Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Neil Aggett was born in 1953 in the district of Nanyuki in Kenya, and moved to South Africa with his family at the age of 10. He attended a private school at Kingswood College in Grahamstown, and went on to study medicine at the University of Cape Town. Increasingly radicalized, he disapproved of the apartheid society in which he was raised, and rejected the privileges that came with being white and middle class. As a medical student, Aggett lived in a laborer's cottage without any electricity or hot water, and served his internship at black public hospitals in Umtata and Tembisa. Once he completed his studies in 1977, he worked at the Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. Aggett believed the ill health of those he treated was rooted in the oppressive social and economic conditions that African workers had to endure, and became increasingly involved in the growing African workers' movement of the 1970s. He initially volunteered at the Industrial Aid Society, a workers support center, and assisted with the establishment of the center's Workmen's Compensation section, which dealt with workers injured at work. From 1978 onwards, Aggett actively assisted the African Food and Canning Workers' Union (AFCWU), which was linked to the Food Canning Workers' Union, an independent registered union. The AFCWU was unable to pay Aggett a full salary, so he continued to work part-time as a doctor. ... log in or subscribe to read full text