New S.A. report urges aid for black residents, migrant curbs

Press, 10 May 1979, Page 9

New S.A. report urges aid for black residents, migrant curbs

NZPA-Reuter Cape Town

The South African Government, committed to proposals giving recognition to black trade unions, has released a report backing a more liberal State approach to resident black workers.

But the report, tabled in Parliament by the Prime Minister (Mr Pieter Botha) and broadly accepted by the Government, also pressed for a clampdown on the country’s two million migrant workers. The Riekert Report into the utilisation of manpower

in South Africa recommended that there should be State subsidies of housing for black employees and that better accommodation should be provided for blacks in urban areas.

It also said, however, that South Africa should cut down on employing blacks from neightbouring States, and that tighter laws should be introduced to keep whites from employing such labour illegally. Migrant workers come to industrial centres from such countries as Mozambique, Swaziland, and Lesotho, as

well as from South Africa’s black homelands. Normally they are employed on limited contracts and do not have extended residential rights. The Riekert Report came on the heels of another important Government inquiry, the Wiehahn Commission, which recommended that blacks should be free to join trade unions in South Africa.

The Riekert Report backed the earlier commission’s findings that resident blacks should be given better opportunities for industrial

training, and that South African labour legislation should move away from discrimination on the basis of colour.

But it came down heavily against the expansion of migrant labour in South Africa, saying that employment opportunities should be created in neighbouring black States.

It added that strict control should be exercised over the admission of contract workers, and incentives should be provided for employers to use local labour.