Privileged Precariat: White Workers and South Africa's Long Transition to Majority Rule (The International African Library)
Cambridge University Press, 4/15/2021
EAN 9781108831802, ISBN10: 110883180X
Hardcover, 290 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
White workers occupied a unique social position in apartheid-era South Africa. Shielded from black labour competition in exchange for support for the white minority regime, their race-based status effectively concealed their class-based vulnerability. Centred on this entanglement of race and class, Privileged Precariat examines how South Africa's white workers experienced the dismantling of the racial state and the establishment of black majority rule. Starting from the 1970s, it shows how apartheid reforms constituted the withdrawal of state support for working-class whiteness, sending workers in search of new ways to safeguard their interests in a rapidly changing world. Danelle van Zyl-Hermann tracks the shifting strategies of the blue-collar Mineworkers' Union, culminating in its reinvention, by the 2010s, as the Solidarity Movement, a social movement appealing to cultural nationalism. Integrating unique historical and ethnographic evidence with global debates, Privileged Precariat offers a chronological and interpretative rethinking of South Africa's recent past and contributes new insights from the Global South to debates on race and class in the era of neoliberalism.
Introduction
The Return of the White Working Class
Part I
White Workers and the Racial State
1. Privileged Race, Precarious Class
White Labour from the Mineral Revolution to the 'Golden Age'
2. From Sweetheart to 'Frankenstein'
The NP's Changing Stance Towards White Labour Amid the Crisis of the 1970s
3. Race and Rights at the Rock-Face of Change
White Organised Labour and the Wiehahn Reforms
Part II
White Workers and Civil Society Mobilisation
4. From Trade Union to Social Movement
The MWU/Solidarity's Formation of a Post-Apartheid Social Alliance
5. An 'Alternative Government'
The Solidarity Movement's Contemporary Strategies
6. Discursive Labour and Strategic Contradiction
Managing the Working-Class Roots of a Declassed Organisation
7. 'Guys Like Us Are Left To Our Own Mercy'
Counternarratives, Ambivalence and the Pressures of Racial Gatekeeping Among Solidarity's Blue-Collar Members
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.