Outsourcing Labour Conflict?: Workers and the Public-Private Partnership Development Strategy in South Africa

South Africa, like many countries around the world, is pursuing a development strategy based on courting private investment in public infrastructure. Analysis of the development strategy has focused on the power of finance capital vis-a-vis states in the global South (e.g Gabor 2021). However, less attention has been given to the role of workers in financialized development strategies. It is noteworthy that, in South Africa, many large projects involve private companies building and operating physical infrastructure, but also employing the workers that maintain those infrastructures. This is in a context in which state owned entities, which have historically owned and managed infrastructure directly, are under severe financial strain after decades of corruption and mismanagement. The paper presents an analysis of specific infrastructure projects which are facilitated by the national infrastructure fund. It analyzes the role of labour in the projects and the implications for labour of organizing employment in major infrastructure projects through the financialized development model.