Lionel Bernstein

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Lionel Rusty Bernstein (born March 5, 1920 in Durban , † June 23, 2002 in Kidlington , Oxfordshire ) was a South African politician and opponent of apartheid . He was a leading member of the South African Communist Party (SACP).

Life

Origin and background

Bernstein was born in Durban as the fourth child of European Jewish emigrants. When he was eight he was an orphan. He received his education at the elite Hilton College . After graduating from high school, he worked in a Johannesburg architecture firm and at the same time began studying architecture part-time at the Witwatersrand University . After graduating in 1936, he worked as an architect.

Political activities in South Africa

In 1937 Bernstein became a member of the Labor League of Youth. In 1939 he joined what was then the CPSA (later SACP) and soon became a leading member there. He became secretary of the Johannesburg district of the CASP. In 1941 he married Hilda Watts , an emigrant from the United Kingdom whom he met in the Labor League of Youth . He got his nickname "Rusty" because of his red hair and his political views. During the Second World War he served in the South African Army and fought in North Africa and Italy. In 1946 he was responsible for the strike newspaper during the great miners' strike. He and his wife were arrested and given suspended sentences for rioting . As a result, Bernstein worked as a journalist for various left-wing South African newspapers such as Liberation and The Guardian . After he was banned , he wrote under pseudonyms.

In 1950 the CPSA was banned. Bernstein founded the SACP in 1953 with other party members as an underground movement. He was instrumental in the formation of the Congress of Democrats , which cooperated with the African National Congress (ANC), which then had only black members. Lionel Bernstein attended the People's Congress in 1955 , which passed the Freedom Charter . His task was the final formulation of the Freedom Charter. In 1956, Bernstein and 155 other anti-apartheid activists were accused of treason in the Treason Trial , but like all the other accused were acquitted. From 1959 to 1990 he was a board member of The African Communist magazine . He and his wife were arrested after the Sharpeville massacre . Bernstein was only released five months later and was placed under house arrest in 1962 . However, he continued to work underground.

On July 11, 1963, he was arrested along with other high-ranking ANC and SACP officials during a raid in the Johannesburg district of Rivonia . Bernstein was placed in solitary confinement and was a defendant in the Rivonia trial from 1964 to 1965 , in which high-ranking ANC and SACP members such as Nelson Mandela were given life sentences. Only Bernstein and one other defendant were acquitted . After he was released, he was arrested again immediately, but was then released on bail. His wife was also due to be arrested, but escaped in time.

Time in exile and temporary return to South Africa

The Bernsteins decided to go into exile in 1964, mainly because of their children. They fled on foot across the border into Botswana and on to Zambia . From there they traveled to Tanzania and finally to the United Kingdom, where their children also arrived and Bernstein was able to work as an architect in London. There, too, he campaigned for the abolition of apartheid. In 1987 he gave a series of seminars for ANC members in Moscow . He helped set up a political science department at Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Morogoro , Tanzania , where he gave lectures on the struggle for freedom to young ANC members for a year.

Bernstein returned to South Africa for four months in 1994. For the ANC he worked in the press office in preparation for the first free parliamentary elections in South Africa . His job was to convince white voters of the ANC. In 1999 he wrote the book Memory against Forgetting about the resistance against apartheid between 1938 and 1964. In 2002 Bernstein died in his house in Kidlington near Oxford . Zanele Mbeki, the wife of then South African President Thabo Mbeki , also attended his funeral in the UK . Nelson Mandela and his wife Graça Machel visited Hilda Bernstein the week after the funeral.

Works

  • Memory against forgetting. Memoirs from a Life in South African Politics. Viking, London 1999, ISBN 0-670-88792-7

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Website in memory of Lionel and Hilda Bernstein (English), accessed December 7, 2011
  2. ↑ Portrait at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed December 7, 2011
  3. ↑ SACP website ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English), accessed December 7, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sacp.org.za
  4. ↑ Bernstein's profile on the website commemorating Lionel and Hilda Bernstein , accessed on December 7, 2011
  5. ^ Website of the South African President , accessed December 7, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Bernstein, Lionel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Amber, Rusty (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Durban
DATE OF DEATH June 23, 2002
Place of death Kidlington , Oxfordshire