Trade Unions and Democratization in South Africa, 1985-1997. Glen Adler & Eddie Webster (eds.). New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. Pp. 238.

The South African transition and the South African labor movement are inextricably linked. This book leaves no doubt that the defiance of organized labor was the most reliable autonomous powerhouse in the anti-apartheid struggles of the 1980s. The book provides proof that labor militancy continues to fuel the social imaginition of intellectuals now as in the 1980s.

Eddie Webster and Glen Adler describe the objective of the study in the following sentence: "The chapters in this volume examine labour's role in democratization and assess whether it can continue to exert such influence in the future." This objective is pursued in different ways. For example, Sakhela Buhlungu contributes a study on participatory management strategies at specific work places in the wood and paper industry. Buhlungu carefully compares examples the successes and failures of specific shop floor attempts to influence the work process and relates their impact on the union's ability to include shop floor voices and upgrade skills. From his careful micro-analysis he concludes that "unions must ensure that principles of democratic decision making and worker control...are maintained." Buhlungu's study is an extension of the very "lessons of struggle" tradition among progressive South African academics, as is Karl von Holdt's convincing piece on Steelco. Adherents to this tradition regard themselves as primarily conceptualizers of historical experience, rather than conceptualizers of analytical tools.

The post-modern tradition is also applied in some of these studies. The topics covered here are much more generic than the others making this a weakness of the book. Ian Macun's analysis of major historical trends convincingly argues that unions gradually moved into the political field when they were sufficiently strong. However, the preconceived notion of union autonomy makes Macun blind to the swings of working class mobilization from the community and back into the work place. Macun asserts that there is no correlation between significant political moments and union membership, which is not true. I find it appropriate to speak of four waves - 1979-1980, 1983-1985, 1989 and 1994 - where working class activism was mainly residential. These four peaks of community action happen to coincide with low or negative growth in union density in Macun's table on page 63. While the efforts were inspired by workplace activism, they also reinforced unionization, but only when they had peaked. A micro-study would have revealed such a correlation, eg. that the community mobilizations in Cape Town of 1979-1980 led to a much increased union membership but only by 1981.

The breakthrough of the UDF, the Defiance Campaign, and the first democratic elections were all moments when many union activists focused on the community struggles. Thus, these activists could only later reap the organizing benefits of these struggles at the workplace. Macun's uni-lateral assertion of the uniqueness of the workplace experience thus counters the strong 1980s tradition of regarding both community and workplace as interacting habitats for workers. I doubt Macun's assertion would have been possible if more women - at least one - had been part of the team behind the book. It seems to be very male perspective to see the workplace as the absolute fulcrum of struggle, thereby down-playing the role of the reproductive sphere.

Another problem with the book is that the editors treat chapters as independent articles. This makes the openings of most chapters a bit boring and repititive, since all the contributors inform the reader that the unions and South Africa are undergoing transformation. However, this is a minor problem, since the book contains many interesting discussions. For instance, the role of unions - particularly the largest national structure COSATU-in the tripartite alliance with the ANC and the Communist Party-is a particularly interesting topic for those who want to predict the political future. It is very hard to conceive how that alliance could last another decade, since the ANC has assumed an increasingly middle class and pro-business identity. While everyone waits for the foreign investors to turn up, the daring individuals and collective initiatives which brought about democracy are withering. P.G. Eidelberg's chapter on the problem asks all the right questions and gives many useful hints. His historical analyses though, are underpinned by the understanding that ideology is the most constant element in the histories of the allies. He thus overlooks how swiftly people can change faith if their opportunities change. Thus, I do not accept his assertion that nationalizing banking and and mining monopolies was not a fully integrated part of the ANC's nationalism in the 1980s. His messy relationship to the chronology of the 1980s suggests that the analysis suffers from exaggerated hindsight.

The two last chapters of the anthology deal with the integration of the unions into the socio-economic policies of the post-apartheid state. They are both illuminating and informative. While the topics are almost identical, the approaches differ. Götz uses post-modern analysis to understand policy integration as a text, while Friedman and Shaw present a tour de force account of policy integration as an outcome of a changing power equation.

Gorm Gunnarsen
University of Copenhagen