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White Workers in the Late Apartheid Period: A Report on the Wiehahn Commission and Mineworkers’ Union Archival Collections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2015

Danelle van Zyl-Hermann
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Abstract:

This paper offers a critique of the existing historiography on the late apartheid period, arguing that white workers’ role in and experience of the unraveling of racial privilege in the labor arena has been obscured by a focus on the high politics of reform and on anti-apartheid resistance emanating from African labor and the broader black population. Reporting from the archive, it discusses two under-utilized archival collections – that of the Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation and of the Mineworkers’ Union – as sources for starting to write white working-class organization, politics, identity, and experience into the history of reform and resistance, thereby adding a new dimension to South Africa’s broadly conceived struggle history.

Résumé:

Cet article propose une critique de l’historiographie existante sur les dernières années de l’apartheid et argue que le rôle et l’expérience des travailleurs blancs pour mettre fin aux privilèges raciaux dans le domaine du travail ont été négligés au profit d’une analyse portant sur les grandes politiques de réforme et sur la résistance anti-apartheid des travailleurs noirs et plus généralement de la population noire. Les deux collections archivistiques discutées dans cet article ont été sous-utilisées jusqu’à présent: il s’agit des archives de la commission d’enquête sur la législation du travail et de celles du syndicat des mineurs. Ces documents permettent de commencer à inscrire l’histoire de l’organisation, des politiques, de l’identité et de l’expérience de la classe ouvrière blanche dans l’histoire de la réforme et de la résistance à l’apartheid. Cet article propose donc d’ajouter une nouvelle dimension à l’histoire de la lutte contre l’apartheid dans sa conception plus large.

Type
Blind Spots and Politics in Sources from South Africa
Information
History in Africa , Volume 43 , June 2016 , pp. 229 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2015 

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