Becoming a social movement union: Cyril Ramaphosa and the National Union of Mineworkers

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Periodical article

Title:	Becoming a social movement union: Cyril Ramaphosa and the National Union of Mineworkers
Author:	Moodie, T. Dunbar
Year:	2010
Periodical:	Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa (ISSN 0258-7696)
Issue:	72-73
Pages:	152-180
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	trade unions gold mining protest leadership millenarianism
About person:	Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa (1952-)
External link:	https://muse.jhu.edu/article/383717
Abstract:	This paper uses a single case to address the social origins of millenarian ungovernability on the South African gold mines in 1985. It seeks to understand the potentials and pitfalls for union leadership of such enthusiasm and to outline union strategies to institutionalize and control it. The National Union of Mineworkers in South Africa was avowedly not millenarian. Its leaders all - especially Cyril Ramaphosa - eschewed any claim to prophetic charisma. Nevertheless, two relatively clear cases are known when NUM leaders arose who directly challenged management control, claiming charismatic power with supernatural assistance. One was at Cooke shaft on Randfontein Estates; the other at Vaal Reefs gold mine, at the time the largest gold mine in the world with more than 40,000 workers. Events at Vaal Reefs South constitute the case study dealt with in the paper. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]