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The recent publication of No
Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists
over a Half-Century, 1950-2000,
a book about the history of the anti-apartheid movement
in the United
States, has provoked a larger discussion
of that movement’s long and radical history. In the San
Francisco Bay Area, leftwing activity in solidarity with
the liberation struggle in southern Africa goes back to the 1930s, with especially deep roots in the African
American community. National leaders like William L. Patterson
and Paul Robeson had deep ties to the members of the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which had (and has)
a very active, radical Black membership. It was natural
that this union, together with the Northern California
chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, would
provide support for the South African Congress of Trade
Unions after it was banned in South Africa, and invitations to its leaders to
attend conferences, like that held in 1978 in San
Francisco.
Robeson, when he was banned
from many venues during the cold war, found audiences not
only in Oakland’s Black churches, but
at the longshore union hall in San Francisco, where he sang about the African freedom struggle. Today’s
Vukani Mwethu choir carries on in that tradition.
The labor roots of the South
African solidarity movement in the Bay Area, therefore, are
deep and go back a long way. In looking at the history of
the anti-apartheid movement nationally, the role of the labor
movement in general is not well-known, or acknowledged for
the important role it played. Especially in the Bay Area,
it was an engine that helped push the broader movement forward.
It used its power in the workplace to cut the economic links,
especially trade, on which the apartheid regime depended.
It was a movement that tried to do immediate economic damage.
It also sought to work in
close cooperation with the liberation movement. It accepted
direction from SACTU, in particular, and tried to build relationships
between unions and workers in the U.S. and
their banned counterparts struggling in the underground in South Africa. It popularized the thinking and
demands of the movement in South Africa, especially
the Freedom Charter. It sought to aid the liberation organizations
directly. At a time when the ANC was called a terrorist organization
by the U.S. government, it was not afraid to send material
support to the Umkhonto We Sizwe camps in Tanzania.
The labor contingent of
the Bay Area anti-apartheid movement was made up, overwhelmingly,
of ordinary workers. They took action at work, often risking
their jobs. They raised money, picketed, marched and went
to jail many times. They moved the labor movement from below,
insisting that their local unions, labor councils, and the
state labor federation support those fighting for freedom.
They rejected the U.S. government’s
policy of “constructive engagement,” even when it was supported
by national labor leaders in Washington.
For a decade, the Free South
Africa Labor Committee was an important part of that history.
I hope that recounting some of its accomplishments will inspire
grassroots labor activists around the country to speak publicly
about what they did in those years. It is important, not
just to describe that history accurately, and give credit
where credit is due, but to strengthen the politics of solidarity
in the labor movement today. Supporting working class movements
opposing colonialism, racist oppression, war and neoliberal
economics is as important for unions now as it was during
the apartheid years.
Unions in Iraq today
are accused of terrorism for trying to stop the privatization
of their oil, and calling for U.S. troops to leave their
country. They are fighting for the same freedom for which
the SACTU fought – the right of the majority to determine
the economic and political future of their country. The unions
today that support them (including, by no accident, the ILWU)
are acting in the same tradition of solidarity that motivated
labor’s anti-apartheid campaigners. The accusation of aiding
terrorists will not frighten activists today any more than
it did then.
This, then, is a little
of that history.
In November of 1984, members
of ILWU Locals 10 and 34 refused to unload the Nedlloyd Kimberley
at Pier 80 in San
Francisco for eleven days, because it was carrying South
African cargo. That action was organized by a group of people
in those locals that included Leo Robinson, Dave Stewart,
Larry Wright, Alex Bagwell, Jack Heyman (then IBU), A.J.
Mitchell, Tom Lufer and perhaps a dozen others. They had
all been involved in one way or another in the 1978 conference
on solidarity with the South African Congress of Trade Unions
(SACTU), and had been talking for some time about taking
action.
During those 11 days, there
were huge picket lines at Pier 80, as hundreds of people
came out to support the action and provide the workers with
a reason under their contract for refusing to go to work.
The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) went to Federal court
to get an injunction against Local 10 to force it to work
the ship. To avoid huge fines and its officers possibly going
to prison, the local eventually unloaded the ship. But the
people who had been picketing then went across the Bay, and
began picketing the Pacific Maritime Association offices
on Grand Avenue
and Harrison to protest the PMA’s decision to get the injunction.
Daily picket lines went
on for a year, and then on a weekly basis for a year after
that. The Bay Area Free South Africa Movement (BAFSAM) was
born in those demonstrations. It was headed by John George,
and had two co-coordinators, Franklin Alexander and Lorenzo
Carlisle. Later, two others were added, Natalie Bayton and
David Bacon. BAFSAM then began holding regular meetings at
the First Universe Baptist Church
on International Boulevard in East Oakland. With BAFSAM’s participation, the church set up a homeless
shelter to connect the issues of racism and apartheid in South Africa to racism and economic oppression
in Oakland. This
was the period of big plant closures in Oakland,
which were having a devastating impact on Black workers.
BAFSAM lasted as an active
organization for about five years, and carried out the fight
for the Oakland
divestment ordinance, the strongest in the country at the
time. It was the pattern for legislation that Congressman
Dellums then took to Congress. BAFSAM also organized many
marches and demonstrations in Oakland.
The Bay Area Free South
Africa Labor Committee (FSALC) began as an outreach committee
to get labor support for the longshoremen, and the picket
lines at PMA. It then became an autonomous organization.
The FSALC was active for about 10 years, from 1984 to 1994. David
Bacon, then an organizer for Molders Union Local 164, was
its chair for the first few years, followed by David Shelton,
president of the San Francisco school bus drivers. Among its most active members were
Kathy Black, Darryl Alexander (she and David met in FSALC
meetings and later married), Frank Pottier, Maddie Oden,
David Reed, Roland Anolin, Bobby Williams and others. It
was a multiracial committee with Black, Asian American and
white members. During its lifetime the committee organized
many campaigns:
FSALC
and BAFSAM organized a series of civil disobedience actions
at the PMA in which dozens of people were arrested. Wilson
Riles Jr., BAFSAM leader and city council member was running
for Mayor, and then-Mayor Lionel Wilson ordered the police not to arrest him, so to deny him publicity.
Dozens of others were arrested, however. Many national
labor leaders came down to the noontime demonstrations,
despite the fact that the AFL-CIO would not support them
at first. It was a long struggle to change that position,
but because of the ILWU challenge and the growing movement
organized by FSALC, Randall Robinson and TransAfrica convinced AFL-CIO President, Lane Kirkland, to get arrested in the first civil disobedience at the South
African Embassy a year later.
FSALC
and others went back to Pier 80 to picket other ships.
Many were arrested for blocking the gates and stopping
trucks from going in or out. Arrestees had to spend two
years going to court over the charges, which were eventually
dropped.
FSALC
organized a labor conference in San
Francisco, and as a result, set up a network up and down
the Pacific Coast. For the two years after the
Pier 80 arrests anti-apartheid activists, mostly in unions,
chased the ships carrying South African cargo. They organized
picket lines and sometimes arrests, in San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, Canada.
Other ILWU locals got involved, along with labor activists
from the solidarity movement, with the struggles in Central
America and the existing SACTU support committees in the
Canadian unions. Eventually, the demonstrations forced
Nedlloyd Lines to stop its South Africa service into West Coast ports.
When
Zim Lines announced it was going to start a new South
Africa service in the Port of Oakland, the FSALC threatened demonstrations
and arrests. Supervisor John George negotiated an agreement
in which they promised not to carry South African cargo,
and eventually left the port entirely. FSALC campaigned
for many years to get the Port
of Oakland to pass its own divestment ordinance, and to prohibit South
African cargo in the port.
FSALC
helped organize labor anti-apartheid committees in Portland
and Seattle, and
together worked on joint conferences, demonstrations against
South African trade, support for SACTU and the ANC, and
to change the policy of the AFL-CIO.
FSALC
worked with locals and labor councils throughout the Bay
Area, passing numerous resolutions supporting SACTU and
the ANC. During most of this time, the AFL-CIO leadership
called the ANC and SACTU terrorists, because they were
allied with the South African Communist Party (SACP). Lane
Kirkland even gave a medal to Gatsha Buthelezi while he
was murdering members of the United Democratic Front in Natal.
The FSALC exposed the activities of the CIA-affiliated African American Labor Center,
and distributed in the U.S. reports
by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, that documented
the efforts to bribe and corrupt leaders of the rising
South African anti-apartheid labor movement.
FSALC
developed a close working relationship with the South Africa
Congress of Trade Unions, then a banned organization in South Africa before The Congress of South African
Trade Unions (COSATU) was formed. SACTU had an office in Toronto
and its representative, Bamgumzi Sifingo, came to the Bay
Area several times to meet with Bay Area activists. FSALC
raised money for SACTU and the ANC, and with the San Francisco
Anti-Apartheid Committee, filled a truck with donations
and drove it to Toronto
(in a blizzard). FSALC organized visits by SACTU leaders,
including John Gaetsewe, Muzi Buthelezi and John Nkadimeng
and took action, at their request, to support the underground
movement in Africa. SACTU leaders
met with California
labor leaders, and spoke to workers at hospitals, foundries,
warehouses and other workplaces. Hundreds of rank-and-file
union members heard them and many became involved in the
movement. FSALC worked with the Peoples’ Daily World to
invite to their annual banquet Chris Hani, head of the
ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe, not long before he
was assassinated, and then-exiled ANC leaders Pallo Jordan
and Thabo Mbeki.
Together
with the Human and Civil Rights Committee of the public
workers union SEIU Local 790, FSALC organized a campaign
to “work a day for freedom in South Africa.” Hundreds of
Local 790 members donated a day’s pay to the South Africa
Municipal Workers Union, which was then illegal and its
leaders in prison. FSALC activists in the Amalgamated Transit
Union discovered that AC Transit was buying windows for
their busses from South
Africa, and made them stop.
Along with
Bay Area labor councils, FSALC organized demonstrations
and civil disobedience, including arrests, at the office
of South African Airways on Union Square in San Francisco. The demonstrations
forced the airline to shut its office and leave.
FSALC
supported the efforts to get the University of California
(UC) to adopt a divestment ordinance, led by campus unions
including AFSCME, by students (who organized tent encampments
on campus), and by California Labor Federation Secretary-Treasurer
John Henning, who was a UC regent.
FSALC
published a regular newsletter for many years, reporting
on the ANC and South Africa’s
growing labor movement, to workers, union members and anti-apartheid
activists in California. It was eventually circulated around
the country, since it was often the only U.S. source of information
on the South African labor movement. FSALC consistently
showed that SACTU, and later COSATU, were formally allied
with the other organizations of the liberation movement,
the ANC and the SACP. FSALC argued that it was not possible
to support workers' rights in South Africa without supporting the liberation
struggle as a whole.
FSALC
helped unions to form union-to-union relations with SACTU,
and later COSATU, unions in South
Africa, including Local 790 with SAMWU
and ILWU Local 10 with the South African Railway and Harbor
Workers Union. Committee members actively participated
in African American labor organizations such as the Coalition
of Black Trade Unionists, and the labor sections of anti-apartheid
groups in New York, Chicago
and St. Louis.
When COSATU was formed, FSALC helped organize tours for
its leaders, including COSATU general secretary, Jay Naidoo,
who was invited to speak at the AFL-CIO convention in San
Francisco, and leaders of the South African Domestic Workers
Union.
After
the Shell boycott was launched by TransAfrica and the United
Mine Workers (who hired a South African liberation activist
on staff), FSALC organized local boycott activities, including
picketing gas stations. The Shell station at High and MacArthur
in Oakland closed
as a result, and has been an empty lot ever since.
These were exciting times.
We met wonderful comrades in South Africa and here at home, many of whom became
friends for life. Frank Pottier cooked some extraordinary
French meals on the PMA picket lines, and those who ate them
will never forget how good they were. We participated in
the destruction of apartheid, and when Nelson Mandela came
to Oakland and
spoke at the Coliseum, he recognized the longshore workers
for
the role they’d played. FSALC members felt we also had
had a role in those earth-changing events.
I will always deeply respect
the courage of those who stood up in South Africa during the apartheid years, and those
who took up arms outside South Africa to fight at Cuito Cuanavale
and the other places where the spread of colonial fascism
in Africa was defeated. Those who stood
up here in the U.S., especially in the years when anti-apartheid
activists were redbaited for doing so, can feel justly proud.
Amandla!
BC commentator,
David Bacon, is a California writer and photographer, and
former union organizer and factory worker. His new book
Illegal! - How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes
Immigrants, is being published by Beacon Press this fall. Click
here to contact Mr. Bacon.
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a book about the history of the anti-apartheid movement
in the 
