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NEIL AGGETT LABOUR STUDIES UNIT (NALSU): Annual Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture
Professor Lloyd Sachikonye: "The Labour Movement and Struggles for Democracy and Livelihoods in Zimbabwe"
SEMINAR & WEBINAR: 4PM, Tuesday 29 October 2024, in person at Graham Hotel, 123 High Street, Makhanda, South Africa & streamed via Zoom (details below).
ALL WELCOME!
THE LECTURE: Despite claims that workers' movements are fading away, they remain one of the largest in civil society worldwide, including in Africa, and central to struggles for dignity, rights, and equality. In a year when 64 countries are holding parliamentary elections – including dramatic developments in South Africa – and old certainties crumble, esteemed scholar Lloyd Sachikonye examines the Zimbabwean experience. Zimbabwe's unions have been central to struggles for democracy and livelihoods over the past 30 years. They have spearheaded struggles against neo-liberal economic adjustment and an authoritarian party-state, in a country suffering multiple, prolonged crises.
The Lecture will examine how unions provided invaluable resources, representation, and leadership, not only to workers but also to other sectors. This has included mobilising an effective political and party movement that made significant gains – despite extensive vote rigging and repression, and the limitations of a Government of National Unity established in 2009. Professor Sachikonye will also examine how sharp economic decline has fostered, on the one hand, the contraction of formal sector jobs and union strongholds, and large-scale emigration, and on the other hand, an imaginative reconfiguration of unions – as labour continues to execute interconnections between economic and political struggles in Zimbabwe's difficult, authoritarian environment.
THE SPEAKER: Lloyd Sachikonye is Professor Emeritus of Development Studies, the University of Zimbabwe. He has published widely on African labour movements, and on union, civil society, and the democracy struggle in Zimbabwe. Professor Sachikonye's books include “Striking Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe 1980-2000” (w. Brian Raftopoulos, 2001), “Trade Unions and Party Politics: Labour Movements in Africa” (w. Björn Beckman and Sakhela Buhlungu, 2010), “When a State Turns on its Citizens” (2011) and “Building from the Rubble: The Labour Movement in Zimbabwe since 2000” (w. Brian Raftopoulos and Godfrey Kanyenze, 2018). He serves on the boards of the union affiliated Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), and on the boards of the Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe (FCTZ), the “Global Labor Journal” and the “Review of African Political Economy.”
JOINING ONLINE: If you are attending this blended event online, please register in advance at
https://tinyurl.com/43krcvtr
Professor Lloyd Sachikonye: "The Labour Movement and Struggles for Democracy and Livelihoods in Zimbabwe"
SEMINAR & WEBINAR: 4PM, Tuesday 29 October 2024, in person at Graham Hotel, 123 High Street, Makhanda, South Africa & streamed via Zoom (details below).
ALL WELCOME!
THE LECTURE: Despite claims that workers' movements are fading away, they remain one of the largest in civil society worldwide, including in Africa, and central to struggles for dignity, rights, and equality. In a year when 64 countries are holding parliamentary elections – including dramatic developments in South Africa – and old certainties crumble, esteemed scholar Lloyd Sachikonye examines the Zimbabwean experience. Zimbabwe's unions have been central to struggles for democracy and livelihoods over the past 30 years. They have spearheaded struggles against neo-liberal economic adjustment and an authoritarian party-state, in a country suffering multiple, prolonged crises.
The Lecture will examine how unions provided invaluable resources, representation, and leadership, not only to workers but also to other sectors. This has included mobilising an effective political and party movement that made significant gains – despite extensive vote rigging and repression, and the limitations of a Government of National Unity established in 2009. Professor Sachikonye will also examine how sharp economic decline has fostered, on the one hand, the contraction of formal sector jobs and union strongholds, and large-scale emigration, and on the other hand, an imaginative reconfiguration of unions – as labour continues to execute interconnections between economic and political struggles in Zimbabwe's difficult, authoritarian environment.
THE SPEAKER: Lloyd Sachikonye is Professor Emeritus of Development Studies, the University of Zimbabwe. He has published widely on African labour movements, and on union, civil society, and the democracy struggle in Zimbabwe. Professor Sachikonye's books include “Striking Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe 1980-2000” (w. Brian Raftopoulos, 2001), “Trade Unions and Party Politics: Labour Movements in Africa” (w. Björn Beckman and Sakhela Buhlungu, 2010), “When a State Turns on its Citizens” (2011) and “Building from the Rubble: The Labour Movement in Zimbabwe since 2000” (w. Brian Raftopoulos and Godfrey Kanyenze, 2018). He serves on the boards of the union affiliated Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), and on the boards of the Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe (FCTZ), the “Global Labor Journal” and the “Review of African Political Economy.”
JOINING ONLINE: If you are attending this blended event online, please register in advance at
https://tinyurl.com/43krcvtr
HOSTS: The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) hosts the Annual Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture as part of its programme of labour studies seminars and the annual Vuyisile Mini Workers School: te School is in partnership with the Departments of Sociology & Industrial Sociology, and Economics & Economic History, at Rhodes University, South Africa, and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES). 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 draw strength from our location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and post-apartheid contradictions, are keenly felt. We are named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, a union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail after enduring brutality and torture.