In the 1980s, South Africa townships exploded in insurrection led by youth and residents' organizations that collectively became known as the "civics movements." Yet it has been difficult for the civics movements to find a place for itself in the post-apartheid order it helped to create. This book charts the rise and fall of the movement in the transistion to, and the consolidation of, a democracy in South Africa.

The democratic South Africa boasts some of the most advanced labor legislation in the world, allowing public service workers to enjoy trade union and collective bargaining rights for the first time in the country's history. These developments set the stage for public servants to bring their conditions of service into line with the industrial relations 'best practice' in the private sector.

The problem of addressing workers' demands and concerns about job security; transforming the state into a more effective agent of development; and redressing the legacies of discrimination and authoritarianism is likely to generate considerable conflict between workers and managers and between different groups of workers. Indeed, the mass action in the education, health and police sectors, which made international headlines in August 1999, demonstrated that labor-management strife in the public service is not a narrow industrial relations issue of interest to the parties alone. The outcomes of these conflicts will have crucial and long-lasting consequences for the transformation of the state as an institution, and therefore for the governments's ability to promote fiscal integrity, economic development and service delivery.

The chapters in this volume are based on critical assessments of contemporary developments in the public service drawn from original research by a range of contributors, including public servants, academics and independent researchers, all specialists in this field. The contributions thus combine depth of research and critical appraisal with privileged insight into recent policy developments.

One of the most innovative aspects of South Africa's democratization has been the emergence of institutions and processes through which workers and unions may challenge the state and business to gain varying degrees of control over important economic decisions. These features are unprecedented in the old South Africa. Moreover, such institutions and processes are virtually unknown among developing countries undergoing democratization, and have few precedents among advanced industrial countries that have well-established systems of codetermination.

Scholars and practitioners have focused on specific elements of these changes, such as the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) or the workplace forum provisions of the Labour Relations Act. But they have generally missed the fact that the changes have implications ranging from the factory floor to the national and societal level, and the extent to which labor has obtained strong decision-making and consultation rights. Taken together these features have the potential to deepen dramatically the political democracy won in 1994. The chapters in this volume have been written by academics, independent researchers, and researchers affiliated with labor. The contributions combine depth of research and critical appraisal with privileged insights into current policy developments.