SPEAKER_00: Hey, y'all, I'm Erin Haynes. I'm the editor at large for The 19th News, a nonprofit newsroom
reporting on gender, politics, and policy. I'm also the host of a brand new weekly podcast
from The 19th News and Wonder Media Network called The Amendment. Each week, we're bringing
you a conversation about gender, politics, and the unfinished work of American democracy.
Our very first episode features my dear friend and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones. It's out now, so please go listen and follow the show. On top of all of this,
I'm your guest host for this month of Womanaca. This Black History Month, we're talking about
revolutionaries, the Black women who led struggles for liberation from violent governments, colonial rulers, and enslavers. These women had the courage to imagine radically different worlds,
and they used their power to try and pull those worlds into view.
Today, we're talking about a woman who made waves as a trade unionist and activist during the apartheid era of South Africa. The government locked her in prison for daring to fight for
Black workers' rights. Please welcome Emma Mashinini.
Emma Mashinini was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1929. She grew up under the
racist apartheid system, which enforced strict segregation between the country's white minority
and its non-white populations. Emma's family was one of many forcibly relocated to Soweto,
a segregated all-Black township. Resources there were scarce, and many residents were
underpaid and living in poverty. Emma's parents separated when she was 14, and she had to
leave school to help support her family. In a few years, she was married and beginning
a family of her own. She had six children during her lifetime, though three died in
infancy due to the poor health care provided to Black South Africans.
Emma got work in a clothing factory. That was where she began her revolutionary work.
In the factory, Black workers were excluded from white unions, and all Black unions were
not legally recognized. It was illegal for them to strike, and they were also usually
paid the lowest wages. Emma fared well at her factory, eventually earning a supervising
role—a rare promotion for Black women at the time. In this job, Emma witnessed numerous
strikes as her fellow African workers fought for better conditions. In her leadership position,
she helped reduce their working hours and win the right to unemployment insurance. As
she later recalled, there was one strike after another, and this has followed me all my life.
Wherever I am, it seems there must always be trouble.
It was a turbulent time in South Africa. The African National Congress and other anti-apartheid
groups were spreading a message of liberation while the white government tried to violently suppress them. In 1955, at the Congress of the People gathering, leaders of the ANC drew
up the Freedom Charter, a document that envisioned a South Africa where all people were free and equal. Emma later credited that day as one of the moments that made her political,
and it wasn't long before that activist instinct followed her into her work.
In 1962, Emma was elected to sit on the National Executive Committee of the National Union
of Clothing Workers. There, she met her second husband, Tom Maschineini. In 1975, she became
president of a new labor group, the Commercial, Catering, and Allied Workers Union of South Africa,
or the CCAWUSA. In her first two years, she grew the organization to a thousand members,
many of whom were women. At the age of 46, she learned to drive a car so she could travel to
meet more workers for recruitment, but it was risky work. Managers would accuse her of illegal
trespassing when she tried to hand out leaflets to shop workers clocking in. Emma and her husband
were often harassed and arrested by police. The danger of Emma's work continued to escalate until
November of 1981. Police arrived at her home at night and searched the entire house.
They arrested Emma. She spent six months, mostly in solitary confinement, experiencing intense
isolation and terror as she was locked away from the outside world and slowly starved. She was
regularly questioned for hours as police accused her of being a communist, which Emma was not.
When she couldn't answer their questions in a way that pleased them, they would bully and taunt her.
She later wrote, I was never physically abused by them, just pushed around, but not battered or
assaulted. It was an emotional battery, I suppose. While Emma was in prison, her close friend and
fellow union leader, Neil Agate, died in detention. Because Neil was white, his death generated
attention in the press. The resulting outcry helped spur the release of other political prisoners,
including Emma in 1982. Her time in detention left her deeply traumatized, so she spent some time in
Denmark at a clinic for detainees and people who had been tortured. Many people told her not to go
back to South Africa. She was bound to be arrested again, but Emma did return.
She worked for the CCAWUSA for four more years. By the time she left, the union boasted more than
80,000 members. In 1985, she helped form the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
The next year, Emma took a role as director of the Anglican Church's Department of Justice and Reconciliation, where she helped families of political prisoners like herself. Emma also
published a memoir titled, Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life, writing about her life as a trade unionist and experience in prison. In the early 1990s, formal apartheid finally came to an end.
As a well-respected organizer, Emma was appointed president of the Mediation and Conciliation Center before being named the commissioner for the restitution of land rights.
She was also awarded the National Order of Lothuli in bronze for the years she spent strengthening trade unions in South Africa. Emma died on July 10, 2017. She was 87 years old.
All month, we're talking about revolutionaries. For more information, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wamanaka Podcast.
Special thanks to co-creators Jenny and Liz Kaplan for having me as a guest host. As always, we're taking a break for the weekend, so talk to you on Monday.
