In January 1973 South Africa witnessed a momentous chain of events in its political history. The Durban Strikes were a turning point in the confrontation between the country's minority rulers and the worker majority. Motivated by material need and underpinned by principles of democracy and equality, the strikes conjoined academics, workers and political leaders among others, in a struggle that was to redefine the South African political landscape in the years to follow.

The decade before the strikes saw Black Nationalist organizations banned along with their members, who were either imprisoned or forced underground. The onslaught by the state soon had the African trade union movement crushed or exiled and by the mid 1960s there were only a handful of conservative White unions in existence. Worker resistance was almost non-existent in the face of the tightening of the job colour-bar and harsher pass laws, whilst employers were free to run their factories as they chose and to freely determine the pay of their African workers. The growth of industry at the end of the 60s, underpinned by the exploitation of African workers, consolidated a honeymoon period between the state and the employers, whilst the plight of African workers worsened.

On the morning of 9 January 1973, 2000 workers from the Coronation Brick and Tile Works marched to a nearby football stadium chanting ? filumuntu ufesidikiza ? (Man is dead, but his spirit lives). Severe repression by the state in the 60s had seen the death of African unionism, but the actions of the Coronation workers in their quest for higher wages, were to revive this spirit in the chain of events that followed. The next day there was a stoppage at the A.J. Keeler transport company, spurring stoppages at other factories. By 14 January, the strikes were still fairly small and scattered, but they gathered momentum as workers from Pinetown/New Germany and Jacobs/Mobeni industrial complexes demanded higher wages. By 26 January all of Durban 's major industrial complexes were faced with a wave of strikes as factory after factory downed tools. By early February, some 30 000 workers, including Durban 's 16 000 municipal workers, had embarked on strike action demanding higher wages and better working conditions.

The waves of strikes that hit Durban, and the pace at which they mushroomed revealed a new force for which many employers had not been prepared. Wide media coverage of the striking workers caused an outcry from various quarters including the White public, and government at the shockingly low wages being paid to workers. In what was seen as an about turn on the part of government, Prime Minister Vorster called on employers to see their employees ?? as human beings with souls?. Even more unusual, was the reaction of the police to the strikes.,They exercised restraint and even seemed sympathetic to the plight of African workers.

It is unclear what sparked the strikes but the wave of worker action was an unmistakable signal to employers and government that a new order was emerging and it simply could not be ignored. In a change of tactics the government ordered an investigation into wage levels, amended legislation to give African workers the right to strike, albeit with severely restrictive conditions, and the opportunity to attend, though not to vote, at Industrial Council meetings. Though these reforms were mere window-dressing on the part of the state, they symbolized for the first time the recognition of the right of African workers to withhold their labour, as well as giving access to channels that were previously the sole domain of government, employers and White trade unions.

Immediately following the strikes in 1974, a study by the Institute for Industrial Education found no plausible or immediate cause and concluded ?the strikes were a series of spontaneous actions by workers, which spread by imitation??. This raises a number of questions such as: What caused the strikes to snowball in the way they did? Why did workers at other factories down tools and also demand higher wages? When one examines the context from which the strikes emerged, it becomes apparent that there existed in workers a heightened consciousness of their plight. This consciousness was due in part, to the work and advocacy of the Wages Commission, an organization founded by White students at the University of Natal. Garnering the resources of the academic world, the students lobbied the government Wages Board for changes to minimum wage levels, using quantitatively researched evidence. Though they were largely ignored by the Board, their definitive research into the poverty datum line (PDL) as a yardstick for setting minimum wage levels drew widespread support from Black workers. Workers often used the PDL when making demands for higher minimum wages.

Wages Com link above ? new Chrono NUSAS Wages Board

At the time of the strikes, the Wages Commission together with over 2000 textile workers had successfully launched the General Factory Workers Benefit Fund as a cautious alternative to starting up a union which would attract immediate state oppression. Similar structures were set up in Johannesburg and Cape Town and a common thread between them was their commitment to democratic grassroots unionism. However many of the leaders such as Rick Turner Halton Cheadle, David Hemson, Neville Curtis, Paula Ensor, and David Davis were banned soon after the 1973 strikes. This marked a turn in the tide for growing African unionism as membership dwindled to a little over 2000 in 1974 from a zenith of some 40 000. This slump was prompted by a spate of bannings, as well as an economic recession that allowed employers, in a labour-buyer's market, to retrench ?problematic' union members.

In a somewhat prophetic sense, a journalist covering the stevedore strikes in Durban in 1972 remarked that the pressure coming from Black workers, ?will not be temporary this time but will go on growing irresistibly, slowly at first, then rapidly later. And as it does so the processes of change will begin to move again?.

Two months later Durban had erupted in strikes on a scale which had never been seen before. Whilst workers had not achieved their demands for an initial increase of R20, and then later R30, most did receive increases in their weekly wages. Of significance in this context was that few workers were fired during the strikes. Growing international pressure on foreign firms saw a large percentage increase being given to their lowest paid workers, and local firms soon followed.

The Durban strikes had instilled in workers a new sense of power. Workers learnt that by striking ?the sky would not fall on their heads?. The bureaux set up by the Wages Commission began to organize more effectively and yet could not cope with the numbers of joining workers. Such resulted in the launch of several unions of workers from the metal, chemical, textile and furniture industries. Access to the government's Industrial Council via the factory-level Works and Liaison Committees, enabled activists to concentrate on building unionism factory by factory. It also provided a foundation that allowed them to survive the 1970s as well as a platform from which to challenge government's bargaining system in the 1980s.

In the more than thirty years since the strikes of 1973, South Africa, has witnessed three major shifts in the history of the labour struggle:

• the emergence of the labour movement rooted in the strike action of 1973,
• the consolidation of trade union power in the 1980s
• the securing of labour rights in the new Constitution, with the advent of a democratically elected government in 1994.

Today the right to strike is guaranteed under the law and is seen by unions, workers, employers and government as a measure of last resort. Though labour dispute mechanisms prescribed by the Labour Relations Act are in place, the work of trade unions in educating and resourcing their members remains a challenge, to sustain the labour movement in the newly democratic South Africa.

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