ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the tension between paid and unpaid labour carried out largely by women in postapartheid South Africa and the continued multiple threats of discrimination. The history of African women in South Africa is a history of struggle against pass laws, forced removals, and separation from their husbands and families due to creation and administration of what was essentially a system of labour coercion, directed against the Africans. Those conditions and consequences of coercion were central to the existence and change nature of South African capitalism. In the world of work, many women are employed as casual and labour broker workers, and they are the first to be dismissed when economic crisis hits the markets hard. The chapter highlight struggles for women workers rights organizations in sectors strongly marked by precarity.
