'That Spells Trouble': Jews and the Communist Party of South Africa

Israel, Mark A.; Adams, Simon

doi:10.1080/030570700108423

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Many of those Jewish immigrants who joined the Communist Party, such as First's parents, had experienced the trauma of anti-Semitism both in Europe and upon their arrival in South Africa. Israel and Adams (2000) have argued that the existence of a disproportionate number of Jews in the Communist Party meant it was easy for the National Party to utilise a range of anti-Semitic stereotypes to quash communist activity.…”

Section: The Fight Against 'South African Fascism'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fighting talk: Ruth First's early journalism 1947–1950

Webb

2015

Review of African Political Economy

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While celebrated for her anti-apartheid activism, Ruth First's early journalism has received limited attention by scholars. The result has been an incomplete understanding of her political and intellectual development. Drawing from First's scrapbooks, this article examines some of the themes that preoccupied her from 1947–1950 while situating her work within the broader political context. Her journalism played a crucial role in chronicling resistance to segregationist policies in the pre-apartheid period and the role of cheap labour in capitalist development. Many of the themes that dominated her work on labour and development in Mozambique can be glimpsed in these scrapbooks.

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Section: The Fight Against 'South African Fascism'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fighting talk: Ruth First's early journalism 1947–1950

Webb

2015

Review of African Political Economy

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“…The five whites among the seventeen activists arrested in the Rivonia Raid in 1963 were all Jewish. 23 The idea that all whites involved in the struggle were Jewish became fixed in the popular imagination.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Socio-Political Context, Finding Communism and Ivan and Lesley’s Early Years

Kirkaldy

2021

Everyday Communists in South Africa’s Liberation Struggle

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Unlike many of their (white) contemporaries in the CPSA/SACP, Ivan and Lesley were not the children of trade unionists or socialists. Both had politically conservative parents and grew up on trading stations-he in the Transkei and she in Zululand. As it turned out, their early childhood experiences helped them to develop an appreciation of the plight of the dispossessed and disenfranchised masses in South Africa, and sympathy for local cultures. This was nevertheless not a foregone conclusion-like the majority of their contemporaries, they could just as easily (if not more so) have become supporters of the apartheid system.Born in 1921 and 1926, respectively, Ivan and Lesley's personal biographies overlapped with the formation and subsequent development of the CPSA/SACP. Ivan's radicalisation during the war years-the catalyst for his joining the Party-was not an isolated example. The Second World War, and reactions to it, proved to be a watershed in its growth and development. In addition, Ivan and Lesley had to negotiate the changing directions in party policy, its blind loyalty to Stalinism and the Soviet Union, its linkages with other liberatory movements, transnationalism, the internal and external wings of struggle, the move to armed struggle and the tensions and fractures that all of this brought. The changing patterns of their lives were intricately bound to the history of the Party until the end of the 1960s at least. They could, and did, take issue with some of these developments.

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‘Old Synagogue’ and Apartheid Court: Constructing a South African Heritage Site

Buntman

2010

South African Historical Journal

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'That Spells Trouble': Jews and the Communist Party of South Africa

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

Fighting talk: Ruth First's early journalism 1947–1950

Fighting talk: Ruth First's early journalism 1947–1950

The Socio-Political Context, Finding Communism and Ivan and Lesley’s Early Years

‘Old Synagogue’ and Apartheid Court: Constructing a South African Heritage Site

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