Strikes have followed me all my life

By Emma Mashinini

Subjects: Officials and employees, Biography, Trade-unions, Black, Apartheid, Black Labor unions, Prisons, South africa, biography

Description: Emma Mashinini was Secretary of the Commercial, Catering, and Allied Workers Union of South Africa, one of South Africa's biggest trade unions, when she was arrested without charge and detained. She was held incommunicado for six months, much of that time of solitary confinement. The gripping story of her time in prison is one part of *Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life*, the powerful and compelling autobiography of Mashinini's life. This personal account of Mashinini's life as a black woman's politicization and, serves as an extremely valuable record of the development of the black trade union movement during a critical period in South African history. In *Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life*, Mashinini relates the moving story of her life under apartheid. She describes her childhood in Sophiatown, her first marriage and divorce, motherhood (and single motherhood), and her work in a textile factory making uniforms for the South African police forces which eventually led to her trade union work and subsequent arrest and detention in the notorious Pretoria Central Prison. She also addresses the feminist mechanisms of collective labor and political awareness through her intriguing discussion of the "stokvel:" neighborhood collectives of women who come together to pool financial resources and provide each other with emotional and political support. *Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life* is an important contribution to our understanding of the South African labor movement and contemporary South African culture and history. Above all, this is a moving and inspiring account of one woman's courageous fight for justice.