Overcoming Difference, Confronting Hegemony: the Unruly Alliances of Social Movement Unionism in Cape Town

Abstract

Service delivery reforms in the municipal sector have, in the post-apartheid era, been politically contested at the local as well as the national level. Processes of deracialisation and development have been accompanied by, and are sometimes hard to separate from, the emergence of a neoliberal model of service delivery (Atkinson, 2003). The move from a ‘statist’ delivery model to a neoliberal one has relegated the local state from a provider of services to merely becoming an ensurer of these, allowing market forces to play a bigger role in state and non-state sectors (McDonald and Smith, 2002). While public sector unions have participated in the local state restructuring, they have also been the starkest critics of these processes when they have been followed by job losses, reduced job security and aggravated working conditions. The adverse effects of the commercialisation of public services are most directly experienced by workers and the poor (Hart, 2002). Hence, community organisations and social movements have also voiced their concerns with the political direction these reforms have taken. Observers have therefore suggested that the post-apartheid era has lain open new occasions for community-oriented unionism. This article looks at the challenges in uniting union politics and community activism around issues of service delivery in Cape Town.