Mapping precarity and social movements in contemporary South Africa

Abstract

The Global South has been a historical site for marginality and precarity, challenging the Global North’s theorisations and assumptions of precarity being a uniquely Northern phenomenon. This dissertation focuses on the continual development of precarity in the Global South with specific attention toward the Southern African context. Since the transition to democracy, a historically entrenched and divided Southern African society has remained a turbulent site of inequality and racialised capitalism. Producing forms of marginality that have broad and far-reaching consequences in political, social, and economic realms that impact labour on the macro as well as the micro-level, these forms of precarity invade and permeate the material and existential life worlds of South Africans. Therefore, the South African precariat asserts their agency through collective action to re-establish and regain the political, economic and social power that was taken from them during Apartheid and in today’s capitalistically dominated climate. Throughout the dissertation, these phenomena have been contextualized to illustrate the material and existential impact on individuals and groups who live in precarity. Furthermore, the dissertation then focuses on the development of social movements in contemporary South Africa, whilst focusing on drawing possible links to precarity. This connection helped to demonstrate how existing research illustrates ways in which we can understand the relationship between precarity and protest in South Africa’s political economy.