As we mark the 50th anniversary of the Durban strikes, we remember the role black women played at this turning point in our history. We pay tribute to their contribution and sacrifice — not only in their courage to participate in the strikes, but in the building of the independent trade union movement that followed. 

Beginning on 9 January 1973 and continuing for many weeks afterwards, tens of thousands of black workers in Durban went on strike in a movement that would transform the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. 

The strikes paved the way for the building of the independent trade union movement, emboldened political activism across the land and exposed the ultimate ineffectiveness of the repression that had been ramped up by the apartheid regime in the decade following the Rivonia arrests and subsequent trials.

Much has been written about the Durban strikes, in their immediate aftermath and in the years that have followed, as successive anniversaries of the strikes come and go. The key authoritative text on the strikes remains a book published by the Institute for Industrial Education (IIE) soon after the strikes ended: The Durban Strikes — Human Beings with Souls. 

I recently reread this book, as well as reviews and commentary written about it in the intervening 50 years. Two aspects stand out, reminding me of the ways in which human agency enters the historical record: who tells the stories and makes the records, and who are presented as prominent actors and who remain invisible.

First, the book says very little about the conditions of life and struggle of black women workers, especially African women workers, in Durban at the time of the strikes. According to the book, 26 strikes took place in the Durban textile sector in early 1973, which was the highest number in any industry. (Ropes and mattings, bag and twine, and knitting were included in this definition of “textile”.) 

By the end of January, 8,000 textile workers were on strike, involving significant numbers of Indian and African women. The largest number of strikes, and those of the longest duration, took place in the textile industry, which was dominated by the Frame group of companies. 

Yet black women workers, especially African women in the textile industry, are almost invisible in this book. 

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We learn a great deal about the attitudes of the state, politicians, employers and white people towards the strike action, a little about the conditions facing Indian women workers, but virtually nothing about African women. 

Ninety-five African workers were interviewed as part of a research project undertaken by the IIE and reported in the book, but the gender of the interviewees does not appear to have been recorded. If it was, it is not reported in the book. It seems that the only biographical information collected was age, length of service with present employer, length of time spent in Durban and weekly wage.

In the course of reporting on answers to the questions the male pronoun, “he” is used on a number of occasions, but never “she”. The research provides no information at all about the conditions of life and work of African women.

Women leaders left out of history

Second, and perhaps even more telling, is that in the intervening 50 years I have only been able to find two commentators (Iris Berger and Julian Brown) who have drawn attention to the lack of serious consideration of the role of women in accounts of the Durban strikes.

It is a tragedy, for example, that we cannot easily find in the public domain a record of the working lives and experiences of women such as June-Rose Nala, a leading trade unionist in the 1970s and a textile worker at the time of the 1973 strikes, even in accounts written by those very closely associated with her.

Why should this be the case? 

Partly because press reports on the strikes paid little if any attention to gender in reporting on the strikes. Women are mentioned in passing, but do not occupy centre stage. 

Julian Brown makes the point that press accounts (and hence most commentaries that relied on them) usually described workers generically and insofar as gender was made visible, masculinity was strongly foregrounded. The presence of women in the strikes, particularly in the textile industry, drew very little comment.

The reliance on press commentary thus explains in part the relative silence we find in The Durban Strikes on the role of women in the industrial upheaval. But it surely manifests a broader, deeply problematic attitude towards women in general in the early 1970s and beyond.

Conditions faced by African women

Although accounts of the Durban strikes at the time pay scant attention to the struggles of black women, it is possible to reconstruct, to some degree, a description of their circumstances by using the findings of research projects conducted in the years following the strikes.

For example, the work of Jean Westmore and Pat Townsend in 1975, Alan Hirsch in 1979, the Natal Labour Research Committee in 1980, S’bu Khwela in 1993 and, more recently, Alex Lichtenstein in 2017, opens a window on the conditions faced by African women, especially African women textile workers, who played such a significant role in the strikes and in the building of the independent trade union movement that followed in their wake.

Although these accounts were all written after the 1973 strikes, they provide sufficient information to piece together a picture of the brutal conditions under which African women textile workers were labouring in Frame textile factories.

The oppression of African women workers was effected through a complex web of laws that were devised to maintain the migrant labour system at the heart of South Africa’s racial capitalism.

A key element in maintaining this system was the restriction of women, children, the sick and elderly to the Bantustan reserves and strict controls via the migrant labour system on movement of Africans to the towns. 

In terms of the Natal Code, all African women, except in exceptional circumstances, were deemed to be perpetual minors. African women were legally subordinate to their fathers, husbands or male guardians, and as such were unable to enter into contracts such as rental agreements, marriages and divorce, without the permission of male elders.

The position of African women migrant workers, many of whom were employed in the textile mills at the time of the 1973 Durban strikes, was extremely precarious. 

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The restrictions on movement and settlement were combined with deeply patriarchal prejudices against women with regard to employment, child care and their role in the reproductive functions of capitalism.

As workers in factories, domestic environments and rural areas, women’s precarious position enabled the payment of extremely low wages and the imposition of harsh working conditions. 

African women entering employment in industry carried with them the severe legal impediments of their civic status, to be confronted in the workplace by a slew of measures that discriminated against them simultaneously as black, as female and as workers.

This affected their access to jobs, their wage levels, their freedom of movement within the work environment, and their bodily integrity. 

Durban, and the Frame group of companies in particular, had become a key node for South African textile production by the 1970s. The requirement for cheap labour brought about changes in the profile of the labour force, with the employment of increasing numbers of Indian and African women. By the late 1970s, African women constituted about 70% of the workforce.

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Conditions of employment were appalling. Wages paid for African women were at least 20% lower than those paid to African men. At the time of the Durban strikes, African women in the textile industry were paid as little as R3.50 a week.

Many were heads of single-parent families with children and elders to support. There was no provision for maternity leave and women who became pregnant were dismissed. Sexual harassment by male workers was a constant threat.

As well as the pressures of factory work, those women able to live with their children carried the additional burden of housework and childcare, balancing the demands of overtime and shift work with domestic responsibilities. 

Many women lived in single-sex hostels, from which their families were excluded and where the regime of control in the factory penetrated deeply into the domestic sphere. 

In the early 1970s, African women textile workers were locked into a system of extreme exploitation and oppression, both within the factory (through low wages, the shift system and discriminatory practices relating to supervision, movement within the factory and so on) and within the community, where they confronted deeply rooted patriarchal systems. 

As an editorial in the SA Labour Bulletin in 1975 commented: “It has been said that the African women in South Africa are perhaps the most displaced and deprived people in any country not involved in open war.” That they were willing to take strike action took extraordinary courage. 

So as we celebrate the Durban strikes and the new era of political struggle they inaugurated, we should remember these women, their conditions of life, work and struggle. We must pay tribute to their contribution and sacrifice — not only in the strikes, but in the building of the independent trade union movement that followed. 

By acknowledging their role, we expand the historical narrative of the strikes to provide a more just record. We are also able to disrupt the uncritical circulation of the masculinist narrative of the so-called “Durban moment” to acknowledge the role that black women played at this turning point in our history. DM/MC

Paula Ensor is professor emeritus in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. She writes in her personal capacity.