Trade Unions In South Africa
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Trade Unions In South Africa
Trade unions in South Africa has a history dating back to the 1880s. From the beginning unions could be viewed as a reflection of the racial disunity of the country, with the earliest unions being predominantly for white workers. Through the turbulent years of 1948–1991 trade unions played an important part in developing political and economic resistance, and eventually were one of the driving forces in realising the transition to an inclusive democratic government. Today trade unions are still an important force in South Africa, with 3.11 million members representing 25.3% of the formal work force. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is the largest of the three major trade union centres, with a membership of 1.8 million, and is part of the Tripartite alliance with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). The history Early trade unions were often for whites only, with organizations like the South African ...
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South African Confederation Of Labour
The South African Confederation of Labour (SACOL) was a national trade union federation of white workers in South Africa. History The federation was established in 1957, as a loose body bringing together the South African Federation of Trade Unions, the Co-ordinating Council of South African Trade Unions, the Federal Consultative Council of South African Railways and Harbours Staff Associations, and the Trade Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA). TUCSA withdrew in 1958, and the remaining federation was broadly supportive of apartheid. In 1968, the federation decided to permit individual unions to affiliate. These unions gradually came to operate on an equal footing to the remaining affiliated federations, and this led the Federal Consultative Council to disaffiliate in 1975, although all but one of its own affiliates decided to sign up individually to SACOL. This took the federation's membership to a maximum of 25 unions with 206,511 members. While the Government of South Afr ...
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Council Of Non-European Trade Unions
The Council of Non-European Trade Unions (CNETU) was a national trade union federation bringing together unions representing black African workers in South Africa. The federation was established in November 1941, with the merger of the Non-European Trade Union Coordinating Committee and the recently founded Joint Committee of African Trade Unions, associated with Max Gordon. Moses Kotane, the leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP), presided over the inaugural conference. Gana Makabeni, who had been the leader of the Coordinating Committee of African Trade Unions was elected president, and David Gosani elected secretary. In 1945, the federation was near its peak, with 119 unions and 158,000 members, a majority from the Witwatersrand. Most of the members of these unions were not recognised by the government or the employers, for the purposes of participation in the statutory industrial relations system established in 1924. However, the war economy led to rapid incre ...
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South African Trades And Labour Council
The South African Trades and Labour Council (SAT&LC) was a national trade union federation in South Africa. History The federation was founded in 1930, when the South African Trades Union Council merged with the Cape Federation of Labour Unions. The federation was broadly split between the craft unions and mining unions, which generally only admitted white workers and took conservative positions; and a growing number of industrial unions, which admitted white, Asian and "coloured" members, and often worked closely with unions representing black workers. In 1944, the federation adopted the Workers' Charter, which aimed to bring about a socialist government. In 1947, some unions of white workers resigned in opposition to the SAT&LC admitting black workers, and they formed the pro-apartheid in South Africa, apartheid Co-ordinating Council of South African Trade Unions. A further group of right-wing craft unions left in 1951 to form the South African Federation of Trade Unions (1951 ...
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William H
William is a masculine given name of Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. It is sometimes abbreviated "Wm." Shortened familiar versions in English include Will or Wil, Wills, Willy, Willie, Bill, Billie, and Billy. A common Irish form is Liam. Scottish diminutives include Wull, Willie or Wullie (as in Oor Wullie). Female forms include Willa, Willemina, Wilma and Wilhelmina. Etymology William is related to the German given name ''Wilhelm''. Both ultimately descend from Proto-Germanic ''*Wiljahelmaz'', with a direct cognate also in the Old Norse name ''Vilhjalmr'' and a West Germanic borrowing into Medieval Latin ''Willelmus''. The Proto-Germanic name is a compound of *''wiljô'' "will, wish, desire" and *''helmaz'' "helm, helmet".Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxfor ...
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South African Trades Union Council
The South African Trades Union Congress (TUC) was a national trade union federation in South Africa. The council was established in 1924, as the South African Association of Employees' Organisations. It was founded at a special congress, held after the collapse of the South African Industrial Federation, which was called by the Minister of Labour (South Africa), Minister of Labour, Frederic Creswell. All the affiliated unions were registered under the Industrial Conciliation Act 1924 and represented white workers. The federation was expected to be very moderate, but unexpectedly elected the leading communist William H. Andrews (unionist), Bill Andrews as its general secretary.Wessel Visser'Exporting Trade Unionism and Labour Politics: the British Influence on the early South African Labour Movement' ''New Contree'' 49 (2005), 145-62 As president, it elected Jimmy Briggs (politician), Jimmy Briggs, a Labour Party (South Africa), Labour Party Senator. The unexpected radicalism of ...
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Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alone and over 14.8 million in the urban agglomeration, it is classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity and List of urban areas by population, one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. Johannesburg is the provinces of South Africa, provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, and seat of the country's highest court, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Constitutional Court. The city is located within the mineral-rich Witwatersrand hills, the epicentre of the international mineral and gold trade. The richest city in Africa by GDP and private wealth, Johannesburg functions as the economic capital of South Africa and is home to the continent's largest stock exchange, the Johannesburg Stock Exchang ...
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Clements Kadalie
Clements Kadalie (1896 – 1951) was born Lameck Koniwaka Kadali Muwamba in Nyasaland (present-day Malawi). At age sixteen, he was a qualified teacher. He later settled in Cape Town, South Africa where he became South Africa's first black national trade union leader. Early years Clements Kadalie was born Lameck Koniwaka Kadali Muwamba in 1896 in Nkhata Bay District at the village of Chifira village near the Bandawe Mission Station in Nyasaland, presently Malawi. He was the second born son of Mr. and Mrs. Musa Kadalie Muwamba. He was the grandson of Chiweyu, a paramount chief of the Tonga of Nyasaland. Educated by Church of Scotland missionaries, Kadalie completed teacher training in 1913 graduating from Livingstonia. After a short stint of primary school teaching, Kadalie joined the stream of Nyasalanders seeking employment in neighbouring South Africa in early 1915. Career In 1918, he settled in Cape Town, where he befriended Arthur F. Batty, an emerging trade unionist and po ...
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Cape Town
Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest city by population, after Johannesburg, and the largest city in the Western Cape. The city is part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality (South Africa), metropolitan municipality. The city is known for Port of Cape Town, its harbour, its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place in the world to visit by ''The New York Times'', and was similarly ranked number one by ''The Daily Telegraph'' in both 2016 and 2023. Located on the shore of Table Bay, the City Bowl area of Cape Town, which contains its Cape Town CBD, central business district (CBD), is History of Cape Town, the oldest urban area in the Western Cape, with a signi ...
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Industrial And Commercial Workers' Union Of Africa
The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) was a trade union and mass-based popular political movement in southern Africa. It was influenced by the syndicalist politics of the Industrial Workers of the World (adopting the IWW Preamble in 1925), as well as by Garveyism, Christianity, communism, and liberalism. Origins The original ICU was founded in Cape Town in 1919. Later that year it held a famous joint strike on the docks with the syndicalist Industrial Workers of Africa, a black-based union modelled on the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World. In 1920, the two unions merged with a number of other emergent African and Coloured-based unions into an expanded ICU with the stated aim of "creating one great union" of workers south of the Zambezi river i.e. spanning South Africa, South West Africa, Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia. The first journal of the ICWU, ''Black Man'', ran for six issues in 1920. The ICU has been described as "one of the most radi ...
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International Socialist League (South Africa)
The International Socialist League of South Africa was the earliest major Marxist party in South Africa, and a predecessor of the South African Communist Party. The ISL was founded around the syndicalist politics of the Industrial Workers of the World and Daniel De Leon. History Formed in September 1915, it established branches across much of South Africa (excluding the Western Cape). While early attempts to recruit white workers failed, the ISL soon came to the attention of the young African National Congress, (then called the "South African Native National Congress") and several prominent early ANC members attended ISL meetings. By September 1917 the ISL had helped to form the first black African trade union in the country, the Industrial Workers of Africa. While its founders were mainly drawn from the radical wing of the white working class, the movement would develop a substantial black African, Coloured and Indian membership. Following the Russian Revolution in ...
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Revolutionary Syndicalist
Anarcho-syndicalism is an anarchism, anarchist organisational model that centres trade unions as a vehicle for class conflict. Drawing from the theory of libertarian socialism and the practice of syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism sees trade unions as both a means to achieve immediate improvements to working conditions and to build towards a social revolution in the form of a general strike, with the ultimate aim of abolishing the state (polity), state and capitalism. Anarcho-syndicalists consider trade unions to be the Prefigurative politics, prefiguration of a Post-capitalism, post-capitalist society and seek to use them in order to establish workers' control of Production (economics), production and Distribution (economics), distribution. An anti-politics, anti-political ideology, anarcho-syndicalism rejects political party, political parties and participation in parliamentary system, parliamentary politics, considering them to be a corrupting influence on the labour movement. ...
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