ABSTRACT
This chapter contrasts the qualities, visions and methods of grassroots activism that span the apartheid and post-apartheid eras based on activists’ lived experiences. It relies on activist recollections, formal and non-formal archives, and secondary sources to present two case studies of grassroots organising in Soweto, spanning the democratic transition. First, it focuses on the organisation of street committees and ‘civics’ in a militant and organised Soweto community in the 1980s. Second, it discusses grassroots organising in Pimville, Soweto the trajectory of which was to join the Anti-Privatisation Forum, during the early-2000s struggle in the post-apartheid era. It argues that there have been a complex diversity of political perspectives, tendencies and practices at the grassroots that cannot be exhausted by dominant historical accounts and analyses which tend to simplify, homogenise and suppress this complexity. It is these marginalised ideas and actions that organic intellectuals of working-class communities, including trade unions, seek out and develop when the need to revitalise and renew the struggle becomes acute. A key question posed is how the experiences of grassroots activists and their reflections of the transition relate to the current condition of the working class and the nature of the class struggle.
