The National Union of Mineworkers in apartheid and democracy

A South African organisational trajectory

French Institute Seminars in Humanities (FISH)
26 May 2015

15:00 – IFAS Conference Room, 62 Juta Street, Braamfontein

Raphaël Botiveau
IFAS / Science Po Aix

South Africa’s mining sector has been the site of a major social and economic crisis since 2012, which, among other aspects, has challenged the prevailing labour relations order. One result of this was the rise of a new trade union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, at the expense of the previously dominant ANC-aligned National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Based on fieldwork conducted in South Africa between 2010 and 2012, this presentation will introduce some of the main results of a recently achieved doctoral dissertation, which puts the current situation in mining in historical and contemporary perspectives. It analyses distinct NUM features such as the production of an efficient apparatus to organise mineworkers, cadreship and leadership development, as well as a practice and ethos of negotiation, as useful keys to understand its evolution since the late 1980s.

Raphaël Botiveau’s research has been concerned with South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers and mining sector after apartheid. He published several articles and earned his Ph. D. in 2014 (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne – Sapienza Università di Roma). He is currently attached to the Institut des mondes africains (IMAF, Paris) and teaches at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Aix en Provence.