‘World Class Cities for All’: Street traders as agents of union revitalization in contemporary South AfricaLabour, Capital and Society

By Ercüment Çelik on January 01, 2011

Abstract
Engaging with recent scholarly debates on the challenges of labour movement revitalization in both the global North and South, this paper examines the street traders’ movement as an agency to re-empower the labour movement, with specific reference to the South African case.

The paper explores the mobilization of street traders in Durban/eThekwini, their growing alliance with other marginalized groups – particularly the shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and mainstream unions, and the World Class Cities for All Campaign. This was a joint front by the street traders, community movements and trade unions, which challenged the anti-poor policies associated with preparations for the FIFA 2010 World Cup. It demonstrates how street traders – being both the poorest as well as the most vulnerable fraction of workers, often based in shack communities, facing evictions from the streets (the workplace) and from the shacks (the community) – play a key role in bringing together a range of struggles and movements. It argues that they can and have played a  momentous role in reactivating the ‘movement’ character of mainstream unions, and in reconnecting them with other social movements. Accordingly, their struggle can be a promising agency in revitalising a new ‘social movement unionism’ SMU in contemporary South Africa.

Finally, the article examines core characteristics of the emergent street traders’ movement, which he calls “the movement of the marginalized labour force”, and seeks to integrate street traders and their unions into the SMU approach.

Journal website: Labour, Capital and Society /Travail, capital et société.

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