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COOPERATION IN KWAZULU NATAL 371

the … capacity of labor to process information and Even in the most quiescent contexts, black
generate knowledge is, more than ever, the mate- workers seem to be indifferent to manage-
rial source of productivity, and therefore economic ments’ efforts to introduce participative
growth and social well-being. Yet this symbolic
capacity of labor is not an individual (my emphasis) schemes.
attribute. Labor has to be formed, educated, The new era, in turn, seems to have con-
trained and retrained, in flexible manipulation of structed a new creature: the black worker of
symbols, determining its ability constantly to repro- the new South Africa – at once a ‘resource’
gram itself …
and a ‘problem’, a ‘body’ and a ‘brain’ that is
(d) Good Practice: The latest ideas in ‘untrained’ and a repository of ‘gold’ and
managerial thinking, and indeed the latest tacit knowledge, but also an unproductive
from the main government administration traditionalist and a modernizing partner,
schools, seem to have turned away from something to be reshaped and someone who
looking at profitability as a chemical adjust- must ‘reprogram itself’, a creature of feel-
ment of ‘factored’ prices, or injections of ings and aspirations and a militant problem,
cash. They are convinced that the qualitative the nation itself and an obstacle to nation-
transformation of socio-cultural relation- building. There is in front of us a developing
ships, and a more participatory culture on the invention which, to summarize the media
shop floor is good for business. pronouncements, must be at the same time:
Much of the new managerial leadership ‘patriotic’, ‘tolerant’ of wage-restraint meas-
argues that workers cannot be treated as a ures, ‘putting’ others first who are more
commodity or a unit of production any more. needy, like the unemployed, ‘self-educated,
Following some Japanese models of work multi-skilled and flexible’.
organization they argue that workers must be The new ‘dominant language’ or ‘hege-
seen as a human resource for productivity monic discourse’ demands a new ‘soul’, a
and innovation and that their participation new voluntary surrender and discipline,
is central to managerial decision-making. based on what Tito Mboweni has named a
They are responsible for the new forms of ‘sense of social partnership’ (1995: 26). It
authority – not only the iron cage of bureau- demands that ‘the ordinary citizen needs to
cratic control but also the soul cage of partic- internalize respect for human rights, for
ipative management. democratic ways, for the rules of society’
Finally, to quote a senior executive in (1995: 28).
KZN: ‘… human beings are all diverse and The ‘discourse’ signposts a struggle
one had to become far more flexible in around ‘normative transformation’ (Sitas,
your approach to problems, and people 1984: 195). All of us are busy, in the interests
were invariably at the base of those prob- of reason, progress and transformation, con-
lems…’. They are ‘not just objects to be structing a new mechanism of inclusion and
shuffled around’. This was not only good exclusion, with very subtle discriminations;
practice but also a rational decision based we are unwittingly creating a new political
on technical innovations, which in turn economy of aberration: the black worker
demanded multi-skilling, on the spot deci- on strike, the young man who sees work as
sion-making and a new decentralized com- another kind of slavery, the violent vigilante,
mand structure. the idler, the criminal, the reluctant bureau-
Despite the invocations and appeals from crat, the revolutionary activist, the marginal-
managements and government captured by ized, are among many more unlisted here,
the frames of necessity, of nation–building, the new pariahs, the exemplars of social
of incapacity and good sense, black workers indiscipline.
seem to be resistant to the framing. One has According to Michel Foucault (1979: 138)
witnessed, too, the growth among black a warning becomes necessary, as ‘… discipline
workers of a culture of militant ‘entitlement’. increases the forces of the body (in economic