
Writer, Activist and Researcher
Leo Zeilig is a writer and researcher. He has written extensively on African politics and history, including books on working-class struggle and the development of revolutionary movements and biographies on some of Africa’s most important political thinkers and activists. Leo is an editor of the Review of African Political Economy—the radical African-studies journal founded by activists and scholars in 1974— and an Honorary Research Associate at the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Leo’s critically acclaimed novel Eddie the Kid was published by Zero Books in 2013. It was praised in The Guardian: ‘This passionate, sad and well-told book offers a compelling portrait of a flawed young radical.’ Eddie the Kid won the 2014 Creative Work prize at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. In 2017 Leo’s second novel, An Ounce of Practice, was published by Hoperoad. Praised in The Conversation as ‘a brilliant work of literary imagination that takes the reader to new realities in an engaging, moving read, hilariously humorous at times.’ Leo is writing his third novel.
Books

News
Climate Change and Rebellion: an interview with John Molyneux
In February 2020, Monthly Review Online posted an interview I conducted with the activist and socialist John Molyneux. We discussed the climate crisis and socialist [...]
The Atbara Moment – A radical website
Writing on roape.net in December 2019, I discuss what a radical website and review on African political economy can do. "ROAPE’s Leo Zeilig looks at [...]
Mugabe is dead: remember Chiadzwa
In September 2019, for RS21, I wrote an obituary on Robert Mugabe. "The death of Robert Mugabe (1924-2019) is being celebrated by Zimbabweans around the [...]
‘Walter Rodney was way ahead of his time’
Africa is a Country posted an article based on some research on Walter Rodney that I have been doing. "Rediscovered lectures Walter Rodney gave in [...]
Review: An Ounce of Practice
For the Review of African Political Economy, Colin Stoneman praises An Ounce of Practice, which he commends as a story of 'British socialists wishing to [...]
No Honourable Goddamn Stereotypes
Lynnda Wardle reviews An Ounce of Practice in the Glasgow Review of Books An Ounce of Practice by Leo Zeilig is a hugely enjoyable, ambitious bildungsroman following the life [...]