Belinda Bozzoli, an academic rooted in the lived experience of the working class

Thirty-six years ago, as a PhD student in the Wits sociology department, I was assigned to tutor students on a course taught by Belinda Bozzoli.

I attended her lectures, and they were to prove one of the crucial intellectual experiences of my life. Teaching with the kind of dash, colour and flair more normally associated with the theatre than the classroom, Bozzoli provided what felt like a complete education in SA history and social science...