The study explores the role that organizations and institutions play in reproducing inequality even after significant political transitions in which these transitions sought to undermine the sources of such inequality. Our analysis reveals how incomplete institutional transitions may give rise to contradictory institutional logics and how this can contribute towards high levels of contestation as actors and organizations vie to maintain, disrupt and create new institutions. We analyze the dynamics of a conflict set within a broader institutional contestation in post-apartheid South Africa by examining the farmworkers strike and unrest of 2012. We expose a complex interlocking system of exploitation and oppression at micro, meso and macro institutional levels and highlight misalignments between de facto and de jure institutional environments. Our study shows how actors and organizations can exhibit and constrain agency legitimating the unequal access to resources and opportunities and why this can result in the persistence of inequality.