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THE ILLUMINATI - THE RISE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN REICH |
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Chapter 13 Taming the Trade Unions The movement and the nation can derive advantage from a National Socialist trade union organization only if the latter be so thoroughly inspired by National Socialist ideas that it runs no danger of falling into step behind the Marxist movement . . . It must declare war against the Marxist Trades Union . . . It must declare itself hostile to the idea of class and class warfare and, in place of this, it must declare itself as the defender of the various occupational and professional interests of the German people. -- HITLER in Mein Kampf 'We know one person only to whom we owe an explanation, and that is the White worker in South Africa who has brought the National Party to the position it occupies today and who will keep it in that position in the future.' So spoke B.J. Vorster, now Prime Minister, in the House of Assembly in February 1956. And he spoke the truth. The Nationalist Party is a typical bourgeois nationalist party whose leading members have never shown any reluctance to enter commerce and industry and make profits just like their counterparts in other national groups. Nevertheless, it has always masqueraded, in the same way that the Nazi movement did, as the party of the workers - though only the White workers, of course. And there is no doubt that it has won the support of many White workers by following policies which have buttressed their economic and social position, if at the expense of the rest of the community. The trade-union movement, as the main bastion of the rights and liberties of the working class, has been a target for Nationalist attack ever since the thirties, when the Broederbond decided that the volk as a whole should make a special effort to win over the workers. With the increasing urbanization of the Afrikaner people, tens of thousands of Afrikaners were being drawn into the ranks of the trade-union movement, which had been founded and traditionally led in South Africa by non-Afrikaners, mainly English elements. It was intolerable to the Nationalist leadership that the Afrikaner worker should be subjected in this way to unnational and alien influences, exposed to the debilitating effects of English humanism and liberalism, embroiled in the class struggle. Unless a strenuous effort were made to win him back to the fold, he would be lost for ever and become a convert to the ideologies of the enemy. The Nationalists attacked on two fronts. In the first place they wanted to win over the Afrikaans worker and bring him into the ranks of the Nationalist Party, or at any rate subject to Nationalist Party influence. In the second, they wanted to bring about a separation of White and non-White in the trade-union movement and in all spheres of employment, so ensuring that the White worker would never be threatened by competition from the non-Whites. The story of the Nationalist conquest of the trade-union movement is one of internal subversion coupled, after the Nationalist advent to power in 1948, with direct and blatant government intervention. It is a story which is not yet complete, because there is still a great deal of fight left in the trade unions and in the working class as a whole, though a once mighty and influential trade-union movement has been sadly crippled by Nationalist interference in the last thirty years. With Broederbond backing and guidance, the attack on the trade unions was mounted by the whole host of volksorganisasies, including the Church, cultural and economic movements, political parties, and splinter groups operating inside the trade unions themselves. One of the first shots in the campaign was fired by the Nederduitse Hervormde Kerk Algemene Kerkvergadering of May 1937, which appointed a commission of inquiry into 'Communism and the trade unions'. The commission reported that the South African Trades and Labour Council, the premier trade union coordinating body in South Africa, was working in close collaboration with 'The People's Front', which had been established to counter the fascist menace in the Union, and the Friends of the Soviet Union, both dubbed out-and-out Communist organizations. 'Your commission declares with the greatest emphasis (1) that Communism is a deadly enemy of the Christian religion . . . (2) That Communism is a threat to Christian civilization because it (a) propagates a bitter class struggle, and (b) agitates strongly for equality between Black and White.' The commission recommended: (1) that the N.H. Kerk should warn against the danger of Communism; (2) that the Algemene Vergadering should protest very strongly to the government and the Chamber of Mines against the 'closed shop principle', because thereby many Afrikaners in conflict with their consciences were forced to become members of one of the trade unions, namely the 'Mineworkers' Union'; and (3) that the government and the Chamber of Mines should be earnestly requested to leave the miners free to join without any restrictions the Bond van Afrikaanse Mynwerkers because (a) the Bond stood on a Christian National foundation, (b) it operated outside party politics, and (c) would do as much and infinitely more for the workers. The findings of the commission were set out in a pamphlet entitled Communism and the South African Trade Unions by Dr H.P. Wolmarans, which launched a vicious attack on the leaders and methods of the orthodox trade-union movement in South Africa and described the Trades and Labour Council executive as consisting largely of Jews and the English-speaking, in the main Communist or Communist-orientated. Once again the main crime of the Communists or so-called Communists was held to be that they advocated equal rights for Black and White. Dr Wolmarans found that this ideology had spilt over into the T.L.C. 'The innocent boeredogters [boer, or Afrikaner, daughters] in the Garment Workers' Union have to pay 6d. a week to a central fund, part of which is used to pay a native secretary of the native trade unions.' The Secretary of the Garment Workers' Union was called 'The Communist Jew, Solly [E.S.] Sachs' - a reference which was to prove somewhat expensive for Dr Wolmarans, who ultimately had to pay heavy damages to Sachs for libel. The company which printed the pamphlet, Die Voortrekker Pers, also paid heavy damages, not only to Sachs, but to a number of other trade-union leaders who had been defamed. The pamphlet by Dr Wolmarans referred to a conference of the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurverenigings (F.A.K., the main public front for the Broederbond) where representatives of all the Afrikaans Churches had been present. 'The congress felt that the next task of the F.A.K. lay in the sphere of industry, where the numbers of Afrikaner workers were steadily growing and where the danger was daily growing that the Afrikaner worker would be led away from the national and religious basis of his people and where many of the trade unions to which Afrikaners belonged were being exploited by conscienceless foreigners to harm the Afrikaners and win them to Communism.' The solution proposed was to organize 'pure Afrikaans trade unions which can protect the interest of the Afrikaner workers on Christian-National lines'. Dr Wolmarans claimed that shortly after the Bond van Afrikaanse Mynwerkers was formed its membership had been greater than that of the Mineworkers Union itself. Certain members of the union had then protested to the Chamber of Mines against the formation of an Afrikaans union, and the closed shop had been introduced. As Dr Wolmarans saw it, the mine bosses had shown their antipathy towards the Afrikaner workers by agreeing to this. The next large-scale attack on the trade unions was launched by the Economic People's Congress (Ekonomiese Volkskongres) of the Reddingsdaadbond held at Bloemfontein in October 1939. The Reddingsdaadbond had been the brainchild of the Rev. J.D. Kestell who, appalled by the fact that one sixth of the White population, mostly Afrikaners, were classed as poor Whites, had issued at the time of the Voortrekker celebrations in 1938 an appeal for a tangible tribute to the memory of the Voortrekkers, declaring that they would be honoured if 'something were done for their "sunken" descendants'. Reddingsdaad committees had been formed in all parts of the country to raise half a million pounds, and the Economic People's Congress was held to decide what to do with the money. The conference was quietly taken over by the politicians, prominent amongst whom were Dr Verwoerd, Dr Donges, Dr van Rhyn, Dr Hertzog, and Dr Diederichs - all later to be Nationalist Cabinet Ministers. Two main courses of action were decided upon - on the one hand to promote Afrikaner capitalist enterprises (surely something that the Rev. Kestell never dreamt of in his philosophy) and on the other hand to reform the trade unions on Christian-National lines. According to a report in Die Vaderland of 6 October 1939: Dr Hertzog, who spoke on labour organization, pointed out that the trade unions in this country collected £290,000 annually. He wished to embrace these organizations in the objects of the congress and so put an end to the trade unions 'completely ruining the Afrikaner in the cities' . . . he warned against the control of trade unions by foreigners who had considerable financial self-interest at stake. The congress approved Dr Hertzog's proposal that a 'large portion' of the Reddingsdaad (fund) should be used for reforming the trade unions. The conference set up the Reddingsdaadbond to promote the 'economic independence of the Afrikaner'. Among its objects the new organization proposed 'to make the Afrikaans labourer part and parcel of the Nationalist life and to prevent the Afrikaans workers developing as a class distinct from other classes in the Afrikaans national life'. It even established a special labour section, the Chairman of which for many years was Dr Diederichs. Dr Donges described the mission of the R.D.B.: 'The foreign influences must be removed from our trade unions, and they must take their place foursquare on a national basis.... It is the task of the R.D.B. to keep the Afrikaner worker, in the midst of foreign elements, in his Church, language, and national environment.' At a later stage the Blankewerkersbeskermingsbond (White Workers' Protection Society) was called into being as an organization functioning specifically in the sphere of labour. Its constitution stated: The society is founded on the Christian-National traditions of the people of South Africa (a) to study carefully the social problems and evils, especially those that affect the workers' community on the Witwatersrand: to find ways and means to combat those evils and to bring pressure to bear, where necessary, on responsible bodies, so that the necessary measures can be taken to adopt legislation which will promote the best interests of the workers. Membership was open to ' White persons only who are members of the Protestant Church', and the organization aimed, amongst other things, (j) to support and propagate the undermentioned relationship between European and non-European workers: (1) that there should be a clear determination of which occupations must be reserved for Europeans and which for non-Europeans; (2) that no undesirable contact between European and non-European workers should be tolerated in their employment; and (3) that mixed membership of trade unions of European and non-European worker shall be prohibited. Prominent members of the Blankewerkersbeskermingsbond included Jan de Klerk, present Minister of National Education and of Information, B.J. Schoeman, later Minister of Labour and present Minister of Transport, J. du Pisanie, and Dr Diederichs. These were the main instruments by which the Nationalist poison was injected into the trade-union movement, with special attention paid to unions in which Afrikaner workers predominated, but which were not under Nationalist control, such as the Mineworkers' Union, the Garment Workers' Union, and the Building Workers' Union. The campaign against the Mineworkers' Union was stimulated by a donation of £10,000 from a wealthy Afrikaner landowner, Mrs Jannie Marais, to rescue Afrikaner miners from 'the evil materialistic influences of the Witwatersrand'. On 4 October 1936, Die Nasionale Raad van Trustees was formed. It provided all the funds for the Afrikaner Bond van Mynwerkers which was established on 7 April 1937, and later changed its name to Die Hervormingsorganisasie (in die Mynwerkersunie) - more popularly known as the Reformers - with Dr Albert Hertzog as the guiding spirit. The Reformers rapidly gained ground amongst the rank and file of the mineworkers, aided by the bureaucratic methods of the union leadership which relied upon the closed shop instead of democratic discussion to maintain its influence with labour. As with similar leaderships in other countries, an entrenched trade union bureaucracy is extremely difficult to displace, and the Mineworkers' Union leaders proved to be no exception. At times passions ran high. In June 1939, Charlie Harris, Secretary of the Mineworkers' Union, was assassinated outside his office by a young Afrikaner, who had no doubt been convinced by the Reformers that Harris was an enemy of the volk. The youth was tried for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. By 1941 the Reformers had created a situation which could no longer be ignored, and the government appointed a special commission to inquire into the matter. The commission reported itself fully satisfied that the powers behind the Reformers are much less actuated by an honest desire to reform the affairs and administration of the Union in the sole interests of the mineworkers, and to establish a bona fide trade union along recognized and accepted trade union lines, than by other and less admirable reasons. . . . The Commission has no hesitation in placing on record its findings that the Reformers and the powers behind them, of which they are the puppets, constitute a subversive movement which is detrimental to the interests of the mineworkers, the mining industry, and the Union of South Africa as a whole. |