ‘I am certain that the continued economic expansion of South Africa will prove to be the strongest weapon against apartheid.’ According to the Rand Daily Mail 700,000 African workers were promised pay increases averaging R7–R8 extra a month and the largest group to benefit were the 400,000 gold- and coal-mine employees who worked for companies belonging to the Chamber of Mines.17
In May the British House of Commons Trade and Industry Sub-Committee under the chairmanship of the Labour MP William Rogers began hearing evidence from British companies with South African operations on the wages and conditions of their African employees. It was like a roll call of the leading British companies of that era and included Associated British Foods, Associated Portland Cement, Barclays Bank, British Leyland, British Steel Corporation, Consolidated Goldfields Ltd, Dunlop Holdings, General Electric Company, Great Universal Stores, ICI, Marchwiel Holdings Ltd, Metal Box Company, Pilkington Brothers, Rio Tinto Zinc, Slater Walker, Tate and Lyle, Unilever. Marchwiel Holdings (involved in building, civil engineering and coal mining) paid very low wages: R29 a month in construction and R27 in mines for a 50-hour week while its minimum wage for a 59-hour week was R33. African workers for Pilkington at Port Elizabeth were paid between R21 and R65 a week while fringe benefits were worth up to R20 a month. Sir Val Duncan, the chairman of Rio Tinto Zinc, agreed that wage rates could be doubled without any sizeable effect on profits, but added: ‘It is difficult totally to dissociate from the community in which you are operating.’ Wage rates in the Palabora Mining Company in which Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ) held a 39 per cent interest were R346 a month for white workers and R52 for black workers. RTZ assets in Palabora amounted to about 7 per cent of the group’s total invested capital but provided 43 per cent of its total profits in 1969 and 22.9 per cent in 1972. The evidence of company spokesmen varied: Associated Portland Cement blamed price control by government; the lowest wage they paid was R11.04 a week; British Steel was paying 27 cents an hour for a 45-hour week (R12.5). Consolidated Goldfields Chairman Donald McCall blamed the white trade unions for preventing the company paying better wages. Its African workers in Durban were paid R57 a month. Dunlop Holdings claimed it paid all its African male workers above the PDL but not on a family scale. GEC agreed that 25 per cent of its workers were obliged to work a 50-hour week to reach the PDL level. Tate and Lyle’s minimum rate for a factory worker was R43.85 a month; in the agricultural division average monthly earnings ranged from R18.20 for a casual worker to R65 for grade 10 – a handyman or estate clerk. Unilever gave equal pay for equal work and minimum wages were related to the PDL and MEL, and take home pay for all workers, after deductions, was above the PDL. Harry Oppenheimer commented on these wage revelations in the AAC annual report and said that the growth of the South African economy had been held back because productivity and earnings of black workers were ‘artificially held back by lack of training, by an outmoded industrial structure, or by legal prohibitions’. The economy had reached a stage where the ‘improvement of these matters became an urgent need in order to prevent stagnation’. He said that US and British efforts to raise African wages were valuable but South Africans would have to solve their own problems themselves.18 Oppenheimer had a habit of making such comments upon the state of the South African economy and what was wrong with it but did so as though he were an outsider looking in rather than the greatest beneficiary of the system as it existed.
Although the South African government had vetoed a British parliamentary sub-committee visiting South Africa in the wake of the Adam Raphael furore, it said that a British TUC delegation, led by the recently retired General Secretary Vic Feather, could do so. Mr Grobbelaar, the General Secretary of TUCSA, said the main purpose of the visit would be to determine whether change from within the Republic was possible. ‘The TUC’s starting point is that change must come – and if it cannot come from within, the leadership will be under pressure to bring it about from outside.’ This would consist of ‘support for guerrilla movements, determined efforts to ban emigration, arms boycotts and pressure on British industrialists to withdraw their investments might be among the results’. A special opinion poll conducted for the South African Sunday Times revealed that a majority of South African businessmen felt that the introduction of black skilled labour into white areas was essential for the development of the economy and would not threaten the position of white workers. Over 90 per cent of businessmen favoured African workers becoming skilled artisans and only 3 per cent were firmly against. One result of the Guardian campaign for higher wages was that employers said that if they must pay their black workers more they must be allowed to make them more productive; this meant relaxing the colour bar, which was already under pressure. African labour, increasingly, was becoming the dominant factor in the labour market. The ratio of black to white workers was approximately five to one and the gap was growing. Volkshandel, the official organ of the Afrikaanse Handels Institut, which represented Afrikaner businessmen, questioned the economic feasibility of separate development in an editorial: ‘Cultural, church and political leaders who see the future as separate, politically independent and economically self-supporting black nations must be disillusioned by the hard facts.’ South Africa was economically indivisible and decentralization had not succeeded in reversing the flow of black labour to white areas – the urban African was not merely a permanent resident but was also in the great majority at urban growth points.
On 11 September 1973 the police opened fire at Carltonville killing 11 African miners who were protesting against labour conditions. Western Deep Levels was one of Anglo’s most modern mines. Commenting upon the tragedy, the Guardian made the point ‘that rebellions are born out of rising hopes rather than out of despair. The living conditions at other mines (and in parts of Black Africa) are much more desperate’.19 A further comment upon this mine tragedy came from another journalist: ‘For once the employers have not tried to blame a tragedy of this sort on agitators. Instead, within hours of the clash, a company executive admitted that bad labour policies may have been a major cause of the unrest at the mines. Such a statement from Anglo American has vast implications. The giant company’s array of gold, diamond and coal mines employ 165,000 Africans and as the largest private employer of black labour, its decisions send ripples throughout the whole South African economy.’ Commenting on the anger at the tragedy in Botswana (two miners were from there) and Lesotho (five miners, and the government stopped recruitment for the South African mines), the author quoted a Botswana Cabinet statement which said it was ‘a sad commentary on South African society that 11 men should have lost their lives for no other reason than that they, denied any bargaining machinery, were moved by a deep sense of frustration to demonstrate against the discriminatory terms of their employment. Botswana has repeatedly expressed its fears that the continued denial of fundamental rights to the black man by the South African Government will result in violence.’20
When the TUC delegation led by Vic Feather arrived in South Africa, he at once dismissed the idea that his team had come to look at wages; it had
come to examine the question of trade union rights for black workers and, he made clear, the TUC would support any moves in that direction. David Loshak, writing in the most conservative and generally pro-white South African British paper, the Daily Telegraph, said: ‘That the government, politically so hostile to the known views of the TUC men, even the right-wingers among them, and as anti-British Afrikaners still deeply troubled by Boer War resentments and memories of internment in World War II, should not only allow such intervention but actually encourage it, is of major significance. Furthermore, the influential Afrikaanse Handels Institut, representing some of the most powerful employers, has invited the TUC back. The delegation’s report, due in December, is thus likely to have far-reaching effects on the South African labour scene.’ The South African soft line was due to the ILO resolution of June 1973 that called for a world boycott of South African goods. ‘Clearly as Britain is South Africa’s biggest trading partner, this would damage both countries. Mr Feather’s team and Mr Vorster’s, therefore, had a mutual interest in co-operating to avoid it… South Africa also fears that an antagonized British trade union movement might discourage or seek to prevent the emigration of skilled whites to South Africa, immigrants the country sorely needs.’21