Labour Studies Podcasts

SPEAKER AND TOPIC : Anele Dloto: Informal Construction Labour and the Meanings of Skill: Roadside Hiring in Buffalo City, South Africa In this talk, Anele Dloto examines how skill becomes meaningful and consequential in Buffalo City's informal construction labour market. Focusing on roadside hiring encounters, his talk analyses these intensified moments of judgement: decisions must be made quickly...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC : Lincoln Addison: Chiefs of the Plantation: Authority and Contestation on the South Africa-Zimbabwe Border Commercial farming has undergone enormous changes in South Africa since the 1990s, including the growing use of contract, immigrant, and off-site labour. In this talk, Lincoln  Addison discusses how labour relations have changed in South African agriculture since the end of...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: 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 Afri...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC : Peter Cole, Dockworker Battles on the Global Waterfront: Unions, Boycotts, and Apartheid. In the early 1960s, dockworkers around the world stood on the frontline of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. This included workers in Australia, Sweden, Trinidad, the United States of America, and in other countries refusing to handle South African cargo or ships. Like other...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC : Dinga Sikwebu, "COSATU@40: Decades of Political Alignment and Entanglement". TOPIC: In this Lecture—on the eve of COSATU’s 40th anniversary—labour stalwart Dinga Sikwebu examines the federation's long history of political alignment. Founded in December 1985, the federation became one of the world’s fastest growing union movements. It demonstrated a remarkable dyna...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Lloyd Sachikonye, Annual Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture, "The Labour Movement and Struggles for Democracy and Livelihoods in Zimbabwe" TOPIC: 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 t...

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)" TOPIC: 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 191...

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 textile...

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, enabli...

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...

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 pe...

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 r...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Frederick Fourie, Free State University: "The South African Informal Sector: Creating Jobs, Reducing Poverty" THE PAPER: The story of the Kowie River in the Eastern Cape opens up the story of South Africa, and raises larger questions about colonialism, capitalism, "development," and ecology. These issues are at the heart of Professor Jacky Cock's book, &q...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Jacklyn Cock, University of the Witwatersrand: “Writing the Ancestral River: A biography of the Kowie” THE PAPER: The story of the Kowie River in the Eastern Cape opens up the story of South Africa, and raises larger questions about colonialism, capitalism, "development," and ecology. These issues are at the heart of Professor Jacky Cock's book, "Writing the A...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC:  Alejandro Nadal, El Colegio de Mexico: "From Micro to Macroeconomics for Sustainability: The Delusion of Micro-foundations" THE PAPER: Macro-economic theory, and policy-making, are dominated by the view that markets are well-behaved and converge to equilibrium. This view rests on assumptions that economic behaviour is based on utility maximisation and rational expecta...

NALSU Labour Studies Podcast | John Reynolds, NALSU: "Development Planning in South Africa: Provincial Policy and State Power in the Eastern Cape" -- book/ seminar TALK: While South Africa has been celebrated as a beacon of democracy and reconciliation, many people continue to live in severe poverty. Backed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the post-apartheid Eastern Ca...

NALSU Labour Studies Podcast | Professor Sonwabile Mnwana: Who Owns the Land, Who Owns the Platinum? Conflict and Contested Meanings of Land and Mineral Wealth in Rural South Africa SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Professor Sonwabile Mnwana: “Who Owns the Land, Who Owns the Platinum? Conflict and Contested Meanings of Land and Mineral Wealth in Rural South Africa.” THE PAPER: The "platinum belt" in S...

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 PAPER: 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 Eswat...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC:  Labour Studies Webinar podcast/video: Mattie Webb, University of California:  "Beyond the Workplace: Black Workers' Internationalism and Union Struggles against Apartheid in American Multi-Nationals" THE PAPER:  Studies of trade unionists in the global anti-apartheid movement centre the role of South Africans in advocating for worker rights. However, workers remai...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC : Michael Rogan, NALSU Rhodes: “Social Security for Africa's Informal Sector? Evidence and Lessons from a High Tax / Low Protection System in Ghana." THE PAPER : 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 eco...

In this Labour Studies Podcast, Robert Ovetz, University of California Berkeley and San José State University discusses: "Using a Workers’ Inquiry to Organise at Critical Choke Points." The podcast is provided by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, South Africa. Please follow the link: ⁠⁠https://anchor.fm/nalsu⁠⁠ (You can also download the Anchor FM app for yo...

SPEAKER AND TOPIC : Professor Emeritus Eddie Webster delivered the 2022 Annual Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture, on "Re-Casting the Power of Labour: Working in the Shadow of the Digital Age." The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) hosts the Annual Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture as part of its labour studies seminars series, and its Vuyisile Mini Workers School. This is done in...

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" The podcast is provided by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, South Africa. Please follow the link: https://anchor.fm/nalsu (You can also download the Anchor F...

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.” The podcast is provided by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies U...

In this Labour Studies Podcast (also available as a YouTube Video), Pat Horn speaks on "Organised Workers in the Informal Economy: COVID-19, Workers in the Informal Economy & New Forms of Work in South Africa."   The podcast is provided by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University, South Africa. Please follow the link: https://anchor.fm/nalsu (You can also downlo...