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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Trade Unions and Community Organizations: Towards a Working Alliance?
Author:Ritchken, Edwin
Year:1989
Periodical:Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa
Issue:10
Pages:40-53
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:society
trade unions
Development and Technology
Labor and Employment
External link:https://d.lib.msu.edu/tran/94/OBJ/download
Abstract:This paper outlines and explains the changing relationship between trade unions and community organizations in South Africa on a local, regional and national level in the 1980s. It is a critique of the essay by Karl von Holdt, 'The political significance of COSATU' (In: Transformation, no. 5 (1987), p. 94-103). According to Von Holdt, unions until 1984 were dominated by 'workerism', were interested only in 'economic' struggles, and believed that they were the only appropriate form of class organization. Questions of broader political involvement and of how to articulate with other organizations were not put on the agenda until 1986, when FOSATU was succeeded by a new federation, COSATU, which adopted the principle of replacing general unions by industrial unions. The present author argues that there is in fact an essential continuity in the philosophy, structure and practice of FOSATU and COSATU. What was changing was the local, regional and then national experience of mobilization and organization in the townships that facilitated the alliance between work-based and community-based political cultures and organizations. The author periodizes the parallel and intersecting development of work-based and community organizations on a local, regional and national scale from 1979 to October 1986, and draws out a few implications of recent developments in urban politics for national organization and for the community organization-trade union alliance strategy. Bibliogr., note.
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