ABSTRACT
This chapter shows shows how workers in Botswana have striven, within the limits imposed on them by the capitalist state, to assert their autonomy and to challenge the capitalist system. The first major industrial action by private sector workers after the enactment of the Trade Unions Act and the Trade Disputes Act of 1969 came on 25 November 1974, when about 700 members of the Botswana Bank Employees Union went on an illegal strike for about a week as a result of a deadlock in negotiations over wages and other conditions of service. The defining moment for Botswana ’s labour relations came in July 1975 at Selebi Phikwe, where there was a large copper nickel mine involving huge financial resources from American Metal Climax and the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa. Workers’ struggles in the public sector have been spearheaded by the so called "industrial class employees", who are organised in the Manual Workers’ Union- Botswana’s biggest trade union.
