So worker rebellions against “their own unions†and against the “legal framework†for collective bargaining have a distinguished history. Since Marikana there has been a strike wave of some 100 000 workers across the country – from the platinum province, to the coal and gold mines of the North West, Gauteng and the Free State, and from the workers at Kumba in the Northern Cape; to Toyota in KZN; and even home-based textiles workers in Cape Town. And now farm workers in De Doorns. A common feature of these strikes has been that they were led and driven by self-organised workers’ committees in defiance of the existing unions and of signed collective agreements made with these unions.