The regional claims of workers in post -Apartheid Southern Africa: A case study of Shoprite, a retail multinational, in Zambia and Mozambique

This study is about the regional claims of workers at the foreign branches of Shoprite, a South African retail multinational. Two workplaces of Shoprite in Zambia (Manda Hill) and Mozambique (Centro Commercial ) are the case studies for this analysis. The context of these workplace studies is post-Apartheid Southern Africa, where expanding investment by South African companies is taking place. This retail sector investment follows the model of shopping center development, where Shoprite's food supermarket is the anchor store for new malls.;I argue that a new regional moment is shaping the workplace experiences of African workers. South African retail multinational corporations are important agents of a new imagination amongst retail workers in post-Apartheid Southern Africa. Workers claim inclusion into the regional company on an equal basis with South African workers, privileging their ties to South Africa through the company. The South African reference point in workers' claims is interpreted here as a regional claim.;Five predictors are proposed to explain the regional claims of these workers: (1) foreign, South African ownership, (2) centralized regional organization, (3) management Renaissance ideology, (4) racialized management hierarchies, and (5) weak capacities of national states (and trade unions). Strong similarities and some differences were evident in the regional dispositions of workers in the case studies.;The new regional moment opening up in post-Apartheid Southern Africa has created a dynamic set of contradictions between the self-representation and organization of Shoprite, on the one hand, and the regional expectations of workers at these foreign workplaces, on the other. The high social visibility of shopping malls and new, South African-owned consumptive sites drive a complex regionalism, where different social forces claim the new region in competing ways. In contrast to the dominant depictions of African stagnation amongst ‘Afro-pessimistic’ scholars, South African retail multinationals emerge as dynamic agents of regional transformation and contradictions. The claims and actions of newly proletarianized retail sector workers at South African foreign firms, are an important part of this new phase in Southern African regionalism.