On Durban`s Docks, Ralph Callebert

On Durban's Docks

On Durban's Docks focuses on dock labor in early apartheidDurban, South Africa's main port city and a crucial node in the trade andcommunication networks of the Indian Ocean and the British Empire. Although thelabor of Zulu migrant dock workers made global trade possible, they lived theirlives largely in isolation, both socially and economically, from these globalnetworks. Using seventy-seven oral histories and extensive archival research,Ralph Callebert examines the working and living conditions of Durban's dockworkers and the livelihoods of their rural households. These households reliedon a combination of wage labor, pilferage, informal trade, and the ruraleconomy. Dock workers' experiences were thus more intricate than a focus onwage labor alone could capture. Foregrounding such multifaceted livelihoods,Callebert considers the dynamics of gender within dock workers' households aswell as their complicated political identities, including their economicnationalism and fervent anti-Indian sentiments. On Durban's Docks thus offers anew approach to the study of labor on the subcontinent and globally,questioning the relevance of the predominant wage labor paradigm for Africa andfor the Global South. Ralph Callebert teaches history at the University ofToronto.