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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | African labour in colonial Zimbabwe in the 1950s: decline in the militancy or a turn to mass struggle? |
| Author: | Mothibe, T.H. |
| Year: | 1993 |
| Periodical: | Labour, Capital and Society |
| Volume: | 26 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 226-251 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Zimbabwe United Kingdom |
| Subjects: | colonialism trade unions strikes |
| Abstract: | The conditions that led to African labour militancy in Zimbabwe in the 1940s remained substantially the same in the 1950s, as African workers struggled against exploitative settler colonial capitalism. Other factors that also impinged upon militancy were the increased size of the urbanized workers' population, its economic position relative to that of white workers, and the State's frequent use of its repressive machinery. The politicization of the workers brought about by the 1948 general strike increased as urban workers came to see that their economic situation would improve only in a political environment in which they played an integral role. This recognition led the workers to ally their trade unions with the Salisbury-based Youth League and the Bulawayo-based Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC) to form the first postwar nationalist party. The present article demonstrates the continuity of African labour militancy in Zimbabwe through a brief discussion of the period 1948-1953, analyses the nature of African workers' discontent in the 1950s, and focuses on three major strikes - the Wankie colliery strikes of 1953-1954, the Salisbury bus boycott of September 1956, and the strike by the Railway African Workers Union (RAWU), also in September 1956 - as examples of the intensity of African labour's grievances and the State's repressive response, and in conclusion, the formation of the SRANC. Notes, ref., sum. in French (p. 225). |