Further reading
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Paul Trewhela (born 1941) is a South African journalist [1] and a former political prisoner. [2]
Trewhela was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1941, educated at Michaelhouse in KwaZulu-Natal. Trewhela worked in underground journalism with Ruth First and edited the underground journal of Umkhonto we Sizwe, Freedom Fighter, during the Rivonia Trial. He was a political prisoner in Pretoria and the Johannesburg Fort as a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1964–1967, separating from the SACP while in prison. In exile in Britain, he was co-editor with the late Baruch Hirson of Searchlight South Africa , which was banned in South Africa.
In regard to his ideology Trewhela has stated: "I was a Trotskyist, and, yes, a 'committed Marxist' through to the end of working on Searchlight South Africa. But I'm not a Marxist any longer. Marx's conception of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' gave a licence to totalitarian dictators of all kinds, and Marxism's economic determinism and alleged 'scientific' philosophy are way off beam. I'm much more aware than before how fragile are the little shoots of civil society, and how they need nurturing, and how easily they are crushed by very ideological people who claim to have a universal panacea, usually violent. They're the dangerous people in southern Africa, as Robert Mugabe and his regime have shown." [3]
In 2007 he received the St Michael Award from his alma-mater, Michaelhouse. [4]
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The South African Communist Party (SACP) is a communist party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), tactically dissolved itself in 1950 in the face of being declared illegal by the governing National Party under the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950. The Communist Party was reconstituted underground and re-launched as the SACP in 1953, participating in the struggle to end the apartheid system. It is a member of the ruling Tripartite Alliance alongside the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and through this it influences the South African government. The party's Central Committee is the party's highest decision-making structure.
Govan Archibald Mvuyelwa Mbeki was a South African politician, military commander, Communist leader who served as the Secretary of Umkhonto we Sizwe, at its inception in 1961. He was also the son of Chief Sikelewu Mbeki and Johanna Mahala and also the father of the former South African president Thabo Mbeki and political economist Moeletsi Mbeki. He was a leader of the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress. After the Rivonia Trial, he was imprisoned (1963–1987) on charges of terrorism and treason, together with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Raymond Mhlaba, Ahmed Kathrada and other eminent ANC leaders, for their role in the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). He was sometimes mentioned by his nickname "Oom Gov".
Abraham Louis Fischer was a South African Communist lawyer of Afrikaner descent, notable for anti-apartheid activism and for the legal defence of anti-apartheid figures, including Nelson Mandela, at the Rivonia Trial. Following the trial he was himself put on trial accused of furthering communism. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and diagnosed with cancer while in prison. The South African Prisons Act was extended to include his brother's house in Bloemfontein where he died two months later.
Lionel Abrahams was a South African novelist, poet, editor, critic, essayist and publisher. He was born in Johannesburg, where he lived his entire life. He was born with cerebral palsy and had to use a wheelchair until 11 years of age.
Joe Slovo was a South African politician, and an opponent of the apartheid system. A Marxist-Leninist, he was a long-time leader and theorist in the South African Communist Party (SACP), a leading member of the African National Congress (ANC), and a commander of the ANC's military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).
Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo was a South African Communist and an anti-apartheid activist. During his life, he was chair of both the South African Indian Congress and the South African Communist Party, as well as being a major proponent of co-operation between those organisations and the African National Congress. He was a leader of the Defiance Campaign and a defendant at the Treason Trial in 1956. His last days were spent in exile in London, where he is buried at Highgate Cemetery; a few metres away from the Tomb of Karl Marx.
Philemon Pearce Dumasile Nokwe, known as Duma Nokwe, was a South African political activist and legislator, and served as the Secretary-General of the African National Congress from 1958 to 1969.
Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner. He played a key role in political organizations such as the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC). He helped form the Congress of Democrats to bolster white participation in the ANC, and he brought its allies together to establish a Congress of the People, working closely with Nelson Mandela.
The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was an important force for liberalism and later radicalism in South African student anti-apartheid politics. Its mottos included non-racialism and non-sexism.
Essop Goolam Pahad is a retired South African politician. He served as the Minister in the Presidency from 1999 to 2008.
The Rand Daily Mail was a South African newspaper published from 1902 until it was controversially closed in 1985 after adopting an outspoken anti-apartheid stance in the midst of a massive clampdown on activists by the security forces. The title was based in Johannesburg as a daily newspaper and best known for breaking the news about the apartheid state's Muldergate Scandal in 1979. It also exposed the truth about the death in custody of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, in 1977.
The African National Congress (ANC) has been the governing party of the Republic of South Africa since 1994. The ANC was founded on 8 January 1912 in Bloemfontein and is the oldest liberation movement in Africa.
Esther Barsel was a South African political activist and long-standing member of the South African Communist Party (SACP). She was a member of both her local African National Congress branch and the SACP's Johannesburg Central Branch.
Morris Isaacson High School is a government secondary school in Soweto. Founded in 1956, the school took an important role at the start of the Soweto Uprising in 1976.
Ahmed Timol was an anti-apartheid activist in the underground South African Communist Party. He died at the age of 29 from injuries sustained when he fell from the top floor of John Vorster Square police station in Johannesburg. Police claimed, and an official inquest confirmed, that Timol had committed suicide by jumping out the window. The claim was widely disbelieved in anti-apartheid circles, and in the movement Timol's death became symbolic of the broader phenomenon of deaths in police custody, as well as of the abuses and dishonesty of the apartheid state.
Baruch Hirson was a South African political activist, academic, author and historian, who was jailed for nine years in apartheid-era South Africa before moving to England in 1973. He was co-founder of the critical journal Searchlight South Africa, and in 1991 a critic of what he referred to as Stalinist methods used by the African National Congress (ANC).
Olivia Anne Marie Forsyth , agent number RS407 and codename "Lara", is a former spy for the apartheid government in South Africa. Having attained the rank of lieutenant in the Security Branch of the South African Police (SAP), Forsyth defected to the African National Congress (ANC) and was incarcerated at Quatro prison camp in northern Angola. Following her escape, Forsyth spent six months hiding in the British embassy in Luanda.
Raymond Suttner is South African activist, academic, journalist and public figure.
Sonia Bunting, OLS was a South African journalist, and a political and anti-apartheid activist. After being charged with treason and imprisoned, being detained a second time, and barred from publishing, she and her husband went into exile in London, where she joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) and organised the World Campaign for the Release of South African Political Prisoners. When the African National Congress (ANC) ban was lifted in 1991, she returned to South Africa where she was involved in political activism until her death in 2001. She was posthumously honored by the government of South Africa with the Order of Luthuli in Silver in 2010.
Operation Vula was a secret domestic programme of the African National Congress (ANC) during the final years of apartheid in South Africa. Initiated in 1986 at the ANC headquarters in Lusaka and launched in South Africa in 1988, its operatives infiltrated weapons and banned ANC leaders into the country, in order to establish an underground network linking domestic activist structures with the ANC in exile. It was responsible for facilitating the only direct line of communication between ANC headquarters and Nelson Mandela, who at the time was imprisoned and was discussing a negotiated settlement with the government on the ANC's behalf. The operation was disbanded in 1990, after its existence had been publicly revealed and eight of its leaders charged under the Internal Security Act with terrorism and plotting an armed insurrection.
