Abstract
D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)
Following the end of apartheid, South Africa experienced political re-structuring and some economic reform, but 25 years later it faces the highest level of inequality in the world. There is relentless, if diffused resistance, but the ruling classes’ power and legitimacy remain intact. This situation resonates with the problems that confronted Antonio Gramsci, and this dissertation takes its cue from his theoretical standpoint, specifically his concept of ‘passive revolution’. This concept often appears in academic literature in relation to state formation and the formative action of capital, but it is deployed here to understand dynamics associated with two movements of subalterns: the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the student/worker struggle in Johannesburg of FeesMustFall and EndOutsourcing (FMF-EO). These movements have been selected because of their location at the forefront of challenging the country’s status quo. By assembling and analysing substantial empirical data it has been possible to offer an account of their limitations and potentialities, and through this appraisal, to shed light on why, despite a high level of social conflict, there has as yet been no point of rupture in post-apartheid South Africa. The research findings show that, while the two movements diverge in their limitations and potentialities, they also have important similarities. NUMSA is a well-structured and militant organisation, but has struggled to produce an ideology able to connect the material needs of the working class with the practical articulation of a political project. There is an absence of shared collective clarity around ideological references and a lack of debate on perspectives of a future society. So far, despite significant political interventions, the union has been unable to lead sections of the working class beyond organised labour, and has neither provided a basis for transforming itself, nor its partner structures, into revolutionary movements. In contrast, the student/worker movement intervened in South African society through struggle around common-sense immediate demands which articulated, in practical terms, glimmers of alternative social relations, thereby questioning the nature of the whole post-apartheid capitalist system. However, lack of structured organisation and the absence of a wider political project prevented the movement from establishing stable connections with other subaltern groups, and it was unable to survive the fierce reaction of its adversaries. This dissertation argues that the current unfolding of passive revolution in South Africa is firstly, intertwined with long-standing structural characteristics and secondly, based on the hegemonic role of compromise politics. Neither NUMSA nor FMF-EO managed to delegitimise the latter on a fundamental level, and they were unable to advance new political projects. The concept of passive revolution, in its organisational tension, offers the framework to rethink the current standing of potentially revolutionary movements and to restructure the working priorities of organisations that...