The State and Civil Society: Transition and Prospects of Labour Geographies in an Era of Economic Globalisation in Nigeria and South Africa

Abstract

This paper seeks to provide a comparative analysis of the role of labour movements in democratisation during two very different political transitions in Nigeria and South Africa and in the context of globalisation and neoliberal hegemony. First, Nigeria is examined as an example of authoritarian rollback and containment of pro‐democracy movements in an economy heavily conditioned by interventions from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Second, South Africa is discussed as a case of home‐grown structural adjustment or gradual neoliberal shift in macroeconomic policies without relevant external interventions. The paper compares the failure of past Nigerian democratisation with the problems and issues arising after the first successful democratic electoral change in South Africa. Labour is analysed by focusing on its relationships with a set of organisations, institutions and regulated behaviours, and the broader concept of labour movement in its plurality of forms of identity, militancy and organisation. The argument of this paper is that the neoliberal discourse, with or without overt political authoritarianism, involves a narrowing of spaces for institutionalising the progressive role of labour in civil society. In the Nigerian case, this process leads to grassroots' demand for a significant radicalisation of trade union strategies, while the possibilities and constraints for such an outcome in the South African case are explored in relation to the crisis of corporatist solutions. The paper concludes that the impact of labour is the single most important factor in the establishment of democracy through alliance with other social forces. At the same time, this conclusion cautions with the contradictory nature of pressures placed on organised labour.