A Brief History of South Africa’s Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (1919-1931)
Submitted by red jack on Feb 13 2020 08:01
The Industrial & Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) – a trade union, rural peasant movement, and urban squatters’ movement – formed on the docks in Cape Town in 1919. Within a decade, the ICU had expanded across Southern Africa without regard for national borders and counted people from various African countries and the Caribbean in its leadership, as well as people who were Indian and mixed race. The largely forgotten history of the ICU is well worth recovering in a time of escalating chauvinism and xenophobia. Our Dossier #20 offers an introduction to this extraordinary popular movement.
South Africa: Land Expropriation from Below Faces Brutal Repression
Submitted by red jack on Mar 12 2018 16:42
As the ruling African National Congress promises, with an eye on a coming election and the collapse in its popular support under Jacob Zuma, to expropriate land without compensation urban land occupations continue, and continue to face serious repression from the ruling party and the state.
The First Globalisation and Transnational Labour Activism in Southern Africa: White Labourism, the IWW, and the ICU, 1904–1934
Submitted by red jack on Dec 18 2016 13:31
Lucien van der Walt on transnational labour activism in Southern Africa in the first half of the twentieth century.
Class Contradictions and Class Alliances: The Social Nature of ICU Leadership, 1924-1929
An examination of the class character of the leadership of the ICU by Helen Bradford.
The South African Wobblies: The Origins of Industrial Unions in South Africa - John Philips
Submitted by Ed on Nov 21 2015 22:13
John Philip’s pioneering, hard-to-get study of syndicalism in South Africa, stressing the influence of the IWW.
The Rise and Fall of the ICU: a Case of Self-Destruction? - Phil Bonner
Submitted by Ed on Nov 20 2015 21:59
This essay, which first appeared in the South African Labour Bulletin, sought to draw the lessons of the spectacular rise and fall of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa (ICU) in South Africa, which in the 1920s was the biggest black protest movement in the country.
