Ryland Fisher
Forty years ago, on 24 October 1980, I had been working as a journalist for only about four months when we began a strike that would, in many ways, redefine the media industry. But it did not come without a heavy toll on many involved.
I was a young journalist with roots on the Cape Flats and strong links with activists in the anti-apartheid movement. In June that year I had joined a newspaper called the Cape Herald, which was owned by the white-owned Argus Company and which targeted the “coloured” community, a definition with which I did not feel comfortable. But the Cape Herald, because of its wide reach and impressive circulation figures, was an important vehicle to help spread news about the struggle.
It was not long before we realised that white journalists employed by the Argus Company, mainly at “white” newspapers such as the Cape Argus and The Star, earned twice as much as black people with the equivalent educational qualifications and/or experience working for the same company.
So, on Friday 24 October, normally a slow day at the Cape Herald, we met in the advertising department’s office on the third floor of the Argus Building (which later became known as Newspaper House, 122 St Georges Street, Cape Town, to discuss our grievances with management. This had been the culmination of many meetings, but it was the most significant.
Most of us had recently joined the Media Workers’ Association of South Africa (MWASA), which was the first time a formerly journalist organisation (the Writers’ Association of South Africa or WASA) had transformed itself into a trade union for all workers in the industry. Suddenly, the messengers, secretaries, advertising sales reps and others were all part of the same union with journalists and editors.
The meeting in the advertising department was tense, but also angry. Aneez Salie, my newsroom colleague who was our union leader, spoke about the discrepancies in pay between us (we were all people who would be described in apartheid language as coloured) and our white counterparts at the Cape Argus, who worked on the floor above us. He told us that management would not accede to our demands for pay parity.
After a while, our discussion turned to the action that we could take to force management to change the discriminatory remuneration policies. My memory (and I could be wrong) tells me that I was the one who proposed that we go on strike, which surprisingly found unanimous support among all those present. From my recollection, the only person who was not there, and who would probably not have supported the strike, was the editor, Ted Doman. Even the editor’s secretary was at the meeting.
Warren Ludski, who was our news editor, was among those at the meeting. Warren sent me a message last week, saying that he will never forget this meeting because he got married the next day (Saturday 25 October 1980) and went away on honeymoon to Johannesburg for a week. When he returned, he “went straight into strike mode”.
It was important that we went on strike when we did. The last weekly paper for the month was normally the biggest and most lucrative from an advertising perspective and we planned to have a special supplement on the newly built Mitchells Plain Town Centre in that edition. In fact, I had spent my day off, the Thursday before our meeting, interviewing traders for this supplement, which was obviously not published as planned.
The strike lasted more than six weeks, as far as I can remember, and involved us putting all kinds of pressure on management.
1980 was a crazy year for community organisations. There were all kinds of boycotts going on in different parts of the country, mainly related to labour or community issues. These included schools boycotts (which started in Hanover Park and quickly went national); a red meat boycott (in support of workers who were fired for going on strike at the abattoir in Cape Town); a bus boycott (in protest at City Tramways putting up their bus fares); and consumer boycotts of products such as Fattis&Monis and Wilson-Rowntree sweets, in support of workers who were fighting for better pay and working conditions.
We decided to feed into the boycott culture by calling for a boycott of the Cape Herald, which for the period of our strike was being produced by the editor with the help of scab labour. We got the support of the Western Cape Traders’ Association, the biggest representative organisation for traders on the Cape Flats.
But we did not just leave it at that. We went to various shops on the Cape Flats and convinced the shopkeeper to accept delivery of the paper when it arrived on the Monday evening or Tuesday morning and again the Wednesday evening. (The paper had two editions a week, on Monday and Wednesday.) But we told the shopkeepers not to display the papers and not to sell it to anyone. As a result, when the newspaper distributors came to fetch the returns of the paper, they had to leave with all the copies. Not one was sold.
The support that we enjoyed among traders and community organisations was one of the key factors which made management concede to our demand for parity a few weeks after we decide to go on strike.
I was one of the happiest people at the Cape Herald: my pay increased from R250 to R500 a month.
But, while we were happy with management meeting some of our demands and decided to go back to work after a long and exhausting strike, our decision was not supported by colleagues in Johannesburg and Durban who had gone on a sympathy strike, but had added some of their own demands.
They saw our going back as a betrayal of the strike. I remember one of the union’s national leaders, Joe Thloloe, coming from Johannesburg in an attempt to convince us to continue the strike. He had to return with his mission unaccomplished.
We felt that we had done our bit. We had sacrificed for many weeks and needed to return to work after achieving a considerable victory. We needed to do this also to hold on to the unity that we had built among the Cape Herald staff before and during the strike.
The additional demands included that all strikers should be paid for the period of the strike and that management sign a national agreement with Mwasa.
Most of the journalists at the Cape Herald could see the logic in an extended strike – to push for complete victory – but we had to take into consideration the views of those who did not have the strong anti-apartheid views and beliefs in social justice that we had. Most of these people were found in departments other than editorial.
Our main argument in favour of returning to work was that we led the strike and we should have the right to determine when to go back. Having won a considerable pay increase, which was at the heart of our demands, represented a good enough reason to call off the strike.
The national strike, which started as a support action, eventually petered out and left Mwasa much weaker than it was before the strike. In the end, only a handful of mainly journalists remained on strike, having alienated many of their colleagues. The union never recovered from that setback and, with hindsight, would probably agree that our decision to go back when we did was correct.
In the immediate aftermath of the strike, there were serious tensions between the Cape Herald staff and journalists from other parts of the country, particularly Johannesburg and Durban, who felt that we had betrayed them. It took years to rebuild the trust and the good relationship that we had developed in forming the new union.
Unfortunately, many of the salary victories we won in 1980 have been undone over the past 40 years, with some media companies finding new and innovative ways to introduce pay disparity between blacks and whites and between men and women. In many ways, we are back to before 1980, with the difference being that pay disparities are no longer only driven by race, but also by gender and class. If you are a woman or from a working-class background, you are likely to be offered a lower salary than if you are a man from a middle-class background.
Media freedom is a complex issue and fingers are often pointed at those, especially people in government, who try to interfere with the workings of the media. But media freedom is as basic as making sure that journalists and others in industry are paid properly so that they can focus on delivering an important service to society: to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to be informed, educated and entertained. Much like we did at the Cape Herald before and after the groundbreaking strike of 1980.
(Written as a blog for this website on Wednesday, 21 October 2020)
