The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Indeed, in this genealogy, the most indefatigable documenter and biographer of the
political and intellectual labours of South African Trotskyism was undoubtedly
Baruch Hirson, who devoted a substantial amount of his time in exile in London to
researching a myriad of questions relating to this history. He also gave support and
encouragement to many younger scholars, who spent time researching his personal
papers. 30 Hirson, himself, had been an activist in the Trotskyist movement in South
Africa at different times in the 1940s and 1950s, and some of his research was
addressed to analysing political events, movements, strategies and assessments in
which he himself had been a participant. While in exile, Hirson completed a doctoral
dissertation on the black working class in the 1930s and 1940s, 31 was a regular
participant in the academic activities of the Institute for Commonwealth Studies at
the University of London, and for a while, even taught at Bradford University. Partly
because of having been a participant in certain events and movements he wrote
about and wanting to rise above his “rancour of yesteryear”, as well as wanting his
writings to stand as more than merely the personal testimony of an activist wanting
to set records straight, Hirson advocated a reliance on “basic documents” as evidence
in order to tell stories “dispassionately” and achieve the accuracy needed to avoid a
mere “potted history”. 32 According to Hirson:
Cape Town, 1978; Ciraj Rassool, ‘Going Back to Our Roots: Aspects of Marxist and Radical
Thought and Politics in South Africa, 1930‐1960’, M.A. Thesis, Northwestern University, 1987;
Baruch Hirson, Yours for the Union: Class and Community Struggles in South Africa 1930‐1947,
London: Zed, 1989. In the early 1990s, my own research on Tabata continued to be firmly premised
on the need to identify the lineages and ruptures in the history of Troskyist political formations;
see Ciraj Rassool, ‘Non‐Stalinist Marxism and National Liberation in South Africa before 1960’, in
Proceedings of Conference on Marxism in South Africa: Past, Present and Future, UWC, 1991.
30 See Tom Lodge’s description of Hirson’s “generosity of spirit” in his Foreword to Hirson’s
posthumously published book, The Cape Town Intellectuals: Ruth Schechter and her Circle, 1907‐1934
(Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2001). I spent a period doing research on Hirson’s papers in
1992, and benefited from extensive discussions with him. Allison Drew had spent time in 1987 doing
research in Baruch Hirson’s ‘private archive’ (Tom Karis, personal communication, 1987; Drew had
just been in touch with Karis about the progress of her research). However, in her research, Drew
referred to Hirson’s former activism, and not to his scholarly research.
31 This was published as Yours for the Union.
32 Ciraj Rassool, ‘Introduction of Keynote Speaker, Baruch Hirson’, Marxist Theory Seminar
Conference, Marxism in South Africa – Past, Present and Future, UWC, September 1991; Baruch Hirson,
Additional Comments to Al Richardson’s Review of Robert J Alexander, International Trotskyism 1929‐
307