Clements Kadalie

Clements Kadalie was born in April 1896 in Chifira, near Nkhata Bay, Nyasaland (modern Malawi). Educated at the Livingstonia mission school, he migrated across southern Africa, arriving in Cape Town in 1918.

In January 1919, Kadalie founded the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU). Leading a sensational Cape Town dock strike in December 1919, the ICU expanded explosively across South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, and South West Africa, enrolling over 100,000 rural farm laborers and urban workers by 1927. His thunderous oratory and fearless defiance of white supremacy made the ICU the first mass political movement of Black workers in southern African history.