The past, present, and future of workers’ education in South Africa

Abstract

This section of the special edition offers unique insight into the history and current state of a significant educational tradition in South Africa: that of an emancipatory tradition of workers’ education. The focus of these papers is not on workplace training but rather on workers’ education as defined in one of the papers: education of workers by workers, workers’ organisations and their institutions, for purposes that they themselves determine. This education is understood to include not only trade union education (although this is an important component) but also education directed towards the employed but unorganised, the unemployed as well as workers in precarious employment. South Africa is distinctive in sub-Saharan Africa in the depth and strength of its workers’ movement. However, with the exception of a 2009 paper by Bernard Dubbeld on labour studies in South Africa (Dubbeld 2009), there has not been extensive coverage of labour-related issues in Social Dynamics. Dubbeld’s paper provides a critique of labour studies in South Africa, arguing that there is a need to move beyond the workplace. This is precisely what workers’ education did in the seventies and eighties: it dealt with the totality of workers’ lives. Workers’ education transcended the narrow confines of the union bosses’ exclusive focus on collective bargaining and the workplace. This collection explores the neglected and rich tradition of workers’ education that emerged beside this movement, sometimes as its handmaiden, often as a critic. The papers track aspects of workers’ education from its rich history to its precarious state today, with significant shifts post-democracy, including its formalisation and institutionalisation alongside a steady decline in the strength of organised labour; and new initiatives in the face of new forms of work and new challenges presented by the era of globalisation. All five papers, in different ways, offer a similar and fairly pessimistic view of workers’ education in South Africa today, but all offer some grounds for optimism. The pessimism is perhaps the common thread across the papers: an analysis that workers’ education is weaker today than it was in the past, and less focused on building collective democratic organisations and struggles. The papers use different terms, but all suggest a turn towards less radical, less political education, and a focus on education for leaders as opposed to members.