Three years after the massacre of mineworkers by police at Marikana, which led to waves of wildcat strikes across the economy, South Africa's labour regime remains enthralled in crisis. June 2014 saw the conclusion of the longest-ever strike in the history of South Africa's mines, involving 70 000 platinum workers over five months. It was followed immediately by 220 000 workers in the manufacturing sector, led by the country's largest and most militant union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa). At the time of writing, a special congress of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) had just confirmed the removal of Numsa and left-leaning former general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, who look set to form an alternative federation, along with eight allied unions, which is likely to be more responsive to the radical mood sweeping South African workers.

Employer groups have responded to the crisis with intensified lobbying for diluted regulation and controls on unions, rather than accommodating worker demands. For its part the government appears sympathetic to this, as we argue below, but is prevented from decisive action by the danger of losing further support at its base. Unrest in the labour market, combined with deep popular resentment over poverty, lack of delivery and corruption, is already spurring major political realignments. At the end of 2013, Numsa formally ended its participation in the African National Congress (ANC)/South African Communist Party (SACP)/Cosatu Tripartite Alliance and took the initiative to launch a united front of social movements and more radically oriented unions, which is likely to feed into a party formation at some stage. Expelled ANC dissident Julius Malema launched his party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), at Marikana in 2013, garnering more than 1.1 million votes in elections the next year on a radical platform of nationalisation and redistribution.

However, according to a dominant narrative of post-apartheid political economy, these events should be difficult to understand. Whilst some uptick in social unrest, as a result of intractable poverty and inequality has been widely predicted, the agent of this is generally presumed to be the massive ‘underclass’ that has been barred from participation in the formal labour market.