Trade unions have historically played a critical role in the struggle for emancipation in South Africa. Despite severe legal restrictions and repression, black workers formed unions to fight for better conditions in workplaces and, at key moments, also against the system of white minority rule. Often these unions were influenced by socialist ideas, causing them to be in the forefront of the struggle against capitalism. At different times in the twentieth century, black trade unions posed a serious challenge to dominant class relations at the point of production, which invariably affected the entire political establishment. Migrant workers featured prominently in these struggles.

These workers, who were overwhelmingly African men, have historically constituted the backbone of South Africa's labour force. Predominantly concentrated in the mining sector from the late nineteenth century, migrants were also employed in increasing numbers in industry and municipalities as the secondary economy and urban areas expanded in the twentieth century. Their lives were ruled by a migrant labour system characterised by restrictive labour controls and relatively low wages, which entrapped them on the margins of society. As the modern economy expanded and concomitantly the demand for labour, the number of migrant men spending time in urban areas for extended periods also registered sharp increases. Most of them found life in the towns, which oscillated between lowpaid toil in the mines or factories and the dreary (and increasingly derelict) hostels, deeply alienating. But, as Peter Delius has explained, migrants ‘did not allow themselves to be transformed into atomised economic units tossed to and fro in the swirling currents of market forces’. On the contrary, they constantly struggled against various aspects of their exploitation.

Migrant workers devised various responses to their circumstances in the urban economy, from mutual support to collective resistance. They created associations, invariably born from rural-based networks, which while providing support in the harsh urban environment and maintaining links to rural homes, also engendered solidarity in workplaces.