Trevor Ngwane - Amakomiti

Amakomiti

Wildcat: Workers Movements and Global Capitalism

Series Editors:

Immanuel Ness (City University of New York)

Peter Cole (Western Illinois University)

Raquel Varela (Instituto de Histria Contempornea (IHC)

of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon New University)

Tim Pringle (SOAS, University of London)

Also available:

The Cost of Free Shipping:

Amazon in the Global Economy

Edited by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Ellen Reese

Choke Points:

Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain

Edited by Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Immanuel Ness

Dying for an iPhone:

Apple, Foxconn and the Lives of Chinas Workers

Jenny Chan, Mark Selden and Pun Ngai

Just Work?

Migrant Workers Struggles Today

Edited by Aziz Choudry and Mondli Hlatshwayo

Wobblies of the World:

A Global History of the IWW

Edited by Peter Cole, David Struthers and Kenyon Zimmer

Augmented Exploitation:

Artificial Intelligence, Automation and Work

Phoebe V. Moore and Jamie Woodcock

Organizing Insurgency:

Workers Movements in the Global South

Immanuel Ness

Southern Insurgency:

The Coming of the Global Working Class

Immanuel Ness

Workers Inquiry and Global Class Struggle:

Strategies, Tactics, Objectives

Edited by Robert Ovetz

The Spirit of Marikana:

The Rise of Insurgent Trade Unionism in South Africa

Luke Sinwell with Siphiwe Mbatha

Solidarity:

Latin America and the US Left in the Era of Human Rights

Steve Striffler

Working the Phones:

Control and Resistance in Call Centres

Jamie Woodcock

Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements

Trevor Ngwane

First published 2021 by Pluto Press

345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright Trevor Ngwane 2021

The right of Trevor Ngwane to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 4199 6 Hardback

ISBN 978 0 7453 4200 9 Paperback

ISBN 978 1 7868 0765 6 PDF eBook

ISBN 978 1 7868 0767 0 Kindle eBook

ISBN 978 1 7868 0766 3 EPUB eBook

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England

Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America

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Workers movements are a common and recurring feature in contemporary capitalism. The same militancy that inspired the mass labour movements of the twentieth century continues to define worker struggles that proliferate throughout the world today.

For more than a century, labour unions have mobilised to represent the political-economic interests of workers by uncovering the abuses of capitalism, establishing wage standards, improving oppressive working conditions, and bargaining with employers and the state. Since the 1970s, organised labour has declined in size and influence as the global power and influence of capital has expanded dramatically. The world over, existing unions are in a condition of fracture and turbulence in response to neoliberalism, financialisation, and the reappearance of rapacious forms of imperialism. New and modernised unions are adapting to conditions and creating class-conscious workers movement rooted in militancy and solidarity. Ironically, while the power of organised labour contracts, working-class militancy and resistance persists and is growing in the Global South.

Wildcat publishes ambitious and innovative works on the history and political economy of workers movements and is a forum for debate on pivotal movements and labour struggles. The series applies a broad definition of the labour movement to include workers in and out of unions, and seeks works that examine proletarianisation and class formation; mass production; gender, affective and reproductive labour; imperialism and workers; syndicalism and independent unions, and labour and Leftist social and political movements.

It is hot and dry in Graaff-Reinet, the Great Karoo, at midday. I see a man sitting under a tree as I drive up the dusty and unpaved road into Vrygrond shack settlement. It is the second settlement I am visiting since I arrived in this town in the Eastern Cape. The petrol guy gave me directions after filling the tank of the white University of Johannesburg sedan with its ridiculous woodpeckers emblazoned on the two front doors and the institutions name written in Afrikaans. Who cares? Certainly not the man I have decided to approach, he does not look up until I stop the car right next to him.