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Rethinking the Underclass: Future Directions in Southern African Labor History1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2013

Ralph Callebert
Ralph Callebert*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Halifax
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Extract

Southern and South African labor history has, at least since the 1970s, been as much about the future of the region as about its past. Liberal scholars saw in apartheid and segregation irrational aberrations to the color-blind logic of capitalism. They believed the apartheid state to be an instrument of racial dominance but saw it as more or less neutral in terms of class relations. Economic growth and the abolishment of racial laws would bring freedom and equality—or at least equal opportunities. On the other hand, radical historians and sociologists thought of apartheid as a system that guaranteed the exploitation of cheap black labor for the benefit of capital. For them, apartheid was functional to capitalism.2 While both the liberal and the radical positions were often more nuanced than the other side would admit, the question that divided these two camps was one about politics and strategy: Would capitalist development bring an end to racial domination, or was it part of the problem? In the latter case, challenging apartheid and colonialism would also involve challenging capitalism. The vibrancy of these debates should continue to serve as an inspiration for labor historians. I will argue that for the Left to be able to formulate viable alternatives to present policies, we should look at the history and nature of labor and inequality in the region.

Type
New Directions in Labor History Around the Globe
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 82 , Fall 2012 , pp. 136 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2013

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Footnotes

1.

I would like to thank Bill Freund, Robert Shenton, Marc Epprecht, and Raji Singh Soni for their feedback on an earlier draft.

References

Notes

2. This argument is particularly associated with Harold Wolpe; see “Capitalism and Cheap Labour-power in South Africa: From Segregation to Apartheid,” Economy and Society 1 (1972): 425–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. For example, Max Gluckman, “Malinowski's Sociological Theories,” Rhodes-Livingstone Papers No. 16 (Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia, 1949). James Ferguson provides an excellent overview of this scholarship in Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999)Google Scholar, chapter 1.

4. Wolpe, “Capitalism and Cheap Labour-power.”

5. Bozzoli, Belinda and Delius, Peter, “Radical History and South African Society,” Radical History Review 46 (1990): 22–3Google Scholar.

6. Part of this criticism was that Marxist writings were often strong in debating fine points of theory but light on actual empirical evidence. Of course, many of these scholars were banned from South Africa and had limited access to sources.

7. Bozzoli, Belinda, “Marxism, Feminism and South African Studies,” Journal of Southern African Studies 9 (1983): 139–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Beinart, William, The Political Economy of Pondoland, 1860–1930 (Cambridge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bozzoli with the assistance of Nkotsoe, Mmantho, Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900–1983 (Portsmouth, NH, 1991)Google Scholar; Hunter, Mark, Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2010)Google Scholar.

9. Harries, Patrick, Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860–1910 (Portsmouth, NH, 1994)Google Scholar; Moodie, T. Dunbar with Ndatshe, Vivienne, Going for Gold: Men, Mines, and Migration (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994)Google Scholar.

10. See von Holdt, Karl, Transition from Below: Forging Trade Unionism and Workplace Change in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 2003)Google Scholar.

11. Hunter, Love in the Time of AIDS.

12. Barchiesi, Franco, Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Postapartheid South Africa (Albany, NY, 2011)Google Scholar. Postapartheid changes in the labor market and the workplace are also discussed in Webster, Edward and von Holdt, Karl, eds., Beyond the Apartheid Workplace: Studies in Transition (Scottsville, South Africa, 2005)Google Scholar.

13. It should be noted that, despite often being very critical of the government and demanding better services, housing, etc., the poor mostly remain loyal to the ANC.

14. Sitas, Ari, “The New Tribalism: Hostels and Violence,” Journal of Southern African Studies 22 (1996): 235–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; von Holdt, Transition from Below.

15. Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity; Potts, Deborah, Circular Migration in Zimbabwe and Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa (Woodbridge, UK, 2010)Google Scholar.

16. The first major work on the informal economy in South Africa was Preston-Whyte, Eleanor and Rogerson, Christian, eds., South Africa's Informal Economy (Cape Town, 1991)Google Scholar. There is some early work by liberal anthropologists, especially on African women illegally brewing beer in the cities. This work was in line with that of the Rhodes-Livingstone scholars and also challenged theories of “culture contact.” For example, Ellen Hellmann, “Rooiyard: A Sociological Survey of an Urban Native Slum Yard,” Rhodes-Livingstone Papers No. 13 (Oxford, 1948).

17. Callebert, Ralph, “Cleaning the Wharves: Pilferage, Bribery, and Social Connections on the Durban Docks in the 1950s,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 46 (2012): 23–38 Google Scholar; Edwards, Iain, “Swing the Assegai Peacefully?: ‘New Africa’, Mkhumbane, the Co-operative Movement and Attempts to Transform Durban Society in the Late Nineteen-Forties,” in Holding Their Ground: Class, Locality and Culture in 19th and 20th Century South Africa, ed. Bonner, Philip et al. (Johannesburg, 1989), 59–103 Google Scholar.

18. An incisive critique of this discourse can be found in Devey, Richard, Skinner, Caroline, and Valodia, Imraan, “The State of the Informal Economy,” in State of the Nation, South Africa 2005–2006, ed. Buhlungu, Sakhela et al. (Cape Town, 2006), 223–47Google Scholar.

19. Seekings, Jeremy and Nattrass, Nicoli, Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa (New Haven, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 11.

20. Paton, Carol and Theobald, Stuart, “Talking Cure,” Financial Mail, February 22, 2008 Google Scholar.

21. Callebert, “Cleaning the Wharves.”

22. Argyle, John, African Meatsellers in Durban (Durban, 1981)Google Scholar; Preston-Whyte, Eleanor and Nene, Sibongile, “Black Women and the Rural Informal Sector,” in South Africa's Informal Economy, 229–42Google Scholar. Moreover, Harries and Moodie both mention the presence of penny capitalists in the mine compounds; see Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity; Moodie, Going for Gold.

23. See Bolt, Maxim, “Waged Entrepreneurs, Policed Informality: Work, the Regulation of Space and the Economy of the Zimbabwean-South African Border,” Africa 82 (2012): 111–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bezuidenhout, Andries and Fakier, Khayaat, “Maria's Burden: Contract Cleaning and the Crisis of Social Reproduction in Post-apartheid South Africa,” Antipode 38 (2006): 462–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Ceruti, Claire, “Divisions and Dependencies among Working and Workless,” South African Labour Bulletin 31 (2007): 22–4Google Scholar.

25. Edwards, “Swing the Assegai Peacefully?,” 203.