| Abstrakt: |
ABSTRACT:In looking at the 1973 Durban strikes, I argue that the strikes initiated the emergence of neo-apartheid – a renewed interest in apartheid by the white society during a crisis. This crisis was the collapse of an economic system centred on welfare and succeeded by an economic system premised on the principles of individualism and the discipline of the free market. To sustain itself, the reformulated economic system would have to accommodate the socio-economic demands of the Black working class into the modified labour relations; the socio-economic demands were non-racialism and democratisation in the workplace and society. The apartheid state responded by granting concessions such as the 1979 Wiehahn recommendations, and amending the 1956 Labour Relations Act that recognised Black trade unions under government supervision. One of the zeitgeists of this moment was the advancing of alternative ways to understand the society, and among the avant-garde of this spirit was Rick Turner, who was to begin a conversation about the future of society. In focusing on this period, I move contradistinction to the arguments that frame neo-apartheid as emerging after the 1994 democratic settlement; instead, I locate the inception of neo-apartheid in the gains and losses that came as a result of the 1973 strikes. |
