The working class has received continuous attention from social and political commentators and delegates all over the world. In the middle of the 19th century, there was a new expression which brought into focus a new reality created by industrial capitalism, first in England, later in other Western countries, and then different parts of the world including Africa. Until that time, it was common to speak about laborers but not about a working class. Before the advent of industrial capitalism, western society was represented in terms of its division into estates just as African society was represented in terms of its division than classes.

The classic formulation of the conditions of the working class may be found in the descriptive and analytical writings of Engels and Marx. Engels provided vivid descriptions of working class men; women and children in mid-19^th century England while Marx developed a theory, which maintained that that class would be the principal agent of historical change. That theory has had a profound influence on intellectual and political currents throughout the world. In it, the workers, as the ‘owners merely of labor-power’ are contrasted sharply with the owners of capital or the bourgeoisie. The idea of a working class or proletariat deprived of everything except its capacity to merely labor appealed to the imaginations of many who were themselves somewhat better placed. Some came to believe that the working class was by its very suffering destined to lead humanity as a whole to a better future.

The polarisation of bourgeoisie and proletariat became a central theme in theories and programmes of political change through the conflict of classes but it did not take the course predicted. In the 20^th century, it began to be evident that the `owners of labor-power' were a mixed bag. Social and political attitudes were shaped not only by the structure of property but also, and independently of it, by the occupational structure. The distinction between non-manual and manual occupations could not be seen as merely an aspect of the one between capitalists and workers.

The gap between the working and the middle classes continued to be present even where the latter consisted mainly of `owners of labor-power'. An important sociological study made by David Lockwood nearly 50 years ago showed how clerks and manual workers in Britain differed from each other. They differed in their market situations, work situations and above all, in their status situations. Even when they had similar incomes, they had different patterns of expenditure, lifestyles and aspirations for their children.

Differences between the lower levels of non-manual employees and the upper levels of manual workers have not been of the same magnitude or significance in all places or at all times. The general disesteem of manual work common among agrarian societies was accentuated in the African countries by traditional attitudes towards purity and pollution. The attitude towards manual work is however changing in Africa partly as a result of changes in the technology and organisation of work.

It is to be noted that at the time of their independence, many countries in Africa had a small middle class and industrial working class. Both have expanded considerably, bringing some sections of workers, particularly in the organised sector, closer to some sections of the middle class in their market situation, work and  status situation. Some sociologists call it `embourgeoisement' or the process of `becoming bourgeois'. The process is not simple and one-way. For, while workers have adopted many middle-class social standards, clerks and other non-manual employees, including teachers and doctors, have adopted many trade-union practices developed first by the industrial working class.

The very processes that have brought some sections of manual workers closer to the middle class have carried them further away from the majority of manual workers in a variety of occupations in the unorganised sector. The pay for African working class is very low. There is hardly any job security and the conditions of work are often appalling. So great is the disparity between these workers and those who constitute the aristocracy of labour that one might well ask if it is at all reasonable to speak of all workers, or even all manual workers, as belonging to a single class. The irony is that political movements and parties continue to use the imagery of 19th century capitalism to make demands in the name of the `owners of labor-power' whose benefits go not to the worst-off but to the best-off sections of manual workers and also to many non-manual workers.

In Africa, about three to four decades ago, the differences between manual and non-manual workers were clear and distinct. The wages of manual workers were generally, if not invariably, lower than the salaries of employees in clerical and related occupations. It is to be recalled that in the West, technological changes since World War II have rendered manual work less rough and unclean. Similar changes are taking place in Africa in a slow phase although they are as yet largely confined to the organised sector outside of which manual work continues to be onerous and disagreeable.

Differences between manual workers, clerical and other employees were not confined to the workplace. They were equally, marked in the home and the neighborhood. In cities like Johannesburg and Nairobi, clerks and manual workers lived in different neighborhoods, although shortage of housing and unemployment were leading some downwardly-mobile members of the middle class to move into slums. The reverse movement, of well-paid and upwardly-mobile manual workers into middle-class neighborhoods, was to begin later, and even now it is not much more than a trickle.

The spread of literacy and education has played a part in altering the balance between the higher grades of manual and the lower grades of non-manual employees. In 19^th century, Africa’s manual workers in factories had little or no education whereas the ability to read and write was essential for clerical and related occupations. It took factory workers more than one generation to recognise that even if they themselves had missed out on schooling, their children would benefit by being sent to school. As schooling becomes universal, the disparities between manual and non-manual workers are bound to become softened, although differences in the amount and quality of education still remain.

The equation between factory work and no education, and office work and some education held to a very large extent in African countries at the time of their independence. It does not hold to the same extent any longer. It hardly needs to be repeated that the expansion of literacy and education was painfully slow in the decades immediately after independence, but things are changing. Some public sector undertakings in Africa have their own schools, which provide subsidised education to workers’ children in the continent. Sometimes this education is better than what is available to children whose parents are in lower white-collar employment in small establishments outside the public sector. The vast masses of those who are in casual or unregulated employment find schooling of even the most elementary kind outside their children’s reach. Such enormous and perhaps increasing disparities in life chances among workers in different occupations and in different sectors of the economy lead us back to the question as to what people really mean when they speak of the working class in contemporary Africa.