The formation of Industrial and Commercial Union (lCU)

·         The formation of Industrial and Commercial Union (lCU)

·         It was a very influential Trade Union in the Cape Colony.

·         In the Cape Town a non-revolutionary group of white Socialists broke away from the South African Labour Party, to press for democratic and trade union rights for Africans in all the four provinces of South Africa.

·         This group organized an African trade Union in 1918, called the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU). Its initial membership was mostly coloured dock workers, and it's secretary was an educated immigrant worker from Nyasaland named Clements Kadalie.

·         The ICU became important after it organized a strike at Cape Town docks in December 1919, with the support of Cape branches of the IWA and of the Native National Congress. The strike failed to increase the workers’ pay, but gained much publicity.

·         Strikers refused to load ships with food staffs for export to Europe because workers in South Africa were starving.

·         A transition to the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICWU) from the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU)

·         During 1919, Selby Msimang contacted Clements Kadalie about organizing trade Unions. In 1920, a meeting of 50 delegates was held at Bloemfontein to found a great union associated with the Native National Congress to be called the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICWU) and to include all blacks, coloured and Indian workers in South Africa.

·         Selby Msimang was elected President. But Kadalie returned home to Cape Town annoyed at being left out the leadership, and kept the ICU independent from the ICWU. From the same meeting Samuel Masabalalala returned to port Elizabeth to organize workers on strike.

·         During 1920, the South African government tried to deport Kadalie back to Nyasaland as a dangerous foreign agitator, but Kadalie appears to have bought a reprieve by declaring his support for smuts in the general election.

·         The ICU therefore broke its original with white Socialists. In 1921, the ICU took over the ICWU and became the largest black political organization in Southern Africa, claiming to speak for all black workers .

·         The ICU rose from strength to strength after 1923 when it extended its organization to all provinces of the union.

·         By 1926, its membership was perhaps 50,000 rising to may be 100,000 in 1927 and even 200,000 in 1928. At one time or another there were branches in very town in the Union and in six other countries -Basutoland, Mozambique, South West Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia.

·         The ICU was never a single organized body. It was a collection of local branches, owing allegiance to the National Council of the ICU and to Clements Kadalie as National Secretary.

·         The National Council helped create new branches, but ICU finance and administration were too poorly organized to control their growth or keep them alive.

·         When the ICU moved its headquarters from Cape Town to Johannesburg in 1925, branches were dying out in the Cape province at the same time as new ones were starting in the north .This internal weakness in organization explains why the ICU collapsed under government attack in 1927-28, even when it was the greatest mass movement ever known in Southern Africa.

·         Jan smuts Apartheid Labour Laws of 1922-24, denied blacks’ recognition and rights as workers. The ICU lost its right to bargain with employers as a trade Union. The Hertzog Bills of 1924-27, which reduced all blacks to ‘tribesmen’ further, increased the ICU.

·         As the ICU grew larger, power struggles developed in its ranks between ambitious politicians and national organizers who sought to make the ICU an effective trade union.

·         Many of these national organizers were African Communists including James La Guma from South West Africa who was the ICU's Secretary General, Thomas Mbeki from Transkei and Dunn from Zululand.

·         Kadalie became one of the most important politicians in South Africa, drawing crowds whenever he went to speak and making headlines in the newspapers the ANC, under Mahabane as President 1924-27, was almost forgotten.

·         The ANC’s opposition to the Hertzog Bills appealed to kings, chiefs and leaders - the only Africans possibly to benefit from the bills - instead of appealing to the masses like the ICU.

·         In 1926 Kadalie weakened the ICU by expelling its Communist organizers. White friends had persuaded Kadalie, who was more pan Africanist than a Socialist that the Communists would sometime seize power from him.

·         In 1927 Kadalie visited Geneva, Paris and London to make contact with social-democrat trade unionists in Europe, like those who had originally founded the ICU.

·         In 1927 Kadalie arrived back from Europe determined to make the ICU into a British type of trade union and himself into a British of type union bureaucrat. But Kadalie was no longer in effective control of the ICU.

·         He also clashed with George Champion, the second strongest leader of the ICU and Natal provincial secretary. In 1928, Champion declared the Natal branch to be independent of Kadalie as the ICU 'yase Natal'.

·         Many other local branch leaders then declared their independence. Kadalie brought in a British trade utmost, William Ballinger to recognize the ICU. But as Kadalie later explained; I asked for an advisor and received a dictator. Ballinger ran the ICU’s central office efficiently, but was completely ignorant of African politics.

·         The ICU continued to disintegrate and during 1929 Kadalie himself broke away from the ICU, to form the independent ICU based in East London. The original branch under Ballinger soon ceased to operate.

·         The outbreak of strikes by breakaway branches of the ICU or by black unions backed by the Communist Party, led to violence between white and black crowds and to police shootings 1928 - 29.

·         The 1929 general election brought back Hertzog's National Party without the fact with the Labour Party. The new government was determined to stamp out black revolution.

·         The new Minister of Justice and Police, Oswald Pirow, himself led police raids on blacks at Durban in 1929 the first time tear gas was used against crowds in South Africa.

·         In 1930, the National Party government passed the Riotous Assemblies Act, which permitted Pirow to banish Champion from Natal and after which the ICU 'yase Natal’ collapsed.

·          

·         Attachments

·         No attachments