D.Com. (Industrial Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

D.Phil. / The purpose of this study is to investigate the situation of the white labourer in the secondary industries during the years 1924 to 1933 on the Witwatersrand. This research is, however, not limited to working conditions such as wages, working hours and physical circumstances, but it also takes a look at the daily living conditions of the labourer. In the first place the study focuses on the secondary industries as milieu within which the labourer functioned. The development and growth of the secondary industries were to a large extent inspired and encouraged by the First World War, the mining industry and also urbanisation. These factors led to certain demands on the secondary industries that had to be met. The above factors not only contributed to increased production and: markets, but, also created much needed job opportunities for the inhabitants of the Witwatersrand. During and after the war the industrial growth was to a large extent without direction. The labourer also had only the labour union which he could appeal to. To provide the necessary order and direction, important legislation had been introduced since 1918 to serve as framework within which employer and employee could act. When the Pact Government assumed power in 1924 industrial growth was therefore not only further stimulated, but the government made a conscious effort to eliminate problems between employer and employee. Then a look is taken at the men, women and youth labourers.

This report is concerned with unpacking the influential yet misunderstood “workerist” phenomenon that dominated the major independent (mostly black) trade unions born in the wake of the 1973 Durban strikes. “Workerism” is widely recognized as being concentrated in the Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu). Workerism remains a source of much controversy in labour and left circles; this is due to the massive influence it commanded within the with black working class in its brief heyday, and the formidable challenge it presents to the legitimacy of nationalist movements and narratives attempting (then and now) to stake claims on the leadership of the liberation struggle. This controversy has yet to be resolved: both popular and scholarly attempts to theorise its politics are marked by demonstrable inconsistencies and inaccuracies, often reproducing existing polemical narratives that conceal more than they reveal. This paper contributes to that debate by deepening our understanding of the core politics of the important workerist phenomenon – through an examination of primary documents and interviews with key workerist leaders. I argue that workerism was a distinctive, mass-based and coherent multiracial current, hegemonic in the black trade unions but spilling into the broader anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s and 1980s. It stressed class struggle, non-racialism, anti-capitalism, worker selfactivity and union democracy, and was fundamentally concerned with the national liberation of the oppressed black majority. However, it distanced itself from the established traditions of mainstream Marxism and Congress nationalism – coming to a quasi-syndicalist1 position on many crucial questions, although this ran alongside a far more cautious “stream”, akin to social democracy. It fashioned a radical approach to national liberation that combined anticapitalism with anti-nationalism on a programme that placed trade unions (not parties) centrestage – a notable characteristic that made it the object of much suspicion and hostility. In the longer term, workerists developed a two-pronged strategy. This centred on, first, “building up a huge, strong movement in the factories” – strategically positioned at key loci of power in the economy (key sectors, plants and regions), with a view to “pushing back the frontiers of control”; second, it incorporated an extensive programme of popular education to ignite the growth of a “counter-hegemonic” working class politics, consciousness, identity and culture, thereby “ring-fencing workers from the broader nationalist history of our country” and continent. Right at the epicentre of this radical project was the creation of a conscious, accountable and active (in workplaces and communities) layer of worker leaders or “organic intellectuals”. I contend that a simple conflation of workerism with a form of Marxism, although prevalent in the literature, is misleading and inaccurate. Rather, workerism cannot be understood unless in relation to the far more eclectic and varied international New Left – through which it drew influence (direct and indirect) from a variety of sources, including revolutionary libertarian currents like anarchism, syndicalism and council communism, as well as others such as social democracy, and dissident forms of Marxism. But the unhappy co-existence of these contradictory tendencies (quasi-syndicalism and social democracy) interacted with a New Left-inspired, at times anti-theoretical, pragmatism to leave workerism weakened - hampered by inconsistencies and contradictions, expressed in ambivalent actions that were at once libertarian and more statist, revolutionary and reformist, spontaneous and premeditated, “boycottist” and “engagist”. This left a vacuum in the liberation struggle, paving a way for the resurgence of nationalism under ANC leadership. 1 Here I refer to the historical tradition of anarcho- and revolutionary syndicalism, not the so-called “Leninist critique”.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Dev.Studies)-University of Natal, Durban.

M.A. / A stress inoculation training programme suitable for blue collar workers was developed using Meichenbaum's (1977) training guide-lines. The stress inoculation training programme set out to develop coping skills based on a script including scenes dealing with : supervisor-worker conflict, meeting production deadlines, interactions with para-state officials, problems based on migrant lifestyles, safety issues and the stress experienced by management ...

This thesis is concerned with the mobilisation of African labour in South Central Africa and the creation of a dual economy there. The problem it seeks to examine is why a purely migrant labour system was created, in which Africans spent only short periods in the cash economy interspersed with longer periods in their own subsistence one. This problem is closely linked with the wider issues of land policy, native policy, and colonial labour theory in the nineteenth century. Using the records of the Colonial Office and of the British South Africa Company's administrations in Northern and Southern Rhodesia, together with other contemporary material, an attempt is made to examine the relationship between developments in the Rhodesias and wider colonial experience, between the Company's aims in its administration and the Colonial Office's control of it. Colonial labour theory in the nineteenth century is found to have emerged as a response to the end of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves, as a need to substitute for force both stimulants (like taxation) to overcome so-called tropical indolence and a modicum of land hunger to overcome excessive dependence on subsistence. This had to be balanced, however, by the need to protect the interests and rights of indigenous peoples in the face of humanitarian concern and international opinion. These considerations, coupled with administrative expediency and the desire of European settler communities for the security of social and political segregation, led to the creation of a reserves policy. In Southern Rhodesia, the absence of a genuine reserves policy during the first years of settlement appeared to lead to disastrous relations with the native peoples. The Colonial Office insisted upon the creation of reserves, and the effect, if not the intention, of subsequent Company native policy was to move Africans increasingly on to the reserves, away from European centres of employment, opportunities for marketing produce and stock, and principal lines of communication. As a result, Africans' capacity to respond rationally to the cash economy actually declined as opportunities for exploring the various avenues into it were withdrawn with geographical isolation. In consequence labour became a purely migratory experience which entailed brief periods in the essentially alien environment (accentuated by ordinance) of the town or mine location. This was accentuated also by the migration of labour into Southern Rhodesia from throughout South Central Africa and the import of indentured labour from overseas, policies pursued by an administration convinced of the inadequacy of the internal labour supply. Thus Colonial Office concern for the protection of the native interest led to the perpetuation of an inefficient and, to the African, disturbing system, which ultimately facilitated the mortgaging of Africans' social and political development. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Bibliography: pages 105-116. / The present study investigated the relationships between work stressors, three moderator variables, and a variety of affective, behavioural and health outcomes. More specifically, it was hypothesized that the work stressors would be significantly associated with adverse affective, behavioural and health outcomes. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that personal and situational variables, in the form of the Sense of Coherence (Antonovsky, 1979, 1987), Job Decision Latitude (Karasek, 1979), and Participation in Decision Making, would moderate the relationships between work stressors and a variety of outcomes. The data were obtained from a sample of 111 male, white, blue collar workers at a large chemicals manufacturing organization from a questionnaire compiled for this study, and organizational records. The data were subjected to correlational analysis, supplemented by a form of moderated multiple regression analysis. It was found that the relationships between work stressors and outcome variables were insignificant which led to the conclusions that firstly, a priori specification of stressors may ignore the specificity of persons' appraisals of and responses to stressors, and secondly, consideration must be given to the affective meaning ascribed by subjects to job demands. The moderating effects of the Sense of Coherence, Job Decision Latitude and Participation in Decision Making were inconsistently related to outcome variables, frequently operating in the unexpected direction. It was, however, demonstrated that the main effects of the moderating variables which operated in the expected direction, outweighed the unanticipated negative interaction effects. It was observed that the inclusion of personality variables and situational variables in future studies of occupational stress are necessary, a conclusion which is consistent with more recent findings.

This thesis examines the emergence and development of the African working class in Durban between 1959 and 1985. It begins with an analysis of Durban's economy, which significantly changed .the lives of Africans. It shows how, during an era of economic boom, of intensive state repres•ion and unparalleled social engineering, the state intervened in the shaping of the African community and created the oppressive setting of the African working class, which was to pose the greatest challenge to the established order. The forced removals of the underclasses to the newly established apartheid townships during the late 1950s and early 1960s had a profound influence on the social and political history of this working class. Once African trade unions had been crippled and formal oppositional politics crushed, South African industrial relations enjoyed relative "peace" which was disturbed by the covert forms of worker resistance. In the 1970s the economic position of Durban's African working class was rather tenuous, as earnings had remained static since the 1960s despite the booming economy. Because of this, urban workers felt social and economic pressures from both apartheid and capitalism and responded in a way that shocked both employers and the government. In January 1973 Durban was rocked by strikes, which broke the silence of the 1960s when the South African Congress of Trade Unions declined and the African National Congress and Pan-African Congress were banned. The outbreak of the 1973 Durban strikes marked a new beginning in the labour history and industrial relations of Durban and South Africa in general. A new blend of African independent trade unions emerged with their distinctive style of organisation. They focused on factory-based issues which reaped benefits for the workers in the long-run and managed to sustain pressure from both the state and employers. During this period, however, the African working class paid a high price, enduring miserable conditions, earning wages below the poverty line, experiencing a breakdown in family structure, and living with crime and violence, police repression and the criminalisation of much social and economic life. By 1985, these unions had established themselves so firmly that the state regarded them as a serious challenge. Indeed, the making of Durban's African working class was no easy task and its history shows suffering, change, mobility and accomplishment. / History / D. Litt. et Phil. (History)

Communities which have been characterised by migrancy for a long period of time, such as the Xhosa and the Italians considered in this paper, develop sets 6f terms which describe migrants. The Xhosa have varied criteria for their categories, e.g. amajoyini - those on contract to mainly the mining and construction industries; abafuduga - those who deliberately sell up and go elsewhere; amagoduka - those who intend to return home; imfiki - impoverished migrants from white owned farms. Italians tend to view the crossing of international boundaries as the essence of migration and classify their migrants by the state in which they work e.g. Inglesi, Americani, rather than by the more complex terminology of the Xhosa. Some terms are simply descriptions, others are categories with wider connotations, into which people place others and themselves. As far as possible we shall use the peoples' own categories, which define their relationships to "home", the region to which they migrate and to migrancy as a way of life, as these have important implications for what happens at home. / Digitised by Rhodes University Library on behalf of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER)

This thesis examines the emergence and development of the African working class in Durban between 1959 and 1985. It begins with an analysis of Durban's economy, which significantly changed .the lives of Africans. It shows how, during an era of economic boom, of intensive state repres•ion and unparalleled social engineering, the state intervened in the shaping of the African community and created the oppressive setting of the African working class, which was to pose the greatest challenge to the established order. The forced removals of the underclasses to the newly established apartheid townships during the late 1950s and early 1960s had a profound influence on the social and political history of this working class. Once African trade unions had been crippled and formal oppositional politics crushed, South African industrial relations enjoyed relative "peace" which was disturbed by the covert forms of worker resistance. In the 1970s the economic position of Durban's African working class was rather tenuous, as earnings had remained static since the 1960s despite the booming economy. Because of this, urban workers felt social and economic pressures from both apartheid and capitalism and responded in a way that shocked both employers and the government. In January 1973 Durban was rocked by strikes, which broke the silence of the 1960s when the South African Congress of Trade Unions declined and the African National Congress and Pan-African Congress were banned. The outbreak of the 1973 Durban strikes marked a new beginning in the labour history and industrial relations of Durban and South Africa in general. A new blend of African independent trade unions emerged with their distinctive style of organisation. They focused on factory-based issues which reaped benefits for the workers in the long-run and managed to sustain pressure from both the state and employers. During this period, however, the African working class paid a high price, enduring miserable conditions, earning wages below the poverty line, experiencing a breakdown in family structure, and living with crime and violence, police repression and the criminalisation of much social and economic life. By 1985, these unions had established themselves so firmly that the state regarded them as a serious challenge. Indeed, the making of Durban's African working class was no easy task and its history shows suffering, change, mobility and accomplishment. / History / D. Litt. et Phil. (History)