ANC Youth League

Clive Glaser lectures in History at Witwatersrand University, South Africa. He has published widely on the history of youth politics, youth culture, crime and sexuality in South Africa. He is the author of Bo-Tsotsi: The Youth Gangs of Soweto 1935-1976 and co-author of Challenge and Victory, 1980-1990, volume 6 in the series From Protest to Challenge, A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990 (2010).

"Glaser shows that while the impact of the Youth League has ebbed and flowed, black South Africa youth have shaped the nation's politics in fundamental ways. Authoritative, streamlined, and highly readable, this book deserves a wide readership." (African Studies Quarterly) "Glaser's book provides a well-written analysis of the competition between ideologies and strategies within the ANC. … Throughout, Glaser highlights the tensions between those leaders who stood for ideological purity as Africanists and those who gravitated to a more pragmatic approach that stressed ideological pluralism. …[He] …perceptively [analyzes] the ways in which South African youth have ignited and fueled the nationalist cause in South Africa over the last seventy-five years." (African Studies Review) "As Clive Glaser notes in his nuanced and lively account, the [ANC] Youth League have, at certain times, played a pivotal role in shaping policy in its parent organisation. For Glaser, the rise of the YL needs to be seen in the context of the broader political and economic landscape of industrialisation and urbanisation, when 'the townships of Johannesburg became an extraordinary melting pot of young, educated Africans'…This book is sure to become required reading for students and scholars of youth politics in South Africa and the continent more widely." (Journal of African History)