‘We are not just a union, we are a family’ class, kinship and tribe in Zambia’s mining unions

Abstract

Trade unions in Zambia and in several other developing countries have been understood to create 'detribalising' class consciousnesses. In contrast, we argue that Zambian understandings of unionism have developed through similar political economic processes to those that generated 'tribes'. Values and structures that enable concepts of the good life more commonly found among Bemba speakers and Eastern Zambians have been naturalised into Zambia's mining unions, guiding union policy and practice in a manner which limits North Western Zambians' union participation. Utilising Lazar's (2018) understanding of unionism as kinship, we explore how Zambians of various tribes attempt to utilise unions to achieve what they see as human flourishing and social justice. We foreground that people's understandings of the good life frequently incorporate gendered and gerontocratic hierarchies and we demonstrate that intra-national unionisms are cocreated through (and influence) local cultural norms and political histories. This encourages anthropologists of trade unionism to ask what values and hierarchies are rendered invisible in other union 'families', and to explore intertwinements between unions and communities enabled through kinship, rather than through Civil Society Organisations.

Boxing family: Theorising competition with boxers in Accra, Ghana

“…My argument supports recent accounts of how kinship logics, and practices of kinning, enable people to manoeuvre and organize collectively in the face of punitive labour regimes (Kapesea and McNamara, 2020; Lazar, 2018). Accra boxers deploy kinship logics to navigate a highly competitive sporting industry fraught with contradictory imperatives, demonstrating that kinship remains central to the social organization of purportedly ‘modern’, capitalist spaces such as the boxing industry (cf.…”

“…Here, my argument supports feminist substantivist assertions that contemporary capitalism must be understood as constituted by, and intertwined with, 'the household, kinship and other "non-capitalist" institutions' (Bear et al, 2015), not as distinct from them. For Accra boxers, as for trade unionists (Kapesea and McNamara, 2020;Lazar, 2018), kinship helps people navigate the demands and contradictions of a capitalist world and industry.…”

« Zaïrois, qui est ton père ? »

“…Cependant, la formulation de ces demandes prend une autre forme : en Zambie, les délégués mobilisent le vocabulaire de la lutte des classes, par exemple pour exiger des augmentations de salaire, avec un succès plus évident que leurs pendants zaïrois 77 . La rhétorique familiale qui caractérise les stratégies de l'UNTZa n'a pas cours en Zambie, bien que l'expérience syndicale puisse être vécue comme une forme d'appartenance à une parenté étendue 78 . Néanmoins, l'absence d'une formulation plus « conventionnelle » des rapports de travail au Zaïre ne doit pas faire croire que le syndicat n'a été qu'une chambre d'enregistrement des oukazes du MPR.…”