At the core of colonial and apartheid social engineering was a spatial strategy based on institutions and infrastructure linking together rural homesteads and villages, and mining centers and towns. In the case of the mining industry, single-sex compounds were set up as the foundation of the infrastructure of control over black labor. In this paper we examine how various forms of control operated. We locate our contribution within the labor geography literature. We argue that it was not only state institutions and major corporations that shaped landscapes of control. In this regard we highlight the centrality of workers' agency, specifically the way in which the National Union of Mineworkers captured the compounds and subverted the logic of employer control. However, the union's successes as well as the advent of democracy have resulted in profound changes, thus presenting the union with new challenges.

This article provides an overview of the structure and organisation of the contemporary trade union movement in South Africa. It identifies seven broad trends in the labour market and their impact on the labour movement. It then examines the variety of initiatives by unions to tackle the problems generated by these trends. The article suggests that these initiatives are largely ad hoc and uncoordinated. It concludes that there is a need to go beyond traditional union structures to explore imaginative ways of engagement with the unemployed, the new working poor, their own members, employers, government, the new social movements and labour movements in other countries. However, it suggests that it is premature to pronounce the marginalisation of labour in post-apartheid South Africa. If well-coordinated and prioritised, the revitalisation initiatives identified in the article open up the opportunity for labour to contribute towards the emergence of a new jobcreating developmental path in South Africa.

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An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk Buhlungu, Sakhela and Brookes, Michael and Wood, Geoffrey (2008) Trade unions and democracy in South Africa: union organisational challenges and solidarities in a time of transformation. Copyright and moral rights to this thesis/research project are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. Any use of the thesis/research project for private study or research must be properly acknowledged with reference to the work's full bibliographic details.This thesis/research project may not be reproduced in any format or medium, or extensive quotations taken from it, or its content changed in any way, without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s).If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Middlesex University via the following email address:eprints@mdx.ac.ukThe item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated.1 Trade Unions and Democracy in South Africa: Union Organizational Challenges and Solidarities in a Time of TransformationSakhela Buhlungu, Mick Brookes and Geoffrey Wood* AbstractBased on the findings of a nation wide survey of Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) members, this article explores the state of internal democracy within the federation's affiliates, and degree of rank and file support for its alliance with the ruling ANC. It is concluded that, pessimistic accounts of the decay of internal union democracy and the alleged unpopularity of the ANC in particular and the tripartite Alliance in general seem misplaced. However, a panglossian view of continued and consistent union success is similarly unjustified; unions face the challenges of declining employment in the formal sector, and managing complex accommodations with business and government. Yet, the manner in which unions have coped with these challenges reflects a persistent organizational vibrancy which is encouraging for the future.