September 22
This morning, Bevil Lucas, former trade unionist with the
South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU) picked us
up to take us to Cape Town’s famed “Community House”. It is a vibrant centre for organizations
working on women’s issues, HIV/AIDS, union work, etc. and it is located in Salt River, an area for predominantly
Black working class families. Many
Afrikaans-speaking , Muslims live here as it was a so-called “Coloured” area,
established long before the Group Areas Act under Apartheid where Black South Africans
were forced to live outside of the city centres.
Koni Benson greeted us at Community House and proceeded to
tell us about the work of ILRIG – the International Labour Rights and
Information Group. Her South
African-born parents live in Vancouver, but they were long time activists
against Apartheid while inside the country.
ILRIG began in 1983
when Black trade unions were emerging again and there were healthy debates
about workers and international solidarity and democracy. The trade union unity talks led to the
formation of COSATU and the start of a mass movement which brought down
apartheid.
In the 90s, ILRIG’s approach was clear – if capitalism
doesn’t end, then Apartheid won’t end. They began working with unions and the
unemployed, and began articulating a clear analysis of globalization.
The current crisis of capitalism hit the world in the late
60s and 70s and over the decades of the 1970s the ruling classes of the world
came up with a strategy of globalization to solve that crisis. ILRIG defined globalization as a strategy on
the part of capitalism to restructure the world so as to revive profitability
for the capitalist class. Financial restructuring means borders opening up for
capital to flow and the working class to suffer. ILRIG also looked at new forms of organizing
the unemployed and alternative ways of organizing and mobilizing workers,
supporting unions but organizing more broadly than just on the factory
floor.
There are 5 areas of their work: New forms of Organizing;
Youth; Democracy and Public Power; Trade and Investment / Political Economy;
and Women. History is interwoven – encouraging people to write their own
histories.
ILRIG runs courses based on Popular Education methodology – derived
from Paulo Freire and practiced by many unions and social justice organizations
(including OPSEU). They are working on
many different but extremely important projects, including the following:
·
The Municipal Services Project – linking women
and public health. They are looking at the link between social services and
public health, training people to be researchers themselves – on water,
housing, etc. Housing is a right for all but the struggle for decent housing is
a huge fight. It’s not that eh government
is not building houses – 3 million houses have been built in 25 years, but at the
same time, the government is cutting taxes for the rich by trillions and
pouring $6 billion in to soccer stadiums for the World Cup, etc. The difference
in South Africa is that there is no social safety net.
·
Structural Inequality is entrenched. Under Apartheid, 87% of the population lived
on 13% of the land and now less than 5% of the land has changed hands in South
Africa. There is a small middle class now
but the gap has widened and South Africa has surpassed Brazil for the country
with the greatest gap between the rich and poor
·
Feminism for today – working with women
farmworkers in the Western Cape, but looking at how feminism is relevant to
Black Working Class women in South Africa today. There is a whole history of resistance to
patriarchy and women’s oppression throughout Africa and Latin America.
·
The Gender Education and Training Network
(GETNET) is a collective which includes ILRIG, the University of Cape Town,
refugee groups and the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU)looking at
the gendered effects of crime and poverty.
There are different issues for men and for women regarding social
services and how the lack of services affects women most of all. The links between poverty, violence and
HIV/AIDS is clear. One in three women in
South Africa starts their sex life through forced sex.
·
Globalisation – every year ILRIG runs a
Globalisation School for workers and publishes booklets on issues like the economic
crisis, the austerity measures and working class resistance.
·
Once a year they also have a conference where
they also ask questions like, “What does International Solidarity mean now in
South Africa? Has Apartheid ended? What are the current struggles of workers in
South Africa?”
Koni commented on the The Marikana Massacre – a tragic loss of life but at least it has enlivened debates within South Africa
on how unions are responding to the crisis facing workers who are grossly exploited
by the mining corporations.
Where else is there resistance? What happened to the militancy? These are questions our group asked of
Koni. There is resistance in the
townships; they erupt from time to time in response to the lack of housing,
lack of water and other services. Termed
Service Delivery Protests, there have been instances of communities blocking
highways, burning tires, turning water and electricity meters off, etc.
In one of her articles on housing in Cape Town in 2011, Koni
wrote: “The majority of people in Cape
Town today are Black, female and live in shacks. The history of women in Cape Town is a
history of struggle against pass laws, shack demolition, and continued forced
removals and displacement which has yet to be acknowledged (beyond lip service)
and subverted… From the perspective of the apartheid state, African and female
categorically represented permanence.
This was associated with two things: first, the high cost of social
reproduction (housing, schools, clinics, and wages that could support more than
a single male); second, African and female categorically represented
nationalist and radical resistance for citizenship and rights. These two issues – service delivery and
social movement struggles – remain gendered today.”
It was a great way to end our formal meetings with partners
in South Africa – stepping back to place our experiences within the context of
globalization on an international scale, and within South Africa to view it in
terms of the shift from the old Apartheid system to a new one termed by some as
Class Apartheid.
From Community House, our trade union guide, Bevil Lucas
took us through another history tour in the Western Cape – from the first slave
burial ground to the oldest Muslim Mosque (1754) to Kalk Bay for lunch. Kalk
Bay was one of the few areas where “Coloured” kids like Bevil were allowed to
swim – far away from the whites -only beaches closer to Cape Town.
We tasted the famous “Snoek” from this area,
a great tasting fish. On the way home we
stopped to see the tenement buildings in Lavender Hill where the “Coloured”
community had been forcibly removed to from their original homes in District
Six in the centre of Cape Town. Unfortunately we did not have time to stop at
the District Six Museum, but we stopped to see where the demolition of homes by
the Apartheid state has left a wilderness of empty lots. Almost twenty years after Apartheid ended
former District Six inhabitants are still in court challenges to regain their
land and their heritage in District Six.
Sunday, September 23.
Our final tour was to be a trip to Robben Island, but unfortunately the
weather was too wet and the waters too choppy for the ferry to cross that
day.
That night we had a farewell dinner cooked for us by Bevil
Lucas – complete with some typical Cape dishes.
It was a fitting way to end our OPSEU tour of Southern Africa.
