This chapter focuses on the concept of classed identity, its importance for the process of unionisation and its relation to the broader concept of class-consciousness. Therefore the author examines mining culture and industrial relations at different locations (the Ruhr in Germany, South Wales, West Virginia, Alabama, Jharia in India, Enugu in Nigeria, the Zambian Copperbelt and Transvaal in South Africa). By de-centralising the analysis and including rural relationships, proto-unionism and anti-colonial politics, this chapter seeks to reconsider oversimplified associations between organisation, consciousness and identity.

This article reports on the frequency and turmoil of South Africa’s community protests from 2005 to 2017, which, taken together, have been called a ‘rebellion’. It defines ‘community protest’ as protests in which collective demands are raised by a geographically defined and identified ‘community’ that frames its demands in support/and or defence of that community. It distinguishes between ‘violence’ and ‘disorder’, which has produced a novel three-way categorisation of turmoil, namely ‘orderly’, ‘disruptive’ and ‘violent’ protests. Drawing on the Centre for Social Change’s archive of media reports, the largest database of its kind, and by comparing its data with details gleaned from the police’s Incident Registration Information System (an unrivalled source of protest statistics), the article reveals a rising trend in frequency of community protests and a tendency towards those protests being disorderly, that is, disruptive and/or violent. In the process of advancing this position, the authors offer a critique of other attempts to measure the number and turmoil of community protests.

This article focuses on providing new insights into the nature of public opinion about protest action in South Africa. Since the mid-2000s the country has experienced one of the world’s highest levels of popular protest and strike action, combined with the recent resurgence of an active student protest movement. Sociological research into these protests has suggested that they represent distinct phenomena and that local protests have assumed plural forms that cut across simple violent/non-violent and orderly/disorderly binary distinctions. Despite the rapid growth of literature on South African protests, surprisingly little is known about public opinion relating to various forms of protest. Consequently, this article aims to examine differences with regard to the acceptability, perceived effectiveness and participation in respect of three categories of protest action, namely orderly, disruptive and violent protests. The article uses data from a protest module included as part of the 2016 round of the South African Social Attitudes Survey, a nationally representative series conducted annually by the Human Sciences Research Council. Apart from determining the nature and extent of variation in opinion regarding the three types of protest action on aggregate, the article explores patterns of similarity and differentiation across societal groups, based on class, age, race, gender and geography. Finally, we analyse how and for whom perspectives on the three forms of protest have changed over the course of a generation by drawing on functionally equivalent data collected in 1995. The article concludes by reflecting on whether the evidence supports key hypotheses regarding the ‘rebellion of the poor’1 in the country.

Global Labour History has firmly established itself in the past three decades. This anthology provides an overview of the conceptual aspects of the discipline and is underpinned by case and field studies from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and China. It is dedicated to Marcel van der Linden, the doyen of, and networker for, Global Labour History.

By 1949, South Africa was producing nearly 28 million tons of coal, nearly double the output of 25 years before, but still less than middle-ranking countries like France, Japan and India. In attempting to make sense of these strikes, explaining, in particular, the relatively higher level of militancy among black colliers than among other South African workers, the idea of moral economy provides a valuable starting point. This concept was applied by Moodie to understand disputes involving South Africa's black gold miners. The main limitation of moral economy is that it does not help explain the contrast between the different levels of militancy in the collieries and gold mines. Whilst Transvaal colliery workers' militancy was rooted in the efficacy of their practices, once the state was prepared to use force this was found wanting. This is not to argue that, had the colliery workers had unions, as in the gold mines, they would have fared any better.

South Africa’s Incident Registration Information System (IRIS) is a comprehensive, computerised database maintained by the South African Police Service (SAPS). In principle, it records all public order policing activity including all crowd incidents. While IRIS data is, potentially, a unique source for protest event analysis, considerable care is required. We aim to correct misunderstandings about the data advanced by academics and in the media, and expose its misuse by police chiefs and politicians. In particular, the incidents that IRIS reports are not protests, though protests can be found in the raw data. This article is based, in part, on records of 156,230 incidents covering the period 1997-2013.

The Marikana Commission of Inquiry was established following the killing of 34 Lonmin strikers by South African police on 16 August 2012. This article provides a substantive review of the Commission's Report, released in June 2015. It highlights the Commission's assessment that a decision made by top generals the evening before the massacre was the decisive cause' of the deaths. This and other findings against the police are contrasted with failure to make any recommendations for prosecution. Evidence presented to the Commission is used to draw different conclusions from those in the report. In particular, the article argues that the initial killings, broadcast live on television, were a consequence of planning by the operational commander, rather than a response to workers' aggression. Culpability for the massacre is also considered. While the narrative presented by the police was discredited, that articulated by workers was largely vindicated. However, this did not restrain the Commission from making comments hostile to the workers, and this antipathy is viewed as a factor leading to errors of judgement. The article was written in honour of Colin Murray. Resonating with his work, it ends by urging historians to take workers' voices seriously, something that Lonmin, the police, media reporters, and the Commission conspicuously failed to do.

South Africa’s Incident Registration Information System (IRIS) is a comprehensive, computerised database maintained by the South African Police Service (SAPS). In principle, it records all public order policing activity including all crowd incidents. While IRIS data is, potentially, a unique source for protest event analysis, considerable care is required. We aim to correct misunderstandings about the data advanced by academics and in the media, and expose its misuse by police chiefs and politicians. In particular, the incidents that IRIS reports are not protests, though protests can be found in the raw data. This article is based, in part, on records of 156,230 incidents covering the period 1997-2013.

Schlusselworter: Piketty, Marikana, Massaker, African National Congress, Lonmin, Bergleute, Streik, Sudafrika ----- Thomas Piketty and the Marikana Massacre. Abstract Thomas Piketty opens his bestselling Capital in the Twenty-first Century with the spectre of South Africa’s 2012 Marikana Massacre. He uses the example to illustrate the awful realities of contemporary inequality, the way these throw up “distributional conflict”, and the threat that is posed to democratic societies. This article responds to Piketty’s “telescope of historically grounded economics” with the “microscope of forensic sociology”. What Piketty finds is a conflict over production of value, not just its distribution, and the way this is rooted in a capitalist crisis. Moreover, the massacre arose from a commonality of interests linking the victims’ employer, a major mining corporation, and South Africa’s social democratic government. Despite loss of lives, workers continued their struggle and won a significant victory. It is proposed that, in keeping with Piketty’s account of historical reversals in inequality trends, and in contrast with his latest proposals, the creation of egalitarian society will involve massive social struggles, of which Marikana is a small yet important example. Keywords: Piketty, Marikana, massacre, African National Congress, Lonmin, miners, strike, South Africa ----- Bibliographie: Alexander, Peter: Thomas Piketty und das Massaker von Marikana, PERIPHERIE, 1-2015, S. 12-28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3224/peripherie.v35i137.23010

This article provides a detailed and critically reflective ‘insider’ account of the origins and development of a Community Work Programme as a public employment programme intervention. The article explores the significant potential of such a Community Work Programme to reduce unemployment and improve socio-economic livelihoods for programme participants, and its potential to model public/private alignment across sectors that complements what can be accomplished within the budgetary constraints of the central government alone. It also describes the challenges of programme implementation as a social policy intervention, arising in part from the difficulties of scaling up successful pilots to create a nationwide programme. The article demonstrates real achievements but also the difficulties of engagement with the state by non-profit organisations, and the difficulties of forging sustainable partnerships between communities and government around shared goals.

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A few weeks after the south african police killed 34 people involved in the mineworkers' strike at Marikana, on 16 August 2012, the author and his colleagues have conducted interviews with surviving mineworkers and trade-unionists involved in the conflict in order to understand what happened. Using the collected evidence, the article recounts the precise development of the strike and demonstrates that, considering the balance of forces and the massive scale of the intervention, it was a deliberate act: a cold-blooded massacre. This reconstruction is an extract of a larger book entitled: A view form the mountain : a case to answer.

The Marikana Massacre of August 16, 2012, was the single most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the end of apartheid. Those killed were mine workers in support of a pay raise. Through a series of interviews conducted with workers who survived the attack, this account documents and examines the controversial shootings in great detail, beginning with a valuable history of the events leading up to the killing of workers, and including eyewitness accounts of the violence and interviews with family members of those who perished. While the official Farlam Commission investigation of the massacre is still ongoing, many South Africans do not hold much confidence in the government's ability to examine its own complicity in these events. Marikana, on the other hand, examines the various roles played by the African National Congress, the mine company, and the National Union of Mineworkers in creating the conditions that led to the massacre. While the commission's investigations take place in a courtroom setting tilted toward those in power, Marikana documents testimony from the mineworkers in the days before official statements were even gathered, offering an unusually immediate and unfiltered look at the reality from the perspective of those most directly affected. Enhanced by vivid maps that make clear the setting and situation of the events, Marikana is an invaluable work of history, journalism, sociology, and activism.

Since 2004, South Africa has experienced thousands of local protests, many of them popular insurrections, which, taken together, represent a rebellion of the poor. Lack of service delivery has been the main issue, but protesting communities have also demanded the removal of corrupt officials, re-demarcation of political boundaries and employment. In terms of endurance and geographical spread, the movement is unprecedented. The article presents findings from a case study undertaken in Balfour, a small town outside Johannesburg. It argues for bridging studies of social class and social movements, justifies the concept 'rebellion of the poor' and proposes that the divide between employed workers and 'the poor' is best understood in terms of different relationships to the means and ends of protest.