Professor Lucien van der Walt

BA, BA Hons(Wits), PhD (Wits)

e-mail: l.vanderwalt@ru.ac.za

Teaching areas include:

• Labour and left history, movements, politics and theory;
• Political economy and economic sociology, with a focus on neo-liberal restructuring and development policy;
• The sociology of work and industry.

Supervision areas (postgraduate) include:

(Examples of supervised projects can be found at the bottom of this page)

• Neo-liberal restructuring, including state-owned corporations and economic & social policy;
• Trade unions and working class movements: history, politics, struggles, strategies;
• Development and livelihood strategies;
• Anarchist & syndicalist history and theory, including race and the national question.

Research interests include:

• Labour history, with particular reference to anarchism and syndicalism in the colonial and post-colonial world, and questions of transnationality;
• The sociology of contemporary labour movements, with particular reference to trade unionism and labour struggles in southern Africa;
• Political economy, with particular reference to the neo-liberal restructuring of the state sector.

General profile:

Lucien van der Walt is a prize-winning scholar, who has published in a wide range of local and international journals, newspapers and bulletins, as well as in reference works. Besides his chapters in peer-reviewed books, he has published in African Studies, Anarchist Studies, Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, Archiv fur die Geschichte des Widerstandes und der Arbeit, Capital and Class, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Labor History, Mundos del Trabalho, Politikon, Refractions, Safundi: the Journal of South African and American Studies, and Society in Transition, presented papers at more than 85 events, and serves on four editorial boards. Lucien also served as southern African editor for Blackwell’s International Encyclopedia of Protest and Revolution: 1500 to the present (2009).

Lucien has also published over 90 popular articles, in papers such as the South African Labour Bulletin, and the Sowetan, and also produced several books and special journal issues.

He published the acclaimed Black Flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism (with Michael Schmidt 2009, nominated for the CLR James Prize) and (with Steve Hirsch) edited Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1880-1940: the praxis of class struggle, national liberation and social revolution (2010, Brill). This volume includes a preface by Benedict Anderson.

Lucien also won the international prize for the best Ph.D. dissertation from Labor History, the pre-eminent journal for historical scholarship in its field in the world, as well as the CODESRIA prize for best African PhD thesis.

In between this work, he has been involved in the working class movements, including serving on the executive of the Workers Library and Museum, serving as a media officer for the early Anti-Privatisation Forum, and serving as a union educator through the Global Labour University at both Wits and at Kassel , DITSELA, and the Wits/ NUMSA programme.

Nominated for the University of the Witwatersrand (“Wits”) Vice Chancellor Award, Lucien’s supervision and teaching has consistently been ranked in the top 10% at Wits.

Since Lucien relocated to Rhodes University in 2013, his teaching evaluations have, so far, hit the same levels.

More information:

Lucien’s blog, which includes PDFs and mark-ups of many of his papers and talks, is here.

A blog on Lucien’s book, with Michael Schmidt, the much-discussed and popular Black Flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism, is here.

More on Lucien’s book, with Steve Hirsch, Benedict Anderson and others, Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870-1940, is to be found here.

And last but not least, some examples of theses and research reports supervised to completion:

• Gbahabo, Terfa Percy, 2012, “Desertification and Rural Livelihood : the case of Gursulu Village, Yobe State, Nigeria” (MA in Development Studies, co-supervised with P. Germond)
• Kautzky, Keegan, 2008, “An Examination of the Resources and Relationships Available to Impoverished Rural Households to Adapt and Cope in Response to HIV/Aids: a survey of villages in the Sekhukhuneland Region of South Africa’s Limpopo Province” (MA in Development Studies, co-supervised with L. Gilbert)
• Mulondo, Matodzi Michelle, 2010, “Understanding the Use of Fully Subsidised Houses as a Place of Business by the Urban Poor : poverty repackaged or avenue to escape poverty? the case of Lotus Gardens, Pretoria West, Gauteng” (MA in Development Studies)
• Musi, Mojalefa M., 2010, “Evaluating IMATU and SAMWU policy responses to Igoli 2002″(MA in Labour Policy and Globalisation)
• Ndlozi, Mbuyiseni, 2010, “Trade Unionism in South Africa: A critical assessment of trade union strategy -
  The case of the CWIU, 1987-1999″ (MA in Industrial Sociology)
• Nathan, Oliver, 2012, “What is the Relationship between State Sponsored Worker Co-operatives, Local Markets and the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality?” (MA in Industrial Sociology)
• Sefalafala, Thabang, 2010, “Union Splits on the Mines: a case study of Legal Voice at Driefontein East Gold Mine, Carletonville, Gauteng” (Hons research paper, in Industrial Sociology)
• Shangase, Mabutho G., 2008, “Examining the Effectiveness of BEE implementation: a case study of Eskom restructuring, 1995-2005″ (MA in Development Studies)