The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

and was conducted as part of a wider circle of socialist evaluation that took the form of
documentary history and radical antiquarianism. 38
Hirson’s penchant for biography as a means of recovery of radical history had a
pedigree that stretched back at least to the early 1980s. Among his earliest historical
publications after his arrival in Britain was a biographical study of Johannesburg trade
unionist, Dan Koza, which was published under a pseudonym. 39 Here the
reconstruction of Koza’s career as a trade unionist and political activist was also a
means to record the influence of the Trotskyist Workers International League (WIL) ‐
of which Hirson had been a member ‐ on trade unions in Johannesburg, and to set the
record straight in relation to Koza’s life and its impact and influence. This had been
“barely known even to the most serious student of contemporary events”. 40 Although
this study was connected to Hirson’s doctoral research, it can also be seen as one of
Hirson’s earliest acts of documentation, an early foray into creating a public record of
aspects of South African socialism. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Hirson became
more committed to the project of researching and recording the history of socialism in
South Africa through documentation and biography, he also imbibed from a growing,
but theoretically limited field of Trotskyist biographic work. 41 Hirson’s main concern
38 Hirson served on the editorial board of Revolutionary History, a platform constructed by different
Trotskyist groups in Britain to “right … historic wrong[s]”, especially those perpetuated by
“generations of liberal and Communist historians”, (Introduction, Revolutionary History, Vol 4, No.s
1&2, 1991‐2, p 1) and to create a public record of Trotskyist political activity in different parts of the
world in the form of historical and analytical articles, eye‐witness accounts, and original documents.
Part of the motivation for this research and documentation was a belief that “Trotskyism’s complex
history can only be understood from inside” (Al Richardson, Review of Robert J Alexander,
International Trotskyism 1929‐1985, p 169). The publication of the evidence of this history was necessary
as a body of lessons because “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” (Cover,
Revolutionary History, Vol 4, No 4, Spring 1993. Among the special issues of Revolutionary History
produced were The Spanish Civil War: The View from the Left (Revolutionary History, Vol 4, No.s 1&2,
Winter, 1991‐92) and Victor Serge – The Century of the Unexpected: Essays on Revolution and Counter‐
Revolution (Revolutionary History, Vol 5, No 3, Autumn 1994). Some of Hirson’s colleagues on the
Revolutionary History editorial board also documented Trotskyism’s history in other societies through
the publication of monographs. See Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, The War and the International: A
History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain 1937‐1949 (London: Socialist Platform, 1986).
39 David Harries (Pseudonym for Baruch Hirson), ‘Daniel Koza: A Working Class Leader’, Africa
Perspective, No 19, 1981.
40 David Harries, ‘Daniel Koza: A Working Class Leader’, p 2.
41 For example, Wang Fan‐hsi, Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary. Translated and with an Introduction
by Gregor Benton; New York: Columbia University Press, 1991; Alan M Wald, The New York
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