Harold Wolpe

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Harold Wolpe (born January 14, 1926 in Johannesburg , † January 19, 1996 in Cape Town ) was a South African lawyer, sociologist , economist and anti- apartheid activist. Until his arrest in 1963, he was a key supporter of the resistance against the apartheid regime. Only after 28 years in exile was he able to return to his homeland.

Life

Wolpe was born as a child of Lithuanian - Jewish emigrants. He studied at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences and a Bachelor of Law . He was a leading activist for the National Union of South African Students and President of the University's Student Representative Council . In 1955 he married Anne-Marie Cantor, with whom he had three children. He was a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), which could only operate underground , and the African National Congress (ANC), which also became an underground movement in 1960. As a criminal defense lawyer, he shared an office with his brother-in-law James Kantor and represented political prisoners who were in opposition to the apartheid regime. He also represented members of the ANC, with which the SACP was affiliated, from 1961 through the joint armed arm Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).

Wolpe appeared together with Arthur Goldreich as the owner of the Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia , which served as a meeting point for the management of the ANC, SACP and MK. On July 11, 1963, numerous executives were arrested there during a raid, including Goldreich and Walter Sisulu , later also cantor. Wolpe was caught a few days later on the border with Bechuanaland - now Botswana - and detained in Pretoria . By bribing a guard, he and three other prisoners, including Goldreich, escaped on August 11, 1963 - before the Rivonia trial began , in which he and Goldreich were to be charged. Despite a large-scale chase, they made it to Swaziland and then, disguised as a priest, to Francistown in Bechuanaland. The press reported on August 28th about the escape and Justice Minister Vorster declared: “They were our fattest fish”. South African agents blew up the plane that was supposed to bring the four men to Tanganyika ; but they had chosen a different machine. The escape became known as The great escape .

Wolpe and his family spent 28 years in exile in Great Britain . From 1964 to 1965 he attended the London School of Economics on a grant from the Nuffield Foundation , where he took sociology courses. He then taught at the University of Bradford and the North East London Polytechnic . From 1972 to 1991 Wolpe was a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Essex . Anne-Marie Wolpe was also active as a sociologist and feminist. With the gradual abolition of apartheid, the family returned to South Africa in 1991, where he worked at the University of the Western Cape . In 1996 he died a few days after a heart attack .

Wolpe dealt in his scientific work primarily with the effects of the economic structures in the apartheid system on society. He took the view that the low-wage labor in South Africa and the subsistence economy in rural areas of capitalist would promote awareness forces to the emergence of an urban black proletariat and to prevent the associated conflicts in the labor market from the "white" settlement areas in the homelands to relocate. In his opinion, apartheid had modernized the system of even cheaper migrant workers and perfected the forms of forced labor in the country. Parallel to the work of Ruth First at the Centro de Estudos Africanos in Maputo and other authors, he emphasized the eminent importance of African migrant workers for the South African economy, as their compulsory economic basis in the family subsistence economy of their home regions enabled such a low wage rate that it was could be below the actual subsistence level.

Works (selection)

  • The Problem of the Development of Revolutionary Consciousness. Telos 4 (autumn 1969). Telos Press, New York.
  • Industrialism and Race in South Africa. In: S. Zubaida (Ed.): Race and Racialism . Tavistock, London 1970.
  • Class, race and occupational structure. In: S. Marks (Ed.): The Societies of Southern Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Vol. 2. Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London University, London 1971.
  • Capitalism and cheap labor-power in South Africa: From segregation to apartheid. In: Economy & Society , Vol. 1, no. 4, 1972. Digitized
  • Pluralism, Forced Labor and Internal Colonialism in South Africa. Paper to the Conference on the South African Economy and the Future of Apartheid. Center of Southern African Studies, University of York, 1973.
  • The Theory of Internal Colonialism: The South African Case. In: I. Oxhaal et al .: Beyond the Sociology of Development . Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1975.
  • The White Working Class in South Africa: Some theoretical problems. Economy & Society , Vol. 5, no.2, 1976.
  • A Comment on the Poverty of Neo-Marxism. Journal of Southern African Studies , Vol. 4., no.2, 1978.
  • Towards an Analysis of the South African State. International Journal of the Sociology of Law , vol. 8, no.4, 1980
  • Class, Race and the Apartheid State. UNESCO, Paris. Digital copy (extracts)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d portrait at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on August 12, 2014
  2. ↑ according to other information Annmarie or AnnMarie
  3. ↑ Ruth First : Captive Courage. 117 days in a South African prison. Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 29
  4. ↑ Description of the Rivonia process on the University of KwaZulu-Natal website , accessed on August 13, 2014
  5. ↑ Description of the 50th anniversary of the escape from gauteng.net (English), accessed on August 13, 2014
  6. ↑ Wife smuggled blades into jail. Cape Times August 27, 2013
  7. ↑ Capitalism and cheap labor-power in South Africa: From segregation to apartheid. Economy & Society , Vol. 1, no. 4, 1972. (English), accessed August 12, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Wolpe, Harold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African lawyer, sociologist, economist and anti-apartheid activist
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Johannesburg
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1996
Place of death Cape Town