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NALSU NEWS: Labour Studies podcast/video: Kate Philip | Union-Based Workers' Cooperatives in Southern Africa: "Markets on the Margins: Mineworkers, Job Creation and Enterprise Development"
Can we get off southern Africa's historic path of cheap labour, centralised capitalism and endemic rural poverty? And do workers' co-operatives show a viable way out, enabling justice and equality for the workers and poor?
This seminar and book launch examines one of the most ambitious, systematic, and sustained efforts at union-backed worker-run producer co-operatives in southern Africa: the 30 co-operatives established by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini (Swaziland). Written by an insider –- Kate Philip, United Democratic Front (UDF) activist and coordinator of NUM's co-operatives' programme –- it charts the NUM experiment in people-driven development and rural transformation. It examines the successes, but also the failures, drawing the often-difficult lessons learned from grappling with the limits and opportunities that exist to reduce poverty and improve livelihoods. Kate Philip also explores whether and if so how, markets might be made to work better for the poor.
The NUM co-operatives emerged against the backdrop of a massive strike. The mining industry has been core to capitalist South Africa, based on cheap, oppressed labour. The NUM was the first mass black worker-based union on the mines since the 1940s. It faced off against the mighty Chamber of Mines in 1987: employers cracked down; 40,000 mineworkers lost their jobs, and were sent back to their villages. To help these men and build the union, the NUM set up 30 worker co-operatives in three countries. Over time, NUM broadened the scope to include rural development and job creation through its Mineworkers Development Agency. The NUM's programme, evolving against the backdrop of South Africa's transition from apartheid, provided critical support to poor rural communities hard hit by escalating job losses on the mines.
Kate Philip's book, "Markets on the Margins: Mineworkers, Job Creation and Enterprise Development," is published by James Currey Publishers.
DETAILS: This is a recording of a live event in the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) Labour Studies Seminar Series, held on Wednesday, 15 May 2019, at Eden Grove, Seminar Room 2, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa.
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK0pf9jj9xE
PODCAST: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nalsu
SPEAKER: Kate Philip was president of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), active in the United Democratic Front (UDF) which rallied 600 organisations against apartheid, and part of the editorial collective of the South African Student Press Union (SASPU). From 1988-1994, she ran the NUM’s co-operatives programme, helping establish 30 producer co-operatives in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini (Swaziland). When NUM shifted the project towards a larger development role , establishing the Mineworkers Development Agency, she served as its CEO. Today she is a development strategist, with extensive experience in development practice and policy development, including advising the post-apartheid government, and supporting the government of Greece in its public employment programme, Kinofelis. Kate Philip has a PhD in Development Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand.
HOSTS: The Labour Studies Seminar Series is run by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) in partnership with the Departments of Sociology & Industrial Sociology, and Economics & Economic History, Rhodes University.
ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team, including from the disciplines of Sociology and Economics, NALSU has a democratic, non-sectarian, non-aligned and pluralist practice, and active relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. We draw strength from our location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and post-apartheid contradictions, are keenly felt. NALSU is named in honour of Neil Hudson Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in an apartheid jail in 1982 following brutality and torture.