Academics and activists have mourned the death of Professor Emeritus Edward Webster, who pioneered the sub-discipline of industrial sociology in South Africa.

Former students, academics and activists have described Professor Emeritus Edward "Eddie" Webster as a brilliant mind who was a friend to many.

Webster died on Tuesday, 5 March, at the age of 81.

"I think about his unbelievable intellect and his capacity to work. He has worked all his life up to almost 82. I've always known him as someone who is busy or thinking about something, writing about something, debating something," said Prof Imraan Valodia, Pro Vice-Chancellor of Climate, Sustainability and Inequality at Wits University and director of the university's Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS).

Valodia said Webster was exemplary in managing to work inside Wits University while also working on broader change outside of the institution.

"He is striving to give power to those who don't have [it]. I think better than most people, he understood the importance of power and the fact that many people are completely disempowered but have the ability to create power and change the power relations in our society."

Valodia said Webster was always striving to get the disenfranchised to organise and create a power shift.

The SCIS said it was deeply saddened by Webster's passing. It said he was affectionately known...