Mpetha advocated real change
An edited version of the Oscar and Rose Mpetha memorial lecture held annually at Stellenbosch University, by former unionist and author Jan Theron
I HAVE been asked to say something about Oscar Mpetha and non-racialism. My qualification for doing so, I suppose, is that I worked with him.
It was not for long – from 1978 until 1980, when he was detained. But we achieved a lot in two years. By “we” I do not just mean Oscar and myself, but the trade union we worked for. What we achieved also had an impact on the country as a whole.
Then, as now, there were those who believed that the Western Cape was different from the rest of the country, and wanted to keep it that way. For Dr HF Verwoerd, it was also the area where the policy of apartheid could be applied “with the greatest ease”. On his recommendation, even though the Western Cape was not a province at the time, the government drew a line to separate west from east.
Few people nowadays remember what the Eiselen line did, but the objective was the same as building a wall between the US and Mexico is now: to keep out migrants who are not white. It also meant Africans on the western side of the line did not just have to put up with the gamut of restrictions apartheid imposed on Africans in general – they could not get jobs unless there were no coloured persons able to do them.
This was in terms of the so-called Coloured Labour Preference Area Policy. Policies that applied to Africans in general were also applied more harshly than elsewhere, notably in respect of housing.
This history cannot simply be wished away. It goes some way to explain the anger that one still encounters in Cape Town townships and also the tensions that still manifest between the African and coloured communities.
One is obliged to use racial terms like white, coloured and African because they describe identities that have been shaped by this history. Oscar understood the need to talk frankly about this history. He also believed that African leadership was needed to do so. He was himself an exemplar of an African leader.
That is why, in the opinion of many, his trial on trumped up charges was a travesty of justice.
However in the final analysis, for Oscar, class identity trumped racial identity. What do I mean by this, and why do I say so? What we did over those two years included a great deal of driving, to all sorts of far-flung places. Our objective was to organise workers into what was truly one non-racial trade union: this, at a time when the law did not recognise non-racial trade unions, and there were practically no other organisations that could claim to be truly non-racial.
For Oscar, this was the second time around. He was 70. I was employed in a position he had once occupied, some 30 years previously.
Someone else in this situation might have been resentful. Instead he was forthcoming, in sharing his experience. This included organising white women at a time when there were still white workers to be found on the factory floor. Unless workers are properly organised, Oscar would say, there will never be “real change” in South Africa.
I say more about what I learned from Oscar about the importance of proper organisation in my book, Solidarity Road. Suffice it to say here that he was not just concerned with the proper organisation of workers, but also other sections of society. This required establishing clear structures in terms of which leadership was accountable.
I think he would have regarded a student movement without identifiable structures and accountable leaders as profoundly problematic.
The structures we established for workers in the Western Cape were composed in the main of coloured women and African contract workers. In the case at Fatti’s and Moni’s they did not even share a common language. Yet through being properly organised, they came to see that what they had in common was of far more consequence than what divided them. Victory following a protracted strike was followed by a succession of strikes by African and coloured workers in places like Saldanha Bay, Ceres and Grabouw
There was a material basis for our non-racial organisation, and also for workers in the Western Cape to make common cause with workers in other parts of the country. So in the same two-year period we were also driving to Johannesburg and East London. In so doing, we were also crossing the Eiselen line, with the backing of coloured workers in the Western Cape. In this and other ways the union was effectively undermining apartheid long before a transition to democracy even seemed possible.
What Oscar understood by “real change”, I think, was from a society in which all the wealth resided with a racial minority to a society in which the wealth was more equitably distributed.
So I imagine he would have some sympathy with the students who rubbish the notion of a “rainbow nation”. There could never be a material basis for such a notion in a society having such disparities of wealth. There might, on the other hand, be a basis for talking about a “rainbow elite”.
However, he would surely have regarded as elitist certain Africanist interpretations of “decolonisation” which seek to jettison progressive intellectual traditions because they emanate from Europe. I don’t remember how far he got at school, but he certainly never had the opportunity to go to university.
Yet he could hold his own in any company, and did. He was a genuine “organic intellectual” (to use a term coined by Antonio Gramsci, who was of course Italian) and named his eldest son after Marx. But when Karl died, he also carefully observed the rituals of his Hlubi ancestors.