From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: BOOK: AFRICA/LABOR -- 3RD WORLD RESOURCES (V8 N3)
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 22:48:21 GMT

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        The following is from the quarterly magazine, THIRD WORLD
        RESOURCES: A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF RESOURCES FROM AND ABOUT THE THIRD
        WORLD; subscriptions to the 24-page hardcopy edition are $35/year
        (organizations) and $35/two years (individuals). For rates outside
        North America, write to: Third World Resources, 464 19th Street,
        Oakland, CA 94612-2297 USA. See also their conference `twr.nl' on
        PeaceNet, or email to tfenton@igc.org (Tom Fenton) 
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Topic 123       BOOKS, 8:3 - 1992       Response 13 of 16 
tfenton 
twr.nl  11:09 am  Jul  8, 1992 
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***<STRIKING BACK: A HISTORY OF COSATU.> Jeremy Baskin.  

Verso, 29 W. 35 St., New York, NY 10001-2291. 1991. xv + 488  
pp. $19.95. ISBN 0-86091-557-3. Index, diagrams, list of  
abbreviations, notes, photographs, tables. 

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), South  
Africa's largest- ever trade union federation, was founded  
in December 1985 with a total paid-up membership of 460,000.  

By late 1990 membership had more than doubled (1.2 million)  
and the federation could boast of successful organizing  
efforts in "all corners of the country." Fourteen Cosatu  
affiliates are united today under the banner "one industry,  
one union." 

<Striking Back,> written by a 20-year veteran of South  
Africa's trade union movement and the current National Co- 
ordinator of Cosatu, chronicles year by year the birth and  
development of Cosatu during a period of intense repression  
by South Africa's apartheid state. Reading Baskin's  
"critical history" of Cosatu one has to marvel at the  
persistence and ingenuity of trade union activists who not  
only had to contend with the array of personal and  
institutional dynamics that are part and parcel of any  
organizing effort on the magnitude of Cosatu's federation,  
but who also had "to attempt to speak for the entire  
democratic movement" as the "political centre" for the  
organizing efforts of banned opposition forces such as the  
African National Congress and the South African Communist  
Party. 

Baskin trumpets Cosatu's considerable achievements on both  
the <organizational> and the <political> fronts. At the same  
time he offers a frank and honest assessment of the  
federation's failures and weaknesses during its first five  
years. ("Perhaps the greatest disappointment," Baskin  
writes, "has been the failure to organise farmworkers.") The  
author concludes with an examination of the new  
challenges--political, organizational, and structural--that  
confront Cosatu in post-apartheid South Africa. 
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