Workers' Library and Museum

The Workers' Library and Museum was a non-profit labour service organisation (LSO) active in Johannesburg, South Africa between 1987 and the early 2000s. The organisation provided a meeting and learning centre for labour activists as well as students from the nearby Alexandra and Soweto areas. In 1994, it was expanded into the Workers and Museum in Newtown, Johannesburg, with the only museum in South Africa focussed on working people other than the Slave Lodge, Cape Town.

History

The Workers' Library was founded in 1987 as an alternative to the racially segregated public library system under apartheid. Under apartheid, black workers and writers were "forbidden entrance into some of the basic institutions required to practice history, such as archives and public libraries." It was preceded by the Trade Union Library, founded in Cape Town in 1983: both were part of a larger wave of LSOs that emerged from the 1970s. Often initiated by politicised university students and graduates, these worked with the rising unions of the 1970s and 1980s. The "gathering strength of the labour movement" with its "exciting potential" for social change attracted academics who combined scholarship and "working-class perspectives."

In 1994, the Workers' Library was relocated to premises in the Newtown district, adjacent to Mary Fitzgerald Square, and near the Market Theatre, MuseuMAfricA and the national offices of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). It was renamed the Workers' Library and Museum to reflect an expanded role: the new premises were a refurbished municipal compound (hostel) for black African migrant men workers, part of which was converted to a museum, part of which hosted the library collection, and part of which provided large venues for meetings; nearby cottages for skilled white workers were included, to be used for office space. The buildings housed employees of the now-defunct Jeppe Street Power Station and were a National Monument. The redesign was undertaken by the architect, anti-apartheid activist and radical Allan Robert Lipman in association with Henry Paine, for which they were awarded the South African Institute of Architects Award (SAIA) for Excellence.