Arthur Grobbelaar
Arthur Grobbelaar (24 August 1925 – 3 August 1984) was a South African trade union leader. Born in Pretoria, he worked for the South African Railways, trained as a boilermaker, and also spent time as a hotel manager before returning to boilermaking and joining the South African Boilermakers' Society, where he rose to administrative secretary.
In 1963 he became acting general secretary of the Trade Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA) and was elected to the post the next year. Under his leadership, TUCSA admitted black unions and reached a peak membership of about 478,000 in 1983. He also argued that black unions should be subordinate to white unions. He served on government committees, but many black workers formed independent unions because TUCSA was seen as too close to the government. He died suddenly in 1984 while still in office.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 23:07 (CET).