NEIL AGGETT LABOUR STUDIES UNIT (NALSU) Labour Studies Seminar Series, Rhodes University, South Africa.

BOOK LAUNCH SEMINAR & WEBINAR: Wednesday 15 November 2023 4pm, Graham Hotel, 123 High Street, Makhanda & ONLINE via Zoom (details below)

NALSU, in partnership with HSRC Press, is proud to launch "Labour Struggles in Southern Africa 1919-1949: New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU)," Cape Town, HSRC Press, 308 pp. Co-edited by David Johnson, Noor Nieftagodien and Lucien van der Walt, contributors include Anusa Daimon, Henry Dee, Peter Limb, Tom Lodge, Sibongiseni Mkhize, Tshepo Moloi, Laurence Stewart, Chitja Twala, Nicole Ulrich and Elizabeth van Heyningen, with an unpublished paper by the late Phillip Bonner.

ALL WELCOME . SOME COPIES ON SALE TO PUBLIC (CASH ONLY): R240 (40% discount)

THE BOOK: This collection provides fresh perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (ICU). By far the largest black political organisation in southern Africa before the 1940s, the ICU was active in six countries and in global trade union networks, and lasted into the 1950s. Chapters examine different aspects of the ICU’s record, achievements and failures in relation to the post-apartheid present. In its syndicalist One Big Union approach to workers’ rights; emphasis on economic freedoms; internationalism; unmatched presence in rural areas and on farms; and robust protection of women and migrant workers, the ICU overshadowed rivals like the African National Congress (ANC), the Communist Party, and the Southern Rhodesia Bantu Voters' Association. It helped forge a popular counter-public, and promised freedom through a general strike. Not just an exercise in excavating struggle history, this volume demonstrates that the traditions and legacies of the ICU are of great relevance to contemporary southern Africa.

SPEAKERS:
Anusa Daimon, University of Freiburg, on the rise of the ICU in Zimbabwe.
Chitja Twala, University of Limpopo, on the ICU in small town South Africa.
Lucien van der Walt, NALSU/ Rhodes University, on the ICU in Namibian mining towns.

JOINING ONLINE: If attending this blended event online, please register in advance at https://tinyurl.com/dmn82dps

SPEAKER BIOS:
Dr Daimon's research looks at migration, transnational ethnic minorities, labour, and politics in southern Africa. He is working on a monograph on Malawian migrant communities.

Professor van der Walt has published widely, including "Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1880-1940" (2010, with Steven Hirsch) and "Politics at a Distance from the State: Radical and African Perspectives" (2018, with Kirk Helliker).

Professor Twala works on liberation history and Bantustan history . He has been awarded fellowships at Harvard University, the University of Ghana, and the University of California.

HOSTS: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research and workers' education, has a democratic, non-sectarian, non-aligned and pluralist practice, and active relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. We are named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail after enduring brutality and torture.