Blacks set deadline for action

Press, 3 December 1985, Page 10

Blacks set deadline for action

NZPA-Reuter Durban

Black trade unionists are poised to challenge the South African Government over apartheid race discrimination after the launch of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the biggest labour federation in the country’s history. The federations links 500,000 workers, most of them black, in a federation which has made plain that it means to use its industrial muscle to challenge white dominance.

After a rally at the weekend the Congress president, Mr Elijah Barayi, a leader of the powerful black Mineworkers’ Union, said the congress would take industrial action unless apartheid was scrapped within six months.

“They (the Government) should dismantle apartheid

totally,” he said, adding that the federation would take up the black South African tradition of political protest strikes.

Political analysts see the formation of the new federation as potentially the most important event in black politics in South Africa since the founding two years ago of the United Democratic Front.

Mr Barayi said if pass laws were not -scrapped within six months, "we are going to burn all the passes of the black pian.”

A senior Government advisory body, the President’s Council, has recommended that the Government scrap the much-resented laws in favour of a more positive approach to black urbanisation.

Referring to racially zoned townships where more than 930 people have

died in black protest violence in the last 22 months, Mr Barayi said: “C.O.S.A.T.U. is not going to concentrate only on wages. It is going to concentrate on the townships and on politics as well.

“C.O.S.A.T.U. is going to govern this country,” he said. “C.O.S.A.T.U. will nationalise the mines ... all the big companies will be taken over."

The stadium, normally a venue for the almost exclusively white spectator sport of rugby, was draped with banners advocating redistribution of wealth. They covered permanent advertisements for banks and multi-national car firms.

Labour analysts have said that the federation will have to overcome ideological and organisational differences within its ranks if it is to realise its potential as the

toughest political challenge to the South African President, Mr Pieter Botha’s Government.

Delegates to the founding conference tried to thrash out behind closed doors crucial issues, including how firm an alliance the federation will form with the United Democratic Front, the main anti-apartheid group within South Africa.

The federation is committed to non-racialism, a principle which cost it the support of an estimated 200,000 workers in black consciousness unions which spurn white allies. The U.D.F. affiliates include white liberal groups and associations of black traders, making it suspect to many members of the new labour grouping, which is committed to a strongly socialist line.

Mr Barayi said at the

rally launch — attended by an estimated 10,000 unionists — that the federation demanded the nationalistion of the country’s vital coal and gold mines. To applause, he urged foreign companies to pull their investments out of South Africa as a political protest to the Government. In a clear reference to the Zulu chief, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, whose heartland of support is around Durban, Mr Barayi criticised black leaders who toured overseas urging multinational companies not to pull their money out of South Africa.

He also addressed many of his remarks to the small group of policemen who watched the rally from a road overlooking the stadium. A man in plain clothes among the group filmed the proceedings.