NALSU's Labour History Project

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) works in a range of labour studies-related areas.

NALSU's Labour History Project focuses on the preservation and popularisation of the history of the broad working-class. In addition, we take labour history as including the history of pre-industrial as well as pre-modern labouring classes and are interested in long-term continuities in class formations and struggles. We undertake original research, provide some funding to postgraduate students at Rhodes University working in this area, and integrate labour history into NALSU's worker education programme.  

NALSU partnerships in labour history include the following:

• From 2016, NALSU has worked with the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU), assisting in the development of the union's upcoming official history.
• From 2021, NALSU has worked with veterans of the South African Allied Workers Union (SAAWU) to collect primary materials on union’s history, and to develop a SAAWU history project.
• From 2019, NALSU partnered with the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand for the centenary of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa (ICU). We co-organised panels on the ICU at the June 2019 Southern African Historical Society Conference held at Rhodes University, and co-produced David Johnson, Noor Nieftagodien and Lucien van der Walt (eds.), 2023, Labour Struggles in Southern Africa 1919-1949: New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU), Cape Town: HSRC Press.
• NALSU, working with Technical Services at Rhodes University, and the Labour Research Service (LRS) in Cape Town, has digitised a huge collection of primary sources on and by labour movements, based on the LRS archives. The project is ongoing, but thousands of documents can already be accessed here. 
• In 2022, NALSU produced, with AwaaZ Publications in Nairobi, Kenya, the following text: Zarina Patel and Lucien van der Walt (eds), 2022, Building African Working-Class Unity: The Makhan Singh Memorial Lectures, Working-Class Education Series, Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa/ AwaaZ magazine, Nairobi, Kenya (revised edition). This is a mixture of historical materials and contemporary analyses of workers' struggles in Africa, and discussions of the life and legacy of pioneer East African trade unionist, Makhan Singh. It is available for free here. 
• From 2022, NALSU provided support and materials for the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA)'s on Neil Aggett, our namesake, a doctor and trade union organiser killed in detention by the apartheid Security Branch. SAHRC’s 2023 documentary, "Dr Neil Aggett: The Life and Time - Rising Above All Odds," is now available here. 
• In 2024, NALSU helped compile the posthumous bibliography of the writings of the late Ayanda Kota of the Unemployed Peoples' Movement (UPM), as well as digitise several texts. Ayanda Kota, who was doing his Masters degree on the history of the UPM with us, passed away in February 2024.
• NALSU's Professor Nicole Ulrich, based at the History Department at the University of Fort Hare, is driving NALSU's "Labouring Lives Oral History Project." This includes research on Vuyisile Mini, trade unionist and Umkhonto weSizwe commander, led by Ncebakazi Makwetu, also of Fort Hare. Our annual workers' school is named after Mini.

Labour history also features in NALSU seminars, lectures, and presentations:

Lucien van der Walt, 3 August 2023, "Anarchism and Revolutionary Syndicalism in Africa," paper at Kantine Festival 2023: Geschichte und Theorie des Anarchismus Chemnitz, Germany, 3 August. The video is here.

Mattie Webb, 18 October 2022, "Beyond the Workplace: Black Workers' Internationalism and Union Struggles against Apartheid in American Multi-Nationals," Labour Studies Seminar Series: Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa. Video here and podcast here. 

Lucien van der Walt, 25 August 2022, "Radical Encounters: Christianity, Garveyism and Revolutionary Syndicalism in the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa, 1919-1939," Labour Studies Seminar Series: Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa. Video here and podcast here.

Noor Nieftagodien, 11 November 2021, "Worker-Community Unity: Historical Reflections for Future Struggles," Annual Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture, Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Graham Hotel, Makhanda.

Kate Philip, 15 May 2019, "Union-Based Workers' Cooperatives in Southern Africa," Labour Studies Seminar Series: Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa. Video here  and podcast here.

Bridget Kenny, "Women Workers' Politics, Race and Consumption in South Africa: Shelved in the Service Economy," 9 October 2017, Labour Studies Seminar Series: Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa.

Luke Sinwell and Siphiwe Mbatha, 23rd August 2017, "The Spirit of Marikana: The Rise of Insurgent Unionism in South Africa," Labour Studies Seminar Series: Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa. Podcast here. 

Peter Cole, 24 February 2016, "Against Apartheid, For Civil Rights: Dockworkers and Social Justice Movements in Durban & San Francisco," Labour Studies Seminar Series: Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa. Podcast here. 

Allison Drew, 5 August 2015, "Looking Comparatively at Communism in Twentieth-century Algeria and South Africa," Labour Studies Seminar Series: Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa. Podcast here. 

Peter Linebaugh, 29 July 2015, "Magna Carta Anniversary Lecture 'Liberties and Commons for All!' Reclaiming the Magna Carta from Below 800 years Later." Podcast here. 

Recent publications and presentations on labour history by the NALSU team include (selection only):

David Johnson, Noor Nieftagodien and Lucien van der Walt (eds.), 2023, Labour Struggles in Southern Africa 1919-1949: New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU), Cape Town: HSRC Press.

David Johnson, Noor Nieftagodien and Lucien van der Walt, 2023, “Introduction,” in ibid.

Lucien van der Walt, 2023, “The ICU, the Mines and the State in South West Africa, 1920-1926: Garveyism, Revolutionary Syndicalism and Global Labour History,” in ibid.

Nicole Ulrich, 2023, “Trouble Brewing: The ICU, the 1925 Bloemfontein Riots and the Women Question,” in ibid.

Lucien van der Walt, 2023, “Fragmented Labour Movement, Fragmented Labour Studies: Mapping Some New Directions for Research and Theory,” in Malehoko Tshoaedi, Christine Bischoff and Andries Bezuidenhout (eds.), Labour Disrupted: Reflections on the Future of Work in South Africa, Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

Webb, Mattie Christine, 2023 "'An Exercise in the Art of the Possible': Waging a Battle Against Apartheid in the South African Workplace." Enterprise and Society, published online 2023 :1-29 (first view). doi:10.1017/eso.2023.20

Ulrich, Nicole. 2022. A History of FEDUSA. Research report for the Federation of Unions of South Africa.

Lucien van der Walt, 2022, “Anarchism and Syndicalism in Southern Africa,” in Marcel van der Linden (ed.), The Cambridge History of Socialism, volume 1, Cambridge University Press.

Lucien van der Walt, 2022, “Posfácio: (Re)Construindo o Anarquismo Histórico, a História, a Historiografia e a Teoria do Anarquismo,” to Felipe Corrêa, Bandeira Negra: Rediscutindo o Anarquismo, Autonomia Literária, São Paolo, revised edition.

Zarina Patel and Lucien van der Walt (eds.), 2022, Building African Working-Class Unity: The Makhan Singh Memorial Lectures, Working-Class Education Series, Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa/ AwaaZ magazine, Nairobi, Kenya. Revised edition.

Lucien van der Walt, 2022, “The Second Makhan Singh Memorial Lecture: Makhan Singh, the Ghadar Party, IWW and Communism: Legacy and Relevance to African Trade Unions Today,” in ibid.

Zarina Patel and Lucien van der Walt, 2022, “The Beginnings of Left Ideology in Kenya,” AwaaZ magazine, Nairobi, Kenya, volume 19, issue 3, here. 

Nicole Ulrich, 2021, "'The Wheel is Turning': Fighting Apartheid with Workers’ Democracy, 1950–1990," in Dario Azzellini (ed), If Not Us, Who? Global Workers against Authoritarianism, Fascism, and Dictatorships, VSA: Verlag Hamburg.

Webb, Mattie Christine, 2021, "People Before Profit? Ford, General Motors and The Spirit of the Sullivan Principles in Apartheid South Africa (1976-1984), "Ethnic Studies Review, volume 44, number 3, pp. 64-87.

Leroy Maisiri, Phillip Nyalungu and Lucien van der Walt, 2020, “Anarchist/ Syndicalist and Independent Marxist Intersections in Post-Apartheid Struggles, South Africa: The WSF/ ZACF Current in Gauteng, 1990s-2010s,” Globalizations, volume 17, number 5, pp. 797-819, special issue on “Pluriversality, Convergence, and Hybridity in the Global Left,” edited by Alex Prichard and Owen Worth.

Nicole Ulrich, 2019, "'Journeying into Freedom': Traditions of Desertion at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1795," in Marcus Rediker, Titas Chakraborty and Matthias van Rossum (eds.), A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism, 1600–1850, University of California Press.

Lucien van der Walt, 2019, “Aspects de l’Histoire de l’Anarchisme et du Syndicalisme Révolutionnaire en Afrique du Sud, des Années 1880 aux Années 1920,” Actuel Marx, number 66, pp. 44-63.

Lucien van der Walt, 2019, “Syndicalism,” in Carl Levy and Mathew Adams (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism, Palgrave Macmillan, London, New York, pp. 249-263.

Lucien van der Walt, 2017, “‘All Workers Regardless of Craft, Race or Colour’: The First Wave of IWW Activity and Influence in South Africa,” in Peter Cole, David Struthers and Kenyon Zimmer (eds.), Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW, Pluto Press, London/ University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Sian Byrne, Nicole Ulrich and Lucien van der Walt, 2017, “Red, Black and Gold: FOSATU, South African ‘Workerism’, ‘Syndicalism’ and the Nation,” in Eddie Webster and Karin Pampallis (eds.), The Unresolved National Question in South Africa: Left Thought under Apartheid, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, available here. 

Lucien van der Walt, 2017, “Alan Robert Lipman, South Africa (1925-2013),” Southern African Anarchist & Syndicalist History Archive, 27 April, available here.

Nicole Ulrich, 2016, Rethinking Citizenship and Subjecthood in Southern Africa: Khoesan, Labor Relations, and the Colonial State in the Cape of Good Hope (c. 1652–1815)," in Emma Hunter (ed.), Citizenship, Belonging, and Political Community in Africa: Dialogues between Past and Present, Ohio University Press: 

Sian Byrne and Nicole Ulrich, 2016, “Prefiguring Democratic Revolution? ‘Workers’ Control’ and ‘workerist’ traditions of radical South African labour, 1970–1985, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, volume 34, number 3, pp. 368-387.

Lucien van der Walt, 2016, “Fora das Sombras: A Case de Massas, a Composição de Classe e a Influência Popular do Anarquismo e do Sindicalismo,” in Andrey Cordeiro Ferreira (ed.), Pensamento e Práticas Insurgentes: Anarquismo e Autonomias nos Levantes e Resistências do Capitalismo no Século XXI, Alternativa Editora, Niterói.

Lucien van der Walt, 2016, “Global Anarchism and Syndicalism: Theory, History, Resistance,” Anarchist Studies, volume 24, number 1, pp. 85-106.

Philip Bonner, Jonathan Hyslop and Lucien van der Walt, 2016, “Rethinking Worlds of Labour: Southern African Labour History in International Context,” in Andreas Eckert (ed.), Global Histories of Work, De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 90-122.

Nicole Ulrich, 2015, "Cape of Storms: Surveying and rethinking Popular Resistance in the Eighteenth-Century Cape Colony," New Contree: A Journal of Historical and Human Sciences for Southern Africa, number 73, pp. 16-39, available here. 

Nicole Ulrich, 2014, "Popular Community in 18th-Century Southern Africa: Family, Fellowship, Alternative Networks, and Mutual Aid at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1795," Journal of Southern African Studies, volume 40, number 6, pp. 139-1157.

Lucien van der Walt, 2014, “Reclaiming Syndicalism: From Spain to South Africa to Global Labour Today,” Global Labour Journal, volume 5, number 2, pp. 239-252.

Last Modified: Thu, 18 Apr 2024 09:47:46 SAST