John S. Saul

John S. Saul (born 1938) is a Canadian political economist and activist whose work has focused on the liberation struggles of southern Africa, from the 1960s to the present. In 2004, he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 2010 was granted an honorary doctorate by Victoria University within the University of Toronto, and, in 2011, a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Canadian Association of African Studies.

Saul is professor emeritus of politics at York University in Toronto. He has also taught at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, alongside activist-academics such as Giovanni Arrighi (with whom he wrote Essays on the Political Economy of Africa) and Walter Rodney; at the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique, alongside activist-academics such as Ruth First; and at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in South Africa.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Saul was involved with the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Portugal's African Colonies (TCLPAC), later the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa (TCLSAC), which coordinated the liberation support/anti-apartheid movement in Toronto. He was also an editor of both the Canadian progressive magazine This Magazine (1973–1985) and Southern Africa Report (1985–2000).

Saul is a socialist, and is considered to be an activist-academic in the broader Marxist tradition. As Leo Panitch, long-time editor of the prestigious Socialist Register, has recently written:

Based on his almost half century of immense political and intellectual contributions to African liberation struggles, John Saul shows [in his recent writings] that he is one of the few today who has the courage as well as the credentials to pose the sober question of "what did 'liberation' mean anyway"? What is more Saul also shows that he is one of the few with the confidence as well as the capacity to answer the question by drawing inspirational and strategic socialist and revolutionary conclusions.

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