CHNN 22, Spring 2008 - School of Social Sciences

Sidney occupied several leading positions in the ISL and the CPSA, working selflessly for both
organisations. In order to give all his time to the party, he gave up his income, leaving his legal
practice and resigning as director of a family business. One cannot say that he created a growing
African following for the party single-handed, but he was the first to start this process and he
contributed all his passion and talent to it. However, his reputation as a ‘native lover’ or ‘pronative’
made his life increasingly difficult even among his comrades, let alone his relatives in
London and South Africa. He fell out of favour with the Comintern because the wisdom of a ‘native
republic’, as opposed to a ‘proletarian republic’, escaped him. But he bowed to the Comintern’s
authority and preached the ‘native republic’. Perhaps his greatest achievement was his 1929
election campaign in Thembuland – part of what later became Transkei, and is now part of the
Eastern Cape province. He lost the election but the campaign made a huge impact: thereafter the
CPSA was known as ‘Bunting’s party’ in this area and among broader circles of the African
population. In the wake of this campaign Sidney organised the League of African Rights in order to
fight against a set of new discriminatory laws just enacted.
This was against the wishes of the Comintern: Moscow wanted the African masses to fight not by
petitions but by radical action. This started an anti-Bunting frenzy among the party leadership;
and, although a large group of African supporters tried to fight for him, in 1931 he was expelled
from the party and then even from all the party front organisations, such as the Friends of the
Soviet Union. The accusations against him were nonsensical and the campaign against him truly
ugly. This shattered him: the party was his life, and he firmly believed that he – or any other
communist – neither should, nor could act without it. He was also left without any means of
existence. His last years were terrible. It was too late to start from scratch: in 1931 he was fiftyeight.
He ended up playing the viola in an orchestra to support his family, but even this was too
hard as the job involved a lot of travelling. Redemption came only after his death five years later:
his supporters organised a massive ‘red’ funeral for him, at which the left of all persuasions
gathered to pay their last respects. But the party never rehabilitated Sidney Bunting: neither then,
nor later.
Allison Drew has written an unbelievably detailed chronicle of Sidney’s life. We learn where the
family of Bunting Sr. spent its every holiday, what marks Sidney got at school, what disputes he
participated in and with what result. We discover the background of his school teachers and
university lecturers, and how the rooms he occupied in Magdalen looked. We learn every turn of
Sidney’s prolonged involvement in the family business in Natal, and virtually every detail of that
business too. Then there are his writings, his speeches and his letters to his wife and sons, as well
as detailed accounts of party meetings. We even learn of the behaviour of his relatives, colleagues
and friends towards him at every stage of his life and his political career. Drew’s list of notes takes
forty pages and contains every possible relevant archival collection and book. And, despite her
dispassionate style, the books sucks in the reader like a novel. It is an engaging life of an
outstanding personality.
Yet, gaps remain. It is still not clear, why Sidney became a communist. There is no hint in the book
that he even read any marxist literature before he joined the party. However, he was not an
ordinary member: he became a knowledgeable communist, who took the idea of the party
discipline to heart. He also accepted the party idea that however one debates issues within the
party, organising a faction is the road to disaster. Such a change could not come about overnight,
but we do not see it. Bunting as a personality remains outside the scope of this book.
The same is truer still about his wife, Rebecca Bunting. She was a powerful personality in her own
right, a staunch communist and also a founder-member of the party. Drew gives a lot of details
about her – even of her illnesses – yet Rebecca’s persona remains even more mysterious than
Sydney’s. She seems to be always in his shadow.
In other words, Drew does not offer explanations, visions or guesses to the reader: she offers facts
but not interpretations. She has produced an excellent biography – but the author is strangely
absent.
Irina Filatova, Professor of Moscow School of Economics (Russia) and Professor
Emeritus of the University of KwaZuluNatal (South Africa)
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