An important figure in the revival of African trade unions in the 1970s. Bhekisisa Harold Nxasana was born near Ixopo in southern Natal on September 26, 1936. His father, a teacher who later worked as a mine clerk, died in the violence of the 1949 Zulu-Indian riots. Nxasana attended mission schools to the eleventh grade, then sought work in Durban and was employed for 12 years in textile factories. During this time he became a trade union organizer with the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). In 1967 he was convicted of furthering the aims of the banned African National Congress (ANC), and served a year in prison before being banned for two years upon his release.

As labour discontent mounted in the early 1970s, Nxasana tried to promote the revival of SACTU while working briefly for the General Factory Workers Benefit Fund at Bolton Hall labor center in Durban, then as assistant principal of the Institute for Industrial Education. With Halton Cheadle and others, he helped form the Metal and Allied Workers' Union and the National Union of Textile Workers, which in 1973 came together in the Trade Union Advisory and Coordinating Council. Meanwhile, Nxasana was instrumental in producing literature in Zulu for workers, spoke to student groups at the University of Natal, and for about a year was employed by Mewa Ramgobin, for whom he provided informal links to the banned Congress movement.

While pursuing trade union work, Nxasana was in touch with Joseph Mdluli, Jacob Zuma, Harry Gwala, Griffiths Mxenge and others in the ANC underground who were involved in ferrying ANC recruits and arms between Natal and Swaziland. Detained in December 1975, he was brutally assaulted and held in isolation for 19 months until he agreed to be a witness for the state in the Pietermaritzburg trial of Harry Gwala and other underground ANC and SACTU members. After offering damaging evidence, he retook the stand as a witness for the defence to refute his testimony and to describe the torture which had forced him to give evidence. Released at the end of the trial in August 1977, he was banned several months later and restricted to Umlazi township for five years. In later years he continued his trade union work, helping to produce Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) News, Congress of South African Trade Union(COSATU) News, and the South African Labour Bulletin, and working as a translator.

References

• G. Gerhart, T. Barnes, et al, From Protest to Challenge: Political Profiles, 1964-1990, volume 7(UNISA Press and Indiana University Press)
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