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Baruch Hirson
Baruch Hirson (10 December 1921 – 3 October 1999) 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). Life Baruch Hirson was born to a lower-middle class Jewish family in Doornfontein, Johannesburg. His parents, Joseph and Lily Hirson, had emigrated to South Africa to escape anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire. From the age of four, Hirson attended a Hebrew school in Johannesburg. His mathematical ability enabled him to study as a part-time student at the University of Witwatersrand, matriculating in 1939.Biography: Baruch Hirson ''South ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on ''baasskap'' (boss-hood or boss-ship), which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. According to this system of social stratification, white citizens had the highest status, followed by Indians and Coloureds, then black Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day. Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into ''petty apartheid'', which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, and ''grand apartheid'', which dictated housing and employment opportunities by race. The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trotskyist
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and Bolshevik–Leninist, a follower of Marx, Engels, and 3L: Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. He supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the " dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", which Marxists argue defines capitalism) based on working-class self-emancipation and mass democracy. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Joseph Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favour of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists criticize the bureaucracy and anti-democratic current developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Vladimir Lenin and Trotsky, despite their ideological disp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Arrest
In justice and law, house arrest (also called home confinement, home detention, or, in modern times, electronic monitoring) is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to their residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all. House arrest is an alternative to being in a prison while awaiting trial or after sentencing. While house arrest can be applied to criminal cases when prison does not seem an appropriate measure, the term is often applied to the use of house confinement as a measure of repression by authoritarian governments against political dissidents. In these cases, the person under house arrest often does not have access to any means of communication with people outside of the home; if electronic communication is allowed, conversations may be monitored. History Judges have imposed sentences of home confinement, as an alternative to prison, as far back as the 17th century. Galileo was confined to his home following his infamous trial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Escape From Pretoria
''Escape from Pretoria'' is a 2020 Australian prison film co-written and directed by Francis Annan, based on the real-life prison escape by three political prisoners in South Africa in 1979, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Daniel Webber. It is based on the 2003 book ''Inside Out: Escape from Pretoria Prison'' by Tim Jenkin, one of the escapees. It was filmed in Adelaide, South Australia, in early 2019, both on location in the city and suburbs and in the Glenside studios of the South Australian Film Corporation. Plot In 1979, Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee are two white South Africans carrying out anti-apartheid missions in South Africa. They are arrested and prosecuted; Jenkin is sentenced to twelve years and Lee is sentenced to eight. At the courthouse Lee attempts to escape but to no avail. Transported to Pretoria Prison, they meet Denis Goldberg, an older political prisoner serving four life sentences for previous work against apartheid. He shows them the ropes but discoura ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tim Jenkin
Timothy Peter Jenkin (born 1948) is a South African writer, former anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner. He is best known for his 1979 escape from Pretoria Local Prison (part of the Pretoria Central Prison complex), along with Stephen Lee and Alex Moumbaris. Biography Early life and education Jenkin was born in Cape Town and educated at Rondebosch Boys' Prep and Boys' High School, matriculating aged 17. After leaving school, he avoided conscription into the South African Defence Force, and worked at a variety of jobs for two years, with no particular interest in anything except motorcycle racing. He left for the UK in 1970, where, working in a fibreglass factory under poor working conditions and little pay, found the system unjust and developed an interest in sociology. This led him to learning more about the injustice in his own country. He later wrote that he had "grown up a 'normal' complacent white South African" who "unthinkingly accepted the system and for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denis Goldberg
Denis Theodore Goldberg (11 April 1933 – 29 April 2020) was a South African social campaigner, who was active in the struggle against apartheid. He was accused No. 3 in the Rivonia Trial, alongside the better-known Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, where he was also the youngest of the defendants. He was imprisoned for 22 years, along with other key members of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. After his release in 1985 he continued to campaign against apartheid from his base in London with his family, until the apartheid system was fully abolished with the 1994 election. He returned to South Africa in 2002 and founded the non-profit Denis Goldberg Legacy Foundation Trust in 2015. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in July 2019, and died in Cape Town on 29 April 2020. Biography Early life Denis Theodore Goldberg was born on 11 April 1933 in Cape Town, South Africa and grew up in a family that welcomed people of all races into their house. He was the son of Annie (F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pretoria Central Prison
Pretoria Central Prison, renamed Kgosi Mampuru II Management Area by former President Jacob Zuma on 13 April 2013 and sometimes referred to as Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Services is a large prison in central Pretoria, within the City of Tshwane in South Africa. It is operated by the South African Department of Correctional Services. The complex comprises six correctional centres, including the notorious C Max, Pretoria Local Prison, and a women's prison. The new name is the same as the street name (renamed in the previous year), with both now bearing the name of Kgosi Mampuru, a 19th-century local chief who resisted colonial rule and was subsequently hanged in 1883. History 1948-1991: Apartheid era During the apartheid years, the huge complex was often known incorrectly as "Pretoria Central". In fact there were three separate clusters of prisons: Pretoria Central Prison proper, Pretoria (Local) Prison and a third known only as "Maximum" or "Beverley Hills". The latter was the u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African Resistance Movement
The African Resistance Movement (ARM) was a militant anti-apartheid resistance movement, which operated in South Africa during the early and mid-1960s. It was founded in 1960, as the National Committee of Liberation (NCL), by members of South Africa's Liberal Party, which advocated the dismantling of apartheid and gradually transforming South Africa into a free multiracial society. It was renamed "African Resistance Movement" in 1964. NLC/ARM Immediately after the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, the apartheid government imposed a state of emergency, which allowed it to apply a broad range of sanctions against its political opponents, such as detention without trial and banning meetings, and enabled the Special Branch to secretly detain and interrogate whomever it deemed a threat to the government, without due process. After the state of emergency was lifted, the new Minister of Justice, B.J. Vorster, introduced legislation that made many parts of the emergency regulations permanent ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sharpeville Massacre
The Sharpeville massacre occurred on 21 March 1960 at the police station in the township of Sharpeville in the then Transvaal Province of the then Union of South Africa (today part of Gauteng). After demonstrating against pass laws, a crowd of about 7,000 protesters went to the police station. Sources disagree as to the behaviour of the crowd: some state that the crowd was peaceful, while others state that the crowd had been hurling stones at the police and that the mood had turned "ugly". The South African Police (SAP) opened fire on the crowd when the crowd started advancing toward the fence around the police station; tear-gas had proved ineffectual. There were 249 victims in total, including 29 children, with 69 people killed and 180 injured. Some were shot in the back as they fled. The massacre was photographed by photographer Ian Berry, who initially thought the police were firing blanks. In present-day South Africa, 21 March is celebrated as a public holiday in honour of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Congress Alliance
The Congress Alliance was an anti-apartheid political coalition formed in South Africa in the 1950s. Led by the African National Congress, the CA was multi-racial in makeup and committed to the principle of majority rule. Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter The National Action Council was made up of executives of the African National Congress, the Communist Party of South Africa, the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), the Coloured People's Congress (CPC) and the South African Congress of Democrats (COD) met in Tongaat on 23 June 1955. This group, who became known as the Congress Alliance, developed the document known as the Freedom Charter and planned the Congress of the People, a large multi-racial gathering held over two days at Kliptown on 26 June 1955. At this rally, the Charter was read out in three languages (English, Sotho and Xhosa), and discussed by various delegates. The Charter was the statement of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South African Congress Of Democrats
The South African Congress of Democrats (SACOD) was a radical left-wing white, anti-apartheid organization founded in South Africa in 1952 or 1953 as part of the multi-racial Congress Alliance, after the African National Congress (ANC) invited whites to become part of the Congress Movement. The establishment of the COD sought to illustrate opposition to apartheid among whites. The COD identified closely with the ANC and advocated racial equality and universal suffrage. Though small, COD was a key organization of the Congress Alliance. The COD took part in every Congress Alliance campaign until it was banned by the South African Apartheid government in September 1962. Relationship with the ANC and SACP The ANC viewed the COD as a way to put its views directly to the white public. Moreover, as Nelson Mandela wrote, "The COD served an important symbolic function for Africans; blacks who had come into the struggle because they were anti-white discovered that there were indeed whites ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non-European Unity Movement
The Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) is a Trotskyist organisation formed in South Africa in 1943. It had links to the Workers Party of South Africa (WPSA), the first countrywide Trotskyist organisation, and was initially conceived as a broad protest front. It proposed a 10 Point Programme of radical reforms. It stressed non-racialism, meaning that it rejected race-based organising (and the concept of race itself), unlike the main nationalist groups of the time, was highly critical of the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress, and made a principle of non-collaboration with the apartheid regime and its allies The movement developed a substantial influence in the Cape Province, including Pondoland, and had some role in the 1950-1961 Pondoland peasant revolt, but split in 1957. The faction around Isaac Bangani Tabata formed a new African Peoples' Democratic Union of Southern Africa (APDUSA) in 1961, and the Unity Movement of South Africa (UMSA) in exile in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
