Customer Reviews

Workers War & Origins Of Apartheid: Labour & Politics In South Africa

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This book is the best that I have read on the origins of apartheid in South Africa. It is a carefully-written and quite lucid explanation of the politics and unionism of black and white workers during World War II. Alexander illustrates how the degree and kinds of racial unity among South African workers during this period have been drasticaly underestimated by historians, but his analysis of the complex phenomena of working-class racism is full and nuanced. He has done an amazing amount of research into the political economy of the South African state at a number of different levels, and smoothly integrated this with a subtle and interesting social history of workers. This book serves as an excellent example of this kind of analysis for US historians of labor.