of big business, to intensify the ethnic and class cleavages
among the subject peoples, and to suppress domestic dissidents.
The government's domestic reforms resulted from investigations made
by special commissions of inquiry and by the President's Council-a
sixty-
one-member body appointed by the president with a large white majority
and a few Coloureds
and Indians but no Africans. The first significant
change concerned labor relations and was a response both to the rash of
industrial strikes that had occurred since 1973 and to the need of manufac-
turing industry
for settled and compliant
labor. By 1979, there were
twenty-seven-illegal-democratically
organized
African trade unions,
with African working-class leaders and significant support from key white
activists. A commission chaired by Professor N. Wiehahn recommended
that African workers be brought under control by legislation. Job reserva-
tion should be abolished, all trade unions (including African) should regis-
ter, and each union should be free to prescribe membership qualifications
as it saw fit. During
1979, Parliament
passed the proposed
legislation.
Unions were to apply for registration,
and all registered unions were to
have access to the industrial court and the right to strike after a thirty-day