In December 1919, dock workers in Cape Town took industrial action. For two weeks, 2,000 members of the newly formed Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU) went on strike. In shutting down the docks, they raised the profile of Clements Kadalie, South Africa’s first black leader of a national trade union.
As we build towards a winter of discontent of our own, we can take inspiration from Kadalie’s stand against exploitation. Also taking inspiration was a young woman in one of the crowds that heard him speak. Eva Moorhead was ripe for politicisation. She was the daughter of an absent white father and a black mother who died too young, and had had enough of the racial discrimination that ostracised her as “half-caste” (“I am not half of anything”).
