On Monday, 12 March, The Guardian headlined a report on conditions and rates of pay of black employees of British companies in South Africa. General Electric, Rowntree, Tate & Lyle, British Leyland, Courtaulds and Metal Box were amongst the big corporations named as paying wages to Africans well below the Poverty Datum Line of between £10 and E11 per week for a family of husband, wife and three children. The report showed that in 1970/71 the ratio of African to white wages was slightly over one to four in banks and building societies, just under one to six in manufacturing and the railways, over one to six in construction and central government services, about one to seven in electricity and one to twenty in mining (where however, employees "enjoy free accommodation and rations for themselves in PoW type compounds). The response in the following days was varied. A few companies tried to justify the situation, but most went on the defensive, expressing 'surprise" and 'ignorance of the facts" and ordering urgent enquines' etc. It is, after all, almost a year since a study conducted by the South Africa Productivity and Wage Associ ation for the United Kingdom South African Trade Association showed that 80 per cent of the black employees of British firms were being paid below subsistence levels.
INVESTMENT Sut the game was really given away by Jim Stalet of Slater Walker Securities, whose South subsidiary owns two farms where malison is said to be rife and children suffer from open sores, distended stomachs, and weakened limbs caused by kwashiorkor. On hearing the news, Slater immediately issued a statement that "my colleagues and I were horrified" by the report; they had regarded the subsidiary "simply as an investment". And how do you judge an investment? Well, a good investment is one with a high rate of return on the capital invested, which just happens to be dependent on a low wages bill.
In fact, British capital investment in South Africa is now rapidly nearing the £2,000 million mark. This is not unrelated to the fact that throughout the capitalist world, but particularly in the older established industrialised countries of the Northern hemisphere such as Britain, pressure has been building up on profit margins largely as a result of the relative self-confidence and strength of organisation of the working class. For the international corporations, South Africa comes as a heaven sent opportunity to escape into a paradise where the majority of the labour force is cowed by draconian repression into acceptance of wages and conditions reminiscent of the early days of industrialisation in Europe. For spokesmen on behalf of any investors in South Africa to express dismay or horror at the existence of conditions which have constituted the main reason for their own presence in that country is sheer hypocrsy.
Not hypocritical, but perhaps potentially more misleading, have been the "liberal" comments urging "pressure" to force improvements. In Britain, the Anti-Apartheid Movement has launched a campaign which "asks British companies not to invest further in South Africa until these conditions are improved".
WAY FORWARD Meantime, inside South Africa itself, African workers showed the way conditions will be improved when a three day strike at the South African Pulp and Paper Industries' Mandini mill won a near 20% pay rise on 14 March. Along with the successful Durban strikes in January Above: Two of the South African crew of the Union Castle's Clan Robertson with Swedish Seaman's Union official.
this action will undoubtedly stimulate other sections of the black labour force into further actions This re-emergence of strong organisation and militancy constitutes a much more serious threat to the status quo in South Africa than any attempts to pressurise capitalist companies into defying their very raison d'etre. Of course it is correct to expose the role of British capital in the continued exploitation of South African labour, but our action needs to be taken forward to the provision of more concrete forms of support. Trade Unionists in companies with South African investments should be attempting to forge direct links with workers there. Inside the multi-national corporations the workers need to develop their own multi-national organisations which rally around the demand that wages everywhere be raised to the level prevailing in the highest paid location. Already last week the tremendous effect such actions can have was seen with the blacking of the Union Castle ship Clan Robertson by Swedish, British and Belgian dockers in support of a pay demand by Zulu seamen. Within days the seamen had secured a 100 per cent rise to the same level as British seamen. It is also necessary to develop a fight to commit the British labour movement to a total boycott on the movement of arms, etc., to the racist regimes in Souther Africa. Financial and material support must be given to the organisations engaged in struggle against apartheid.
The new upsurge of workers' struggle in South Africa make this task more urgent. It is certain that when this becomes generalised and develops into an all-out assault on the institutions of the racist regime those who presently mouth hypocritical expressions of their desire to improve conditions for their labour force, ete. will come out in their true colours. At the end of the day the British capitalist class and its govern ment will seek to prevent that revolution against the South African state whose inner logic will end super-exploitation by imperialism and transfer control of industry, agriculture and mining to the African workers and poor peasants. It is in preparation for this revolution and the concrete tasks of solidarity which this will pose to the British working class that it is necessary right now to develop the beginnings of a movement which has no illusions about the potential benevolence of the big corporations but bases itself on the international unity of the working class.
TONY SOUTHALL 3rd Conference of Radical Scholars of Soviet and East European Studies 4-6 May, Birmingham University Union, on THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT May 4(7.30): Marx and the dictatorship of the proletariat-S. Zienau.
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