ASAUK 2018

The paper builds on my recent article in ROAPE, ‘Revisiting Class and Culture in Africa: Between E.P. Thompson and Pierre Bourdieu’ (2018) alongside my book on the main public sector blue collar trade union in Botswana (The Making of an African Working Class, Pluto Press, 2014), to reflect further on the place of casualised workers, the so-called precariat, and the extent to which they may be defined as constituting a class. Whereas my book and article consider the place of unionised workers and the extent to which they may be defined as a ‘class’, in this paper I ask also whether the self-employed may benefit from trade union membership and what this tells us about the multiple functions of trade unions in Botswana.