May Day, celebrated on 1 May in South Africa and the rest of the world, has been recognised as International Workers’ Day since the late 1800s.
2024 Workers’ Day: A history of May Day in South Africa
It began with the demand for an eight-hour workday by the Federation of Organised Trades and Labor Unions in the United States and Canada in 1884.
The first recorded celebration of May Day in South Africa took place in 1895, organised by the Johannesburg District Trades Council. Tom Mann’s visit in 1910 inspired a mood of international worker solidarity and culminated in a mass May Day procession in which all sections of the labor movement participated.
The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 had profound consequences for the development of socialist labor politics in South Africa. Before the war, the Labor Party under Colonel Cresswell was the predominant party political voice of organised white labor in South Africa.
By 1914, the Party had gained the support of the majority of the English-speaking working class and was making inroads into the Afrikaans working class as well as the middle class. The outbreak of war caused a serious rift within the party, impeding its ‘spectacular growth.’
At the same time, members of the War-on-War League began to think in terms of an alternative to the Labor Party. In 1916, the Internationalist Socialist League (ISL) was formed.
In 1917, May Day acquired a new international significance as a result of the Russian Revolution. In South Africa, the ISL organised a May Day rally, where for the first time, an African, Horatio Mbelle, an articled clerk, was billed as one of the speakers. The rally, however, never took place as mobs of soldiers and civilians filled the streets, preventing the rally from taking place.
After the war, there was a resurgence in the militancy of the white labour movement, and May Day became an annual event, but it was a white labour affair.
It would not be until 1928 that May Day would be taken up by African workers en masse. In that year, thousands of African workers took part in a mass May Day march that dwarfed the small Labor Party’s demonstration, which consisted of white workers only. Between 1928 and 1948, May Day became an annual event, drawing workers of all races.
On the 64th Anniversary of May Day, in 1950, the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) called for a May Day strike to protest against the Suppression of Communism Act.
The strike resulted in police violence that led to the death of 18 people across Soweto. Nelson Mandela, later South Africa’s first democratically elected President, sought refuge in a nurses’ dormitory, overnight, where he sheltered from the gunfire.
May Day has a rich history in South Africa, dating back to the late 1800s. It began with the demand for an eight-hour workday, and over the years, it has been a time of international worker solidarity and a reminder of the struggles and sacrifices made by workers in the past.
May Day has been used to call attention to labour rights, to protest against oppressive laws, and to demand better working conditions. It remains an important day in the South African calendar, reminding us of the importance of unity and solidarity in the struggle for a fairer society.