‘Nanna' Liz Abrahams is an icon of the struggle for labour, women's and political rights in South Africa. Her illustrious career as an activist has stretched over more than sixty years and it is a great privilege to be able to publish her life story to coincide with her 80 th birthday. Her life story has been published as a separate booklet to document, recognise and salute, in a small way, her enormous contribution.

This life story is part of a larger research project on the life stories of trade union activists from the Western Cape. Soon after completing my doctorate on the challenges facing unions during the democratic transition, I came across a copy of a fascinating book titled Rank-and-File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers edited by Alice and Staughton Lynd (Monthly Review Press, 1988).

I was impressed by their argument that by conducting life histories of rank-and-file activists we can get past the traditional approach to labour history where workers experience and create history while academics document their experience, and then interpret their story for them and society at large.

I was surprised to find a serious gap in South African labour union history as no collection of worker life stories has been published in South Africa. Quite a few unionists have published their autobiographies including two, Ray Alexander and Archie Sibeko, who worked closely with Liz Abrahams. There is, of course, a critical difference between autobiographies, written at the initiative of the authors, and life stories that are collected through interviews. The academic lens and personal perspectives of the interviewers and editors facilitates and influences how the life story is told.

This project began in 1999 with my class of advanced industrial relations students, enrolled for post-graduate degrees in Management at the University of the Western Cape. Yusuf Patel, an activist from Paarl, was one of these students who had extensive personal experience in the democratic struggle. Liz Abrahams was one of his political mentors and their strong personal bond and her life story reflects strongly on his ability to empathise with her story.

The project was a truly collaborative venture as the students collectively compiled the comprehensive questionnaire that provided the framework for the interviews. The original version of this story was based on interviews that Yusuf Patel had with Liz Abrahams in 1999. That story has been supplemented with selected material from audio and video interviews conducted with Liz in 1992 by Cassandra Parker for a TV documentary, Women in Struggle: A Preview .

Philip Hirschsohn

Cape Town

September 2005