Book Excerpt: Precarious Liberation by Franco Barchiesi

In the following excerpt from Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Postapartheid South Africa, Franco Barchiesi describes the changing place of the black worker in South African society and the rise of trade unions following the fall of apartheid:

Until the last decade of the twentieth century, racial domination has shaped the lives and employment experiences of the vast majority of South African workers. The realm of production was indeed crucial in determining the status of blacks as second-class citizens. The National Party government, rising to power in 1948 with its program of apartheid, subjected non-whites to a particularly harsh and pervasive system of labor control at a time when most African colonial regimes opted for labor reforms and stabilization. Within four decades, black workers would become protagonists of popular resistance. As a response, the racial state mimicked late colonial experiments and tried to tame labor militancy by making work an avenue to limited social entitlements for the disenfranchised majority. The failure of that project was decisive in the collapse of apartheid and left the ANC, triumphant in the first universal suffrage elections of 1994, with the task of responding to black workers’ expectations of social redress.

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Book details

• Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Postapartheid South Africa edited by Franco Barchiesi
  EAN: 9781869142155
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