Nearly 800 black bus drivers, conductors and mechanics were arrested on Christmas Eve in a massive swoop by Rhodesian police for taking part, in the Smith regime's terms, in an illegal strike. The men, all employees of the Salisbury United Omnibus Company, staged a walk-out after negotiations with management to secure an improved Christmas bonus offer had broken down. They were immediately picked up by the police and spent the long Christmas weekend in Chikurubi prison outside Salisbury.
Under the discriminatory laws in force in Rhodesia, black workers are effectively debarred from taking "legal" strike action, even in those areas of the economy where some limited industrial organisation has been possible. The all-embracing Law and Order (Maintenance) Act, for example, provides for a prison term of up to 10 years for anyone who "does any act which is likely to hinder or interfere with the carrying on of any essential service" — the latter being defined to include virtually every economic sector of any significance. The penalty for encouraging or helping others to go on strike is up to 5 years imprisonment. More specifically, Section 141 of the Industrial Conciliation Act (Chapter 267 of Rhodesia's Statute Law, 1974 revised edition) prohibits strikes in the light, power, water, sanitation and fire services, and lays down stringent controls on industrial action in other sectors of commerce and industry.
The workers arrested in Salisbury on Christmas Eve were in due course charged under the Industrial Conciliation Act and on 28 December, 20 of the bus drivers were each fined Rh $40, with an alternative of 40 days imprisonment, by a Salisbury magistrate's court. They were cheered and carried shoulder high by friends and relatives as they left the courtroom. The remaining 776 workers appear to have been released by the following day after being asked to sign admissions of guilt preparatory to the imposition of similar RH $40 fines. The vast majority, however, were later sacked by the bus company.
The background to these Christmas court appearances has been formed by a countrywide series of protests at rising prices and inadequate wages. From the early part of November onwards thousands of black workers in five urban centres including Bulawayo, Que Que and Gwelo boycotted bus services, municipally owned beer halls and bakers' shops. The boycotts began in Bulawayo where the Rhodesian Omnibus Company (ROC), despite protests from black residents' associations, trade unions, and the Township Advisory Board, introduced fare increases of 1-3 cents on certain routes from 1 November. The black workers' representatives argued that inflation (running at around 12%), short-time working in many firms, low wages, unemployment and recent increases in rents, electricity and hospital fees made the new fares intolerable. In the face of the company's argument that the fare increases were the inevitable consequence of escalating running costs, they pointed to a 38% improvement in ROC's taxed profits over the 1975-6 financial year. The largest shareholder in ROC is in fact a British company, United Transport Overseas (UK), with 60.2%. Another British company, Electra Investments Rhodesia, holds 2.6%.
By the end of November, ROC buses in Bulawayo were still operating with only a quarter to half their normal number of passengers as Africans walked to work from the black townships, and a partial boycott was reported to be still continuing two weeks later. Boycotts of ROC buses in Gwelo, and of the United Bus Company in Que Que, both towns in Rhodesia's Midlands, started on November 22 and 19 respectively. By that time, the boycotts had spread to municipally-owned beer halls, 15 of which were closed in Bulawayo over a three-day period. In Que Que, the bakery boycott, partly in protest at a price increase of 12.5% on 25 October, caused a 60% drop in bread sales.
In January, thousands of black workers boycotted bus services in Salisbury in protest at the dismissal of the strikers.
According to recent evidence collated by Dr. Duncan Clarke, a former University of Rhodesia economics lecturer, 56.1% of African workers in the non-agricultural sectors were in 1975 receiving a monthly cash wage of less than Rh $40. This was just 21 cents above the Poverty Datum Line, as revised in June 1975, for a child-less couple. The study concluded that the wage structure for black workers remained "palpably inadequate" at the end of 1976. Statistics published by the Smith regime itself in its latest report on income tax show that only 4% of all individuals liable for income tax were African, in a country where the black majority outnumbers the white by 22 to 1.
