Mailing seeking support for the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) North American office. Unions in apartheid South Africa have harnessed the courage of Black workers and channeled it into mature trade union organizations such as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). South African trade unionists are prominent in the struggle against apartheid as well as the fight for decent wages and working conditions. The South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), founded in 1955, abandoned the traditional stance of organizing unions along color lines. SACTU also declared that the trade union struggle was intertwined with the struggle against apartheid. SACTU was banned...
Mailing seeking support for the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) North American office. Unions in apartheid South Africa have harnessed the courage of Black workers and channeled it into mature trade union organizations such as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). South African trade unionists are prominent in the struggle against apartheid as well as the fight for decent wages and working conditions. The South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), founded in 1955, abandoned the traditional stance of organizing unions along color lines. SACTU also declared that the trade union struggle was intertwined with the struggle against apartheid. SACTU was banned shortly after the African National Congress (ANC) in the 1960s. Many SACTU leaders were imprisoned and killed, and others were forced into exile. However, some SACTU activists remained in the country and continued underground organizing. The enclosed article by Peter Mahlangu, the current North American SACTU representative, is a useful blueprint of the current movement. SACTU plays a vital international role as the official voice of South African labor outside the country. SACTU is in direct contact with COSATU, so it is able to provide current information about the struggle. SACTU coordinates international labor efforts to pressure the regime when South African trade union leaders are imprisoned or detained and it clarifies what the democratic trade union movement asks of its friends, i.e., sanctions against the South African regime. SACTU performs these important functions in North America in a modest office in Toronto that it shares with the ANC.
