Yours for the Union: Class and Community Struggles in South Africa

Review

“A key theme in Baruch Hirson's work is “the enthusiasm, courage and weakness of the workers”. In his view, this courage and enthusiasm was squandered. … South Africa's working-class communities are still paying the price … and Baruch Hirson's tragic history is still their story.” ―Tom Lodge, from the Foreword

Product Description

Yours for the Union stands as a landmark history of the making of the black working class in South Africa. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it covers the crucial period of 1930–47, when South Africa's rapid industrialisation led to the dramatic growth of the working class, and uncontrolled urbanisation resulted in vast shanty towns which became a focal point for resistance and protest. Importantly, Hirson was one of the first historians to go beyond the traditional focus on the mines and factory workplaces, broadening his account to include the lesser known community struggles of the urban ghettoes and rural reserves.

Written by an author with first-hand involvement in South African labour struggles, Yours for the Union broke new ground with its account of the effort to mobilise urban squatters, domestic workers and rural peasants, and remains an indispensable resource for the study of the South African labour movement.

About the Author

Baruch Hirson (1921–1999) was a lifelong activist who spent nine-and-a-half years in South African prisons as a result of his opposition to the apartheid regime. Following his release in 1973 he left for England, where he lectured in history at several universities and produced eight finely written, passionately argued books on the history of the left in South Africa. These include Year of Fire, Year of Ash (1984), The Cape Town Intellectuals (2000) and his autobiography, Revolutions in My Life (1995). He also founded the controversial critical journal Searchlight South Africa.

Tom Lodge is Professor of Politics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and one of the world's leading experts on African political history.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Yours for the Union


Class and Community Struggles in South Africa
By Baruch Hirson Zed Books LtdCopyright © 1990 Yael Hirson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78699-064-8


Contents
Photographs and Illustrations,
Foreword by Tom Lodge,
Abbreviations,
Preface,
Map of South Africa,
1. The African Worker: Class and Community,
2. Desperately Lean Times: The Socio-economic Background,
3. Industrial Legislation and Minimum Wages,
4. Rebuilding the African Unions, 1932–40,
5. Organising Domestic Servants,
6. Vereeniging: 'To Hell with the Pick-up!',
7. The Politics of War and the Black Working Class,
8. Trade Unions in Struggle,
9. Organising Under War Conditions,
10. Rural Protest and Rural Revolt,
11. Azikwhelwa! – We Shall Not Ride,
12. Umagebule – The Slicer,
13. Organising the Migrant Workers,
14. The 1946 Miners' Strike,
15. Conclusion,
Bibliography,
Index,

CHAPTER 1
1. The African Worker: Class and Community

Driven to the city originally by the necessity of supplementing their inadequate earnings ... a part of them were seasonal workers who ... regularly returned to their land. ... Another part continued to work in the cities the year round ... and left behind their families, who cultivated the family allotment in their absence. While it is true that a genuine working class permanently cut off from the land was becoming more and more numerous ... the overwhelming majority of the workers were peasants, still strongly tied to the land, who came to the cities reluctantly to round out a subsistence which could not be adequately provided by tilling the soil alone.
Jacob Walkin

His tastes and appetites were those of the village, but his outward life was that of the factory. There was no harmony between the two.
Theodore von Laue

The growth of an urban community
There are striking similarities between the recruitment and working conditions of workers in Czarist Russia