LABOUR STRUGGLES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA, 1919-1949, new perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union

David Johnson is Professor of Literature in the Department of English and Creative Writing at The Open University. He is the author of Shakespeare and South Africa (1996), Imagining the Cape Colony: History, literature and the South African nation (2012) and Dreaming of Freedom in South Africa: Literature between critique and utopia (2019) and co-editor of The Book in Africa: Critical debates (2015) and ‘I See You!’ The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa, 1919-1930 (2022).

Noor Nieftagodien is NRF Professor in Local Histories, Present Realities at the University of the Witwatersrand, and Chair of the Wits History Workshop. He is co-editor of One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating liberation histories today (2012) and Students Must Rise: Youth struggle in South Africa before and beyond Soweto ’76 (2016), and co-author of Alexandra: A history (2008, with Phil Bonner), Orlando West, Soweto: An illustrated history (2012, with Sally Gaule), The Soweto Uprising (2015), and Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region (2018, with Phil Bonner and Sello Mathabatha).

Lucien van der Walt teaches in the Sociology Department at Rhodes University, is affiliated with the Wits History Workshop and is Director of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit. His books include Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1880-1940 (2010/2014, with Steve Hirsch, Benedict Anderson etc.), and Politics at a Distance from the State (2018, with Kirk Helliker). He was southern African editor for the International Encyclopedia of Protest and Revolution (2009), and winner of the Labor History and CODESRIA PhD prizes.