1 VII. Global Labour University Conference ‘The Politics of Labour and Development’, 28-30 September 2011, Johannesburg, South Africa RETHINKING STREET TRADERS AS A PROMISING AGENT OF RE-EMPOWERING LABOUR MOVEMENT IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICA (Draft Paper) Ercüment Çelik, PhD, Researcher and Lecturer, Institute of Sociology, University of Freiburg, Germany. Ercuement.Celik@soziologie.uni-freiburg.de Introduction In recent years many labour scholars have been discussing the need to revitalise the labour movement both in the global North and the South. At the heart of these debates is a need to find ways to shift from traditional unionism to a new „social movement unionism‟ (Turner, Katz & Hurd, 2001; Voss & Sherman, 2000; Waterman, 1993; Webster & Buhlungu, 2004). This is strongly connected with the escalating emphasis on reviving and redefining trade unions‟ role as „sword of justice‟ (Hyman, 1999). Reassertion of the movement dimension of trade unionism under varying conditions has also been a key part of these debates (von Holdt, 2002; Fairbrother, 2008). In South Africa, it has been excessively discussed that „social movement unionism‟ (hereafter SMU) has undergone an erosion as solidarity has fractured along new and old lines with the transition to democracy and processes of elite-formation in post-apartheid era (von Holdt, 2002). New forms of poverty appeared during the „Mandela Decade‟ [1990-2000] and since then, there have been „new poor‟ priorities that could not be represented by existing organisations with ease. Both trade unions and civic organisations have difficulties in accommodating them, which gave rise instead to new forms of patronage politics or new urban social movements (Sitas, 2010). Thus, the challenge of union revitalisation entails more than simply trying to strengthen existing union organisations. There is a need to go beyond traditional union structures to explore imaginative ways of engagement with, among others, the