Solidarity During the ‘Outsourcing Must Fall’ Campaign: The Role of Different Players in Ending Outsourcing at South African Universities

Abstract

In South Africa, outsourced workers began their struggles in the 1990s, when universities started to implement the outsourcing of services that were considered non-core by university administrations. In analysing the struggle against outsourcing of 2015 and 2016, different scholars have tended to emphasise the role of either the outsourced workers or the student activists of ‘#Fees Must Fall’ (FMF) – a campaign which opposed fee increases in 2015 and 2016 and took up the cause of outsourced workers. Based on interviews with workers directly affected by outsourcing, student activists and trade unionists, as well as internet sources and original documents, this article gives an account of the roles of the various groups involved in the campaign: the students who were part of FMF, the workers who were directly affected by outsourcing, NGOs and socialist groupings who united and defeated outsourcing in 2015 and 2016. The solidarity between students, workers, political groups and some academics ended what the unions could not end for close to twenty-five years in less than a year.

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