Abstract
The year 1919 is a pivotal one for African labour history. The purpose of this chapter is to present the ways in which African labour organisations became involved in the internationalisation of the labour question between 1919 and 1960, the symbolic ‘Year of Africa’, when most African colonies attained national independence. Indeed, African workers’ organisations took part in what in this book is describing as the internationalisation of the labour question, which in Africa coincided with fundamental social and economic transformations: the emergence and expansion of so-called free wage labour. The widespread introduction of wage labour in colonial Africa led to the formation of reformist as well as, but to a lesser extent, communist trade union centrals. A workers’ consciousness and the introduction of labour rights were the main features linked to the internationalisation of the labour question. Finally, this chapter seeks to analyse which, if any, challenges the internationalisation of the labour question has posed in Africa, north and south of the Sahara, since the creation of the International Labour Organization.
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Notes
- 1.
It is possible to view the ascent of the ILO in two ways: ‘[1] as a Gramscian “passive revolution”: that is, as the result of attempts on the part of the established order to disarm antagonistic forces by partially incorporating their methods and goals, up to the point where even representatives of the antagonist are absorbed; […] and [2] the ILO was established as an instrument to re-embed the economy in society and was part of the second phase of what Karl Polányi was to call the Great Transformation’. See Marcel van der Linden, The International Labour Organization, 1919–2019: An Appraisal. Unpublished Paper (2017): 1–2.
- 2.
The predicated adjective ‘free’ is ever so problematic, not just in the African context. See Stefano Bellucci, “Wage Labour and Capital in Africa: A Historical Perspective,” Labor History 58, no. 2 (2017): 133–137.
- 3.
See A.T. Nzula, I.I. Potechin, A. Zusmanovič, A. Zacharovič, H. Jenkins, and R. Cohen, Forced Labour in Colonial Africa (London: Zed Press, 1979); Roger Thomas, “Forced Labour in British West Africa: The Case of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast 1906–1927,” Journal of African History 14, no. 1 (1973): 79–103; Babacar Fall and Mohamed Mbodj, “Forced Labour and Migration in Senegal,” in Forced Labour and Migration: Patterns of Movement Within Africa, eds. Abebe Zegeye and Shubi Ishemo (London: Hans Zell, 1989): 255–268; and Tiyambe Zeleza, “Labour, Coercion and Migration in Early Colonial Kenya,” in Forced Labour and Migration: Patterns of Movement Within Africa, eds. Abebe Zegeye and Shubi Ishemo (London: Hans Zell, 1989): 159–179.
- 4.
Amr Mohie-Eldin, “The Development of the Share of Agricultural Wage Labor in the National Income of Egypt,” in The Political Economy of Income Distribution in Egypt, eds. G. Abdel-Khalek and R. Tignor (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982): 236–267.
- 5.
AAVV, Labour Survey of North Africa (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1960).
- 6.
See various contributions in Abdul Sheriff and Engseng Ho (eds.), The Indian Ocean: Oceanic Connections and the Creation of New Societies (London: Hurst & Company, 2014).
- 7.
Ercüment Çelik, “The ‘Labour Aristocracy’ in the Early 20th-Century South Africa: An Analysis Beyond Traditional Conceptual and Territorial Boundaries,” Chinese Sociological Dialogue 2, nos. 1–2 (2017): 18–34.
- 8.
See further Gareth Austin, “Resources, Techniques and Strategies South of the Sahara: Revising the Factor Endowments Perspective on African Economic Development, 1500–2000,” Economic History Review 61, no. 3 (2008): 587–624; Charles van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1933 (London: Pluto Press, 1976); and Jonathan Crush, Alan Jeeves, and David Yudelman, South Africa’s Labour Empire: A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines (Oxford: Westview Press, 1991). For a list, by country, of cash and mining production see, http://exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu/list-of-agricultural-and-mineral-resources/, 6 April 2019.
- 9.
Although these ties were not even especially easy to cut at a distance, since the workers’ families remained in their places of origin.
- 10.
Frederick Cooper, “Africa and the World Economy,” African Studies Review 24, nos. 2–3 (1981): 1–86.
- 11.
On the development capitalist mode of production in Africa, see Samir Amin, “Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa: Historical Origins,” Journal of Modern African Studies 10, no. 4 (1972): 503–524; I. Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974); I. Wallerstein, “Labor Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the Proletarianisation of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia,” Journal of Development Studies 3 (1970): 197–234; and Edward Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa: Changing Patterns in Internal Trade to the Late Nineteenth Century (London: Heinemann, 1975).
- 12.
‘For the most part’ means that non-capitalist production methods continue to survive and transform, and still exist today, alongside the most classical capitalist modes of production. It is not the task of this chapter to delve into these forms of labour relations, however.
- 13.
Gunnar Myrdal, Une économie internationale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958): 2.
- 14.
Paul N. Rosenstein-Rodan, “The International Development of Economically Backward Areas,” International Affairs 20, no. 2 (1944): 158.
- 15.
Gerald Meier and Robert Baldwin, Economic Development Theory, History, Policy (New York: Wiley Chapman & Hall, 1957).
- 16.
See Haute-Commissariat Général à Dakar, Les Comptes Economiques del AOF (Paris, 1956).
- 17.
See Carolyn Brown, “Mining,” Stefano Bellucci “Transport,” and Patrick Neveling, “Manufacture,” in The General Labour History of Africa, 20th to 21th Centuries, eds. Stefano Bellucci and Andreas Eckert (Oxford: ILO/James Currey, 2019).
- 18.
In the case of Senegal, a ‘unionist conscience’ already existed in the first half of the nineteenth century. See further Iba Der Thiam, Histoire du Mouvement Syndical Africain, 1790–1929 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993).
- 19.
Nicole Bernard-Duquenet, Le Sénégal et le Front Populaire (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985).
- 20.
L. Bovy, “Aspects historiques et idéologiques du mouvement syndical en Afrique d’expression française,” Penant 74, no. 702 (1964): 384.
- 21.
See further Mamadou Dia, Contribution à l’étude du mouvement coopératif en Afrique noire (Paris, 1958).
- 22.
A fair level of discrimination persisted in favour of white European workers compared with Africans with regard to salaries and other rights. See Pierre Naville, “Notes sur le syndicalisme en Afrique noire,” Présence africaine 1, no. 13 (1952): 359–367; Joseph I. Roper, Labour Problems in West Africa (London: Penguin Books, 1958).
- 23.
Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 137–138.
- 24.
See further Cooper, Decolonization and African Society.
- 25.
John Sender and Sheila Smith, The Development of Capitalism in Africa (London: Routledge, 1986): 1–2.
- 26.
Workers have been struggling to move from individual to collective contracts since the eighteenth century. This objective was achieved in various countries at different times between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, in the globalised village, the struggle is to resist the flexibility and precaritisation of labour by returning to the individual contract; see Fabio Bertini, Gilliatt e la piovra: il sindacalismo internazionale dalle origini a oggi (1776–2006) (Ariccia: Aracne Editore, 2011).
- 27.
African trade unions would be in fact phagocytised by the new independent governments; see Roger Scott, “Are Trade Unions Still Necessary in Africa?” Transition 33 (1967): 27–31; Gérard Fonteneau, Histoire du syndicalism een Afrique (Paris: Karhala, 2004): 73–90.
- 28.
See Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987); Noureddine Dougui, “La naissance du proletariat minier du Sud Ouest Tunisien (1897–1914),” Les cahiers de Tunisie: revue de sciences humaines 32, nos. 129/130 (1984): 47–71; George R. Martens, “Révolution ou participation: syndicats et partis politiques au Sénégal,” Le mois en Afrique 18, nos. 205/206 (1983): 72–79, 97–113; 18, nos. 209/210 (1983): 78–80, 97–109; 18, nos. 211/212 (1983): 54–68; 18, nos. 213/214 (1983): 63–80, 97–109; and John Higginson, “The Formation of an African Working Class: Some Problems,” Race & Class: Journal of the Institute of Race Relations 24, no. 1 (1982/1983): 61–78.
- 29.
There is a vast literature with diverse and divergent views on the relationship between capital exploitation and labour agency in Africa. See, for example Robin Cohen, “Resistance and Hidden Forms of Consciousness Amongst African Workers,” Review of African Political Economy 19 (1980): 8–22; R.D. Grillo, African Railwaymen: Solidarity and Opposition in an East African Labour Force (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); and William M. Warren, “Urban Real Wages and the Nigerian Trade Union Movement, 1939–1960,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 15, no. 1 (1966): 21–36.
- 30.
White workers in colonial Africa were a different story, as is highlighted in Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
- 31.
See further Ian Phimister, “The Reconstruction of the Southern Rhodesian Gold Mining Industry, 1903–1910,” The Economic History Review 29, no. 3 (1976): 465–481.
- 32.
For example, as Isaac Shapera explained in 1947, the system by which mining companies could obtain qualified labour at a lower price than was normally paid in the sector relied on the fact that African mine workers periodically returned to their villages for support; see Isaac Shapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life (London: Oxford University Press, 1947). Evidence of this was expressly included in various reports on the Zambian copper mines; see Patrick Ohadike, Development of and Factors in the Employment of African Migrants in the Copper Mines of Zambia, 1940–1966 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969); Jane Parpart, The ‘Labor Aristocracy’ Thesis Considered Once Again: The Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt, 1926–1966 (Brookline, MA: African Studies Center, Boston University, 1982); and Jane Parpart, Labor Strategies in Northern Rhodesian Copper Mines, 1926–1936 (Brookline, MA: African Studies Center, Boston University, 1980). Another tool employed was the so-called colonial salary, which simply meant that money paid to a worker always had to be below his family’s basic needs; see G. Lasserre, Libreville, la ville et sa région (Paris: A. Colin, 1958).
- 33.
This point was especially made by pan-Africanist organisations, see Tiyambe Zeleza, “Pan-African Trade Unionism: Unity and Discord,” Transafrican Journal of History 15 (1986): 164–190.
- 34.
V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 32 (Moscow: Progress, 1965): 20.
- 35.
The ITUCNW was formally established at a conference in Hamburg, with delegates from Africa, including E.A. Richards (Sierra Leone), Frank Macaulay (Nigeria) and Edward Francis Small (The Gambia). See further Hakim Adi, Pan-Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919–1939 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2013); Holger Weiss, Framing a Radical African Atlantic: African American Agency, West African Intellectuals and the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2014); and Holger Weiss, “Framing Black Communist Labour Union Activism in the Atlantic World: James W. Ford and the Establishment of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, 1928–1931,” International Review of Social History 64, no. 2 (2019): 249–278.
- 36.
See Alex Callinicos, South Africa Between Reform and Revolution (London: Bookmarks, 1988).
- 37.
Strikes and unrest led even to the proclamation of a very short-lived ‘Durban Soviet’. See Wessel Visser, “The Star in the East: South African Socialist Expectations and Responses to the Outbreak of the Russian Revolution,” South African Historical Journal 44, no. 1 (2001): 61.
- 38.
Lucien van der Walt, “The Industrial Union Is the Embryo of the Socialist Commonwealth: The International Socialist League and Revolutionary Syndicalism in South Africa, 1915–1920,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 19, no. 1 (1999): 7.
- 39.
Dimitris Stevis and Terry Boswell, Globalization and Labor: Democratizing Global Governance (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007): 60.
- 40.
Geert van Goethem, The Amsterdam International: The World of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), 1913–1945 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006): 38.
- 41.
Peter Walshe, The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1971): 195.
- 42.
See Mpfariseni Budeli, “Trade Unionism and Politics in Africa: The South African experience,” The Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa 45, no. 3 (2012): 454–481.
- 43.
Ronaldo Munck (ed.), Labour and Globalisation: Results and Prospects (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004).
- 44.
See Willard A. Beling, “WFTU and Decolonisation: A Tunisian Case Study,” Journal of Modern African Studies 2, no. 4 (1964): 553–554.
- 45.
Thiam, Histoire du mouvement syndical africain: 185.
- 46.
Thiam, Histoire du mouvement syndical africain: 192–193.
- 47.
The aftermath of World War I saw an unprecedented trade union movement. By 1922, there were 102 trade unions: 38 in Cairo, 40 in Alexandria, 18 in the Canal Zone and 6 in the provinces. Simultaneously, a wave of strikes hit most of the major industries: between 1919 and 1921, there were 81 strikes (67 general and 14 partial). It was also due to the increasing number of labour disputes that the Labour Conciliation Board was set up in August 1919. See further Marius Deeb, “Labour and Politics in Egypt, 1919–1939,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 10, no. 2 (1979): 187.
- 48.
The French denomination is due to the fact the union was initially closely linked to the Watany Party, whose leadership was both Francophile and Francophone. See Jacques Couland, “Régards sur l’histoire syndicale et ouvrière égyptienne (1899–1952),” in Mouvement ouvrier, communisme et nationalismes dans le monde arabe: études, eds. R. Gallissot and M. Al-Charif (Paris: Éditions ouvrières, 1978): 186; Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile: 139.
- 49.
Zachary Lockman, “British Policy Toward Egyptian Labour Activism, 1882–1936,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 20, no. 3 (1988): 278.
- 50.
Mai Taha, “Reading ‘Class’ in International Law: The Labor Question in Interwar Egypt,” Social and Legal Studies 25, no. 5 (2016): 576.
- 51.
The British TUC asked the IFTU to send an investigative commission to Egypt. See further Stevis and Boswell, Globalization and Labor: 49; Joel Beinin, The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt (Washington, DC: Solidarity Centre 2010), available at history.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9471/f/publications/the_struggle_for_workers_rights.pdf, checked 19 February 2018.
- 52.
See Gertrude Newbury and Colin Walter Newbury, “Labor Charters and Labor Markets: The ILO and Africa in the Interwar Period,” Journal of African Studies 3, no. 3 (1976): 311–327.
- 53.
The membership remained merely nominal until 1951, when Monrovia managed to send delegates to the ILO. See ILO, Report to the Government of the Republic of Liberia on Labour Legislation and Administration (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1952).
- 54.
See ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, Reports of the Committee of Experts Since 1932, https://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/P/09661/, checked 6 April 2019.
- 55.
For an account of Convention No. 29 and how it was received globally, see ILO, Giving Globalization a Human Face, 101st International Labour Conference Report (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2012).
- 56.
See ILO Committee of Experts, Reports Since 1932.
- 57.
See Daniel Maul, Human Rights, Development and Decolonization: The International Labour Organization, 1940–1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012): 193.
- 58.
The year ‘1960 was portrayed in the world’s media as the “Year of Africa” [… because …] 1960 witnessed the most dramatic dismantling of colonial rule, as the continent’s most populous territory, Nigeria, the vast domains of French West and Equatorial Africa, and the Belgian Congo, Somalia, and the island of Madagascar all achieved independence’; John Parker and Richard Reid, The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 1.
- 59.
Pansy Tlakula, “Human Rights and Development,” in Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Development in Africa, eds. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and Philip McConnaughay (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004): 109–119.
- 60.
Tlakula, “Human Rights and Development.”
- 61.
These are especially the monetarist, neoliberal or free-market economists who have their roots in the Chicago or Austrian school of economics.
- 62.
Teobaldo Filesi, Comunismo e nazionalismo in Africa (Rome: Istituto Italiano per l’Africa, 1958): 286–296.
- 63.
Filesi, Comunismo e nazionalismo in Africa.
- 64.
Roger Southall, Imperialism or Solidarity? International Labour and South African Trade Unions (Rondebosch: UCT Press, 1995): 36–39.
- 65.
See further Sar Sijh, La Fédération Syndicale Mondiale et l’Afrique, n.d., 1961, document available at the African Studies Centre Library, Leiden.
- 66.
The reason for this can be found in the composition of the African work force, which, as noted, was not transformed into a veritable industrial and commercial working class between 1919 and 1939, apart from some notable exceptions such as Egypt and South Africa. The economic and social conditions required for the development of large-scale unionism were evidently not yet in place.
- 67.
Sijh, La Fédération Syndicale Mondiale: 37.
- 68.
On the split and its meaning at an international level, see M.K. Pandhe, Working Class and Current Challenges (Chennai: Indian University Press, 2011): 60–62.
- 69.
See George Lichtblau, “African Trade Unions and the Cold War,” Maghreb Digest: North African Perspectives 4, nos. 7–8 (1966): 1–26.
- 70.
Fonteneau, Histoire du syndicalisme en Afrique: 57–59.
- 71.
In France, for example, the CGT was affiliated with the WFTU, the CFTC with the IFCTU, and the CGT-FO with the ICFTU.
- 72.
The Confédération Africaine des Syndicats Libres–Force Ouvrière (CASL) was created and affiliated with the ICFTU, while the Confédération Africaine des Travailleurs Croyants (CATC) was founded and joined the IFCTU.
- 73.
Which some did, see further Guy Pfeffermann, “Trade Unions and Politics in French West Africa During the Fourth Republic,” African Affairs 66, no. 264 (1967): 213–230; Le Movement Syndical en Afrique Noire (Report), n.d.: 52, available at the African Studies Centre Leiden.
- 74.
The UGTAN is in English the General Union of Negro African Workers. However, the organisation is most widely known and referred to by its French name.
- 75.
At the time of the referendum for the independence, in 1958, the UGTAN split into two faction: the Conakry current led by Sekou Touré, and the autonomous current led by Abba Gayé, a Counsellor in the Union Française.
- 76.
On Tettegah, see Naaborko Sackeyfio-Lenoch, “The Ghana Trades Union Congress and the Politics of International Labor Alliances, 1957–1971,” International Review of Social History 62 (2017): 191–213; on Mboya, see Wogu Ananaba, Trade Union Movement in Africa: Promise and Performance (London: Hurst & Co., 1979): 126–128.
- 77.
Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: 441.
- 78.
Ananaba, Trade Union Movement in Africa: 24; Lichtblau, “African Trade Unions and the Cold War”: 12.
- 79.
Ali Yata, “Une nouvelle étape dans la lutte de l’Afrique,” La nouvelle revue internationale 12 (1961): 48–63.
- 80.
Gary Busch, “The Transnational Relations of African Trade Unions,” Africa Today 19, no. 2 (1972): 25.
- 81.
Lichtblau, “African Trade Unions and the Cold War”: 7.
- 82.
Sandrine Kott, “Constructing a European Social Model: The Fight for Social Insurance in the Interwar Period,” in ILO Histories: Essays on the International Labour Organization and Its Impact on the World During the Twentieth Century, eds. Jasmien Van Daele, Magaly Rodríguez Garcia, Geert Van Goethem, and Marcel van der Linden (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010): 176.
- 83.
See further van der Linden, The International Labour Organization, 1919–2019.
- 84.
van der Linden, The International Labour Organization, 1919–2019.
- 85.
Maul, Human Rights, Development and Decolonization.
- 86.
See further Nick Bernards, “The International Labour Organization and African Trade Unions: Tripartite Fantasies and Enduring Struggles,” Review of African Political Economy 44, no. 153 (2017): 399–414; Hans Slomp, European Politics into the Twenty-First Century: Integration and Division (Westport: Praeger, 2000); Guy Standing, “The ILO: An Agency for Globalization?” Development and Change 39, no. 3 (2008): 355–384; and Howard Wiarda, Corporatism and Comparative Politics: The Other Great “Ism”. Comparative Politics Series (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1996).
- 87.
ILO, Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312174, 29 December 2018. From then onwards the ILO engaged in a series of programmes for technical cooperation which, ‘like international labour standards and research activities, is a fundamental ILO mission under the Organization’s Constitution,’ https://libguides.ilo.org/c.php?g=657806&p=4648837, 29 December 2018; see also ILO, List of Ratifications by Conventions and by State (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2000): 93–96.
- 88.
In the 1950s, it was not easy for the ILO to deal with Africa, which was still a colonial territory and therefore under colonial administrations. Since 1947, the ILO claimed competence in social affairs via the so-called Committee of Experts on Social Policy in Non-Metropolitan Territories (COESP); these were of course African territories. The COESP was active in the 1950s and was then replaced by the African Advisory Committee. The COESP dealt with issues such as labour fluxes and migration, social security and so on. This way the ILO issued recommendations for the colonial powers which served as a guideline for their policies. See further Maul, Human Rights, Development and Decolonization: Ch. 5; Anthony Carew, “Conflict Within the ICFTU: Anti-communism and Anti-colonialism in the 1950s,” International Review of Social History 41 (1996): 147–181; J. Kent, The Internationalization of Colonialism: Britain, France and Black Africa, 1939–1956 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992): 263–286.
- 89.
Wilfrid Benson, “A People’s Peace in the Colonies,” International Labour Review 47, no. 2 (1943): 141–168.
- 90.
David Morse, “The ILO and Africa,” Civilisations 9, no. 1 (1959): 3–16.
- 91.
ILO, African Regional Conference [1960]: Report, Record of Proceedings (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1961).
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Bellucci, S. (2020). The Ascent of African Labour Internationalism: Trade Unions, Cold War Politics and the ILO, 1919–1960. In: Bellucci, S., Weiss, H. (eds) The Internationalisation of the Labour Question. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28235-6_16
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