From reluctant slavery to a black flood: Black workers, mass production and cultural formation in South Africa's metalworks

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 2 August 1982In the first chapter of this thesis the problem of the transition from absolute to relative surplus-value extraction, of the changes in the social relations of production that bring about the mass production of commodities in South Africa's Metalworks, was discussed in some detail. There it was shown that South Africa's bonded accumulation and reproduction of capital, militated against such a transition: The local Metalworks, subordinate on the one hand to an international division of labour, on the other, to the needs of the local mining industry, faltered in all their efforts to effect this transition. Furthermore, through a discussion of the economic role of the South African State it was emphasised that the first pockets of mass producing Metalworks, like Iscor and the African Metals Corporation were created through State or para-statal corporations. This entailed a vast reorganisation of the industry by the late 19 30s. Finally, despite the favourable conditions for growth engendered by the Union's 'war effort', the dominance of these new relations of production was shown to be tenuous and a continued juxtaposition of jobbing and mass forms of production defined the morphology of the industry by the 1950s. The second chapter of the thesis addressed itself to the transition itself, located in the era after 1964 and consolidated by the crisis years of the mid-nineteen-seventies. Primarily through a rapid concentration and centralisation of the industry but also through the sudden large scale involvement of Mining Houses and Transnational Corporations, the 'universal worker' of machinofacture is created. The absolute increase of operative African workers turn from a quantitative flood to a qualitative presence. This present chapter is an attempt to examine the contradictory implications of this presence, in the words of the author M. Dikobe a generation 'that is surprising the world, fast very fast', in its combativity and political consciousness (1)

Disorganising the unorganised: The 'Black Flood' and the Registered Metal Union responses, Part I, the 1960s, of South African 'development'

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented May 1981This paper arises out of a combination of two factors: firstly, it is out of a dissatisfaction with a reality presented to us of late by a number of articles and more voluminous affairs like books about the role of white-skinned people in the racial division of labour, and through that, South African society as a whole. Secondly, out of a feeling that the ever-recurrent debate about 'inter-racial solidarity' and the South African working classes has been spirited away by some theoretical formulations that like the best of imported machinery started producing a mass of realities that obfuscate rather than clarify real issues that the labour movement is facing at present. (2) Unlike Demag machinery though, the results of the former, produced a reality that in most cases does not exist. These two factors will increasingly become clear as the narrative unfords and need not detain us here. What needs to detain us here though is the plot of the ensuing argument. In the first two parts of this paper, the story of the shifts in the T.U.C.S.A. as concerns African unionisation and their affiliation, disaffiliation acrobatics that characterised much of the 1960s is told. It finally traces two divergent responses vis-a-vis the registered union movement. The one, spearheaded by what have been called 'craft-diluted' unions, the other by 'industrial unions'. The third part, concerns an exploration of the material complexities that characterise the 'craft-diluted' unions with a specific focus on the actual transformations in the metal industry in South Africa throughout the 1960s. The fourth part looks at the unions themselves and how they respond to their new-found reality, not at the point of leadership but rather at the actions and passivities of their respective ranks and files. The fifth part analyses what has been discussed so far in the light of the current debates about the class determination of the white wage-earning classes. The paper closes with the 1972 T.U.C.S.A. Conference and the clear polarisation/accommodatiorithat exists in strategy between registered unions: a year before Potgieter's Zulus took to the streets, their rags barely covering their bottoms but for completely different reasons than he gives or to use Nelson's bad metaphor, the year his Black-worker-Christ resurrects himself despite the washing of the hands of Pontius Pilate (read; colonial administrator; read: registered union movement).(3) The second part, or the second paper, at the moment in preparation, will be tracing the process to the present

Desegregating health statistics and health research in South Africa

KI

Early Life UV and Risk of Basal and Squamous Cell Carcinoma in New South Wales, Australia

Sun exposure is the main cause of squamous (SCC) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC) although pattern and amount differ by cancer type, and sun sensitivity is the major host risk factor. Our study investigated risk factors and residential ambient UV in a population‐based sample of Australian 45 and Up Study participants: 916 BCC cases, 433 SCC cases, 1224 controls. Unconditional logistic regression models adjusting for key covariates demonstrated 60% increased BCC risk and two‐fold increased SCC risk with sun sensitivity, and three‐ and four‐fold increased risk, respectively, with solar keratoses. BCC but not SCC risk increased with higher early‐life residential UV in all participants (odds ratio (OR) = 1.54; 95% CI 1.22–1.96 for intermediate; OR = 1.31; 95% CI 1.03–1.68 for high UV at birthplace) and similarly in Australian‐born participants (P‐values < 0.05). Risk of SCC but not BCC increased with long‐term cumulative sun exposure assessed by self‐reported outdoor work (OR 1.74, 95% CI 1.21–2.49). In conclusion, sun sensitivity is important for both cancers, early‐life UV but not cumulative UV appears to increase BCC risk, the former an apparently novel finding, and SCC risk appears only to be related to long‐term cumulative sun exposure

Silicon Savannahs and motorcycle taxis: a Southern perspective on the frontiers of platform urbanism

The rise of digital platforms in urban Africa has been rightfully critiqued as an example of global techno-capital seeking new frontiers of profit among precarious lives and from fragile infrastructures. However, this techno-pessimistic reading of so-called “platform urbanism” leaves us with a bleak outlook on the future of the African city as a mere site of accumulation and exploitation. In this article, in contrast, we offer a more ambivalent analysis of a compelling trend in several African cities: the platformization of motorcycle taxis. Our focus is on Kigali and Nairobi two cities that have been celebrated as “Silicon Savannahs” for their commitment to digital innovation, and where motorcycle taxis have long contributed to the regular movement of people and goods. Deploying a Southern urban perspective on the digitization of these mobility systems, we make two contributions to platform urbanism debates. First, we show that this phenomenon dovetails two decades of supply-side, developmental investments in the connectivity infrastructure upon which platforms rely and are predicated. Second, we show that platform urbanism is not simply a case of global technologies landing in Africa. It is characterized by a proliferation of experiments in which domestic and international capital coalesce, platforms intersect in dynamic ways with informal economies, and local adaptations are necessary for survival. Overall, we argue that the platformization of motorcycles in these cities (and arguably others) constitutes a dynamic and evolving landscape that requires more careful conceptual and empirical attention

Antibodies against six human herpesviruses in relation to seven cancers in black South Africans: A case control study

BACKGROUND: Infections with certain human herpesviruses have been established as risk factors for some cancer types. For example, Epstein-Barr Virus is considered a cause of Burkitt's lymphoma and other immunosuppression related lymphomas, Hodgkin lymphoma, and nasopharyngeal cancer. Several other human herpesviruses have been linked to cancers but the totality of evidence is inconclusive. METHODS: We conducted a systematic sub-study from within an ongoing case control study of adult black South Africans to investigate the relationship between antibodies to six human herpesviruses and seven cancer groups that may be caused by infectious agents. Subjects had incident cancers of the oral cavity(n = 88), the cervix(n = 53), the prostate(n = 66), Hodgkin lymphoma(n = 83), non-Hodgkin lymphoma(n = 80), multiple myeloma(n = 94) or leukaemia(n = 203). For comparison, patients with other cancers(n = 95) or cardiovascular disease(n = 101) were randomly selected from within the study. Patients were interviewed and their blood was tested for IgG antibodies against HSV-1, HSV-2, VZV, EBV-EBNA, CMV and HHV-6 using enzyme linked immunosorbent assays. Because these viruses are highly prevalent in this population, optical density results from the assays were used as an indirect, quantitative measure of antibody level. RESULTS: There was significant variation in the mean log antibody measures for HSV-2, VZV, CMV and HHV-6 between the disease groups. However, none of the specific cancer groups had significantly higher mean log antibody measures for any of the viruses compared to either control group. In a more detailed examination of seven associations between cancers and herpesviruses for which there had been prior reports, two statistically significant associations were found: a decreasing risk of myeloid leukaemia and an increasing risk of oral cancer with increasing tertiles of antibodies against HHV-6 compared to all other patients (p-trend = 0.03 and 0.02, respectively). Odds ratios for the top tertile compared to the bottom tertile were 0.58 (95%CI 0.3 – 1.0) for myeloid leukaemia and 2.21 (95% CI 1.1 – 4.3) for oral cancer. CONCLUSION: In this population, using these tests for IgG, neither mean antibody measure nor high antibody measure against human herpesviruses 1–6 was strongly associated with any of the seven cancer groups. However, we may not have had sufficient power to detect weak associations or associations with a sub-type of cancer if they were present

Simple models of the chemical field around swimming plankton

Background. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women, and we recently reported human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles showing strong associations with cervical neoplasia risk and protection. HLA ligands are recognized by killer immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) expressed on a range of immune cell subsets, governing their proinflammatory activity. We hypothesized that the inheritance of particular HLA-KIR combinations would increase cervical neoplasia risk. Methods. Here, we used HLA and KIR dosages imputed from single-nucleotide polymorphism genotype data from 2143 cervical neoplasia cases and 13 858 healthy controls of European decent. Results. The following 4 novel HLA alleles were identified in association with cervical neoplasia, owing to their linkage disequilibrium with known cervical neoplasia-associated HLA-DRB1 alleles: HLA-DRB3*9901 (odds ratio [OR], 1.24; P = 2.49 × 10−9), HLA-DRB5*0101 (OR, 1.29; P = 2.26 × 10−8), HLA-DRB5*9901 (OR, 0.77; P = 1.90 × 10−9), and HLA-DRB3*0301 (OR, 0.63; P = 4.06 × 10−5). We also found that homozygosity of HLA-C1 group alleles is a protective factor for human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16)-related cervical neoplasia (C1/C1; OR, 0.79; P = .005). This protective association was restricted to carriers of either KIR2DL2 (OR, 0.67; P = .00045) or KIR2DS2 (OR, 0.69; P = .0006). Conclusions. Our findings suggest that HLA-C1 group alleles play a role in protecting against HPV16-related cervical neoplasia, mainly through a KIR-mediated mechanism

Defining the genetic susceptibility to cervical neoplasia - a genome-wide association study

Funding: MAB was funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia) Senior Principal Research Fellowship. Support was also received from the Australian Cancer Research Foundation. JL holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Genome Epidemiology. The Seattle study was supported by the following grants: NIH, National Cancer Institute grants P01CA042792 and R01CA112512. Cervical Health Study (from which the NSW component was obtained) was funded by NHMRC Grant 387701, and CCNSW core grant. The Montreal study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (grant MOP-42532) and sample processing was funded by the Reseau FRQS SIDA-MI. The Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, the ALF/LUA research grant in Gothenburg and Umeå, the Lundberg Foundation, the Torsten and Ragnar Soderberg’s Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and the European Commission grant HEALTH-F2-2008-201865-GEFOS, BBMRI.se, the Swedish Society of Medicine, the KempeFoundation (JCK-1021), the Medical Faculty of Umeå University, the County Council of Vasterbotten (Spjutspetsanslag VLL:159:33-2007). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscriptPeer reviewedPublisher PDFPublisher PD

Movement 5. Sensing the affective lives of arrangements

This final movement explores whether thinking with re-arrangements can help us account for that which is hidden, unseen or nested in the recesses and folds of urban practices. And if so, how we might then talk about and account for elusive parts of an arrangement that both exert an influence and are influenced. This essay uses sensibilities as an entry point into the intangible interactions between subjects and (re)arrangements