South African Black Trade Unions as an Emerging Working-Class Movement

1989 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony W. Marx
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Manufacturing Sector ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Labour Unions ◽  
Industrial Manufacturing ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
African Black ◽  
New Phase

The Recent resumption of popular protest signals a new phase in South Africa's internal opposition, characterised notably by the rising political engagement of black labour unions and their federations. Membership in these unions has reached over a million workers, reflecting the dramatic expansion of South Africa's industrial manufacturing sector in the last 20 years. With severe restrictions placed on the leading national and local political organisations since 1985, the unions have developed beyond their initially narrow concerns for their members into the forefront of opposition to established economic and political order. As a result, class consciousness and working-class organisation have increasingly been combined with, and taken precedence over, previous conceptions of opposition based on racial and national identity. This development has exacerbated both remaining ideological divisions and pressures for united action within the union movement.

Nkosi, Lewis (1936–2010)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Steibel
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Working Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
African Black ◽  
The Usa

Lewis Nkosi is increasingly recognized as one of South Africa’s foremost literary critics, and also as an iconoclastic writer of novels and plays. His years as an exile during the apartheid era meant, however, that his reputation within South Africa was for some time less secure than it was abroad. Born in Chesterville, a black Durban township, Nkosi came from a female-headed, working-class family. He was mission-schooled in Eshowe and then embarked on a career that began with a short but important journalistic stint at Drum magazine. To take up a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard in 1961, Nkosi left South Africa on a one-way exit permit. For the rest of his life he lived variously in England, Zambia, Poland, the USA and Switzerland, following a writing and academic career. Nkosi’s style is a distinctive one, at odds with much of the naturalist writing that characterized South African black ‘protest’ fiction of the apartheid years. Influenced by the writings of Faulkner, Kafka and Joyce, Nkosi’s style is modernist, suggestive and symbolic. His loyalty to form, and to the stringent demands of a modernist perception of art, is evident in his critical essays, gathered into three collections: Home and Exile (1965), The Transplanted Heart: essays on South Africa (1975), and Tasks and Masks: themes and styles of African literature (1981).

scholarly journals Organising Against Precarity: The Life of a South African Labour Broker Worker

2021 ◽  
pp. 095001702110150
Author(s):  
Carin Runciman ◽  
Khongelani Hlungwani
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
Labour Rights ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
African Context ◽  
Permanent Workers ◽  
Insight Into

This article presents Khongelani Hlungwani’s experiences of working as a labour broker worker and his struggle to become a permanent worker in Gauteng, South Africa. His account provides a lens through which to understand the shopfloor divisions between permanent and labour broker workers. These divisions are, as Hlungwani’s account demonstrates, compounded by a trade union movement that largely sidelines the interests of precarious workers in favour of permanent workers. This has led many workers, like Hlungwani, to be distrustful of trade unions. Thus, when new labour rights were introduced in 2015, which provided an impetus for labour broker workers to organise, many, like Hlungwani, chose to do so outside of trade unions. The article demonstrates how it was possible, in the South African context, to utilise the institutional power of new labour rights to build associational power outside of trade unions. The article provides insight into both the strength and the fragility of these forms of organising through an account of the strike that Hlungwani participated in in solidarity with unionised workers at his workplace.

scholarly journals Confronting White Labourism: Socialism, Syndicalism, and the Role of the Scottish Radical Left in South Africa before 1914

2010 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Kenefick
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Working Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Early Labour ◽  
History Of ◽  
White Workers ◽  
Radical Left

SummaryDominated by the ideas of the “communist school”, the early history of the socialist and revolutionary syndicalist movement in South Africa has (until relatively recently) been largely overlooked by labour historians. From this approach emerged the view that the dominant voice of white workers in South Africa was British, and to a lesser extent Australian, and that their blend of class and racial consciousness resulted in the widespread support for the common ideology of white labourism. Indeed, support for this system of industrial and racial segregation was prevalent across the British Empire, was widely supported by the imperial working class, and in South Africa was never seriously challenged or confronted before 1914. Over recent years, however, South African labour historians have made efforts to rethink their national labour history by examining the early labour movement and the ideology of white labourism in a global context. This article adopts a similar approach and argues that the politics of white labourism was not uniformly embraced by the imperial working class, and that in South Africa there was a vocal and active non-racialist movement which sought to confront racism and segregation, dispute the operation of the “colour bar”, and challenge the white protectionist policies of the labour and trade-union movement. In conclusion, it will be argued that the campaign to confront white labourism was disproportionately influenced by radical left Scottish migrants who adhered firmly to the colour-blind principles of international socialism and revolutionary syndicalism.

scholarly journals The Challenges Facing the South African Labour Movement

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-693 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Wood ◽  
Pauline Dibben
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Nationwide Survey ◽  
The South ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Union Policy ◽  
Worker Democracy

There is a growing body of literature on the role and impact of unions in the developing world, and on their ability to mobilize members against a background of neo-liberal reforms. The South African trade union movement represents a source of inspiration to organized labour worldwide, but has faced many challenges over the years. This article engages with debates on union solidarity and worker democracy, and draws on the findings of a nationwide survey of members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to explore the extent of fragmentation according to gender, age, skill level and ethnicity. The survey reveals regular participation in union affairs, democratic accountability, participation in collective action, and a strong commitment to the labour movement, but variation in levels of engagement between categories of union members indicates significant implications for union policy and practice.

Reproductive cancers among South African Black men: A scoping review protocol

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elvis Tichaona Munatswa ◽  
Mzikazi Nduna ◽  
Thobeka Nkomo ◽  
Esmeralda Vilanculos
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
African Black ◽  
Review Protocol ◽  
Reproductive Cancers

Abdullah Quilliam

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Siddique Seddon
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Political Influences ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
Class Struggles ◽  
Legal Advisor ◽  
Shed Light

This chapter explores the religious and political influences that shaped Abdullah Quilliam’s Muslim missionary activities, philanthropic work and scholarly writings in an attempt to shed light on his particular political convictions as manifest through his unique religiopolitical endeavors. It focuses especially on Quilliam’s Methodist upbringing in Liverpool and his support of the working classes. It argues that Quilliam’s religious and political activism, although primarily inspired by his conversion to Islam, was also shaped and influenced by the then newly emerging proletariat, revolutionary socialism. Quilliam’s continued commitment to the burgeoning working-class trades union movement, both as a leading member representative and legal advisor, coupled with his reputation as the "poor man’s lawyer" because of his frequent fee-free representations for the impoverished, demonstrates his empathetic proximity to working-class struggles.

Postcolonial Liberation: Decolonizing Biblical Studies in the South African Postcolony

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald O. West
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The South ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
The Bible ◽  
African Black ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Economics ◽  
The 1960S

Liberation biblical interpretation and postcolonial biblical interpretation have a long history of mutual constitution. This essay analyzes a particular context in which these discourses and their praxis have forged a third conversation partner: decolonial biblical interpretation. African and specifically South African biblical hermeneutics are the focus of reflections in this essay. The South African postcolony is a “special type” of postcolony, as the South African Communist Party argued in the 1960s. The essay charts the characteristics of the South African postcolony and locates decolonial biblical interpretation within the intersections of these features. Race, culture, land, economics, and the Bible are forged in new ways by contemporary social movements, such as #FeesMustFall. South African biblical studies continues to draw deeply on the legacy of South African black theology, thus reimagining African biblical studies as decolonial African biblical studies—a hybrid of African liberation and African postcolonial biblical interpretation.

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