Coloured labour relations and political organisation: past developments and a scenario

Title: Coloured labour relations and political organisation: past developments and a scenario
Creator: Natherson, R
Subject: Industrial relations -- South Africa
Subject: South Africa -- Race relations
Subject: South Africa -- Politics and government -- 20th century
Date: 1988-11
Type: text
Type: book
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66392
Identifier: vital:28944
Identifier: ISBN 0797202048
Description: The rise and development of ‘Coloured’ labour relations and political organisations form the central theme of this study. These two areas of South African contemporary history have received comparatively little attention for a number of reasons. Not the least of these is the controversial issue of whether or not it is justifiable or accurate to treat ‘Coloureds’ as a separate and identifiable group apart from the black majority. The term ‘Coloured’ as used in the South African context refers to those people often described in other societies as of mixed race, mulattos or half-castes. Within this study the term ‘Coloured with a capital C and hereafter without apostrophes is used to avoid confusion with ‘coloured1 meaning black. Black is used in the general sense of all those people not being White. The impact of organized Coloured politics, however, has been greater than their minority status would suggest, especially in the Cape, and in particular in the Western Cape, where most of the people described as Coloured live. When Coloured political mobilization started in the 1890’s, it centered in Cape Town. The founding of the first successful Coloured political movement, the African Political Organization (APO), marked the start of successful black political mobilization on a national scale in South Africa. Other Coloured organisations which emerged after the APO made important contributions to the tactics and ideologies of Black political leaders. Coloured intellectuals in the 1940’s propagated the principle of non-collaboration with segregatory political institutions, implemented through the tactic of the boycott, a strategy employed to good effect by contemporary Black organisations. This study is divided into three main sections. Chapters 1 and 2 trace the origins of the labour history in which past and present day developments in the industrial relations system can be viewed in relation to the political, industrial and economic systems that have evolved within South Africa since the occupation of the Western Cape by the Dutch in 1652. The initial contact between these Europeans and the indigenous inhabitants of the Cape developed a relationship which determined the pattern of interaction between Black and White South Africans the major traces of which have still remained until today. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 deal with the early history of the Coloured people, their industrial and political organisations prior to the watershed year of South African Industrial Relations, 1979, whereafter a more generalised view is adopted in order to trace the broad trends which have emerged with the new labour dispensation and its industrial enfranchisement of the Black worker. The remaining chapters concentrate on Coloured participation within the Industrial and Political arenas, particularly in the Western Cape, and offer substantiation for the postulate of a new political grouping based on socialist principles and having a similar trend in terms of its origins to that of the British Labour Party at its birth at the turn of this century. It is concluded that this grouping would be a natural home for the ‘stateless’ Coloured, and ideologically and politically would offer coherence and structure to the disparate groupings within the United Democratic Front (UDF) and form the most potential, Western Cape based political party ‘in waiting'.
Description: This occasional paper is based on the technical report which received the Finansbank award for 1987
Format: 39 pages, pdf
Publisher: University of Stellenbosch Business School
Language: English
Rights: University of Stellenbosch Business School
Rights: No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission from the publisher

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Strikes, Lockouts and Labour Relations in South Africa

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