ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the traditions of social movement unionism embedded in Congress of South African Trade Unions in the 1980s survive two decades later. Changes in representative and participatory democracy within National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) in the East Rand cannot be divorced from the context of industrial and political demobilisation that occurred during the 1990s. Indeed, participatory democracy is, in large part, synonymous with membership mobilisation. NUMSA, like many other unions, has lost an entire generation of shop steward activists. Their replacements lack the historical memory of campaigning in the 1980s and, in many cases; they lack also a passion to bring about change. NUMSA has maintained a strong interest in non-workplace political campaigns since the coming of political democracy, both within South Africa and without, as a review of its triennial conference proceedings makes clear.
