This is the first of ILRIG’s two-part series – ‘Handbook of Struggle’.
The starting point for this series is an understanding of the crucial importance for
popular, people’s organisations and struggle to recognise the continuities and
links between the past and present. For us here in South Africa, that means more
specifically, between what came before 1994 and what has happened since.
We hope that the series will be a useful reminder in three particular ways of:
• How South Africa got to where it is today
• The character and content of our more recent history of popular struggle
• The importance of knowing our political and economic history, to inform present
and future organisation and struggle.
We also hope that this handbook (and the one to follow), will be used as political
and educational tools for activists to:
• Deepen our knowledge of the overall political economy of the South African
transition (from the late 1970s to the present)
• Better understand the role and character of the ANC, the state, private capital as
well as popular worker and community movements
• Engage with, and learn from, lessons of past and present struggles
• Gain a clearer appreciation of what popular, people’s forces are up against and
what we fight for today.