JOE SLOVO WAS A COMMUNIST AND MY HERO

When I first learned of Joe Slovo as a teenager in 1980s South Africa, I thought he must be black inside since whites at the time did not necessarily side with the liberation struggle against Apartheid. Joe was a public exception and paid a heavy price for his commitment.

The son of Jewish immigrants, Slovo–a close ally of Nelson Mandela–was leader of the armed wing of the then-banned African National Congress and general secretary of the country’s Communist Party during the ANC and SACP’s long exile. During this time his first wife, Ruth First, was killed in a bomb attack by the South African dictatorship.  He served as the country’s first democratic housing minister for one year before dying of cancer in January 1995. Joe is buried in Soweto.

Slovo was a recent subject of a spirited discussion on BBC4′s “Great Lives,” a biographical series in which “… guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.” One surprise was the appearance of David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, who met Slovo as a child and who expressed his admiration for Joe. David’s father, Ralph, was a close friend of Joe. David Miliband recalls a visit to his school by Slovo. Other than that, he comes across as awkward and at one point labels the ANC and Slovo “terrorists.”  Luckily Shawn Slovo joined Miliband and the program’s host and could respond to this nonsense.  Miliband and the program host’s comments are reflective of the revisionism that has seeped into public (and scholarly) discussions of how the anti-apartheid struggle is now talked and written about in the West and especially in South Africa where no one, especially whites, know insist that they never supported Apartheid.

Her father raised her right.

You can listen to the program here.