Le National Union of Mineworkers, principal syndicat sud-africain

Negotiating union South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers and the end of the post-apartheid consensus

• Auteur / Autrice : Raphaël Botiveau
• Direction : Richard Banégas, Claudio Pellegrini
• Type : Thèse de doctorat
• Discipline(s) : Science politique
• Date : Soutenance le 12/12/2014
• Etablissement(s) : Paris 1 en cotutelle avec Università degli studi La Sapienza (Rome)
• Ecole(s) doctorale(s) : École doctorale de science politique (Paris)
• Partenaire(s) de recherche : Equipe de recherche : Centre d'études des mondes africains (Paris ; 2006-2014)
• Jury : Président / Présidente : Johanna Siméant-Germanos
• Jury : Examinateurs / Examinatrices : Richard Banégas, Claudio Pellegrini, Johanna Siméant-Germanos, Elodie Béthoux
• Jury : Rapporteurs / Rapporteuses : T. Dunbar Moodie, Ida Regalia

Mots clés

Mots clés contrôlés

Postapartheid

Mouvement ouvrier

Afrique du Sud

Syndicalisme

Mots clés libres

Congrès national africain

Syndicat national des mineurs

Congrès des syndicats sud-africains

Exploitation minière

Apartheid

Syndicalisme

Négociation collective

Relations professionnelles

Relations de travail

Negociation

Leadership

African national congress

National Union of Mineworkers

Congress of South African trade unions

Mining

Apartheid

Trade unionism

Collective bargaining

Industrial relations

Labour relations

Negociation

Leadership

Résumé

Cette thèse de doctorat s’intéresse au principal syndicat sud-africain, le National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), fondé en 1982. Partant de ses premières années, au cours de la dernière décennie du régime d’apartheid, elle retrace sa trajectoire, en tant qu’organisation syndicale, dans l’après apartheid. L’industrie des mines emploie aujourd’hui près d’un demi-million de travailleurs en Afrique du Sud et cette recherche, entamée à l’automne 2009, a été marquée par les grandes grèves de mineurs qui ont débuté en janvier 2012. Plusieurs mines de platine visitées avant et, pour certaines, après ces conflits, ont été affectées et, notamment, celle où a été perpétré le « massacre de Marikana ». Le 16 août 2012, des unités de la police antiterroriste ont ouvert le feu sur les grévistes et tué 34 mineurs. Cette répression étatique d’une violence inégalée depuis l’apartheid n’a pas pour autant mis un terme aux grèves qui ont atteint leur paroxysme au cours du premier semestre 2014.

Based on a case study of South Africa’s largest union – the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), this dissertation puts the current mining crisis in historical perspective. Beyond mining, it proposes keys to understand South Africa’s “negotiated” transformation from apartheid to democracy. It concludes that this country currently experiences what one can call the “end of the post-apartheid consensus”; a moment in which shared elitist conceptions of political and socioeconomic change developed during South Africa’s 1990s transition are starting to be decisively challenged. Departing from the NUM’s early years, in apartheid’s last decade, it analyses the union’s trajectory as a mineworker’s organisation after the end of while minority rule. Questioning NUM representations, in traditional struggle iconography, as a militant and revolutionary organisation, it argues that this union was also historically developed into a disciplined union, structured by and around strong core leadership. In other words, the main questions raised here here are : how are we to understand, in time, tensions between militancy on the one hand, and organisation on the other hand? How are we to accound in non-linear terms for the build up to 2012 Marikana strike and massacre, in a democratic context in which labour relations has supposedly become less adversarial and more workers friendly? What, in the NUM’s organisational ethos, can help us understand what happened, not as if Marikana was the expression of fundamental and untenable contradictions – class betrayal by another name, but as the result of sometimes unintended consequences of a nevertheless conscious and deliberate process aimed at organisation building and development? The main hypothesis that is put to work here is that NUM founders strategically built a centralised and efficient organisation, in order to survive in the mines’ repressive environment. This, in turn, generated tensions, which were to remain, between the grassroots and the top the organisation. In order to fulfil its organisational goals, the union also crucially invested in leadership development, at the expense of membership development. While claiming to be a socialist union that produced professional organisers and revolutionaries, the NUM nevertheless gave birth to professional negotiators who were more inclined towards negotiation than conflict. If the NUM achieved tremendous gains for workers through collective bargaining, the 2012 strikes and their aftermath have shown that mineworkers still aspire to militancy at the grassroots, and that they are ready to fight in order to transform the mining industry. This implies that the workers’ bread and butter demands are also rooted in more structural claims, which have gradually brought the “post-apartheid consensus”, which until 2012 prevailed as a shared narrative of how mining was to be democratised, into question.

La presente tesi di dottorato si interessa del principale sindacato sudafricano il National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), fondato nel 1982. Partendo dai primi anni della sua creazione, che corrispondono all’ultimo decennio del regime dell’apartheid, ne ripercorre la traiettoria in quanto organizzazione sindacale nel postapartheid. L’industria mineraria impiega all’incirca mezzo milione di lavoratori in Sudafrica e la presente ricerca, avviata nell’autunno del 2009, si è svolta in parte durante gli importanti scioperi di minatori iniziati a gennaio 2012. Diverse miniere di platino visitate prima e, in alcuni casi, dopo le manifestazioni sono state protagoniste di questi eventi. Un esempio fra tutti è la miniera in cui si è perpetrato il “massacro di Marikana”. Il 16 agosto 2012, alcune unità della polizia antiterroriste hanno aperto il fuoco sui manifestanti e ucciso 34 minatori. Nonostante una repressione statale di tale violenza non si fosse più verificata dai tempi dell’apartheid, gli scioperi sono proseguiti e la situazione ha raggiunto il suo parossismo nel corso del primo semestre 2014.