Joe Slovo

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Joe Slovo (May 23, 1926 – January 6, 1995) was a South African Communist politician and long time leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and leading member of the African National Congress. He was born in Obeliai, Lithuania to a Jewish family who emigrated to South Africa when he was eight. His full name was Yossel Mashel Slovo. His father worked as a truck driver in Johannesburg.

Slovo left school in 1941 and found work as a dispatch clerk. He joined the National Union of Distributive Workers and, as a shop steward, was involved in organising a strike. He joined the SACP in 1942.

Inspired by the Red Army's battles against the Nazis on the Eastern Front of World War II, Slovo volunteered to fight in the war joining the Springbok Legion.

Between 1946 and 1950 he completed a law degree at Wits University and was a student activist. In 1949 he married Ruth First, the daughter of SACP treasurer Julius First. They had three daughters, Shawn, Gillian and Robyn.

Both First and Slovo were listed as communists under the Suppression of Communism Act and could not be quoted or attend public gatherings in South Africa (see ban (law)). He became active in the African National Congress and was a delegate to the June 1955 the "Congress of the People" organised by the ANC and Indian, Coloured and white organisations at Kliptown near Johannesburg, that drew up the Freedom Charter. He was arrested and detained for two months during the Treason Trial of 1956. Charges against him were dropped in 1958. He was later arrested for six months during the State of Emergency declared after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960.

In 1961, Slovo emerged as one of the leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe. In 1963 he went into exile and lived in Britain, Angola, Mozambique and Zambia. Slovo was elected general secretary of the SACP in 1984. He died in 1995 of cancer.

He returned to South Africa in 1990 to participate in the early "talks about talks" between the government and the ANC. Ailing, he stood down as SACP general secretary in 1991 and was succeeded by Chris Hani who was soon murdered. Slovo was given the titular position of chairperson of the SACP. He served as housing minister in the first government of Nelson Mandela.

Slovo was a leading theoretician in both the party and the ANC. In 1989, he wrote Has Socialism Failed? which acknowledged the weaknesses of socialism and excesses of Stalinism. In 2004 he was voted 47th in the Top 100 Great South Africans.

Joe Slovo appears as a character (played by Malcolm Purkey) in the 2006 film Catch a Fire, for which Shawn Slovo wrote the screenplay.

[edit] External links

• Joe Slovo – biographical sketch at the homepage of the ANC
• "Has Socialism Failed?" – article by Joe Slovo, first published January 1990, at the homepage of the SACP (retrieved 15 December 2006)
• "Old Marxist Returns, With Hope for South Africa" – article by Chris Hedges, The New York Times 17 October 1990
• "Joe Slovo: Ode to a mensch" – eulogy by friend Linzi Manicom