African Labour Research Articles

Preparing graduates for the job market: A strength-based skill development approach

Orientation: The lack of skills, such as communication and teamwork among graduates, is a major concern for employers. Graduates should prioritise developing skills in demand for the evolving job market.Research purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore the impressions of graduates regarding the skills they need to enter the job market and to develop and present a strength-based skills training programme for graduates in the South African labour market.Motivation for the study: Graduates can be equipped through a strength-based approach, which could assist them in applying their strengths to find employment in the South African labour market.Research design/approach and method: A qualitative research approach with a social constructivism paradigm was used. The participants were unemployed graduates, with a sample size of N = 10. Data was collected by using qualitative surveys captured on the QuestionPro platform. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.Main findings: The findings highlight the challenges faced by unemployed graduates. The participants reported feeling empowered by the training programme, helping them recognise and utilise their skills and strengths.Practical/managerial implications: The study highlighted that a strength-based training program for unemployed graduates could enhance the skills necessary for employment, such as self-awareness and emotional intelligence. A comprehensive understanding of the barriers to decent work is crucial for developing interventions to equip graduates for the labour market.Contribution/value-add: This research provides a basis for training and developing unemployed graduates from a strength-based perspective.

Barriers and Challenges Faced by Women Shop Stewards in Two Major South African Trade Unions

There are fewer women shop stewards than men shop stewards in South Africa, which can be attributed to existing barriers and challenges. A need arose to investigate these obstacles. The study was qualitative and exploratory. Two themes emerged from the interviews we conducted, each with various sub-themes. The findings revealed barriers such as existing relationships, lack of nomination and not being elected if nominated as well as challenges such as the negative perception of women’s emotionality and a desire to become mothers, a general lack of support and victimisation. These barriers and challenges make it difficult for women to become shop stewards and, if they do, to be effective. According to South African labour legislation, equality should be encouraged in all roles. Women should be motivated to become shop stewards and offered support, not only by the trade unions through policies such as reserved seats for women in union leadership, women-only conferences and workshops and the funding of women’s initiatives, but also by employers, fellow women members and society. This study provides valuable information for industrial relations in South Africa and worldwide.

Remembering African Labor Migration to the Second World: Socialist Mobilities between Angola, Mozambique, and East Germany by Marcia C. Schenck (review)

Remembering African Labor Migration to the Second World: Socialist Mobilities between Angola, Mozambique, and East Germany by Marcia C. Schenck (review)

The Riviera, Exposed: An Ecohistory of Postwar Tourism and North African Labor. By Stephen L. Harp

The Riviera, Exposed: An Ecohistory of Postwar Tourism and North African Labor. By Stephen L. Harp

Skill, race, and wage inequality in British Tanganyika

High racial disparities between Europeans and Africans and high skill premiums are recurrent themes in the literature on inequality in colonial Africa. However, their determinants and effects on inequality remain underexplored. This paper investigates wage inequality, skill premiums, and racial discrimination in British Tanganyika from c. 1920 to 1960. It provides first estimates for wage inequality and race premiums in Tanganyika and extends the coverage of earlier skill premium estimates. Initially, wage inequality in Tanganyika was comparable to neighbouring Kenya and Uganda, but it remained higher in the late colonial period. A primary driver of wage inequality was racial wage disparity, which was partly caused by racial discrimination. Skill premiums also played an important and increasing role and were higher than previously thought. The Tanganyikan administration's failure to expand African education to meet skilled labour demand significantly contributed to racial income differences and wage inequality within the African labour force.

African Entrepreneurship in urban colonial Zimbabwe: The case of Highfield, 1953–1965

Abstract This paper examines the importance of Highfield to the African entrepreneurship history of colonial Zimbabwe, then known as Southern Rhodesia. The Southern Rhodesia colonial state established the township of Highfield in its capital city, Salisbury (now Harare), in 1936 as part of its spatial and racial segregation policy. The policy made Africans temporary residents in the urban areas. However, the post-Second World War industrial growth forced the colonial state to revisit its stance on African urbanisation. Seen as critical for the expanding manufacturing sector, African labour now had to be accommodated in the urban areas, which triggered the colonial state to expand the township of Highfield in 1956. That very year, enterprising Africans responded by taking up the expanded township’s entrepreneurial opportunities. This response and the subsequent evolution of African entrepreneurship in Highfield township are the focus of this paper. The paper provides a historical kaleidoscope of Highfield as a place of African entrepreneurship, which thus far has been occluded and separated from the dominant literature on the township’s role in the rise of African nationalism and anti-colonial struggles. Highfield emerged as a cultural milieu hosting an African Renaissance in food, fashion and lifestyle inspired by a mix of modernity and indigenous ethos. Thus, the paper argues that Highfield was the entrepreneurial centre of various businesses and startups. These colourful stories of African entrepreneurship are gleaned from handwritten business stand applications by African traders, archival documents, and newspapers in piecing together an urban history of African entrepreneurship in the township of Highfield in colonial Zimbabwe.

Kutafuta Maisha: Connections Between Agency and Structure in Makonde Migratory Labour from Mozambique to Tanzania (ca. 1907-1964)

The drive for making colonial territories “profitable” through various means, such as commodity extraction, got entangled with complex events that stood well beyond the intervening capacity of colonial administrators, and labour migration was no exception. This article analyses Makonde migration from Northern Mozambique toward sisal plantations in neighbouring British Tanganyika during the twentieth century and argues that the interweaving of written and oral sources renders two contrasting pictures: one of an orderly planned commodity sector mediated by industrial pundits and sustained by a rhetoric of colonial “development”; and another of spontaneous, haphazard yet rational life decisions undertaken by migrant men and women. We challenge the conventional take on African labour migration by discussing a much more complex picture that shows how the colonial labour migration system had to address the migrants’ needs and how migrants successfully subverted coercive structures for their benefit, and by doing so, Makonde migrants established their own transformative connections with global phenomena that outreached their participation in commodity production chains

The Political Economy of China’s Presence in Africa

Abstract This paper seeks to examine the political economy of China in Africa to unpack whether this foreign presence represents a miracle or a mirage for the continent. Data was gleaned from books, articles, official documents and the 2021 Afrobarometer Dispatch 489 survey (AD489). The paper argues that China is a rational actor that engages with Africa to advance its national interests. The Chinese presence in Africa has elicited divergent reactions from Africans of different social groups. The non-interference principle of the Beijing Consensus has led African power elites to embrace China as a reliable partner. Yet, the reactions of local Africans are mixed. While some applaud China’s contributions to infrastructure development, others criticise it for employing debt-trap diplomacy to assert hegemonic dominance on the continent, exploit African labour and extract resources. The criticism from Africans has led China to attempt to formulate corporate social responsibility policies, establish environmentally sustainable industries and ensure favourable working conditions.

Jeffrey Gunn: Outsourcing African Labor. Kru Migratory Workers in Global Ports, Estates and Battlefields until the End of the 19th Century

Jeffrey Gunn: Outsourcing African Labor. Kru Migratory Workers in Global Ports, Estates and Battlefields until the End of the 19th Century

Education-Job mismatch, earnings and worker’s satisfaction in African labor market: evidence from Cameroon

Education-Job mismatch, earnings and worker’s satisfaction in African labor market: evidence from Cameroon

A human resource professional perspective of strategies to accommodate employees with mental health conditions in the workplace in South Africa.

The South African Labour Relations Act, specifically the Code of Good Practice (CGP) advocates against the discrimination and unfair dismissal of individuals with mental health conditions in the workplace. However, little is known about the implementation of these national policies within the workplace, especially from the perspective of the employer rather than the employee. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences and perceptions of how human resource practitioners accommodate and support individuals with mental health conditions in the workplace. Eleven participants (Human Resource Professionals) participated in the study. The researchers utilized semi-structured interviews where the data was analysed by means of thematic analysis to formulate themes. Three themes emerged depicting the participants' experiences and perceptions of barriers and facilitators which influenced their return to work: The themes that emerged through thematic analysis consisted of 1) Challenges perceived by Human Resource personnel that influences work participation; 2) The influence that workplace accommodations and support structures have on the work participation; 3) The prevalence of policies and laws that are available in theworkplace. The study highlighted that Human Resource Professionals struggle to interpret and implement labor related polices that aid in employing individuals with mental health conditions in the workplace. It is important to implement strategies that will assist Human Resource practitioners in understanding how to implement such policies to successfully accommodate individuals with mental health conditions in the workplace.

Types of shop stewards in a South African higher education institution and their varying challenges

ABSTRACT The main role of shop stewards, whether part-time or full-time, is to act as workplace representatives for trade unions. However, they face several challenges while fulfilling their roles, more specifically shop stewards in the higher education sector due to marginalisation and politicisation in the sector. This study employs qualitative research methods to explore these challenges and proposes effective solutions for shop stewards. The study involved interviews with 15 shop stewards from a higher education organisation. After analysing the data, the findings revealed that part-time shop stewards get challenged by role overload and face the risk of career suicide. On the other hand, full-time shop stewards are challenged by the prolonged working hours. Similarly, both types of shop stewards experience work-family and interpersonal conflicts. South African labour legislation needs to be relooked at to accommodate the dual roles of part-time shop stewards and reduce the hostility they encounter from line managers or employers. Moreover, shop stewards need to develop on self-and others’ awareness skills, and create own awareness with workplace policies so that they carefully navigate between their two roles without any major ramifications like disciplinary hearings. These findings provide new information on shop stewards challenges by type in the higher education sector.

Europe and Arab States’ Migration-related Instruments with Africa: Dilemma of Soft Power and Conflictual Interests

The national and regional interests of the European Union, oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council and Africa are conflictual in addressing international labour migration. This underscores the structure and ineffectiveness of bilateral migration instruments. The European Union canvasses for migrants’ returns, readmission and outsourcing of national border controls; Arab states show reluctance to stop the predominant employer–sponsorship system that curtails labour migrants’ human rights, while African states detest migrants’ return and readmission, and prefer liberalisation of legal migration and flow of remittances. This article is anchored on the hegemonic stability and regime frame of interventionist liberalism theoretical perspectives to highlight Europe’s soft power in migration partnerships or agreements deployed via financial aid and development projects as a way to drive the migration-development-security nexus with African countries. Essentially, African states’ asymmetric economic relationship with Europe has accentuated the carrot-and-stick approach, while Arab states’ slow pace in allowing the mobility of African labour migrants has led to a reduction in remittance flows. It is recommended that the dialogues between the regional blocs and countries leading to labour migration agreements must find a common ground of mutual interests for effective partnerships to emerge.

Labour market trends in South Africa in 2009–19: A lost decade?

ABSTRACT While the South African labour market showed some signs of improvement in the 2000s with unemployment rate gradually dropping to as low as 22.7% at the end of 2007, things unfortunately turned downhill in 2009–19 (sometimes referred to as the ‘lost decade’). Using the 2009 and 2019 Quarterly Labour Force Survey data, this study derived descriptive statistical estimates on labour force, employment and unemployment; the empirical findings suggested strongly that patterns in the labour market outcomes deteriorated during this decade. Unemployed individuals were largely black Africans and concentrated amongst the less educated individuals. They remained out of work for longer and, on average, spent more time seeking employment. The data also indicated the presence of hysteresis in unemployment. Key ameliorating policies in this scenario are skills development and structural reform in the labour market. The former is difficult to achieve, even in the long-term, while the latter is politically challenging.

The Worlds of Labor in Ghana’s Gold Mining Industry, c. 1895–1957

Abstract The global turn has contributed to a revitalization of labor history. Historians have become increasingly attentive to the varied forms of labor commodification that existed under capitalism. Many historians have welcomed this approach which challenges the universalism of “free” wage labor. Critics, however, have warned that global labor history risks re-inscribing the power of capital at the expense of local specificities, particularly in terms of the plurality of labor’s worlds and its (dis)connections with capital. This is not a new debate within African studies. Since the 1980s, historians of Africa have questioned the privileging of wage labor at the expense of other forms of labor and the focus on (post)colonial workplace relations to the exclusion of other relational power structures which shaped the behavior of African men and women. This article takes up these debates by focusing on different forms of labor connected to the gold mining industry in colonial Ghana. The article argues that African men and women involved in the mining sector, including mineworkers, petty traders, and sex workers, responded to their experience of commodification in ways that were about more than just their status as abstract sellers of labor power. What emerges from this analysis is a more nuanced understanding of the strategies and aspirations of African labor which was connected to the mining sector. That is to say, where colonial officials saw working patterns that were purportedly symptomatic of the “lazy” and “ill-disciplined” character of African labor, this article demonstrates otherwise. The behavior of African labor associated with the mining sector was indicative of choices that were made in accordance with individual and collective needs connected to issues of class, gender, and generation, which, in turn, were “entangled” with capitalist market imperatives but not necessarily determined by them.

Capital’s Preference for Foreign African Labour in South Africa: Reflections on Liberal Anti-xenophobia Research

In South Africa, in many economic sectors, foreign blacks are more likely to get a job than a similarly skilled black South African. This paper is about why employers prefer foreign African labour in South Africa, how this contributes to seeing South African black workers as inferior and how job hoarding networks in employment niches have emerged. We examine this in the context of literature on ‘xenophobia’. Both discursive and material practices of racist-ethnicist employers are significant. In a new hierarchy of fictive labour imaginaries which reflects a new labour ‘frontier’ in a diversified post-apartheid southern African pool. The new frontier reflects neoliberal flexible labour systems which also operate within a human rights free-market framework.

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF LABOUR COMMISSIONERS' DILEMMAS WHEN DEALING WITH WORKPLACE DISPUTES IN SOUTH AFRICA

Purpose: The overarching purpose of the study is to review the existing literature on the immense challenges faced by South African labour commissioners when dealing with labour disputes. Upholding decent work is indispensable to dispel injustice and poor working conditions at the workplace. Theoretical reference: It is one of the key sustainable development goals the United Nations sets in which South Africa is a member state. Labour commissioners of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration in South Africa play an integral role in accomplishing decent work through adjudicating labour disputes between employees and employers. Method: The study adopted a systematic review method. The study extensively reviewed the available literature, which include published research articles, conference papers, reports and policy documents over the period 2012–2022 from Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar and ScienceDirect databases. Results and Conclusion: The study found unparalleled challenges, which include illiteracy and poor level of education among the complainants, mounting reported labour caseload, increase in labour matter reviews, re-filing of cases dealt with due to unimplemented awards, poor access to training of the commissioners, among others. Implications of research: The study provides critical policy implications to address labour commissioners' challenges in South Africa. The management must also ensure that the complainants have access to adequate technology whenever they contemplate conducting their dispute resolution process via digital platforms. Originality/value: However, despite labour commissioners facing challenges linked to their work, which compromise their ability to discharge their duties effectively, studies have yet to be conducted to specifically examine the challenges faced by labour commissioners in South Africa.

Gender-Trade Issues: The Effect of AGOA on Female Participation in African Labour Markets

Gender-Trade Issues: The Effect of AGOA on Female Participation in African Labour Markets

Alcohol Diplomacy, Gender and Power in the Late Seventeenth-Century Gold Coast Slaving Complex

Abstract Across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Atlantic African leaders confronted new challenges as the European demand for captive African labour transformed the political economy of the region and the experience of living within it. Among a range of new and remodelled strategies designed to protect their polities, West African leaders used alcohol diplomacy to facilitate political alliance, cross-cultural communication and economic exchange. This article draws on warehouse registers, European travelogues and joint-stock company correspondence to uncover Queen Tituba of Agona (c.1638–1707) in her efforts to manage the English Royal African Company. By tracing her adroit use of alcohol, it reveals how West Africans repurposed English commodities to fit their own patterns of consumption and exchange. From funnelling diplomatic gifts of brandy into Akan-speaking political hierarchies to resolving disputes over rum, the queen drew on alcohol to fortify her rule against other coastal powers and navigate the demands of her own officials, subjects and enslaved labourers. She deployed alcohol in these ways despite, and because of, the pressures placed on her as a woman political leader. Essential to trade and ritual, yet morally fraught, Queen Tituba’s use of alcohol upended the European hierarchies of race and gender that consigned West African women to the status of commodity rather than recognized them as strategic consumers. Following alcohol offers a way of unravelling the intersection between gender, consumption and authority in a period when the trafficking of enslaved African peoples fundamentally transformed Atlantic political economy.

Alluring Opportunities: Tourism, Empire, and African Labor in Colonial Mozambique. By Todd Cleveland

<i>Alluring Opportunities: Tourism, Empire, and African Labor in Colonial Mozambique</i>. By Todd Cleveland