Socialism And Black Trade Unionism In South Africa ·

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·         Socialism And Black Trade Unionism In South Africa

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·         The African Mine Workers Union (AMWU).

·         This trade union was influential in Transvaal and Natal.

·         It was founded in 1941, with the black Communist J.B. Marks as its secretary, by the Transvaal branch of the African National Congress.

·         The AMWU gradually recruited mine workers by first recruiting mine clerks, who were free to enter and leave the labour commands. By 1944, the union claimed 25.000 men.

·         The AMWU began to move towards strike action, after the mine workers refused to improve the pay and conditions of mine workers as recommended by a 1944 government commission (the mining companies had made a record profit of 15.6 million pounds in the previous year)

·         Black miners were made rebellions by cuts in their food rations, and the AMWU began to demand 60 shillings or 3 pounds a week.

·         In August 1946 the Union called the workers out to strike as 75.000 men responded, of whom 9 were killed when the police evidently crushed the strike by driving strikers down the mines.

·         The Native Representative Council that included whites and blacks discussed the suppression of the miners' strike, and adopted Paul Mosaka's motion of condemning 'fascism' which was the anti- thesis and negation of the spirit of the United Nations Charter.

·         When the government refused to respond, the council suspended itself in protest, after Paul Mosaka had described it as contemptuously as a toy telephone.

·         Dr. Pixley Ka Isaka Seme

·         Seme was educated through a mission school later to a university in the USA and Britain. When he returned to South Africa he was exposed again to the humiliations heaped on his fellow Africans.

·         Seme delivered a prize winning address when he graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1906, titled the Regeneration of Africa.

·         He abandoned a dream to rebuild the Zulu nation in favour of an African nationalism, which cut across all existing difficulties.

·         It was Seme along with three other African lawyers who called the conference of all chiefs and leaders in January 1912, which marked the beginning of the South African Native Congress.

·         In the same year, Seme began the first national African newspaper, called the Abantu-Bathu or people, which was published in English and three other Bantu languages.

·         On a more practical level, he bought land in the eastern Transvaal and set up the African Fanners' Association in an attempt to introduce modern farming methods and to encourage Africans to buy more farmland. However, the 1913 Land Act ended all these hopes.

·         After a bright beginning, Seme's leadership proved something of a disaster. First, his newspaper was forced to close down. Second, he had difficulty working with others, always demanding full control of the organization.

·         He opposed the more militant actions of Africans against apartheid such as boycotts and strikes, and in 1935 when Hertzog was threatening to remove the African voters at the Cape from the common roll; he was unable to give the lead many Africans wanted.

·         He misread the situation that he welcomed the alliance between Smuts and Hertzog as a rare combination of the most powerful and capable people.

·         In the 1940, the leadership of the ANC was taken over by Dr. A. B. Xuma. Dr. Seme died in 1951.

The ANC was a fitting symbol of his contribution to the 20^th century African politics