Eddie Webster has left us. 

We recall with admiration his remarkable Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture 18 months ago, given at our Vuyisile Mini Workers School.

The hole in the world that he left is large indeed. He passed away on Tuesday, 5 March, from a heart attack at the age of 81. More than anyone else, Eddie Webster remade the field of industrial sociology in South Africa, but his impact was not just in academia but in the workers’ movement, and not just here in South Africa, but globally. 

I first encountered Eddie Webster as an Industrial Sociology undergrad and postgrad at Wits, the University of the Witwatersrand. Later, he was my HoD at that university, my alma mater; when I became an associate of what was then the Sociology of Work (SWOP) unit, my director; when he initiated the Africa wing of the Global Labour University (GLU), my coordinator. 

Eddie Webster’s work in fostering the field of labour studies and the labour movement was monumental. We will always appreciate his role in helping the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, and we recall with admiration his remarkable Neil Aggett Labour Studies Lecture 18 months ago, given at our Vuyisile Mini Workers School. Here, he engaged people from the popular movements, including at a memorable dinner with Mazibuko Jara, Warren Mc Gregor, Russell Grinker, the late, great, lamented Ayanda Kota, and I.

In 1992, I started Industrial Sociology 2 at Wits, unsure what to expect.  I still vividly recall the first class with Eddie Webster. The great man walked to the lectern, battered copy of Das Kapital in hand, and read out: “We, therefore, take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production… Here, we shall see not only how capital is produced but also how capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit making.” 

Legendary.  Legendary! And, as soon became clear, he was never a man to stay on the surface of anything. Open-minded, he was an eclectic thinker who embraced new ideas and (re)shaped the whole field in doing so. He was influenced by Marxism, but was far more than any label can capture. He was a master of applying, adapting, creating, and transmitting new approaches. 

Much of his work was literally globalised; that is, his theory from the South had a huge impact elsewhere in our world, but also in the North. Three generations of scholars, who today include VCs, heads of national research units, academics nationwide, and countless trade unionists across Mzansi and across Africa and beyond, were taught and mentored by the man.  

It would not be right or complete, in recalling this remarkable figure, to fail to mention his role as an organiser. He successfully founded and built more institutions than scores of people do in their combined lifetimes. He had a keen eye for finding and remarkable skill in resolving problems. I saw him fix, with bold strokes, issues that wracked our department: he tackled these in startling ways, which I privately used to think of as “Websterian solutions”; he had that rare ability to cut the Gordian knot, i.e., to find unexpected, decisive, solutions. 

And no reflections would be complete without noting that Eddie Webster embraced differences of opinion. Although he and I never quite saw eye-to-eye on quite a few issues, you know what? He told me what mattered was to do good work, to collaborate, to be collegial, and to be sincere. That debate was a good thing, and decency was even better. This, let me tell you, was incredibly important to me as a young man. So, while I chose not to do my PhD with him, he was always a voice in it and in my later work, despite our differences.

That is the man I recall.  Go well, travel safely, Eddie.

Professor Lucien van der Walt is Director of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, worker educator and author. He is a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand.