An organizer known as Mkhumbikanowa, or “Noah's Ark,” played a prominent role in the labor unrest that rocked Durban's harbor in 1958–59. Several interviewees still remembered him in 2009. Noah's Ark attempted to keep Durban's dock workers, or buffaloes, safe from exploitation and repression. He used biblical imagery, as Zulu Phungula had done before him. Both presented their struggles as a story of suffering and redemption. Phungula argued that Africans lived in hell even though they had helped to build up the British Empire higher than the kingdom of heaven. They too wanted to share in the milk and honey. Both Phungula and Mkhumbi, short for Mkhumbikanowa, strove to redeem African workers, to lift them out of their hell, and to protect them from the rising tide of poverty that threatened to engulf them.

Mkhumbikanowa was of course a nickname. Like most other organizers, he did not use his actual name, as victimization of labor leaders was common practice. Mr. Mkhwanazi recalled that “it used to happen when these strikes occurred, when we chose people to represent us, we would hear that they are detained.” Similarly, while these strikes did have organizers, there were no identified spokesmen who could be singled out and fired, arrested, or expelled from the city. In the context of apartheid, a strike was not just a conflict between employers and workers; it was a direct challenge to the racial and political order. In the eyes of the authorities, it was something to be repressed. Zithulele Chemane recalled that “you would be arrested if you were against the white people.” Unfortunately, the use of a nickname did not keep Mkhumbi safe. He was arrested and banned from working on the docks. As we shall see, however, such bans could not always be enforced.

Dock workers around the world have a long-standing reputation for being uncompromising and strike-prone working-class radicals. Durban's port laborers are no exception. From the first togt boycotts in the 1870s to their refusals in the 2000s to handle Israeli ships and weapons destined for Zimbabwe's Mugabe regime, these workers have used their strategic position in global networks of exchange and communication to express their grievances. The classic explanation for such radicalism comes from Clark Kerr and Abraham Siegel, who argue that, like miners, sailors, and loggers, dock workers often formed isolated and tight-knit communities.