South African socialist pamphlets

Photocopies of a collection of Socialist pamphlets from Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. Includes: material published by The Fourth International (South Africa) (5 items); Non-European United Front (2 items); Communist Party of South Africa (4 items); South African Labour Party (1 item); African Mineworkers' Union (3 items); Forum Club (4 items); Society of Young Africa (1 item); Cape Debating Society (1 item); Socialist League of Africa (4 items); African National Congress and allied organisations (1 pamphlet on 1959 potato boycott); memoranda relating to the Magazine Barracks submitted to the National Health Services Commission 1943 and to the 'Wadley' Health Commission 1944 by the Durban Indian Municipal Employees Society; memorandum submitted to the Natal Indian Judicial Commission by the Natal University Students' Union (Non-European Section), 1944; 'Soweto, June 1976; the call to arms, a political assessment' by VK Scrape Ntshona; and items from the Non-European Women's Suffrage League.

Baruch Hirson was born at Doornfontein near Johannesburg, South Africa in December 1921, the son of a Jewish electrician. Between 1944 and 1946 he worked as the political organiser for the Workers' International League, and subsequently he combined his politics with an academic career as a physicist at the University of the Witwatersrand. Towards the end of the 1950s he joined the Congress of Democrats, the white arm of the African National Congress-led congress alliance. Highly critical of its leadership and policies, with other disaffected left-wing congress activists Hirson formed the Socialist League of Africa just before the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, and later the National Committee for Liberation/African Resistance Movement (ARM). The ARM was broken in 1964, and Hirson and other leading activists arrested and imprisoned for nine years. After his release he moved to Britain, he taught physics at Bradford and Middlesex Universities, and devoted much of his time to history and the publication of Searchlight South Africa (1988-1995), a left-wing analysis of South African politics. He wrote several books or aspects of South African history and an autobiography, Revolutions in my Life (1995). He died in London on 3 October 1999.

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Baruch Hirson was born at Doornfontein near Johannesburg, South Africa in December 1921, the son of a Jewish electrician. Between 1944 and 1946 he worked as the political organiser for the Workers' International League, and subsequently he combined his politics with an academic career as a physicist at the University of the Witwatersrand. Towards the end of the 1950s he joined the Congress of Democrats, the white arm of the African National Congress-led congress alliance. Highly critical of its leadership and policies, with other disaffected left-wing congress activists Hirson formed the Socialist League of Africa just before the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, and later the National Committee for Liberation/African Resistance Movement (ARM). The ARM was broken in 1964, and Hirson and other leading activists arrested and imprisoned for nine years. After his release he moved to Britain, he taught physics at Bradford and Middlesex Universities, and devoted much of his time to history and the publication of Searchlight South Africa (1988-1995), a left-wing analysis of South African politics. He wrote several books or aspects of South African history and an autobiography, Revolutions in my Life (1995). He died in London on 3 October 1999.

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* Papers of Baruch Hirson, 1960-1999, held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library, University of London (GB 101 ICS 32).

Published

GB 193