The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

was to record the truth of socialism’s history, to “get the record straight”, 42 with little
more than archival and empirical intent.
From the late 1980s, Searchlight South Africa became Hirson’s most important platform
for this project of documenting the facts of South African socialism’s intellectual and
political history, and evaluating the life histories of socialists and those connected with
them. 43 Importantly, for our purposes, it was here that Hirson reflected much more
purposefully on the history of South African Trotskyism, 44 and on the history of the
Unity Movement, 45 with which he had been associated. It was here that Hirson drew
upon the evidence of his own and other documentary archives (Carter and Karis, for
example) as well as his own recollections to evaluate I.B. Tabata’s political ideas and
influence in relation to the WPSA, AAC and NEUM. Hirson also wrote a special
obituary article to assess Tabata’s political career. 46
Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti‐Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill and
London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987. The title of the latter book was the influence for
Hirson’s The Cape Town Intellectuals.
42 Baruch Hirson, ‘Socialism – Has it Failed?: Joe Slovo’s Apologia for Mr Gorbachev’, Searchlight South
Africa, No 5, July 1990.
43 From the inception of the journal, space was provided for the publication of archival documents. See
for example, ‘David Ivon Jones: The Early Writings on Socialism in South Africa’, Searchlight South
Africa, Vol 1, No 1 September 1988 (this was clearly an annotated presentation of documents as part of
the biography of Jones); ‘Selections from Spark’, Searchlight South Africa, No 2, February 1989; Leon
Trotsky, ‘Remarks on the Draft Thesis of the Workers Party’, Searchlight South Africa, No 4, February
1990; Frank Glass, ‘The Commune of Bulhoek’, Searchlight South Africa, No 6, January 1991. This was
also where Hirson published shorter biographical articles, often in preliminary form, as work in
progress, based upon his archival searches. See for example, ‘Spark and the “Red Nun”’, Searchlight
South Africa, No 2, February 1989; ‘Ruth Schechter: Friend to Olive Schreiner’, Searchlight South Africa,
No 9, August 1992.
44 Baruch Hirson, Supplement to Searchlight South Africa, No 10, April 1993: The Trotskyists of South
Africa, 1932‐48. The articles in this Supplement were also published along with a piece by Ian Hunter
(‘Raff Lee and the Pioneer Trotskyists of Johannesburg’), in a special issue of Revolutionary History (Vol
4, No 4, Spring 1993) called Colour and Class: The Origins of South African Trotskyism. This issue of
Revolutionary History also contained 65 pages of archival documents on historical and policy issues of
South African Trotskyist formations, including correspondence, and statements on ‘the land question’,
trade unions, the party and the war.
45 Baruch Hirson, ‘A Short History of the Non‐European Unity Movement: An Insider’s View’,
Searchlight South Africa, No 12, June 1995.
46 Baruch Hirson, ‘The Dualism of I.B. Tabata’, Searchlight South Africa, Vol 2, No 2, January 1991.
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