Class Formation and the Politics of Social Mobility

Abstract

South Africa’s trade unions are believed to hold the key not only to galvanising a new class politics in South Africa; they are also lauded as an example for labour movements in other parts of the world to follow in their struggles against neoliberal globalisation. This stems from COSATU’s pivotal role in the struggle against apartheid: it was a role made possible by an adherence to what Webster (1988) identified as ‘Social Movement Unionism’ (SMU), combining deeply embedded traditions of democratic shop floor organisation (which encouraged rank-and-file militancy) and engagement in a broader political struggle to overcome apartheid in alliance with other social movements (Baskin 1991; Buhlungu 2004; Friedman 1987; Siedman 1994; Wood 2003). This won the labour movement global acclaim, and academics heralded South Africa’s unions’ virtuous commitment to democratic organisation, membership participation, linkages with civil society and broader social/political goals as a model of unionism that could be replicated elsewhere in an effort to regenerate labour moments in the north in particular (Clawson 2003; Moody 1997; Waterman 2001). Moody (1997: 201–227), for example, implores northern unions to ‘look south’ to the example of SMU offered by unions in Brazil and South Africa who, Moody argues, have retained a ‘solid class outlook’ in their political organisation.