How unions lost their way

“Solidarity Road is a timely and highly readable insider’s account of organising food workers across the colour line at the height of apartheid.

“It’s a story of how organisation was undermined from above by a new political class and carries crucial lessons for labour after Cosatu.” – Edward Webster, Professor Emeritus, Wits University

The events leading to the Marikana massacre not only shattered South Africa’s image of itself as a democracy in which workers had a respected place, but the image of Cosatu and its largest affiliate.

Subsequent events confirm that South Africa’s pre-eminent trade union federation has lost its way. To understand why, Jan Theron argues, it is necessary to understand the choices made by the trade unions that formed it in the 1980s.

The Food and Canning Workers’ Union (FCWU) was perhaps the most famous, and had produced some of the country’s most prominent labour leaders – Ray Alexander, Oscar Mpetha and Liz Abrahams, among others. But by 1976, it was on its last legs and riddled with corruption.

A demonstration of non-racial solidarity by the workforce of Fatti’s & Moni’s in Cape Town catapulted the union to national prominence, in the same week government tabled its race-based labour “reforms” in Parliament.

FCWU’s unprecedented victory in this strike meant it was well placed to initiate the talks that eventually led to the formation of Cosatu. This was to be an independent federation, allied to political organisations fighting to end apartheid. However, for FCWU, the basis of independence was always financial self-sufficiency coupled with zero tolerance of corruption. In this regard it was unlike the other trade unions involved in these talks.

This is a story about the values that shaped the trade union struggle and the decisions and practices which undermined them.

Theron was born and educated in Cape Town. At 26 he became general secretary of FCWU, until 1986, when he became general secretary of the Food and Allied Workers Union.

Recommended retail price is R240 and available at all bookstores.