Special Hearings — Business Hearings — 1997-11-13

RUSSELL ALLY: Thank you very much, gentlemen.  I'm going to be brief, because we've been here a long time and I'm also going to be brief for another reason and that is that Prof Simkins, Charles Simkins who is the Prof at the head of the economics department - Department of Economics at Wits University, will also be making some comments on the issues that we've been dealing with here in this hearing, the relationship of business to politics, Apartheid and the economic system which developed and also some observations, looking at what the submissions were saying and what we can learn from them.
 I want to reiterate to what the Chairperson has said, to please ask people not to leave before that's completed, because Prof Simkins has been - he spent the day with us and he has also prepared a submission.  So, I think we will benefit from his insights.
 The two issues really, and I ask them together, so that you can respond and then I think we can move to Prof Simkins if there are no other questions.
 The first is that in the COSATU submission, one of the messages which came out very strongly and very clearly and what came out with a lot of anger attached to it, is that there seems to be a tendency amongst many businesses that now in the after match, the end of Apartheid, to want to falsely take credit for its dismantling.
 That if it was not for the struggles which workers actually waged and which other members of the oppressed community waged, in particular Black people, business and White people would have been quite happy with the system, notwithstanding its inconveniences and notwithstanding the other problems, because they benefitted.
 The business may have been inconvenienced, but individually, personally, White people did benefit.  There's an anger at this wanting to take credit now that within this new democracy, by business and big corporations, particular to say, but we were responsible and we fought against Apartheid.  
 So, there are two parts to it.  The one is the anger, being expressed by organisations like COSATU, but I would imagine more generally by Black people, the anger at this attempt now by business, White business to want to claim some kind of moral credit.  Is that anger valid, legitimate.
 Secondly, is it not more important for business to acknowledge that the main driving force of what lead to the ultimate changes were the struggles of those who were oppressed, those who were at the receiving end, no matter how business may have been convenienced or inconvenienced.
 That's the first.  The second, and this has got more general ramifications, is that when the - in the amnesty process, the Amnesty Hearings, one of the things that comes across very strongly, is that those who carried out the killings and those who administered shock treatment and who tortured, say that they were doing that because they were carrying out orders.  They were the foot soldiers, but nobody now who gave them the orders, wants to take responsibility.  They are abandoned.  They did not do this on their own behalf.  They did this in protection of a system which they were indoctrinated to believe in.
 Now, a similar theme seems to emerge from some of the submissions.  From the Anglo submission, to a certain extent, but from your submission, that White workers seem to be given the burden of having been responsible.  That White workers wanted discrimination.  White workers wanted job reservation and these workers were organised in such powerful trade unions that it was difficult for management to do anything, so that they become the escape codes of this when in reality the whole society was bases on White supremacy and that workers were part of that and that therefore it is unfair now for managers and for bosses and corporations who've benefitted to lay all the blame - in fact a charge that is made, is that between 1950 and 1973, that the industrial council whom which Seefsa was a - the employers' representative, actually behaved or functioned as quite a rosy cartel;  that together with the unions, mainly White unions, Seefsa determined at a national level the wages and conditions for all workers in the metal industry.   Not just for White workers and that together there was originally defined grade and wage scale in which higher paid grades were under racially exclusive closed shop agreements, open only to White union members.
 That from time to time such categories were redefined so that the job colour bar was (indistinct) upwards, but that it was only after workers themselves, Black workers began to push, that this system began to break down.
 So, it was not just White workers who were imposing their world, but management who also has - was complicit.