Page 397 - The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology

9781412934633-Chap-25 1/10/09 8:56 AM Page 368

25

Industrial and Labour

Studies, Socio-Economic

Transformation, Conflict,

and Cooperation in KwaZulu

Natal

Ari Sitas

‘There is gold in the workers’ brain’. (Motto, Nissan INTRODUCTION
Motor Corporation)
‘they took the gold from the holes where For a brief period of approximately 20 years
the walls are singing the platform was there for ordinary black
there is none in our brain, there is; people to express not only their grievances
bile, there’. (Terence Miya-ex Mineworker)
and anger but also a rich trove of popular
I will argue that both the slogan of the Nissan wisdom, self-determination and ingenuity.
Corporation, so popular in new managerial cir- The rise of a labour movement created the
cles and the black miner’s response and lament conditions for anticipation as ordinary
are wrong. Instead I will attempt to show how people got caught between a past that had
more complex than a precious clump are the become unlivable and a future that had not
legacies and pressures that ruminate in work- been born. Furthermore, the Apartheid state
ers’ cultural formations and brains; I will also and its repressive policies made sure that
attempt to show how difficult it will be to find people mattered and were central to the
a way into a culture of participation and emerging politics of liberation. As most stud-
growth, and, how social analysis can con- ies of labour problems in the 1970s and
tribute to clarifying the decisions that will have 1980s have commented: the survival of trade
to mark our lives in these times of change, here unions necessitated the development of demo-
in KwaZulu Natal (KZN). cratic shop steward structures, the circulation