SOUTH AFRICAN RAILWAY AND HABOUR WORKERS UNION SARHWU AN INJURY TO ONE, IS AN INJURY TO ALL (front)
we have won the strike.... now we want recognition. (back)


After being expelled from the National Union of Railway and Harbour Servants, black workers of the Railways and Harbours Administration founded the South African Railways and Harbours Union (SARHU).

Rachel Simons, then known as Ray Alexander, was a founding member along with Johnny Gomas, the General Secretary of the Cape Town Stevedoring Workers Union. The South African Railways and Harbours Union was launched at a meeting on March 26, 1936 and by July 1936, had 1300 members.

SARHU joined the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, the South African Trades and Labour Council and the Council of Non-European Trade Unions. Due to black people being disavowed from renting in city centres, the union operated from the Cape Town Stevedoring Workers Union premises at 57 Plein Street, which was rented in the name of white members of the South African Communist Party.

Many of the union's organisers were arrested and charged in the 1956 Treason Trial. The union was revived in Lusaka in 1985, affiliated with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the United Democratic Front.