NALSU NEWS: labour studies podcast/video: launch of Danelle van Zyl-Hermann, 2023, Privileged Precariat: White Workers and South Africa's Long Transition to Majority Rule.

The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) Press,  the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, the University of the Free State (UFS), and the University of Basel in Switzerland, recently launched the southern African edition of this important book, which contributes new insights from the Global South to debates on race and class in the neo-liberal era.

The author, Dr Danelle van Zyl-Hermann, was in conversation with Dr Jantjie Xaba (Stellenbosch University), Professor Lucien van der Walt (NALSU), and Dr Lindie Koorts (UFS).

THE BOOK: 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 government, their race-based status concealed their class-based vulnerability. Examining this entanglement of race and class, Danelle van Zyl-Hermann’s path-breaking Privileged Precariat 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 late apartheid reforms amounted to the withdrawal of state support for working-class whites, sending these workers in search of new ways to safeguard their interests in a rapidly changing world shaped by neo-liberal globalisation. It tracks the shifting strategies of the blue-collar, conservative SA Mineworkers’ Union (MWU), and its eventual reinvention by the 2010s as the Solidarity / Solidariteit union, one of the country’s most influential labour bodies. It also looks at the Solidarity Movement the union has established, extending its role far beyond the workplace. Appealing to class as well as Afrikaner identity, it encompasses counter-institutions ranging from youth and student groups, to a publishing and media house, the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge (“Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations”), Helpende Hand (“Helping Hand”) and other charity work, job placement and training schemes, financial services, a union-financed independent university and a technical college, and high-powered legal, media and research teams.

Integrating unique historical and ethnographic evidence with global debates, this book complicates the conversation on labour movements, examines the re-making of the white working-class, and offers a chronological and interpretative rethinking of South Africa’s recent past.

The book has been described by reviewers as “outstanding,” “elegantly written and closely argued,” “rich, perceptive and sensitive.”

DETAILS: This is a recording of a live online event held on Thursday, 19th October 2023.

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/WFPwoxiH62Y

PODCAST: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nalsu1953

IN DISCUSSION:  

Danelle van Zyl-Hermann (author) is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and Research Associate with the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, South Africa. 
Lucien van der Walt is director of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, and a labour educator.
Jantjie Xaba is in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Stellenbosch University.
Lindie Koorts (facilitator) is an award-winning historian, author and media commentator, based at the UFS. 

MORE INFORMATION: 

The book:

https://www.ukznpress.co.za/?class=bb_ukzn_books&method=view_books&global[fields][_id]=606

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/privileged-precariat/43A008C71A8EC466C291ADC861958CBC

UKZN Press: https://www.ukznpress.co.za/

NALSU: www.ru.ac.za/nalsu

ABOUT UKZN PRESS: The University of KwaZulu-Natal Press is a quality publisher of scholarship and general expertise books for both academic and general readers. Our range is wide and includes social studies, politics, economics, history, gender studies, African literature, and natural sciences.

ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research, and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team, including from the disciplines of Sociology and Economics, NALSU has a democratic, non-sectarian, non-aligned and pluralist practice, and active relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. We draw strength from our location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and post-apartheid contradictions, are keenly felt. NALSU is named in honour of Neil Hudson Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in an apartheid jail in 1982 following brutality and torture.