Post-colonial workplace regimes in the white goods manufacturing industries of South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

Abstract

This study attempts to consider the nature of workplace regimes that are constructed on the ruins of what has become known as the ' apartheid workplace regime'. It explores this question by analysing one industry- the white goods (or household appliance) manufacturing industry in South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe - as a case study. A critique of the dominant approach to the study of workplace dynamics in South Africa is developed. It is argued that this approach, based on post-Fordist theory, is able to assume that a radical break - implying a shift from racial Fordism to post-Fordism - can take place because South Africa's industrial structure and legacy of race and racism is somehow different from other African post-colonies. This approach also works with underlying assumptions that are inappropriately teleological in nature. An alternative approach, based on the work of Michael Burawoy, as well as a number of insights generated by radical approaches to geography, is developed in order to understand and analyse processes of transformation in industry and the workplace as a more contested and open-ended process. The study finds that, rather than some kind of post-apartheid workplace regime emerging, changes at the level of the workplace, as well as the structure of the industry as such, reinforce key elements of the apartheid workplace regime. First, in the context of the breakdown of the racial division oflabour in the workplace, wage and job colour bars still operate informally. Second, with the racial structure of power in the workplace no longer supported by the state, the language of flexibility and globalisation reinforces the arbitrary exercise of power over a layer of contract workers in all three countries. Third, migrant labour remains as a key characteristic of the labour market in Southern Africa, and this is reinforced by the segmentation of the labour market into ' permanent' and ' contract' employees. Fourth, while the segregation of facilities according to race is no longer sanctioned by the state, workers experience segregation along company lines of hierarchy as racial, since this often still coincides with race. Fifth, the location of the industry in the industrial geography of apartheid - referring to former industrial decentralisation zones - is replicated in the context of Southern Africa, specifically because of the state formation of Swaziland, and the resemblance this has to the former Bantustans under apartheid. The concept of 'post-colonial workplace regime' is developed in order to describe and understand these transitions better.