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Book Book
Title:Privileged Precariat: White Workers and South Africa's Long Transition to Majority Rule
Author:Zyl-Hermann, Danelle van
Year:2021
Pages:290
Language:English
Series:International African library
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9781108831802
Geographic term:Southern Africa
Subjects:Whites
workers
miners
External link:https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108924702
Abstract:White workers occupied a unique social position in apartheid-era South Africa. Shielded from black labour competition in exchange for support for the white minority regime, their race-based status effectively concealed their class-based vulnerability. Centred on this entanglement of race and class, this book examines how South Africa's white workers experienced the dismantling of the racial state and the establishment of black majority rule. Starting from the 1970s, it shows how apartheid reforms constituted the withdrawal of state support for working-class whiteness, sending workers in search of new ways to safeguard their interests in a rapidly changing world. The author tracks the shifting strategies of the blue-collar Mineworkers' Union, culminating in its reinvention, by the 2010s, as the Solidarity Movement, a social movement appealing to cultural nationalism. Integrating unique historical and ethnographic evidence with global debates, Privileged Precariat offers a chronological and interpretative rethinking of South Africa's recent past and contributes new insights from the Global South to debates on race and class in the era of neoliberalism.
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