ABSTRACT
White workers and the white underclass are in the spotlight. The emergence and success of right-wing populist movements across Europe and North America are provoking debate and discussion about the attitudes and role of the “white working class”, and all manner of political outcomes are attributed to this group. Southern Africa, and South Africa in particular, has a rich tradition of social history. The most obvious form of subordination and marginalisation which stratified white societies in the region was the continued presence of poor whites. In Southern Africa, as in other settler colonial contexts, white rule depended on a sharply delineated boundary between colonisers and colonised. Debates surrounding the role and position of white labour and scholarship on early-twentieth-century white working-class lives took place in a context in which white labour formed an important political constituency in Southern Africa. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
