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HOW DID THE END OF APARTHEID affect South Africa’s white workers? An excellent question. And the answer can go a long way towards explaining some of the more virulent politics evident today. But the question is rarely asked because – so the assumption goes – there are...
The Marikana massacre and unrest on South Africa's mines in 2012 elicited a flurry of analysis, much of it superficial and too hastily produced to be of any real use. One of the more authoritative accounts, however, came from former trade unionist Gavin Hartford, now...
Why consider the history of a hundred-year old law? Surely the Marikana massacre and farm-workers' strikes are more urgent? In fact, there are direct links between the Natives' Land Act of 1913 and current struggles. The Land Act and its consequences still shape rural...
During the month of November last year, the world watched farm workers strikes, particularly those working in vineyards in the Western Cape Province, in South Africa. They were protesting against exploitation and poor working and living conditions on farms, demanding...
The vivid images of the Marikana Massacre and its aftermath are strikingly different from those capturing previous strikes by South African mineworkers. What is noticeable is the presence of large numbers of women – not all of them mineworkers – acting in support of...
The massacre of 34 people by police in Marikana, South Africa last week shocked not only locals, but the world. The conflict has many dimensions but the chief factors that led to it are being analysed in a very thorough way by the media, numerous political entities...
Chris Webb On August 4, 1946 over one thousand miners assembled in Market Square in Johannesburg, South Africa. No hall in the town was big enough to hold them, and no one would have rented one to them anyway. The miners were members of the African Mine Worker's...
by Chris Webb There is a passage from Olive Schreiner’s 1883 novel The Story of An African Farm where she describes the isolated existence of the rural Karoo, with its “weird and almost oppressive beauty...the stone walled sheep kraals and kaffer huts.” This cursory...
The increasing prosperity of East Asia since the mid-1970s has stimulated substantial international migration within the region. It is estimated that the number of temporary migrant workers in Asia, with or without legal documents, reached 6.1 million by 2000.[1]...