A School within a School of War: Workers Making, Learning and Teaching about History

Abstract

In June 1988 hotel-workers in Cape Town were amongst many dismissed in the then biggest stay-away against planned anti-union attacks. For months they met daily, organising their struggle for reinstatement: the site of an ongoing collective process of radical worker education for liberation. Workers shared this through a process of documentation and solidarity celebrating their collective agency, reflecting on past, making current, and envisioning future history. A different capitalist market-driven education for competitiveness now dominates postapartheid South Africa. A reflection written in 1994 illuminates the denigration of working class collectivism, successfully resisted by the dismissed workers but even then developing.