NALSU NEWS: Labour Studies podcast/video – Book launch: Henry Dee | Militant Migrants: Clements Kadalie, the ICU and the Mass Movement of Black Workers in Southern Africa, 1896-1951
Henry Dee discusses the remarkable life of Clements Kadalie, who exploded on the global stage as head of the Industrial & Commercial Workers' Union of Africa (ICU). A massive popular movement founded in 1919, it exploded across South Africa, also into Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In the 1920s, it completely overshadowed nationalist and communist parties, organising perhaps 250,000 workers and labour tenants.
Kadalie was a famed orator, journalist and organiser, electrifying rallies with calls for economic freedom & all-in mass organisation. Praised as the most important black worker leader in the world, Malawian-born Kadalie was championed by W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Tom Mann, and George Padmore. His story illuminates the period his star rose: the Malawian diaspora and immigrant politics, class struggles and transnational organising, and battles over gender, citizenship, nation and respectability
Dee's deeply researched Militant Migrants is the first full biography of Kadalie. It examines his evolving ideas, African impact, and global importance, & influences, like black nationalism, Christianity and syndicalism; it looks at his unprecedented successes, inescapable failures, and complicated personal life. While the ICU won gains and alarmed colonial governments, it imploded into autocratic leadership, corruption, factionalism and bitterness; the ICU story is a tale of a man's fall from hero into alcoholism, a broken family, and ruined reputation.
YOUTUBE: https://shorturl.at/xYoyZ
PODCAST: https://shorturl.at/gVQgQ
LECTURE SLIDES: Henry Dee Presentation
SPEAKER: Henry Dee is a research fellow at Northumbria University, UK, and historian of empire, labour and migration in the early 20th century. He co-edited (w. David Johnson) I See You: The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union of Africa, 1919-1930, a collection of primary sources (HiPSA: South Africa). His biography of Kadalie, Militant Migrants, was published by Liverpool University Press. Henry's latest research compares unions in southern Africa, Sri Lanka and Myanmare.
DETAILS: Recording of livestreamed event in Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU)'s Labour Studies Seminar Series, 19 February 2026, 4pm, Eden Grove 3, Rhodes University.
HOSTS: Series run by NALSU in partnership with 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, has a democratic, non-sectarian, non-aligned, and pluralist practice, and active relations with other advocacy, labour, and research organisations. We are named in honour of Neil Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail.