Rethinking the Underclass: Future Directions in Southern African Labor History

Abstract

Southern and South African labor history has, at least since the 1970s, been as much about the future of the region as about its past. Liberal scholars saw in apartheid and segregation irrational aberrations to the color-blind logic of capitalism. They believed the apartheid state to be an instrument of racial dominance but saw it as more or less neutral in terms of class relations. Economic growth and the abolishment of racial laws would bring freedom and equality--or at least equal opportunities. On the other hand, radical historians and sociologists thought of apartheid as a system that guaranteed the exploitation of cheap black labor for the benefit of capital. For them, apartheid was functional to capitalism. 2 While both the liberal and the radical positions were often more nuanced than the other side would admit, the question that divided these two camps was one about politics and strategy: Would capitalist development bring an end to racial domination, or was it part of the problem? In the latter case, challenging apartheid and colonialism would also involve challenging capitalism. The vibrancy of these debates should continue to serve as an inspiration for labor historians. I will argue that for the Left to be able to formulate viable alternatives to present policies, we should look at the history and nature of labor and inequality in the region.Before making this argument, however, I briefly need to revisit the historiography and recent political and labor market developments. Scholars on the Left shifted the emphasis from race to class and emphasized working-class solidarities. They were often actively involved in organized labor and the liberation movement. Challenging the idea that the traditional and rural allegiances of migrant workers inhibited the formation of an urban working-class consciousness, they wrote about the rise of an African proletariat. Decades earlier, the Rhodes-Livingstone scholars in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) described the emergence of the modern, urban African on the Copperbelt in reaction to theories of "culture contact" that justified segregation. 3 The rest of the subcontinent featured mostly as labor reservoirs in writings about South African labor; the gold mines of the Witwatersrand were at the center of a vast network of organized and independent migrations of African laborers. Harold Wolpe argued, against the liberal dual-economy model, that the supposedly traditional economies of sending areas could not be considered separate from the modern South African economy that received this labor. 4 Marxists also took issue with the exclusivist tendencies of African nationalism and established their own political relevance in the struggle on the basis of class solidarity rather than racial politics. 5

Transcending Dual Economies: Reflections on ‘Popular Economies in South Africa’

“…Dualist accounts do not offer a useful framework through which to interpret the lives and concerns of South Africa's poor. We should consider the formal and the informal economies as intricately connected and the interests of wage labourers and the underclass as not necessarily in opposition (see also Callebert 2012a). Karl Marx noted that the production of poverty is linked to the creation of wealth (1936 [1847]: 104); the plight of the unemployed and of informal workers cannot be understood without also looking at the development of the formal/first economy.…”