NALSU & Organising Women Workers in Women's Month

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Photo credits : Vanessa Pillay & Nande Siko
Photo credits : Vanessa Pillay & Nande Siko

Over Women's Month in August, the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, worked with partners to run two key workshops as part of its workers' education project for improving access to social protection. The first workshop, held in Johannesburg, was run in collaboration with WIEGO's Basadi Buwang ("Women Speak Out") programme. It aimed at working with participants to understand the root causes of women's exploitation, to identify the challenges that women face when raising their voices within their own worker organisations, and to reflect on the future work of the programme. Attendees included the Tshwane Barekisi Forum, the Johannesburg Informal Traders Platform, and the African Reclaimers Organisation. "WIEGO" is the Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO) project, with which NALSU has close ties.

Later in the month, work moved to Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) where NALSU's Dr Laura Alfers worked with the national Department of Social Development (DSD) to facilitate a workshop and space for dialogue on social protection access for self-employed informal workers. The workshop, supported by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Pretoria and UN Women's South Africa office, focused on three sets of proposals from the DSD. These are: a retirement scheme for informal workers which will build on the social pension and combine individual savings with a government subsidy; the consolidation of the fragmented maternity benefit landscape so as to ensure better access for working women; and DSD's proposals for Basic Income Support. Dr Alfers is Director of WIEGO's Social Protection Programme.

After presentations from DSD representatives, workers -- representing a mix of sectors, from street vending to waste picking, smallholder farming and fishing -- workshopped the issues, presenting their replies to the government. This should have some impact on the policies that (we hope) are to come. UN Women's new Representative for Southern Africa, Aleta Miller, closed off the session on a high note, with the participants erupting into song and dance. Picking up a recording of the session on Twitter, Neil Aggett's biographer, Beverly Naidoo tweeted: "I reckon Neil would have been singing/dancing with the participant workers here..."

NALSU is named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, a union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail following brutality and torture. 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.