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“An Exercise in the Art of the Possible”: Waging a Battle Against Apartheid in the South African Workplace
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2023
Abstract
The Wiehahn Commission, a government body that proposed a multipronged 1979 South African labor reform, accelerated the corporate recognition of Black trade unions in apartheid era South Africa. Gradually implemented over the course of two years, the reforms complemented international workplace codes and the burgeoning reformist push for ethically sound business practices in the workplace. Although U.S. multinational firms in South Africa did not initially voice support for Black trade unions, in the aftermath of Soweto, many were faced with cascading internal and external pressures to negotiate with these emerging unions. By incorporating the Sullivan Principles, a U.S. code for ethical business conduct, into the broader scholarship on the South African trade union movement and the late apartheid era Wiehahn Commission reforms, this article examines how corporate reforms landed in South Africa, probing the business response to worker demands. South African workers were not merely passive recipients of workplace reform, but rather active participants, shaping the form and direction of U.S. and South African policy.
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- © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Business History Conference
References
Bibliography of Works Cited
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The Future Is in the Hands of the Workers”: A History of FOSATU
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Whisson, M. G., Roux, M. C., Manona, C. W.. The Sullivan Principles at Ford. N.p.: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1979.Google Scholar
African Labour NewsGoogle Scholar
Evening Post
Google Scholar
FOSATU Worker News
Google Scholar
Multinational Monitor
Google Scholar
Rand Daily Mail
Google Scholar
South Africa Namibia Update
Google Scholar
South African Labour Bulletin (SALB)Google Scholar
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Google Scholar
The Sowetan
Google Scholar
The Star
Google Scholar
Sunday Tribune
Google Scholar
Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), Pretoria, South Africa.Google Scholar
Digital National Security Archive (DNSA), Washington DC, online.Google Scholar
Gerald Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.Google Scholar
Historical Papers, William Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.Google Scholar
Leon Howard Sullivan Papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.Google Scholar
Melville, J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois.Google Scholar
National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa.Google Scholar
University of Cape Town Special Collections, Rondebosch, South Africa.Google Scholar
University of the Western Cape Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives, Bellville, South Africa.Google Scholar
Friedman, Michelle. “
The Future Is in the Hands of the Workers”: A History of FOSATU
. Historical Papers Archives Project. Houghton, SA: Mutloatse Arts Heritage Trust, 2011.Google Scholar
Friedman, Steven. Building Tomorrow Today: African Workers in Trade Unions, 1970–1984. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Giliomee, Hermann. The Last Afrikaner Leaders: A Supreme Test of Power. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Hull, Richard W. American Enterprise in South Africa: Historical Dimensions of Engagement and Disengagement. New York: New York University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Lipton, Merle. Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–84. Aldershot, UK: Gower/M. T. Smith, 1985.Google Scholar
Massie, Robert Kinloch. Loosing the Bonds: The United States and South Africa in the Apartheid Years. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997.Google Scholar
Nesbitt, Francis. Race for Sanctions: African Americans Against Apartheid, 1946–1994. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Posel, Deborah. The Making of Apartheid, 1948–1961: Conflict and Compromise. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198273349.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rycroft, Alan, and Jordaan, Barney. A Guide to South African Labour Law. Cape Town: Juta, 1992.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Elizabeth. Decoding Corporate Camouflage: U.S. Business Support for Apartheid. Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 1980.Google Scholar
Seidman, Gay. Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007.Google Scholar
Sethi, S. Prakash, and Williams, Oliver F.. Economic Imperatives and Ethical Values in Global Business: The South African Experience and International Codes Today. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Leonard. A History of South Africa. Rev. ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.Google ScholarPubMed
van Zyl-Hermann, Danelle. Privileged Precariat: White Workers and South Africa’s Long Transition to Majority Rule. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cilibe, Mpumelelo. “On the Shop-Floor: Ten Years at Ford.” MA thesis, Rhodes University, November 2016.Google Scholar
Farr, Sharon, dir. Help or Hindrance? The Sullivan Principles in Apartheid South Africa, Shoot the Breeze Productions, 2021. 55 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsR424Zvfro.Google ScholarPubMed
Gibbs, Pat. “Women, Labour, and Resistance: Case Studies from the Port Elizabeth/Uitenhage Area, 1972–94.” In Women in South African History: They Remove Boulders and Cross Rivers = Basus’iimbokodo, Bawel’imilambo, edited by Gasa, Nomboniso, 315–343. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Gurney, Christabel. “The 1970s: The Anti-Apartheid Movement’s Difficult Decade.” Journal of Southern African Studies 35, no. 2 (2009): 471–487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harries, Patrick. “Capital, State and Labour on the 19th Century Witwatersrand: A Reassessment.” South African Historical Journal 18, no. 1 (1986): 25–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larson, Zeb. “The Sullivan Principles: South Africa, Apartheid, and Globalization.” Diplomatic History 44, no. 3 (2020): 479–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, Jessica Ann. “Black Power in the Boardroom: Corporate America, the Sullivan Principles, and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle.” Enterprise & Society 21, no. 1 (March 2020): 170–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lichtenstein, Alex. “‘A Measure of Democracy’: Works Committees, Black Workers, and Industrial Citizenship in South Africa, 1973–1979.” South African Historical Journal 67, no. 2 (2015): 113–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lichtenstein, Alex. “‘We Do Not Think That the Bantu Is Ready for Labour Unions’: Remaking South Africa’s Apartheid Workplace in the 1970s.” South African Historical Journal 69, no. 2 (2017): 215–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lichtenstein, Alex. “‘We Feel Our Strength Is on the Factory Floor’: Dualism, Shop-Floor Power, and Labor Law Reform in Late Apartheid South Africa.” Labor History 60, no. 6 (2019): 606–625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maree, Johann. “The Emergence, Struggles and Achievements of Black Trade Unions in South Africa from 1973 to 1984.” Labour, Capital and Society / Travail, Capital Et Société 18, no. 2 (1985): 278–303.Google Scholar
McHenry, Donald. United States Firms in South Africa. Bloomington: African Studies Program, Indiana University Bloomington, 1975.Google Scholar
Roux, M. C., Nkuhlu, W. L., Thomas, W. H., Manona, C. W., and Whisson, M. G.. The Sullivan Principles at Ford, Audit 2. [Johannesburg]: South African Institute of Race Relations, February 1981.Google Scholar
Sheehan, J. Brian. Church Investors Concerned About U.S. Investment in South Africa: A Symposium on Current Issues Facing American Corporations. New York: Symposium on Current Issues Facing American Corporations in South Africa, 1981.Google Scholar
Stevens, Simon. “‘From the Viewpoint of a Southern Governor’: The Carter Administration and Apartheid, 1977–81.” Diplomatic History 36, no. 5 (2012): 843–880.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, James B. “Amandla! The Sullivan Principles and the Battle to End Apartheid in South Africa, 1975–1987.” Journal of African American History 96, no. 1 (2011): 62–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torchia, Andrew. “The Business of Business: An Analysis of the Political Behaviour of the South African Manufacturing Sector Under the Nationalists.” Journal of Southern African Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 421–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulrich, Nicole. “Only the Workers Can Free the Workers: The Origin of the Workers’ Control Tradition and the Trade Union Advisory Coordinating Committee (TUACC), 1970–1979.” PhD diss., University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, School of Social Sciences, 2007.Google Scholar
van Zyl-Hermann, Danelle. “White Workers in the Late Apartheid Period: A Report on the Wiehahn Commission and Mineworkers’ Union Archival Collections.” History in Africa 43 (2016): 229–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webb, Mattie C. “People Before Profit? Ford, General Motors & The Spirit of the Sullivan Principles in Apartheid South Africa (1976–1984).” Ethnic Studies Review 44, no. 3 (2021): 64–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whisson, M. G., Roux, M. C., Manona, C. W.. The Sullivan Principles at Ford. N.p.: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1979.Google Scholar
African Labour NewsGoogle Scholar
Evening Post
Google Scholar
FOSATU Worker News
Google Scholar
Multinational Monitor
Google Scholar
Rand Daily Mail
Google Scholar
South Africa Namibia Update
Google Scholar
South African Labour Bulletin (SALB)Google Scholar
Southern Africa Perspectives
Google Scholar
The Sowetan
Google Scholar
The Star
Google Scholar
Sunday Tribune
Google Scholar
Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), Pretoria, South Africa.Google Scholar
Digital National Security Archive (DNSA), Washington DC, online.Google Scholar
Gerald Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.Google Scholar
Historical Papers, William Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.Google Scholar
Leon Howard Sullivan Papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.Google Scholar
Melville, J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois.Google Scholar
National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa.Google Scholar
University of Cape Town Special Collections, Rondebosch, South Africa.Google Scholar
University of the Western Cape Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives, Bellville, South Africa.Google Scholar