Labour Studies Podcasts Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit(NALSU)

SPEAKERS & TOPIC: Anusa Daimon, Chitja Twala, Lucien van der Walt, "Labour Struggles in Southern Africa 1919-1949: New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU)"

NALSU NEWS: Labour Studies podcast/video: Anusa Daimon, Chitja Twala, Lucien van der Walt, "Labour Struggles in Southern Africa 1919-1949: New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU)"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Sibongiseni Mkhize, Tshepo Moloi, Laurence Stewart, Chitja Twala, Nicole Ulrich and Elizabeth van Heyningen, with an unpublished paper by the late Phillip Bonner.This collection provides fresh perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (ICU).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.Details: This is a recording of a live event in the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) Labour Studies Seminar Series, held on Wednesday, 15 November 2023, at the Graham Hotel, Makhanda, South Africa.ABOUT NALSU: 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.MORE: https://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu

SPEAKER: Andrew Murray, "Why has South Africa's Industrial Policy Failed to Halt Deindustrialisation and Transform the Economy?"

TOPIC: This Lecture examines the evolution of industrial policy in South Africa, and what can be done to save the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing has fallen from 19.3% of GDP in 1994 to just 11.8% in 2019, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs. Employment in textiles, leather products, footwear and clothing fell 50% from 2000 to 2019. The remnants of these former mainstays of the Eastern Cape are rustbelts, gutted factories and stranded working-classes. Factories had been built within the framework of import-substitution, but were not globally competitive; the country remained dependent on raw material exports. With the neo-liberal turn in the 1990s, protective tariffs fell from 28% in 1990 to 8.2% in 15 years. Factories and jobs were washed away by cheap imports.

Andrew Murray focuses on the policies that were intended to revive local industry from the 2000s, starting with the National Industrial Policy Framework (NIPF) and the Industrial Policy Action Plans (IPAPs), and moving into the more recent Reimagined Industrial Strategy and sector masterplans. Looking especially at the Eastern Cape, he evaluates these policies and examines the impact of state capacity. The Lecture closes with a consideration of what needs to be done to build a coordinated and technically capable state that can build a future fit economy, and negotiate reciprocal conditionalities and trade-offs with the private sector and other stakeholders.

DETAILS: This is a recording of a live event in the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) Labour Studies Seminar Series, held on Tuesday, 14 November 2023, at Graham Hotel, Makhanda, South Africa.

ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team from disciplines including Sociology and Economics & Economic History, it has active partnerships and relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. It draws strength from its location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and the contradictions of the post-apartheid state, 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.

MORE: https://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Kate Philip, University of the Witwatersrand: "Union-Based Workers' Cooperatives in Southern Africa: Markets on the Margins: Mineworkers, Job Creation and Enterprise Development"



TOPIC: Can we get off southern Africa's historic path of cheap labour, centralised capitalism and endemic rural poverty? And do workers' co-operatives show a viable way out, enabling justice and equality for the workers and poor?

This seminar and book launch examines one of the most ambitious, systematic, and sustained efforts at union-backed worker-run producer co-operatives in southern Africa: the 30 co-operatives established by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini (Swaziland). Written by an insider –- Kate Philip, United Democratic Front (UDF) activist and coordinator of NUM's co-operatives' programme –- it charts the NUM experiment in people-driven development and rural transformation. It examines the successes, but also the failures, drawing the often-difficult lessons learned from grappling with the limits and opportunities that exist to reduce poverty and improve livelihoods. Kate Philip also explores whether and if so how, markets might be made to work better for the poor.

The NUM co-operatives emerged against the backdrop of a massive strike. The mining industry has been core to capitalist South Africa, based on cheap, oppressed labour. The NUM was the first mass black worker-based union on the mines since the 1940s. It faced off against the mighty Chamber of Mines in 1987: employers cracked down; 40,000 mineworkers lost their jobs, and were sent back to their villages. To help these men and build the union, the NUM set up 30 worker co-operatives in three countries. Over time, NUM broadened the scope to include rural development and job creation through its Mineworkers Development Agency. The NUM's programme, evolving against the backdrop of South Africa's transition from apartheid, provided critical support to poor rural communities hard hit by escalating job losses on the mines.

Kate Philip's book, "Markets on the Margins: Mineworkers, Job Creation and Enterprise Development," is published by James Currey Publishers.



DETAILS: This is a recording of a live event in the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) Labour Studies Seminar Series, held on Wednesday, 15 May 2019, at Eden Grove, Seminar Room 2, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa.



DETAILS: This is a recording of a live event in the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) Labour Studies Seminar Series, held on Wednesday, 15 May 2019, at Eden Grove, Seminar Room 2, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa.



ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team from disciplines including Sociology and Economics & Economic History, it has active partnerships and relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. It draws strength from its location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and the contradictions of the post-apartheid state, 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.

MORE: https://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Lucien van der Walt, Rhodes University: Kantine Festival 2023 "The History of Anarchism and Revolutionary Syndicalism in Africa"

PAPER: NALSU's director, Prof Lucien van der Walt, speaking at the 2023 "Kantine" theory festival in Germany, focused on two main phases: the 1860s-1930s, and the 1980s-present. Anarchism appeared in North Africa from the 1870s, and in southern Africa a decade later. By 1920, anarchists and syndicalists were an important presence in workers' movements, strikes, anti-imperialist struggles and the radical press in Algeria, Egypt, Mozambique, Tunisia, and South Africa; they had some presence in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Morocco; they also influenced the Ghadar Party, in East Africa, and the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), in southern Africa. The movement emerged in Nigeria in the 1930s, and was active in the Algerian war of independence. Some figures moved to the communist parties, or to FRELIMO and MPLA. A revival of anarchism and syndicalism began in 1980s, starting in Senegal, and later in Egypt, Eswatini, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tunisia, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

For links to the video, slides, and Kantine: http://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu

DETAILS: Recording of blended event, 2023 "Kantine" festival, Thursday,3 August 2023, Subbotnik eV, Vettersstraße 34a, Chemnitz, Germany.

ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team from disciplines including Sociology and Economics & Economic History, it has active partnerships and relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. It draws strength from its location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and the contradictions of the post-apartheid state, 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.

MORE: https://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Lucien van der Walt, Rhodes University: Greek publication, podcast, "Breaking The Chains: A History of Anarchism"


PAPER: "Breaking the Chains" is the first complete book by Lucien van der Walt to be translated into Greek. Written in a popular style, it presents a global history of the anarchist movement and its offshoot, revolutionary syndicalism. A global perspective shows the profound influence of the libertarian current on labour, left, popular and anti-imperialist struggles since the 1860s to the present. It dispels the myth that the broad anarchist tradition was just a minor footnote in working-class and popular movements. The Greek edition of "Breaking the Chains" includes a new introduction. It was launched by the grassroots syndicalist union, ESE [https://ese.espiv.net/] in Athens, Greece, at Café Locomotiva, on 9 December 2022, with a second launch at the Athens School of Philosophy, on 27 April 2023. Lucien is based at the Neil Aggett Labour studies Unit (NALSU), South Africa



DETAILS: This is a recording of a blended event held on Friday, 9 December 2022, 7 pm, Café Locomotiva, Athens, Greece. The recording is in English, with Greek translation is provided.



From the editor’s introductory note: "His work as an academic combined with organized participation in the libertarian movement has given him a penetrating eye that combines methodical analysis and deep knowledge of history with a genuine interest in the subjects he tackles, that avoids the pitfalls of academicism, and addresses the everyday person as equal to equal. To date, he has contributed to the international literature a series of works that highlight anarchism not as a minority whim of some theoreticians but as the most massive revolutionary current of the labor movement from the First International until today."



HOSTS: The series is run by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) in partnership with the Departments of Sociology & Industrial Sociology, and Economics & Economic History, Rhodes University.



ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team from disciplines including Sociology and Economics & Economic History, it has active partnerships and relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. It draws strength from its location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and the contradictions of the post-apartheid state, 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.



MORE: https://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Bill Freund, University of Kwazulu-Natal: "Twentieth-Century South Africa: A Developmental History"



THE TOPIC: In this seminar and book launch, the late Professor Bill
Freund argued that South Africa in the twentieth century should be understood as a nascent "developmental" state, with economic development acting as a key motivating factor. While issues of race, segregation and apartheid were central, there was another facet: a state-led drive towards modernisation and industrialisation, to move the country away from a dependent position. Freund considered the achievements and failures of that drive, as well as how it
related to the state's ethnic and racial policymaking. The twentieth century has brought considerable political, social, and economic change to South Africa -- and this is part of that story, developing a new interpretation of modern South African economic development, essential for development studies and economic history.



DETAILS: This is a recording of a live event in the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) Labour Studies Seminar Series, held on Wednesday, 6 March 2019, at Eden Grove, Seminar Room 2, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa.

HOSTS: The series is run by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) in partnership with the Departments of Sociology & Industrial Sociology, and Economics & Economic History, Rhodes University.

ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team, including from the disciplines of Sociology and Economics, NALSU 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. NALSU is named in honour of Neil Hudson Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in an apartheid jail in 1982 following brutality and torture.

MORE: www.ru.ac.za/nalsu