When South African Unionists Struck for US Workers
In 1986, black workers in apartheid South Africa walked off the job in support of unionists in New Jersey. Their strike marked a rare moment of international labor solidarity at the height of deindustrialization and apartheid.
Amon Msane speaks at a press conference outside the 3M plant in Freehold, New Jersey, surrounded by leaders of OCAW Local 8-760. Stanley Fischer (beard, sunglasses) stands beside Msane, 1986. (Courtesy of Stanley Fischer)
In many ways, Donald Trump owes his political career to deindustrialization, the late-twentieth-century process in which multinational corporations eliminated millions of unionized manufacturing jobs in the United States by callously abandoning working-class communities in pursuit of quick and easy profits.
Trump has won two presidential elections in part by presenting himself to voters as the solution to the still-unresolved social and economic dislocations caused by deindustrialization. His main remedy is to relentlessly scapegoat and marginalize foreign nations.
One of the president’s favorite international punching bags is South Africa. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has expelled the South African ambassador, suspended most US humanitarian aid to the country, and has claimed that its minority white population of Afrikaners — who once ruled South Africa under the racist and oppressive apartheid system — are now themselves the victims of racial discrimination and even genocide at the hands of the black-led government.
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