The labor movement was one of the main actors in popular resistance to apartheid in South Africa. A militant working class, radicalized by a deeply entrenched socialist discourse and organized through practices stressing grassroots self-organization decisively shaped the transition to democracy. In post-apartheid South Africa organized labor faces a new set of challenges. The contest over labor's role in the economic reconstruction and the challenges of a tripartite industrial relations system are confronting trade unions with a new dilemma. They have to remain responsive to grassroots militancy while, at the same time, channeling it in a development effort that emphasizes social pacts and non-adversarialism. This paper analyzes these issues, emphasizing the social processes of the construction of militancy at the workplace as crucial to the analysis of unions in transition.
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