Race, rights and South African retail workers: the limits of a politics of inclusion

Abstract

ABSTRACTExamining South African retail workers, the article explores some of the complexities and limitations of rights-based demands for national inclusion. The article describes black workers’ historical exclusion from workplace participation and employment rights under the apartheid regime, and the particular ways they sought to be incorporated into workplace decision-making processes and labour law. South African retail workers’ struggles for ‘inclusion’ were successful at one level: black workers were finally incorporated as ‘employees’ into national labour legislation and as citizens. Yet, not all black workers were equally incorporated, particularly, those employed in casual or contract jobs. Drawing on Wendy Brown’s work on the relationship between freedom and equality, the article argues that the way in which claims for inclusion were made contributed to the reproduction of new divisions – new exclusions in the workplace – and has continued to shape workers’ actions.