The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) congratulates Kanyiso for his successful thesis on "Farmers and Farmworkers in the Global Apple Value Chain: A Study of Selected Commercial Apple Farms in the Langkloof Valley of the Eastern Cape, 2018-2022”. 

He said that unions in South Africa previously swam against the global tide, growing and winning major gains. Today, they’re fragmented, retreating, and members are often demobilised. Vast sectors of the working-class are low-waged, insecure, or unemployed.

WEBINAR: Wednesday 7 May 2025 4pm (SA standard time), online via Zoom (details below)

NALSU congratulates Dr Mattie Webb on being awarded a tenure-track faculty position at the Virginia Military Institute, USA. Mattie will be teaching in United States history, and on "The United States of America in the World".

Despite claims that workers' movements are fading away, they remain among the largest formations in civil society worldwide, including in Africa; they have been central to struggles for dignity, rights, and equality. In this Lecture, Professor Sachikonye shows how Zimbabwe's unions have been at the heart of struggles for democracy and livelihoods over the past 30 years.

NALSU NEWS: Lucien van der Walt | "The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) and the Battle to Organise across Southern Africa" (Workers World News)

Laura joined WIEGO in 2009 to support the Social Protection Programme, becoming its Director in 2017. Laura has worked on bridging the grassroots realities of workers in informal employment with global research, advocacy, and policy narratives and directions. She brought new talent into the Social Protection Programme, carving out WIEGO’s niche in social protection, workers’ health and childcare, and ensuring that the concerns of workers in the informal economy were heard, including in the development community and at policy and representative bodies, nationally, regionally, and internationally.

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 University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) Press, the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, the University of the Free State (UFS), and the University of Basel in Switzerland, recently launched the southern African edition of this important book, which contributes new insights from the Global South to debates on race and class in the neo-liberal era.

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) and the Vuyisile Mini Workers School, in in partnership with HSRC Press, were proud to recently launch "Labour Struggles in Southern Africa 1919-1949: New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU)." This collection provides fresh perspectives on the ICU, which was by far the largest black political organisation in southern Africa before the 1940s, active in six countries and in global trade union networks, and lasted into the 1950s.

Mike was interviewed by ‘Faculti’ which is an international streaming platform which aims to promote access to recent research in an accessible format. The target audience is researchers, students and policymakers and the format is a sort of ‘video podcast’:

How have labour relations changed in South African agriculture since the end of apartheid? Drawing on ethnographic research on a plantation located along the South Africa-Zimbabwe border, I argue that labour control hinges upon a delegation of authority from white land owners to black Zimbabwean managers. These labour relations facilitate intensive fruit production, but also enable lower-ranking migrant workers to access natural resources, steal plantation property and contest piece rates.

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, South Africa, is sorrowed by the passing of Kenya's remarkable champion of human rights, writer, and artist, Zarina Patel at the age of 88. Zarina was managing editor of "AwaaZ" magazine in Nairobi, Kenya, which is online here, and author, including of "Unquiet," the biography of the founder of radical trade unionism in East Africa, Makhan Singh. During her lifetime, she was honoured, but was always a humble and kindly person, believing that "principle, commitment, honesty and sacrifice are not just utopian ideals but are possible, and, in fact, essential."

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

Labour Studies podcast/video: Andrew Murray, "Why has South Africa's Industrial Policy Failed to Halt Deindustrialisation and Transform the Economy?"

The hole in the world that he left is large indeed. He passed away yesterday of a heart attack, at the age of 81.  More than anyone else, Eddie Webster remade the field of industrial sociology in South Africa, but his impact was not just in academia, but in the workers' movement, and not just here in South Africa, but globally. 

Ayanda Kota passed away this morning, Thursday 22 February.

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 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.

The mining industry has been at the core of capitalist South Africa. It has also been a site of cheap, oppressed labour. How do we get off the road of cheap labour, centralised capitalism and endemic rural poverty upon which we have been placed?

UKZN Press, in collaboration with the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, the University of the Free State (UFS), and the University of Basel in Switzerland, invite you to celebrate the publication of the Southern African edition of this important book by the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN). Danelle will be in conversation with Jantjie Xaba (Stellenbosch University), Lucien van der Walt (NALSU) and Lindie Koorts (UFS).

NALSU's director, Prof Lucien van der Walt, recently presented an overview of the history of anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism in Africa, focusing on two main phases: the 1860s-1930s, and the 1980s to the present.

NALSU NEWS: NALSU’s Prof Mike Rogan recently filmed a series of lectures as part of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) exploring a number of key themes related to Sustainable Development Goal #8. The course is hosted by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and aims to shed light on policy interventions that can support sustainable and equitable economic development while creating opportunities for decent work.

The twentieth century has brought considerable political, social, and economic change for South Africa. While many would choose to focus only on the issues of race, segregation and apartheid, this book tries to capture another facet: its drive towards modernisation and industrialisation.

In this article, Zarina Patel, managing editor of "AwaaZ" magazine in Kenya, and Lucien van der Walt of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, South Africa, explore the history of anti-capitalist left in East Africa. It traces the story to the 1910s, with the impact of the Ghadar Party, the influences upon which included anarchism/ syndicalism; the rise of the unions from the 1910s; and the impact of Marxism and the USSR. Most accounts of Kenyan resistance focus on the nationalists who took office at independence: this piece sheds light on another side of the story.

While the informal sector is the "forgotten" sector in many ways, it provides livelihoods, employment and income for about 2.5 million workers and business owners. One in every six South Africans who work, work in the informal sector. Almost half of these work in firms with employees; these firms provide about 8500 000 paid jobs - almost twice direct employment in the mining sector.

"Writing the Ancestral River" is an illuminating biography of the Kowie River in the Eastern Cape. This tidal river runs through a formative meeting ground of peoples who have shaped South Africa’s history: Khoikhoi herders, Xhosa pastoralists, Dutch trekboers and British settlers.

The premise that markets are well behaved and coverage equilibrium continues to dominate macroeconomic theory and policy-making. Macroeconomic models not derived from explicit utility or wealth-maximising assumptions and rational expectations are considered inadmissible. this approach not only limits the possibility of deriving results with involuntary unemployment.

The Labour Studies Seminar Series, in partnership with Zedd Books, will launch "Development planning in South Africa: Provincial policy and state power in the Eastern Cape," by Dr John Reynolds.

Against the backdrop of mass unemployment, Siviwe uses her recent publication, "Precarious Work and the Gendered Individualisation of Risk in the South African Manufacturing Sector, 2002–2017", to examine changes in labour-intensive production and the gendered individualisation of risk associated with informal / precarious employment under neo-liberalism.

Mike Rogan (Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit/ NALSU) was an invited delegate and subject expert at the 2023 Patna Summit of the "Labour 20"/ L20, held on the 22-23 June in Patna, India.

"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

NALSU NEWS: Congratulations to Mattie Webb from the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) team!

The 'platinum belt' - a vast stretch of platinum-rich land in South Africa's North West and Limpopo provinces - has been marked by a rapid expansion of mining over the last two decades. Platinum has increasingly displaced gold as an employer and as a part of crucial mining sector. But the platinum belt is largely located in the old 'homelands, ' on 'communal' land controlled by 'traditional' authorities (chiefs). These 'tribal' authorities lease mining rights and land to large private corporations in return for payments. Large mines operate amidst impoverished villages in overcrowded areas, where generations of dispossessed and impoverished African families have eked out a precarious existence through farming and other strategies.

In this short blog post, Laura Alfers (NALSU and WIEGO) and Florian Juergens (WIEGO) explore a fairer and more inclusive social protection paradigm for the world's informal workers. This blog was published on an online member-based knowledge sharing and capacity building platform, socialpotection.org. To read the full article online, visit https://tinyurl.com/4aver77j

Founded 1919 in Cape Town, the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) exploded across southern Africa. The first mass black/ Coloured movement -- with 200,000 members across Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe -- it overshadowed bodies like the African National Congress (ANC), Communist Party of SA and the Southern Rhodesia Bantu Voters’ Association. The ICU dominated African politics for years, drew tens of thousands including women into politics, helped forge a popular counter-public, mobilised in communities and rural areas, and promised land and freedom through a general strike. This paper focuses on the ICU's complex, syncretic politics, especially Christian, Garveyite and revolutionary syndicalist influences.

ESKOM’s ongoing crisis is a huge strain on working and poor people in South Africa. It affects everything from child-care to access to education and jobs, to safety. How we understand the crisis has deep implications for the solutions – and where the working-class movement should position itself. The blame lies in a toxic mixture of state failure, and neo-liberal measures. The solution does not lie in more state interventions, but in working-class struggles to expand popular and community control over the power sector, and to decentralise it where possible. ESKOM is now literally a national disaster. It is important to think of concrete actions that can defend the class, but also build an independent popular movement for jobs, dignity and self-management.

In the wake of COVID-19, low- and middle-income countries face the challenge of increasing domestic resources while improving social protection. These are especially acute where countries have large informal economies, and in which many workers are employed. There are widespread debates on taxation and social protection, including grants, and the informal sector, but little empirical work. Using new, representative data on informal sector operators in Accra, Ghana, this paper contributes novel evidence on the extent to which informal sector workers in Accra have access to social protection, and to COVID-19 relief programmes. It also explores the tax burdens of informal workers. Most, it turns out, are not covered by social protection beyond national health insurance, yet all pay a wide range of taxes and fees to government, in a regressive system that falls hardest on the poorest.

Engaging in what Karl Marx called a workers' inquiry, workers and militant co-researchers are studying how workers are organised (the working class composition), how capital is organized (the technical composition of capital), and how workers can recompose their own power by devising new tactics, strategies, organisational forms, and objectives. A workers’ inquiry can help workers identify and organise at vulnerable choke points in the local, national and global supply chain.

In the wake of COVID-19, low- and middle-income countries face the challenge of increasing domestic resources while improving social protection. These are especially acute where countries have large informal economies, and in which many workers are employed. There are widespread debates on taxation and social protection, including grants, and the informal sector, but little empirical work. Using new, representative data on informal sector operators in Accra, Ghana, this paper contributes novel evidence on the extent to which informal sector workers in Accra have access to social protection, and to COVID-19 relief programmes.

Engaging in what Karl Marx called a workers' inquiry, workers and militant co-researchers are studying how workers are organised (the working class composition), how capital is organized (the technical composition of capital), and how workers can recompose their own power by devising new tactics, strategies, organisational forms, and objectives. A workers’ inquiry can help workers identify and organise at vulnerable choke points in the local, national and global supply chain. Drawing on case studies in his book "Workers' Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives" (Pluto Press, 2020), Robert Ovetz will discuss how workers' inquiries can be an invaluable tool organise, take on the boss, re-energise unions, bypass unions altogether and innovate new forms of workers' organisations that can further the class struggle.

There is a widespread view that labour, as a counter-hegemonic force, has come to an end. There is a lot going for these arguments; there is no question that there has been a decline of union membership and density in the Global North.

NEIL AGGETT LABOUR STUDIES UNIT (NALSU): Annual Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture, Rhodes University, South Africa

Siviwe Mhlana spoke as an invited panelist at the annual Rethinking Economics for Africa (REFA) Festival

If you missed Dr Laura Alfers seminar webinar for the launch of the (freely downloadable) edited book collection Social Contracts and Informal Workers in the Global South, you can catch the recorded version of it on the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit YouTube channel.

The NALSU team would like to congratulate Mr David Fryer, a NALSU stalwart, on giving the recent Vice-Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award Lecture at Rhodes university, Makahnda, South Africa. David's lecture on the 20th September addressed "Teaching, Learning and Contextualising Economics in a Transforming Society: Unlocking Potential at the Undergraduate Level."

THE BOOK: In a context where calls for a new social contract abound, “Social Contracts and Informal Workers in the Global South” focuses on workers in the informal economy, who represent over 60 per cent of the global workforce, to advocate for radically new conceptualisations of state-society, capital-labour and state-capital-labour relations. Bridging social contract theories, both mainstream and critical, with cross-national evidence and case studies, this book sheds light on how many existing social contract models stigmatize informal workers and are irrelevant, inadequate and unjust. Instead of ideologically driven top-down calls to revitalise social contracts, it advocates for bottom-up initiatives focused on the demands of the working poor in the informal economy.

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Speaking in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), Dr Lali Naidoo reported that workers in the commercial farming sector in the Eastern Cape remain largely unorganised, low-wage and unprotected. The same pattern is true, more generally, across South Africa. Workers were employed in a secondary, and highly segmented, labour market, with weak labour market policies and social protections. Dr Naidoo, a member of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), was addressing the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on the living and working conditions of farm workers and -dwellers.

Over Women's Month in August, the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, worked with partners to run two key workshops as part of its workers' education project for improving access to social protection. The first workshop, held in Johannesburg, was run in collaboration with WIEGO's Basadi Buwang ("Women Speak Out") programme. It aimed at working with participants to understand the root causes of women's exploitation, to identify the challenges that women face when raising their voices within their own worker organisations, and to reflect on the future work of the programme. Attendees included the Tshwane Barekisi Forum, the Johannesburg Informal Traders Platform, and the African Reclaimers Organisation. "WIEGO" is the Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO) project, with which NALSU has close ties.

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Lucien van der Walt, NALSU, Rhodes: “Radical Encounters: Christianity, Garveyism and Revolutionary Syndicalism in the Industrial & Commercial Workers Union of Africa, 1919-1939”

The NALSU team would like to congratulate Ms. Siviwe Mhlana, who has been awarded a full scholarship to pursue her PhD in Economics at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Professor Lucien van der Walt, director of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, was an invited speaker at the recent strategy workshop of the Makukhanye Rural Movement. Lucien spoke on "The Current Conjuncture and the Broad Working-Class." The event was held with the Khanyisa Educational and Development Trust, and took place in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) on Saturday 23 July 2022. It was attended by Makukhanye members - farm-workers, farm-dwellers and peasant farmers - and Khanyisa staff.

Professor Mike Rogan, member of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, explores how the fallout of the pandemic including lockdowns affected informal workers’ income, working hours, and access to healthcare -- as well as their coping strategies, demands and the government responses.

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), at Rhodes University, South Africa, is partnered with UN Women and Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising WIEGO in a project to support organisations of workers in the informal economy to advocate for better access to social protection. The project, headed at Rhodes by NALSU's Dr Laura Alfers, builds on research on the impact of the COVID-19 crises on women working in the informal economy, which led to the WIEGO series of publications entitled Coping in Crisis: South African Workers Lives during COVID-19, which can be read here.

SEMINAR & WEBINAR: Wednesday, 20th July 2022 4pm, online via Zoom (details below) and Screening in Eden Grove Seminar Room 2

Professor Lucien van der Walt, director of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, and Dr Alex Mashilo, national spokesperson of the South African Communist Party (SACP), addressed the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) Young Workers on 28 June 2022. The topic: “Positioning Young Workers for their Rightful Place in the Economy, Politics and Labour Issues.” The full event can be watched here . Lucien’s slides can be downloaded here.

NALSU's Siviwe Mhlana, and co-author David Francis, both at Wits University’s SCIS, unpack ,"a tragedy of vast proportions" . As jobs decline, precarity soars and manufacturing stutters.

Informal workers have long lacked legal recognition: stigmatised and penalised, they are also excluded from collective bargaining and social contracts. Is something better possible ? NALSU's Dr Laura Alfers is co-author of a new UNU-WIDER working Paper entitled, "A New Social Contract Inclusive of Informal Workers, " which is available here .

Are unions still relevant in 2022?

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) is proud to announce the NALSU YouTube channel.

The official launch of the Oxford Handbook of the South African Economy was held online on the 6th of April 2022.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant implications on the global economy and on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people around the world

South Africa is a middle-income, semi-industrialised country, but its unemployment rate far exceeds comparable economies. Unemployment breached eight million in 2019, rose another million during the pandemic; 35 percent of the workforce was jobless in 2022. Mass unemployment dates from the 1970s, and is a major driver of poverty, erosion of the social fabric, and crime.

Mass unemployment and low-quality government services including schooling reflect, and reinforce, high levels of inequality and black working-class poverty in South Africa.

From the 19 – 21 February 2022, the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit together with Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organizing (WIEGO), the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union (SADSAWU), the Union of Domestic Workers of South Africa (UDWOSA) and Izwi Domestic Workers Alliance hosted the Domestic Workers UIF/COIDA Advocacy Workshop

Worldwide, COVID-19 lockdowns have hit the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) especially hard. Workers in the sector are especially vulnerable to lockdowns, as much of the work is face-to-face, many jobs are freelance and short-term, and in South Africa and elsewhere, there are high levels of informality.

South Africa's labour movement has experienced a number of crises for several years, reflected in the fracturing and weakening of trade unions

Kanyiso Ntikinca Rhodes University, “Labour in Global Value Chains: Apples in South African agriculture"

Labour is on the march with mass strikes in South Africa this week. eNCA South Africa's "News Night" with Shahan Ramkissoon interviewed the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) director Prof van der Walt, Rhodes University, on these developments.

Since the outset of the global pandemic, the ILO has warned of the disastrous impact of the crisis on informal workers (who make up roughly 60% of total employment globally). Unfortunately, these predictions have, to a large extent, been accurate. However, the impact of the crisis on different groups of informal workers has been uneven.

The establishment of the Saltuba Energy Cooperative in Kwazakhele township will be discussed as an example of both emancipatory scholarship and prefigurative praxis. The Saltuba Cooperative was formed as part of a participatory action research project under the banner of the Transition Township project.

Research on South Africa’s obesity epidemic published by Prof Mike Rogan and ISER Research Associate Steffen Otterbach was reported in the Daily Maverick this week.

Laura Alfers, has been invited to become a member of the Advisory Board of the International Social Security Review, for the period 2021-2022.

In this Labour Studies Podcast, David Fryer, Rhodes University, discusses "Can We Ever Stop Talking Left and Walking Right? Diagnosing the economic debate in the age of Radical Economic Transformation"

In this Labour Studies Podcast, Luke Sinwell, University of Johannesburg & Siphiwe Mbatha, Thembilihle Crisis Committee, discuss the working-class rebellion and power that shook the mines and withstood the Marikana massacre, with reference to their classic book, “The Spirit of Marikana: The Rise of Insurgent Unionism in South Africa.”

In this Labour Studies Podcast & YouTube Video, Pat Horn speaks on "Organised Workers in the Informal Economy"

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) team congratulates Ms. Siviwe Mhlana on the award of her MA with distinction (cum laude) in Social Policy and Labour Studies.

In this Labour Studies Podcast, Leroy Maisiri discusses "After Zuma: A Workers' Party for South Africa?"

Toward a Better Deal for Informal Workers: A Paradigm Shift Post-COVID

NALSU Labour Studies Podcast and YouTube video: Mametlwe Sebei: "Losing or Using the Crisis? Critical Reflections on South African Labour in the Great Lockdown”

Link workers and residents: Prof Lucien van der Walt, NALSU director, addresses SAMWU conference

NALSU associates Dr. Laura Alfers and Professor Michael Rogan recently published a policy brief through their affiliation with WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing) and in collaboration with UNWomen’s South African country office.

Dockworkers have enormous structural power, as they can disrupt the ports so vital to capitalist economies in their respective cities and countries -- and militant dockworkers have often exerted this power for overtly political ends.

In this Labour Studies Podcast, Andrew Lawrence discusses "Found in Translation: Understanding South Africa's Union Power."

Webinar: “Public Childcare: Essential for Gender Equality” (Josie Mpama Gender Equality Series)

In this Labour Studies Podcast, Mzwanele Mayekiso launches his journal "Ndivhuwo: Journal for Intellectual Engagement".

You are invited to a webinar hosted by the EU-funded Capacity Building Programme for Employment Promotion (CBPEP) taking place on Tuesday 10th November, 10:00 – 12:00.

Veteran labour activist and feminist Pat Horn will speak about how organised workers in the informal economy fought for the ILO's 2014 rights-based Recommendation 204: the need for transitions from the informal to the formal economy.

The current crisis has dealt the South African workforce more job losses and greater economic hardship.

NALSU Labour Studies Podcast, Sian Byrne discusses "Red, Black and Gold: FOSATU, South African 'Workerism,' 'Syndicalism' and the Nation."

Prof Lucien van der Walt spoke on "Working Class Heritage: The Creation of the Working Class and its Struggles in South Africa"

This webinar is part of a monthly series hosting labour activists on the theme of "COVID-19 and the Working Class Movement in South Africa."

In this Labour Studies Podcast, Prof Allison Drew discusses "Looking Comparatively at Communism in Twentieth-century Algeria and South Africa."

NALSU director Prof Lucien van der Walt writes in the recent issue of Amandla magazine that discussions of workers’ education and union revitalisation are often framed in ways that pose the issues as simple organisational “fixes.” But the issue of workers’ education in union revitalisation poses the primary question: what is the aim

NALSU's Mike Rogan gives ISER webinar on the "The COVID-19 Crisis and the South African Informal Economy"

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Labour Organisation predicted that measures to curb the spread of the disease would disproportionately affect women workers.

In this Labour Studies Podcast, Prof Peter Linebaugh discusses "Magna Carta Anniversary Lecture 'Liberties and Commons for All!' Reclaiming the Magna Carta from below 800 years later."

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, is pleased to announce the launch of our Labour Studies Podcasts series.

Prof Michael Rogan and Dr Laura Alfers both contributed to the edited volume (Routledge), The Informal Economy Revisited: Examining the Past, Envisioning the Future

M. Rogan, working with an international research network, was the successful co-author of a large research grant awarded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

NALSU has donated R25,000 to the RU Covid-19 Relief Fund.

M. Rogan has been invited to consult with Minister Nzimande’s panel to review the higher education, science, technology and innovation institutional landscape (HESTIIL) on 25 June 2020.

On June 15th, M. Rogan spoke as an invited panellist at an event that formed part of the ODI at 60 Global Reset Dialogue Series

Mr Shaka Bob, a NALSU masters bursary student and Ms Reesha Kara, who is the first NALSU PhD student, both who have done very well.

The ILO World Social Protection Report 2017–19: An Assessment: Laura Alfers & Rachel Moussié

This article, published in the international journal- Higher Education- is based on research commissioned by NSFAS in 2018.

On 26 May 2020, NALSU director Professor Lucien van der Walt presented live in the South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU)'s online #SAFTUWorkersConversations series, "Coronavirus and the Working Class."

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) and Zwelinzima Vavi will be in discussion with Professor Lucien van der Walt of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, Makhanda

The VC of Rhodes University, Makhanda, Dr Sizwe Mabizela today thanked the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit's (NALSU's) Professor Mike Rogan for developing social welfare measures to cushion informal workers in the COVID-19 crisis.

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, Makhanda, welcomes the measures being put in place by civil society and the state to contain the spread of COVID-19....

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa wishes all people safety and health in this difficult period.

The Labour Studies Seminar Series is a vibrant example of collegiality in action.

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), in partnership with the International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG), is proud to present a one-day workshop in Makhanda: "An Alternative for a World in Crisis: The Rojava Revolution, Kurdish Freedom Movement and Prospects for South Africa’s Incomplete Liberation."

What are the routes for societal transformation? What are the possibilities for the exercise of working class political agency? Should we organise through or in partnership with the state, including through parties? Or should we build working class counter-power outside and against the state?

Professor Lucien van der Walt, Director of the Neil Aggett Labour studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, Makhanda, spoke to Phemelo Motene of SAFM on the life and legacy of Dr Neil Aggett.

In Beyond Decent Work: Fighting for Unions and Equality in Africa, NALSU Director Professor Lucien van der Walt examines the history and future of union movements in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, Makhanda welcomes the re-investigation of death of Neil Aggett, who died in an apartheid jail.

Studies of trade unions in South Africa have focused on the socialist and Marxist union tradition represented by the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (COSATU).

2019 is the bicentenary of the attack by Makhanda, Xhosa prophet and resistance leader, on the British imperial garrison at Egazini, at the city’s edge......

The Launch of the 4th edition of Ndivhuwo: Journal for Intellectual Engagement was held on Wednesday, 21st August 2019.

Why are so many young people NEETs?

On Wednesday 23 July, Finance Minister Mboweni tabled a Special Appropriation Bill adding R26bn this year and R33bn next year to the R23bn per year that was already allocated in the 2019/20 national budget to save Eskom....

The Vuyisile Mini Winter School is an annual initiative of the Rhodes University Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), in partnership with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) foundation – a German funding body. This year, it runs from from 9-12 July.

A seminar in the Labour Studies Seminar Series was presented by Ben Scully, entitled "The Councillor and the Commissioner: Job creation policy and citizenship rights in urban South Africa”

Can you design a bold t-shirt? Give themes a graphic form? And use some prize money?

The Labour Studies Seminar Series, in partnership with James Currey Publishers will launch Markets on the Margins: Mineworkers, job creation & enterprise development by Kate Philip.

A seminar entitled " Revisiting Harold Wolpe in Post-Apartheid South Africa" was presented by Dr John Reynolds as part of the Labour Studies Seminar Series.

The Handbook of Social Policy and Development makes a groundbreaking, coherent case for enhancing collaboration between social policy and development.

This book provides an overdue critical re-engagement with the analytical approach exemplified by the work of Harold Wolpe, who was a key theorist within the liberation movement.

The Labour Studies Seminar Series, in partnership with Routledge, will launch " The Political Economy of Livelihoods in Contemporary Zimbabwe" edited by Kirk Helliker, Manase Kudzai Chiweshe and Sandra Bhatasara

A panel discussion on the right to vote in South Africa was held on 26 March 2019 in the Eden Grove Blue Lecture Theatre. This discussion focused on the right to free, fair and regular elections and the upcoming South African general elections taking place on 8 May 2019.

The Labour Studies Seminar Series hosted a presentation by Lucien van der Walt, entitled "What Are We Fighting For? Possibilities for Decent Work, Unions and Rights in Africa"

The Labour Studies Seminar Series, in partnership with HSRC Press, launched “Post-School Education and the Labour Market in South Africa” edited by Michael Rogan.

The Labour Studies Seminar Series, in partnership with Cambridge University Press, launched “Twentieth-Century South Africa: A Developmental History” by Prof Bill Freund.

The last Labour Studies Seminar for 2018, entitled Informal workers growing older in the changing world of work: Implications for economic and social policies" was presented by Prof Francie Lund.

DataFirst, of the University of Cape Town, and the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), of Rhodes University launched two historical datasets on 22 November 2018.

DataFirst, located at the University of Cape Town, recently launched the Keiskammahoek Rural Survey (KRS) and Surplus People Project Survey Datasets (SPP) in partnership with the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) of Rhodes University. The rescuing of these datasets formed part of a national Data Rescue Project that had been initiated by DataFirst.

The Labour Studies Seminar Series, in partnership with Routledge, launched "Politics at a Distance from the State: Radical and African Perspectives" edited by Professor Kirk Helliker and Professor Lucien van der Walt.

The Labour Studies Seminar Series, in partnership with Workers’ World Media Productions, will be hosting a screening of the film “Freedom isn’t Free: The Freedom Charter Today”, written and directed by Martin Jansen.

The Labour Studies Seminar Series hosted a presentation by Prof Alejandro Nadal, El Colegio de México, entitled “From micro- to macroeconomics for sustainability: the delusion of micro-foundations".

The Labour Studies Seminar Series, in partnership with HSRC Press launched The South African Informal Sector: Creating Jobs, Reducing Poverty edited by Prof Frederick Fourie.

The Labour Studies Seminar Series, in partnership with Wits University Press, launched "Writing the Ancestral River: A biography of the Kowie," by Prof Jacklyn Cock.

Wits University Professor of Politics Shireen Hassim, based in WiSER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research), presented the Fourth Annual Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture on the 14th of August at the Eden Grove Blue lecture theatre.

The Labour Studies Seminar Series, in partnership with Elafos Productions hosted a screening of the film Out of Dust and Iron, The Women of Marikana Rise: Strike a Rock

The Labour Studies Seminar Series – hosted by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), the Department of Sociology, the Department of History, and the Department of Economics and Economic History – kicked off Part Two of its 2018 programme with the launch of a new book by Dr John Reynolds.

A book launch was held in partnership with ZED Books entitled, Development planning in South Africa: Provincial policy and state power in the Eastern Cape , by John Reynolds

A book launch was held entitled, Urban Revolt: State Power and the Rise of People's Movements in the Global South, edited by Immanuel Ness, Trevor Ngwane, and Luke Sinwell.

A book launch was held in partnership with UKZN Press entitled, Crossing the Divide: Precarious Work and the Future of Labour, edited by Edward Webster, Akua Opokua Britwum and Sharit Bhowmik.

Michael Joseph and David Fryer delivered a seminar commemorating Marx's birthday and held a discussion on Marx's legacy.

A book launch was held in partnership with Wits University Press, entitled "Labour Beyond COSATU: Mapping the rupture in South Africa's Labour Landscape" edited by Malehoko Tshoaedi and Andries Bezuidenhout.

David Fryer delivered a seminar entitled, entitled "Can we ever stop talking Left and walking Right? Diagnosing the economic debate in the age of Radical Economic Transformation” on the 17th April 2018 as part of the Labour Studies Seminar Series.

Sonwabile Mnwana delivered a seminar entitled, Who owns the Land, Who owns the Platinum? Conflict and Contested meanings of Land and Mineral Wealth in Rural South Africa......

Nimi Hoffmann delivered a seminar entitled, The unfolding of African feminism in CODESRIA.....

On international women's day, 8th March 2018, NALSU's Dr Laura Alfers with her colleague Rachel Moussie contributes article on the conversation highlighting the connections between child care and women's economic empowerment.

The Head of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit at Rhodes University, Dr John Reynolds, has published a book with ZED Books based on his first-hand experiences with development policy processes in the Eastern Cape. The book is titled "Development Planning in South Africa: Provincial Policy and State Power in the Eastern Cape" and will be available in print in June 2018.

RHODES University’s post-doctoral fellow Dr Laura Alfers (NALSU/ISER) and Dr Francie Lund (RU Honorary doctorate holder), along with their colleague Rachel Moussié, contributed a critically acclaimed research-based article on ‘The human right to social security’.

Oupa Lehulere and Lucien van der Walt delivered the last Labour Studies seminar for 2017 entitled 1917-2017: The Russian Revolution and its Relevance Today on the 17th October 2017

Percy Ngoyama delivered a seminar entitled Baphi oMzala? — An African Marxist Perspective on the 'National Question' in South Africa on the 27th September 2017 ...

Bridget Kenny delivered a seminar entitled Women Workers' Politics, Race and Consumption in South Africa: Shelved in the Service Economy on the 9th October 2017

Dr Michael Rogan delivered a seminar entitled “Starving amidst Plenty: Survey Evidence on Child Stunting in South Africa” on the 13th September 2017

A book launch was held for Luke Sinwell and Siphiwe Mbatha’s "The Spirit of Marikana: The Rise of Insurgent Unionism in South Africa"

A book launch was held for Eddie Webster and Karin Pampallis’s "The Unresolved National Question in South Africa: Left Thought under Apartheid" on 3rd May 2017

Oupa Lehulere delivered a seminar entitled “The Crisis in the ANC and the Struggle against Corruption” on the 17th May 2017

Eddie Cottle delivered a seminar entitled “Is South Africa at a turning point” as part of the Labour Studies Seminar Series.

Henry Mitchell delivered a seminar entitled Contesting the Racist Public Sphere: “New Africa” and the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union versus the State in South Africa, 1918-1938

A book launch was held for Jan Theron’s "Solidarity Road: The story of a trade union in the ending of apartheid" on 8th March 2017

Gilad Isaacs delivered a seminar entitled Findings from the National Minimum Wage Research Initiative on 22 February 2017

Mzwanele Mayekiso launched his journal, Ndivhuwo: Journal for Intellectual Engagement, on 17 February 2016

Prof Peter Cole presented his paper entitled Against Apartheid, For Civil Rights: Dockworkers and Social Justice Movements in Durban & San Francisco on 24 February 2016

Prof Ran Greenstein presented his paper entitled How Useful is “Settler-Colonialism” as Concept and Guide to Liberation Struggles? on 25 May 2016

Dr Nicolas Pons-Vignon presented his paper titled Caught in the grip of the market: past and present of rural wage workers in South Africa on 24 August 2016

Prof Andrew Lawrence presented his paper entitled Found in Translation: Understanding South Africa's Union Power on 2 March 2016

The Labour Studies Seminar Series partners, together the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, launched The New Black Middle Class in South Africa by Roger Southall the 16 March 2016

Prof Fred Hendricks presented his paper entitled What Would You Do with R1.8 trillion? The Private Affairs of the Public Investment Corporation on 6 April 2016

A double book launch was held for Vishwas Satgar's

Dr Michael Rogan and Mr Kanyiso Ntikinca presented on “Graduates and the Labour Market: the case of two Eastern Cape universities”

Professors Nicoli Nattrass and Jeremy Seekings presented their paper entitled Wage determination and employment in South Africa: the case of the clothing industry on 20 September 2016

The Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Rhodes University, which includes the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), hosted a Harold Wolpe Colloquium in Grahamstown on 22-24 September 2015

Drs Michael Rogan and John Reynolds of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) have undertaken ground-breaking work on the plight of South Africa’s working poor

The Second Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture was delivered by Prof Edward Webster on 21 September 2015 at Rhodes University

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), which is located in the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Rhodes University, brought Prof Eddie Webster to the Eastern Cape in October 2014

March 2015 saw the launch of a new inter-departmental Labour Studies Seminar Series at Rhodes University.

The Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Rhodes University, which includes the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), hosted its Vuyisile Mini Winter School 2015 in Grahamstown on 15-18 July 2015

On 31 March 2015, Dr Michael Rogan of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) participated in a high-level briefing workshop with the Minister of Higher Education and Training (DHET), Dr Blade Nzimande

No matter the circumstances and challenges, informal traders were able to parlay the Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant into supporting and even in some cases, growing their businesses, write Senzelwe Mthembu, Sophie Plagerson, Laura Alfers, Mike Rogan and Lauren Graham.

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University welcomes the re-investigation of death of union leader Neil Aggett, who died in an apartheid jail.