Political and social change in South Africa has been crucially shaped by large-scale strikes that have
often taken a violent form. In spite of South Africa establishing a constitutional democracy in 1994 –
and a new vision of industrial relations – violence has become so entangled in institutional life that
South Africa has been described as a “violent democracy”. The massacre of thirty-four striking
workers by heavily-armed police at Marikana in August 2012 was a culmination of this trajectory.
The article explores the possibility of a nonviolent resolution of industrial disputes. This would
require the capability of unions to recognise and strategically use the four dimensions of union
power: structural, institutional, associational and societal. Without such capabilities, power resources
may go unutilised, or be strategically ineffective. The article argues that in post-apartheid South
Africa, associational power has become disconnected from institutional power. Instead of a vital
interaction between the two, the institutions created by the new labour regime have become
disconnected from the organisations that created them.