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Social movements, c lass, and adult
education
Shirley Walters
Social movements are movements of people in civil society who
coher
e around issues
and identities that they themselves define as significant
(Mar
tin, 1999). The following
quotation describes a group of poor women
in
South Africa, a group calling itself People’s
Dialogue, who are
mobilizing
around their need for houses. They are part of a social
movement of
women
and men internationally who are collectively struggling for access to
land
and
houses.
Women are
singing
Ululating,
dancing,
Marching
Carrying placards for their different housing
associations,
Wearing T shirts which
read—
People’s Dialogue for Housing and
Shelter
We
Want!
Power! Money!
Knowledge!
The songs they sing tell of the hardships they endure in the shacks, the threat from fire,
rain and the wind from eviction even under a new govern
ment.
Now they have started to build houses by saving R2 [two South African
rands
(equivalent
to 35 U.S. cents)] a
day.
These women are marching to the mass meeting in Hout
Bay
settlement,
Imizamo Yethu.
The atmosphere is electric, there is lots of energy, excitement
and
anxiety as the different
housing savings groups take the courage to say enough is enough, we are tired of this kind
of life, and don’t want to die
in
fires any longer and they say, ‘We work with all our hearts
to do the
good
work and do not want to be pitied and we will rebuild our lives as we
build
our homes’” (Ismail, 2003, p.
94).
The fact that the women from People’s Dialogue are poor, they
speak
IsiXhosa, and they
are women shapes very much what they do and how
they
do it. This chapter will examine
how particularly notions of class affect
the
education in and the learning fostered by
social movements. I will
begin
with a discussion of what social movements are and what
adult
education
and learning means in relation to them. I will then focus in on South
African social movements as a “mirror and lens” (Crowther, Martin, and Shaw, 1999, p.
2) in order to draw out key issues. In this era of
globalization,
South Africa is a
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microcosm of wider processes at work in other
societies.
It
is a middle-income country
that has recently emerged from a
pr
otracted
liberation struggle; and its reentry into the
global economy is
heightening
the tensions between economic development, equity, and
redress. As
such,
South Africa is both a mirror reflecting these processes and a lens
thr
ough
which to examine
them.
What Are Social Movements?
Social movements are voluntary associations of people and
or
ganizations
within civil
society that rise and fall in response to particular social,
econ
omic, ideological, and
political changes and issues often driven by the
state
or the market. They are reactive and
are sustained by their relationships
to
the particular issues or circumstances. A common
feature of much social-movement activity is its oppositional or alternative nature. Social
move
ments are the lightning rods of society. They can be either
conservative
reactionary
forces or progressive. The focus in this chapter is on the
latter
.
Welton (quoted in Martin, 1999) identifies three general
characteris
tics of social
movements: they articulate a collective identity, which
means
that their members
subscribe to a common cause that the
movement
expresses collectively; they exist in
an antagonistic relation to an
opposed
group or interest; they have a normative
orientation, which means that
they
embody a mobilizing ethic, moral code, or set of beliefs
that reflect
shar
ed
values and
purposes.
Social movements have a long history around the world, for
example,
within anticolonial
struggles, among peasants and workers, the urban
poor
,
black people, and women.
Oppressed and exploited people have
fought
back against their harsh material realities
through collective
or
ganizing.
Many social movements have historically organized around
class-r
elated
issues. Eyerman and Jamison (1991, p. 62) say that social movements
ar
e “at
once conditioned by the historical contexts in which they emerge,
their
particular time and
place, and, in turn, affect that context through their cognitive and political praxis.” To
understand
the workings of particular social movements, you therefore have to locate them
quite
par
ticularl
y
.
Melucci (quoted in Badat, 1999, p. 29) argues that we should see social movements as
“action systems operating in a systemic field of
possibilities
and limits. . . . Social
movements are action systems in that they have
struc
tures: the unity and continuity of
action would not be possible without
inte
gration and
interdependence
of individuals and
groups.” In many instances a social movement comprises various smaller
interdependent
or
ganizational
structures, working toward a particular social goal. The social movement
in
turn may well form a coalition with other social movements, in order to
cr
eate a united
front to oppose an issue or promote an
idea.
Through participation in social movements, people prepare for
change
or resistance to it by
challenging or confirming the ways in which they
think
and feel and act politically. Their
moral or
counterhegemonic
work
may
become the common sense of an era. As Martin
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(1999, p. 10) states, “in
this
sense social movements are intrinsically educative both for the
participants
and for the broader
societ
y
.”
Social-Movement Learning
Eyerman and Jamison (1991) have made a seminal contribution to
under
standing learning
in social movements. They state (p. 14): “Social
move
ments are not merely social dramas;
they are the social action from
wher
e new knowledge including worldviews, ideologies,
religions, and
scientific
theories originate.” Because adult education is integral to social
pr
ocesses and therefore social movements, it is not surprising that it gains in
pr
omi
nence
at heightened political or economic moments in response to
actions
within the state, civil
society, or the private
sector.
Social-movement learning includes both learning by people who
par
tici
pate in social
movements and learning by people outside of social
movements
through the impact they
make (Hall and Clover, 2005). Learning through a movement can occur informally through
participation or through
intentional
educational interventions. The educational and
organizational practices
inter
twine. The cultural, gender, class, and ethnic locations of the
individuals
or
groups involved shape the educational and organizational practices, just as
they
are shaped by the particular historical
conjuncture.
Social movements
ar
e exceedingly rich
learning environments. So in those movements
or
ganized
around class-related issues such
as working conditions, housing, health,
and
other social services, participants come to realize
that collective action and
soli
darity, as captured in the workers’ slogan “an injury to one is an
injury to
all,”
is the most effective approach to overcome social and economic
har
dships.
I turn now to explore what these ideas mean in a specific
context
through a description
of social movements in South Africa, with a
particu
lar focus on the ways that social class
shapes organizational and
educational
practices.
Social Movements in South Africa
Over the last hundred years in South Africa, civil society has responded
to
political, social,
cultural, and economic hardships through mobilizing
peo
ple across social class, ethnicity,
gender, and geography into social
move
ments. During the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s,
the political social movements for democracy were particularly prominent. These
movements
adopted innovative organizational and educational processes to
encourage
women and men of all classes and racial categories to participate actively
in
the movement
for change. In 1994 national liberation was achieved.
Mor
e recently social movements have
again formed in response to economic
and
social hardships in relation to land and
privatization of basic services
(like
water),
HIV/AIDS,
and violence against women and
children; some
have
strong links to
international
social movements. Each of the social
move
ments has a different composition of membership depending on its social purposes.
Some, for example, are rooted very particularly among the
land-
less and the poor, others
among middle-class, working-class, and
poor
women. The composition of movements
shapes profoundly the
or
ganiza
tional and educational activities within them. I will draw
on a study
(W
alters, 1989) of self-education within the social movements in the
1980s,
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which shows this
clearl
y
.
The history of resistance in South Africa from the early twentieth
cen
tury involves a
complex interplay between national political
or
ganizations
and social-movement
struggles; Abrahams (1996) provides a
succinct
description of this. The social-
movement struggles have had a
significant
effect on the development of strategic
perspectives of political
or
ganizations.
When the African National Congress (ANC) was
formed in 1912,
it
reflected an attempt to unite people, who until then had resisted
colonial
ism in scattered and disparate ways, into a national political movement.
The
development of capitalism in South Africa in the latter half of the
nineteenth
century had
destroyed the traditional precapitalist social formations of
the
indigenous people. The
political, social, and economic institutions
that
emerged during those early years gave
the South African social
formation
its peculiar racial capitalist character. The early
national liberation
move
ment, mainly made up of the ANC, whose leadership came almost
entir
ely
from the ranks for the emergent African middle class, had no mass
mem
bership
and in many ways represented the social and political outlook of that social class. As
Abrahams argues, this outlook sharply
cir
cumscribed
the political strategies and tactics
the ANC advocated and
employed.
In mass protests women resisted an attempt to extend the
notorious
pass laws to them,
forcing the state to drop the idea temporarily. (Pass laws prescribed who could enter, live,
and work in certain areas. The
common
result was that black men and women had to
carry a pass on them at all times or face
punishment
and
imprisonment.)
The
conservative ANC
lead
ership was forced to respond to social-movement struggles
engineered
and
led by people in communities and in the mines. The Communist Party of
South Africa, formed in 1921, provided a very important theoretical
input
that helped
shape the early perspectives of the nascent liberation
movement.
One of the factors that
made class alliances possible was a shared
oppr
ession that all black people in South Africa
experienced.
In the early 1940s, numerous social movements of the poor
emer
ged
in response to
people’s worsening economic, social, and political
positions.
The enormously exploitative
conditions that oiled the wheels of white
cap
italism meant that issues such as housing, cost
of living, fuel, transport,
and
clothing all became highly contentious political issues for
black
people.
Numerous grassroots social movements emerged in the urban slums,
aris
ing out of local frustrations at appalling conditions. Their emerging
leader
ship was not
of the same social class or outlook as that of the
existing
political organizations.
However, they began processes that effectively pushed organizations like the ANC toward
the left. Such social
movements
were defensive responses by the working class and poor to
socioeconomic
crises. They tended to have short life spans. The ANC began to provide
the
glue to bond them into a sustainable movement to end white minority rule, a movement
that conformed to the three characteristics of social
movements
that Welton (quoted in
Martin, 1999) identified: a collective identity of oppressed people, an antagonistic
relationship with the white minority government, and a vision of a nonracial democratic
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state.
In this early period, the impact of poor and working-class people
on
the shape and form
of the liberation movement was marked. They
influ
enced what the movement took up
and how. Evidence of this influence was visible in the 1950s when the ANC changed into a
mass-based
or
ganization
that adopted strikes, boycotts, mass protests, and general civil
disobedience
as its new weapons. Seeking the destruction of white minority rule
necessi
tated creation of the broadest front of resistance because it affected
people
across
class, social, and racial lines. It thus laid the basis for the
potential
unity of those social
forces and classes. Among the white people were
also
those prepared to throw in their lot
with the oppressed in pursuit of
nonra
cial
democrac
y
.
The 1960s was a quiet period because the state had banned
political
organizations and
jailed their leadership. The ANC set itself up in exile
and
established its military wing. The
social movements of the 1970s and
1980s
can be traced back to these earlier periods. As
Melucci (quoted in Badat, 1999, p. 32) states, it is important to recognize the relationship
between
the
visible and latent dimensions of collective action: during the latency
phase,
“the potential for resistance or opposition is sewn into the very fabric of daily life. It is
located in the molecular experience of the individuals
and
groups who practice the
alternative meanings of everyday life. Within
this
context, resistance is not expressed in
collective forms of conflictual
mobi
lizations.
Specific
circumstances are necessary for
opposition and
ther
efor
e of mobilizing and making visible this latent potential.” Thus,
phases of latency, far from being periods of inaction, are crucial to the formation
and
development of abilities and capacities for mobilization and
struggle.
The formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983 was a culminating point of
the reemergence of popular struggles in the 1970s
and
responses to the state’s
restructuring.
The UDF comprised thousands of sector organizations nationally. Two of the
most significant
social-movement
formations within the UDF were the trade union
movement and
commu
nity-based residents’ associations that formed around specific
issues.
The
independent trade union movement was emphasizing the importance of
worker democracy within the unions and the workplace as an essential
par
t
of the broader
struggle for democracy; this movement did not join the UDF until later. Its participants
saw community organizations as
unaccountable
and were at times critical of middle-class
leadership.
Through the collective struggles with community organizations,
the
differences between
the forms and functions of trade unions and other
or
ga
nizations came into focus. The
unions initially argued against affiliation
to
the UDF because they saw the different class
composition of the
various
affiliates as leading to different possibilities for organizational
forms
and
strategies. There were ideological struggles in the unions
themselves
between those who emphasized organizing in the workplace and those
who
argued for
closer
worker-community
solidarity. Harsh repression from
the
state forced closer work
among and across
or
ganizations.
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