Privileged Precariat
White Workers and South Africa's Long Transition to Majority Rule

White working-class experiences of South Africa's transition provide a reinterpretation of how class colours race in the era of neoliberalism.

Danelle van Zyl-Hermann (Author)

9781108831802, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 April 2021

290 pages
16 x 23.5 x 2.5 cm, 0.66 kg

'Van Zyl-Hermann fills a major gap in the literature … She draws compelling parallels with the economic fate of white American workers and the rise of Donald Trump, underlining the contemporary salience of this well-written, well-sourced book …' Peter Limb, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

White workers occupied a unique social position in apartheid-era South Africa. Shielded from black labour competition in exchange for support for the white minority regime, their race-based status effectively concealed their class-based vulnerability. Centred on this entanglement of race and class, Privileged Precariat examines how South Africa's white workers experienced the dismantling of the racial state and the establishment of black majority rule. Starting from the 1970s, it shows how apartheid reforms constituted the withdrawal of state support for working-class whiteness, sending workers in search of new ways to safeguard their interests in a rapidly changing world. Danelle van Zyl-Hermann tracks the shifting strategies of the blue-collar Mineworkers' Union, culminating in its reinvention, by the 2010s, as the Solidarity Movement, a social movement appealing to cultural nationalism. Integrating unique historical and ethnographic evidence with global debates, Privileged Precariat offers a chronological and interpretative rethinking of South Africa's recent past and contributes new insights from the Global South to debates on race and class in the era of neoliberalism.

Introduction: The Return of the White Working Class
Part I: White Workers and the Racial State
1. Privileged Race, Precarious Class: White Labour from the Mineral Revolution to the 'Golden Age'
2. From Sweetheart to 'Frankenstein': The NP's Changing Stance Towards White Labour Amid the Crisis of the 1970s
3. Race and Rights at the Rock-Face of Change: White Organised Labour and the Wiehahn Reforms
Part II: White Workers and Civil Society Mobilisation
4. From Trade Union to Social Movement: The MWU/Solidarity's Formation of a Post-Apartheid Social Alliance
5. An 'Alternative Government': The Solidarity Movement's Contemporary Strategies
6. Discursive Labour and Strategic Contradiction: Managing the Working-Class Roots of a Declassed Organisation
7. 'Guys Like Us Are Left To Our Own Mercy': Counternarratives, Ambivalence and the Pressures of Racial Gatekeeping Among Solidarity's Blue-Collar Members
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Cultural studies [JFC], African history [HBJH]