Red, Black and Gold: FOSATU, South African ‘Workerism’, ‘Syndicalism’ and the Nation

January 7, 2024January 7, 2024 / Zabalaza Books

Authors: Sian Byrne, Nicole Ulrich and Lucien van der Walt

PDF file size: 283 KB

The Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) inaugurated in 1979, the strongest working class organisation opposing apartheid in the early 1980s. FOSATU was associated with the distinct radical politics of South African ‘workerism.’ ‘Workerism’ has been widely caricatured: this pamphlet provides a recovery of its politics and history. Its emphasis on strong, industrial, autonomous unions, free of party control, its project of building a working class movement and identity, its participation in a wide range of struggles, and its left-wing, anti-capitalist and class-based (and anti-nationalist) approach to the national question is outlined.

Sian Byrne, Nicole Ulrich, and Lucien van der Walt, 2017, “Red, Black and Gold:¹ FOSATU, South African ‘Workerism’, ‘Syndicalism’ and the Nation,” in Edward Webster and Karin Pampillas (eds.), The Unresolved National Question in South Africa: Left Thinking Under Apartheid, Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

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[Leaflet] The 1973 Strikes and the birth of a New Movement in Natal

March 20, 2021November 11, 2021 / Zabalaza Books

Author: Nicole Ulrich

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Nicole Ulrich reflects on the birth of the modern non-racial trade union movement in the early 1970s in South Africa, and draws lessons for the social movements of today.

From: Khanya: A Journal for Activists, No. 8, May 2005

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Prefiguring Democratic Revolution?: ‘Workers’ Control’ and ‘Workerist’ Traditions of Radical South African Labour, 1970–1985

March 14, 2021March 19, 2021 / Zabalaza Books

Prefiguring Democratic Revolution?: ‘Workers’ Control’ and ‘Workerist’ Traditions of Radical South African Labour, 1970–1985 by Sian Byrne and Nicole Ulrich Author: Sian Byrne and Nicole Ulrich

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During the 1970s and early 1980s, sections of the trade union movement questioned the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party’s (SACP’s) narrow vision of freedom, which was based on the capture of the colonial state by a nationalist elite. Located within a distinct political current that prioritised participatory/direct-democracy and egalitarianism workers were regarded as the locus of transformative power in society, and their organisations were viewed as prefiguring a radically democratic future. This article examines the very different kind of radical anti-colonial engagement offered by ‘workers’ control’ in the 1970s and ‘workerism’ in the early 1980s that was developed by the Trade Union Advisory Co-ordinating Council (TUACC) and the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU), respectively. Keen to draw lessons for the trade union movement today, this article outlines the key characteristics and limits of these traditions that facilitated their decline in the post-apartheid context.