Rethinking Representations of Trade Unionism in South Africa

Abstract

Abstract This essay reviews the literature on trade unions in South Africa in the last century. It points to some of its limitations seeking to challenge narrow conceptions and worn binaries of worker resistance and trade unionism, spontaneity and organization, that still plague some histories of labor and labor unions. It therefore attempts to review the literature in a way that opens up new readings and theoretical perspectives on labor and trade unions. It seeks to show how migrant and women’s organizing continue to be two areas that the literature has not adequately grasped. That women have often organized themselves outside of unions and dominant political structures implies that there is broad scope for theoretical perspectives that challenge masculine notions of organizing and institutional culture. In addition, there needs to be more attention paid to the issue that migrant members of unions themselves are finding more expression for their grievances outside of trade union bureaucratic structures. Moreover, in a country such as South Africa, with extremely high unemployment in a global economy of fewer and fewer jobs, it is necessary to ask whether the notion of industrial unionism, which has for so long excluded those on the margins of the so-called formal economy, is still viable, or whether new forms of organizing that are more cognizant of the local and global interconnectedness of all spheres of the economy, beyond the public/private divide, must be sought. In order for these perspectives to emerge, however, it is necessary to rethink the categories that people impose on history and how it limits future possibilities.