Workers in their thousands came together across the country to celebrate May Day. These pictures tell the story. But as Ayanda Billie reminds us, we should not forget why we celebrate May Day, for a nation without a sense of history is like a tree without roots.
May day: where it all began
Famed poet Paul Dehn once wrote “˜Let [history] be recorded for those who come after’. The 1 st of May is one of those days that will be in our consciousness as workers, and it should be preserved and retold.
How did it become part of our history? May Day is not just about the arrival of spring in the northern hemisphere. It also stems from workers in the 1880s demanding humane treatment; men and women around the world marched in solidarity against the factory owners who would have them work all day, every day.
In 1886, workers in many American cities called for an 8-hour workday by. In Chicago ‘s Haymarket Square , a bomb thrown by an unknown person at a labour rally killed one policeman; authorities rounded up those whom they considered to be the leaders of the local labour movement and put them on trial. This day is marked by sweat, tears and blood of those before us.
That struggle spread across the world. In South Africa workers were faced with many trials, fighting against the apartheid government and struggling for workers’ rights. The struggle for May Day rang out to the marching of anxious feet, the singing of songs of defiance: “˜Unzima lomtwalo’. Some comrades fell, gave their sacred best and wrote our destiny.
Women cried out marching ahead with children on their backs beckoning their husbands and sons to struggle on. Unkindly bullets cut the skins of workers who were carrying to posterity Africa ‘s noblest cause – liberty. It was grim nights for others who were fired from their factories, mines and offices.
When we are celebrating 10 years of freedom and workers’ rights day, let us not forget those workers who are still exploited by their employers – workers at Durban clothing factories, mine workers who are retrenched, farm workers who are evicted from the only place they know, women who work leaving their children alone in a shack and those who gather at factory gates queuing for work armed with diplomas and degrees from universities. They still haunt our history and challenge our freedom; they are a part of us.
The vision of masses of courageous workers marching through the streets of cities, towns, and villages of our beautiful South Africa on May Day should not be lost in the revision of history. Marcus Garvey once said that a nation without a sense of history is like a tree without roots. SINQOBILE.