Abstract: | This article focuses on how and why South Africa's model of labour relations changed in the course of the country's transition to democracy. The country's labour relations underwent two very different sets of reforms in the transitional era. In the liberalization phase, after 1978, labour relations were characterized by a competitive dynamic which was reflected in African trade unions' use of strikes, issue-based negotiations, etc. The democratization phase, after 1990, saw the establishment of a pattern of relationships within the industrial relations arena that emphasized the complex interdependence of labour, capital and the State. The article investigates why political elites and social movements in South Africa advocated and implemented a transition from the pluralist model of the 1980s to the corporatist model of the 1990s. It shows that the extension and consolidation of corporatism in the post-1994 period was prompted by the ANC's sense of political and economic vulnerability. It was a political solution for State elites to neutralize the potential opposition that was bound to emerge against at least some aspects of the new political and economic settlement. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. |