Leaflet advertising a lunchtime meeting with Thozamile Botha at Pacific Steel foundry in Berkeley on September 24, 1985, organized by the Free South Africa Labor Committee and Molders Union Local 164. Botha, a leading South African trade unionist, is administrative secretary of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), a non-racial union federation. Botha will discuss the situation of black workers and unions in South Africa and to ask for support. SACTU's leaders, who are mostly black, are banned in South Africa. Botha worked at the Ford plant in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Ford fired him for his political activity, and workers in the plant successfully struck to win his job back....
Leaflet advertising a lunchtime meeting with Thozamile Botha at Pacific Steel foundry in Berkeley on September 24, 1985, organized by the Free South Africa Labor Committee and Molders Union Local 164. Botha, a leading South African trade unionist, is administrative secretary of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), a non-racial union federation. Botha will discuss the situation of black workers and unions in South Africa and to ask for support. SACTU's leaders, who are mostly black, are banned in South Africa. Botha worked at the Ford plant in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Ford fired him for his political activity, and workers in the plant successfully struck to win his job back. This was the first time unions for black workers were recognized at the plant. Botha then had to leave South Africa to avoid arrest and imprisonment. The leaflet says many U.S. companies send foundry and manufacturing work to South Africa because the system of apartheid, or racial segregation, pays slave-labor wages to black workers. Supporting Botha and SACTU will help South African workers win freedom, better wages and conditions, which also will help workers in the U.S. fight for our own jobs. The leaflet quotes Zola Zembe of SACTU.
