Labour Struggles in Southern Africa, 1919–1949: New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) examines a foundational period of social transformations within the colonial system. Published in 2023, the book revisits the history and legacies of the ICU, one of the precursors of South Africa’s “freedom struggle,” incorporating newly qualitative insights into previously unexamined dimensions of the union’s trajectory in documentary sources and historiographical debates. The volume comprises thirteen chapters by different scholars, structured into three sections: (A) “The ICU in Southern Africa,” (B) “Local and Regional Histories of the ICU,” and (C) “Factions and Legacies of the ICU.” The book shows that between 1919 and 1949, intensified processes of expropriation, exploitation, and segregation shaped the resistance to the brutal nature of racial capitalism as a dialectical counterpart to colonialism.
The ICU was a transnational mass movement, articulating a class-based socialist discourse derived from revolutionary syndicalism, pan-African nationalism (Garveyism), and Christian, liberal, and social democratic influences. It sought to organize African workers across gender and economic sectors to resist exploitation and marginalization in the rapidly industrializing Southern African colonial economy. Founded in 1919 in Cape Town, the ICU expanded significantly, establishing branches across South Africa and present-day Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Zambia by the mid-1920s. This expansion followed transnational labour migration flows deeply embedded in an exploitative regional colonial economic system reliant on cheap, mobile African labour (24). The book follows the development of the ICU, initially a trade union advocating for improved wages and working conditions, into a broad-based protest movement addressing diverse grievances affecting African communities. As its influence grew, the ICU faced heightened state surveillance and repression. The economic downturn of 1929 exacerbated anti-immigrant sentiments, triggering mass deportations and ultimately dismantling the ICU’s vision of cross-border black workers’ solidarity. By the early 1930s, the organization had pretty much disintegrated due to a combination of external pressures and internal fragmentation. Yet, as Labour Struggles compellingly argues, the ICU played a crucial role in shaping future labour and political mobilizations in the region, providing a foundation for later struggles against colonial and apartheid oppression.
As a precursor of the anti-apartheid struggle, the ICU has been the subject of extensive scholarly engagement. Aware of the limitations of “methodological nationalism,” the book moves beyond the nation-based traditional rise-and-fall narrative, presenting ICU’s history as shaped by place-based perspectives and global forces. Rather than anchoring the ICU within a singular national trajectory, the authors construct a multi-scalar historical analysis, tracing the movement of people across social and spatial hierarchies and the conflicts embedded within them. These dynamics unfold in the broader context of dispossession initiated by the 1913 Natives Land Act. Adopting a multi-sited and scalar approach, the book offers a nuanced, locally grounded account of the ICU and its legacy. However, this methodological choice may present challenges for readers less familiar with the history of Southern Africa or those accustomed to teleological, nation-state-focused narratives.
Labour Struggles also incorporates an intersectional lens into its historical narrative. It critically examines the contradictions within the ICU’s rhetoric of gender inclusivity, its engagement with black working-class women, and the limitations of labour historiography in fully acknowledging women’s historical experiences. Additionally, the volume interrogates the fluid and often uneasy alliances between moderate, Christian-educated black elites and radicalized, low-skilled workers shaped by episodes of resistance. One of the book’s notable contributions is its engagement with archival sources—particularly state surveillance records, such as police reports. The contributors acknowledge the methodological challenges of relying on sources shaped by the imperatives of colonial repression. ICU leaders strategically engaged with police informants, using their presence to amplify their messages and ensure that their grievances reached state authorities. As a result, these records reflect the dialectics of control and resistance embedded within the historical sources.
Finally, the work of the editors—David Johnson, Noor Nieftagodien, and Lucien van der Walt—skillfully captures the dynamics of structural change in Southern Africa, demonstrating how revisiting the past can illuminate contemporary challenges such as the unfulfilled promises of democracy, deepening political disillusionment, and the enduring legacies of colonial rule. The book provides a vital empirical foundation for rethinking political critique and imagining alternative futures. As historical narratives about the past evolve, Labour Struggles warns against the dangers of "spurious philosophies of history” in contemporary forms of post-colonial nationalism, which tend to subsume the diversity of resistance movements in Southern Africa into a singular anti-colonial nationalist trajectory. According to the World Bank report Inequality in Southern Africa (2022), the region remains one of the most socioeconomically unequal in the world, a legacy of colonial segregationist policies and racial capitalism. The transition to democracy has frequently failed to redress these structural injustices, fuelling social frustration and shaping contemporary political discourse. Postcolonial elites, inheriting the structures of domination once wielded by colonial rulers, have often instrumentalized them for political entrenchment. Labour Struggles challenges readers to critically engage with history not as a static narrative but as a means to understand the dialectic of continuity and rupture shaping our present, underscoring the imperative of harnessing historical knowledge to envision transformative change.
