Labour In South Africa Research Articles

Contrasting perspectives on globalization and labour in South Africa

The academic analysis of the labour market impacts of globalization has been dominated by neoclassical approaches both in the extensive work on developed countries and the more limited, but growing literature on developing countries. However, in many developing countries the positive impacts predicted for workers in (unskilled) labour-abundant economies have not been observed. This suggests that heterodox approaches may have an important contribution to make in analysing labour market outcomes. The paper contrasts the neoclassical and heterodox interpretations, reviews previous empirical studies of South Africa, and presents new data and analysis of the South African manufacturing sector.

Globalization and the labour market in South Africa

AbstractThe paper examines the impacts of globalization on labour in South Africa. A framework is developed to link different aspects of the process of globalization with labour market outcomes in developing countries. This framework is then applied to the South African case focusing on trade, foreign direct investment, technology transfer, macro‐economic policies and the impact on the bargaining power of labour. The paper concludes that although globalization is only one of the factors affecting the South African labour market in recent years, the outcomes for labour, particularly unskilled labour, have been unfavorable. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

ABUSE OF A DIFFERENT KIND: Adults using children to commit crime

In terms of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 182 of 1999, adults using children to commit criminal offences is considered to be one of the worst forms of child labour. Through an ILO and Department of Labour programme focusing on the elimination of the worst forms of child labour in South Africa, a study was undertaken to explore this issue, and engaged 541 children in consultation. The results of the study are discussed, and the value that such studies hold for crime analysis is briefly considered.

The ‘picaninny wage’. An historical overview of the persistence of structural inequality and child labour in South Africa

This paper considers the recruitment of children and youths in colonial and post colonial South Africa. It explores the early legislation that transformed the nature of childhood in pre-colonial South Africa, and contributes to emerging scholarship on social constructions of childhood. The paper draws attention to historical shifts and continuities in the nature of child labour, and in relation to economic exploitation, racial oppression and childhood agency. Spanning the eras of pre-colonial relations of production, child slavery in the 1600s, and children's work under colonial rule in the mining, domestic service, and agricultural industries, this paper considers the differential configurations of the labour demands of children. Working against the tendency to regard child labour as a sentimental human rights issue, this paper provides a critical perspective against which to focus on contemporary debates about the rights of children in post-apartheid South Africa, and redress the participation of children in processes of total social reproduction.

Codes of conduct, retailer buying practices and farm labour in South Africa's wine and deciduous fruit export chains

Global fruit commodity chains are increasingly controlled by large supermarkets in Europe and North America. The impact of retailer buying practices on developing country producers and farm workers has led to codes of conduct that govern the relationship between retailers and their suppliers. The extent to which these codes can improve conditions for primary producers and farm workers in global fruit commodity chains remains an issue of debate. This article draws on interviews with a sample of deciduous fruit and wine farmers and processors in the Western Cape. The results suggest that buying practices have had a significant impact on the labour-hiring practices of deciduous fruit and wine farmers and processors. For reasons discussed in the article, codes of conduct have had only a limited impact on working conditions in these sectors. The article concludes by speculating on the long-term prospects for retailer codes of conduct for developing country producers and workers.

Mastering the sharecroppers: land, labour and the search for independence in the US South and South Africa

This article explores the institution of sharecropping in the racialised countrysides of the American South and South Africa, where, in the second half of the nineteenth century, black sharecroppers farmed white‐owned land in return for a share of the crop. In both countries, the labour of sharecropping families was an important ingredient in the recovery of the countryside from the devastating effects of war, which left white landowners vulnerable and ill‐equipped to assert mastery over farm labour. This article explores how sharecropping brought labour to the farms, but also allowed a degree of autonomy and independence to develop that sat uncomfortably with the imperatives of agricultural ‘modernisation’ and white supremacy. Sharecropping ended after interventions in the countryside by the state, which aimed to promote ‘modernisation’ of agriculture and control of black labour in South Africa, but which, in the American South, became as concerned with restoring white supremacy, and which allowed a ‘pre‐modern’ form of labour organisation – share‐cropping – to continue long into the twentieth century.

Introduction: comparing race and labour in South Africa and The United States

A few years back, George Fredrickson, the pioneer and doyen of US and South African comparative history, chided ‘American labor historians’ for their failure, as he saw it, to produce book‐length c...

‘Christmas Time’ and the Struggles for the Household in the Countryside: Rethinking the Cultural Geography of Migrant Labour in South Africa

In this paper, I take advantage of a space of interdisciplinary research that has emerged at the intersection of human and social sciences since the advent of radical revisionist scholarship in South African Studies in the 1980s. Within this space, I argue for a rethinking of the geography of cultures of migrancy. By focusing attention on rural (rather than urban) contexts of the cultures of mobility that accrue with migrancy, I argue that we can look at migrant labour as a constellation of cultural arguments in much the same way that recent scholarship has analysed media such as radio, newspapers and schooling, all of which similarly connect the ‘local’ with the national and the global. In particular, I look at how a gendered culture of migrancy, reflected discursively, materially and performatively, orchestrates struggles over the household.

Continuity and Changing Configurations of Migration to and from the Republic of South Africa

This paper focuses on the transfixing configurations of migration dynamics in a new South Africa, while examining the context of migration and migration dynamics with an emphasis on the historical and institutional setting; the role of immigrants, including those doing the dirty and dangerous jobs, even when they are unwanted; the dynamics of replacement; and policy responses to fashion out appropriate migration regimes in the country.In the early 1970s, Lesotho, Malawi, and Mozambique were the main suppliers of labour to apartheid South Africa. This pattern later changed, and the supply of workers from Lesotho increased steadily over the years to 50 per cent of the foreign labour in South Africa. The striking disparities in economic development and living standards between South Africa and other African countries, and the remarkable transition to post‐apartheid rule attracted migrants of all categories from Africa and beyond, despite the daunting problems of unemployment, crime, widespread poverty, and the spread of AIDS. It is estimated that nationals from some 100 countries now live in the Republic of South Africa (RSA). From West Africa came highly skilled professionals from Nigeria and Ghana to staff the universities and other professions, along with tradesmen from Senegal and Mali, including street vendors and small traders. These joined their counterparts from the Democratic Republic of Congo, then Zaire and Zimbabwe to swell the informal sector in contrast to the traditional immigrants from Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Malawi, and Mozambique, whose nationals were mostly unskilled farm labourers and mine workers.

Controlling the Coolies: Chinese Mineworkers and the Struggle for Labor in South Africa, 1904-1910

Importes en Afrique du Sud apres la guerre des Boers pour palier au manque de main d'oeuvre, les coolies chinois employes dans les mines d'or vivaient au quotidien l'exploitation et l'oppression. L'A. explore les conflits entre le management et les travailleurs et les tactiques et strategies utilisees par les deux groupes. La convergence de plusieurs circonstances a conduit a un regime de travail particulierement repressif pour les Chinois employes dans les mines d'or sud-africaines. Les coolies etaient dans une situation unique : en raison de leur statut de travailleurs sous contrat ils constituaient une force de travail captive, ce qui determinait leurs possibilites d'action et de resistance. Par ailleurs, la convergence des interets economiques de l'administration coloniale et des proprietaires des mines renforcait la dependance des mineurs chinois. Cependant, malgre ce contexte defavorable, la resistance collective des travailleurs chinois a permis d'attenuer le degre d'oppression.

Trade Unions and Democratization in South Africa, 1985-1997

List of Tables Preface List of Acronyms Notes on the Contributors Maps Introduction: Consolidating Democracy in a Liberalising World: Trade Union and Transition in South Africa E.Webster & G.Adler Trade Unions in Transition to Democracy in South Africa, Spain and Brazil D.de Villiers & M.Anstey Labour in South Africa's Transition to Democracy: Concertation in a Third World Setting J.Baskin Growth, Structure, and Power in the South African Union Movement I.Macun Trade Union Organization and Capacity in the 1990s: Continuities, Changes, and Challenges for PPWAWU S.Buhlungu From the Politics of Resistance to the Politics of Reconstrucution? The Union and 'Ungovernability' in the Workplace K.von Holdt The Tripartite on the Eve on a New Millennium: COSATU, the ANC and the SACP P.G.Eidelberg Shoot Anything That Flies, Claim Anything That Falls: Labour and the Changing Definition of the Reconstruction and Development Programme G.A.Gotz Power in Partnership? Trade Unions, Forums and the Transition S.Friedman & M.Shaw Bibliography Index

The casualization of black female labour in South Africa

Black women workers in South Africa are highly marginalized in that their work has been undervalued and underpaid due to disadvantage and discrimination. They were severely curtailed by legislation that aimed to keep them away from urban areas and the formal job market. This paper reports the results of an empirical study of the work done by black women in the manufacturing and retail industries. The purpose of the study was to determine the kind of work black women do and the nature of the job processes. The article examines the main findings of the study.

The commandos: the army of white labour in South Africa

The commandos: the army of white labour in South Africa

Mines and Labour Migrants in Southern Africa

Jonathan Crush, Alan Jeeves and David Yudelman, South Africa's Labor Empire: A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines (Westview Press: David Philip, Boulder: Cape Town, 1991), xvi+266 pp.Patrick Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c.1860–1910 (Heinemann: Witwatersrand University Press: James Curry, Portsmouth: Johannesburg: London: 1994), xxiii+305 pp.T. Dunbar Moodie (with Vivienne Ndatshe), Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994), xxi+337 pp.Wilmot G. James, Our Precious Metal: African Labour in South Africa's Gold Industry, 1970–1990 (David Philip: Indiana University Press: James Currey, Cape Town: Bloomington: London, 1992), ix+188 pp.

From pluralism to corporatism: South Africa's labour relations in transition

ABSTRACT This article focuses on how and why South Africa's model of labour relations changed in the course of the country's transition to democracy. It discusses and categorises the differing models of labour relations in the 1980s and 1990s within the backdrop of a review of some of the theoretical literature on forms of interest representation. Thereafter, it discusses how corporatism, and its institutions and processes, evolved in South Africa. Finally, the article investigates why political elites and social movements advocated and implemented a transition from a pluralist to a corpo‐ratist model of labour relations.

The Mills of God: The State and African Labour in South Africa, 1918-1948

The Mills of God: The State and African Labour in South Africa, 1918-1948

The Uprooted Peasants: Chinese Labor in South Africa, 1904-19101

The Uprooted Peasants: Chinese Labor in South Africa, 1904-1910¹

Relations between State, Capital and Labour in South Africa: Towards Corporatism?

This article describes corporatist tendencies in South Africa and attempts an assessment of the future of corporatism in the country. Attention is given to general features of relations between state, capital and labour. The prospects for corporatism are explored by reviewing the history of corporatism in South Africa and by considering the views of activists and analysts, as well as salient structural features of institutions for interest representation and the participating organizations.

Some poor and invisible women: Farm labourers in South Africa

This article presents the results of a prevalence survey carried out in 1994 to assess the socio‐economic significance of waged farmwork in parts of the Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga). The survey was designed to shed light on the question of how many rural households depend for their survival on the availability of wage employment opportunities for women on farms. The results support the view that economists and statisticians in South Africa have paid insufficient attention to the importance of unrecorded, or statistically ‘invisible’ agricultural wage employment to the rural population. In particular, the importance of women's work as waged farm labourers has not received the attention it deserves for policy purposes. Women's wages and working conditions on all types of farms are probably the critical determinants of the standard of living of many tens of thowsands of households in Mhala and Mapulaneng, and of many millions of the poorest households in South Africa as a whole.

Labour in South Africa

Labour in South Africa