General Strike in South Africa
Cities and rural towns across South Africa were shut down today as the new South African Federation of Trade Unions, which is independent of the ruling ANC, and driven by the militant National Union of Metal Workers, held a successful general strike. The strike was strongly supported by popular organisations organised outside of the factory floor, such as Abahlali baseMjondolo. It is being understood as a clear indication that the ANC has lost its hold over the organised working class.
A Victim of Power (Corp) and Police: The La Presse Conflict and the Tear Gas Suffocation of Michele Gauthier
A report on the 1971 conflict at La Presse and the police killing of socialist feminist Michele Gauthier. The broader struggle against Power Corp., the impact of the police killing, and the development of the Common Front and subsequent general strikes.
The post-war strike wave in East, West, and Southern Africa
From the end of the Second World War until the mid-'60s there was a wave of strikes in British East and West Africa, French West Africa, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The history of this class struggle has been neglected by both mainstream historians and most revolutionary tendencies based in Europe and the US.
The general strike and Irish independence
The 1945 Nigerian General Strike
In 1945 a general strike involving tens of thousands of workers began with railway workers, then spread to other nationalised industries including dock and civil service workers, with workers at private firms supporting the strike and refusing to cross picket lines. Estimates of involvement range between 42,000 to 200,000 workers making it one of the largest strikes in colonial Africa up until that point.
The Nairobi General Strike, 1950: From Protest to Insurgency
The Nairobi General Strike [1950] was the culmination of Kenya’s post war strike wave and urban upheaval. An unprecedented upsurge occurred with the general strikes in Mombasa [1947] led by the African Workers Federation [A.W.F.] and in Nairobi by the East African Trades Union Congress [E.A.T.U.C.]. While this has been termed and treated as a city wide strike, there is enough evidence to suggest a movement that went some way beyond Nairobi. The extent of the cohesion and reciprocal impacts amongst urban and rural Africans involved in the strike were underplayed by the colonial government and the media that followed it.