CAUGHT IN NEUTRAL, labour, global production networks and the green transition in South Africa's auto industry

301pp., paperback, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 2026

ISBN: 9781997461142

Foreword by Imraan Valodia.

Alex M Mashilo, an experienced automotive technician and trade-unionist, examines the intersection of global geopolitics, industrial policy, economic upgrading, and the contested just transition in South Africa’s automotive sector, showing how policy vacillation has undermined a worker-centred just transition and how, without strategic action, workers and communities will continue to bear the costs of restructuring and decarbonisation. He also identifies transport as the critical terrain on which organised labour and the climate movement can forge a common, transformative agenda.

Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo is Visiting Researcher in the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Imraan Valodia is Professor of Economics, Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality, and Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.