The relational conception of spatiality is useful in researching and analysing the articulation of production and reproduction in post-apartheid South Africa. A relational approach forces one to jettison a binary approach to researching rural- urban, city-countryside, shop floor-household and wages-livelihoods, abstract- concrete, general-specific, global-local as bounded and static. For instance Hart and Sitas (2004: 32) argue that most researchers have pursued each of the elements of ‗the land question‘, the ‗labour question‘ and the ‗livelihoods question‘ in isolation, mostly divided across urban and rural lines. For Hart and Sitas (2004) these themes constitute- in their social and spatial interconnections- a central challenge to research, policy and social action in South Africa.
Researching workers, wages and livelihoods encompasses understanding the interconnections of work and livelihoods, of shop floor and community and of urban and rural. It explores the unbounded set of relations and their construction in constant struggles and contradiction of social reproduction of the working class in everyday life. The research adopts a relational approach to Burawoy‘s (1991) extended case method by looking at Dunlop workers as constituting a microcosm of working class lives and struggles in everyday life in post-apartheid South Africa. The research looks specifically at specific anomalies and peculiarities of Dunlop workers, their history and their everyday life. A relational approach also enables the thesis to develop an unbounded notion of everyday life reality in factory regimes at the level of the Dunlop shop floor.
an Eastern Seaboard Association of Tertiary Institutions‘ (eSATI) funded research- cluster organised around linking labour, land and livelihoods beyond the rural-urban divide. This was a second cycle of the cluster, following an earlier cluster with the theme of ‗reworking livelihoods in a globalising world‘. The cluster consisted of several PhD as well as Masters Students and a group of professors (supervisors) working on various aspects on linking labour, land and livelihoods beyond the rural urban divide. The 2005 seminar series, which was facilitated by Professor Gillian Hart was very helpful. It consisted of engaging with literature, unpacking rural-urban linkages, critiquing the use of binaries in social science analysis and reading Burawoy‘s (1991, 2000) contributions on how theory and research methods are intertwined and interlinked.
Seminars and cluster workshops helped because they forced attendees to develop research ideas and questions together and helped the researcher refocus his ideas from a rather woolly idea into a clear and focused set of questions. Initially the researcher began to be interested in looking at literature around the political economy and around linking wage labour to livelihoods, beyond the rural-urban divide (Bhengu, 2006). He came into contact with a vast amount of literature on work and workers in KwaZulu-Natal. Most of the literature was about the dock and dock workers (Hemson, 1979, 1996), about Dunlop and Dunlop workers (Sitas, 1984a, 1984b, 1989, 2004a; Bonnin, 1987, 1999) and about Durban: the struggle for the city and city life (Maylam, 1996; La Hausse, 1996; Freund and Padayachee, 2002). As the researcher interacted with literature he concluded that Dunlop workers have been part and parcel of research on migrant labour, work and wages the longest dating back to 1950‘s research by The Department of Economics (1950). Dunlop factory workers have been part and parcel of research and knowledge production on migrant labour, workplace regimes, workplace struggles and livelihoods in Durban (Sitas, 1984a, 1984b, 1989, 1996a, 1997, 2002, 2004a), in Howick (Bonnin, 1987, 1999) and in Ladysmith (Hart, 1996, 2002, 2006). Dunlop workers are regarded as pioneers of working class struggles in Durban and KwaZulu-Natal featuring in the famous 1973 strikes, but their teeth and grip in labour history comes from their 1984 strikes. From these strikes they forced Dunlop management to sign a recognition agreement with the trade union.
All other leading firms in the region followed suite from Dunlop in this regard.
During the 1980s and early 1990s Dunlop workers also developed what came to be known as the Culture and Working Life Project, which became an effective mobilisation and worker educational development tool for workers and their communities during the struggle. After much consideration and rewriting of the PhD proposal, the researcher concluded that he would conduct his research on the Dunlop tyre factory in Durban.
From participating in the seminar series, cluster workshops as well as engaging with literature on the rich history of migrant labour, workplace struggles and struggles for the city as well as the history of Dunlop workers, the researcher was able to develop his proposition which asserts that wage income is the locus around which extended household networks of workers mobilise their livelihoods beyond the rural-urban divide. To interrogate this proposition a few questions and areas of evidence needed to be developed:
1. The extent of the migrant labour system at Dunlop Tyres, Durban, 14 years into democracy
2. Levels to which workers maintain household networks beyond the rural-urban divide
3. Workplace regimes and struggles in the everyday life of workers and their household networks
Entrance and access to Dunlop workers was both planned and coincidental. As progression was made through the reading of literature and increasingly forming ideas and research propositions and questions on paper, the researcher knew that his research field was to be the Dunlop workers. A conscious decision was made that even though the research would involve entering Dunlop factory space, observation of the shop floor and everyday life of workers, the researcher would negotiate his entrance and access through the Trade Union, NUMSA, as opposed to factory management. It was fortunate that a part-time Honours Student from the Industrial and Working Life Programme (IWLP) was an official with the National Union of Metal Workers (NUMSA).63 He provided the contact of the union
63 The Industrial and Working Life Program (IWLP) was initiated as collaboration between University of Natal and Workers College through the work of Prof Ari Sitas and then Trade
organiser responsible for Dunlop. When the researcher went to the NUMSA regional office, he realised that there were five more union officials he had lectured through the IWLP programme. It was assumed that the warm reception they gave him and possibly a good word thrown in with the organiser contributed towards him making a quick introductory meeting between shop stewards and himself at Dunlop. The organiser seemed to identify with the research topic and agreed with the key proposition showing an avid interest in what the research might uncover.
The researcher was first introduced to the chairperson and secretary of the shop steward committee, who seemed to be interested in his research proposition. He was invited to present his research project to the full shop steward executive committee the following week. Some of the older shop stewards were even more enthusiastic when the researcher mentioned that Professor Ari Sitas supervised his project, as they had worked extensively with him previously, especially in the Culture and Working Life Project (CWLP) during the 1980s and early 1990s.
These workers remembered that Professor Sitas was instrumental in their struggles during the 1980s and early 1990s along with Geoff Schreiner and Alec Erwin. This was significant for the researcher‘s access to them as shop stewards because one of his sources was someone they remembered and highly respected as a trade unionist and academic. The researcher was then introduced to workers at the end of 2006 over several shifts, in which he made a presentation of his research and its significance.
The researcher began to visit Dunlop again in earnest towards the end of June 2007 because of lecturing commitments in the first half of the year. He was fortunate to be informed by shop stewards that workers were balloting for a strike and that it would take effect in July. The industrial action that began on 20 July 2007 became the best opportunity for the researcher to have time with workers
Union Research Project Unit (TURP). The program is aimed at enrolling trade unionists and a broader scope of community activists and leaders to attain university qualification. Since its inception, this program has produced three cohorts of graduates. One of the students from the program has gone further to complete an MA in Sociology. Seven others have completed Honours Degrees in Social Science and a significant number of those who completed their undergraduate studies have gone further with postgraduate studies in different programs in this and other universities.
and to participate in their strike action, making observations and conversations with them. The five week long strike also enabled him to have access to continue his observation and participation with workers, visiting Dunlop every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday over seven months, making observations with workers in their lunch hour meetings, and of activities and interactions on the shop floor close by the shop stewards‘ office. It also involved attending shop steward committee meetings every Wednesday and having conversations with workers who would come into the shop steward committee office for a range of issues. On one of the visits the researcher was asked by the factory‘s Industrial Relations Manager what he was doing there and was questioned about his right to enter the shop floor without being accompanied. Immediately the shop stewards came to his defence, telling the IR manager to do his job and not worry about things pertaining to security because they were not part of his job.