Trade-Union Internationalism and Solidarity in the Struggle against Apartheid: A Case Study of Volkswagen

Abstract

By the 1970s, the struggle against apartheid had intensified within South Africa and abroad. Eddie Webster has argued that this struggle „became the moral equivalent of the Spanish civil war ... with democrats, liberals, communists and concerned Christians united in common abhorrence of white domination‟.1 This article focuses on the trade-union internationalism and solidarity that emerged between South African and German trade-unionists in the fight against apartheid in a major German trans-national corporation (TNC). The relationships that developed in terms of the overlapping and convergence of economic, political and institutional interests that inform actions are studied.2 Two distinct phases are identified. First, the emergence in the latter part of the 1970s of direct shop-floor and official links between South African and German trade-unionists, informed by the economic and institutional interests of the trade unions and the company involved. Second, new relationships and structures developed in the early 1980s that were informed by political interests of the actors and the German churches, in particular. The tensions between narrow forms of economically determinist trade-union internationalism and more encompassing political activity and solidarity can therefore be identified.