Interview with Joe Slovo by Julie Frederickse http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.INT00000000.043.049A Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org Interview with Joe Slovo by Julie Frederickse Author/Creator Slovo, Joe; Frederickse, Julie Date n.d. Resource type Interviews Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa Source South African History Archive (SAHA) AL3041 Description Interview with Joe Slovo by Julie Frederickse http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.INT00000000.043.049A http://www.aluka.org 40E SLOVO. PAGE 1. 40E SLOVO. PAGE 1. J.F. I thought because of time I wontt dwell n the biographical, but if Itm asking any questions that indicate that the kind of biographies that I've read in movement publipations or this kind of things... J.S. I haven't actually seen this. J.F. Tryto corrct and let me know. Ittp the updated version shots just done - but that's just for basic factyal things. So if I'm as king questions that indicates that lIve got wrong biograph4cal, just correct me, but I thirk probably it's - and the irterviews Verd to be letting people speak personally about thetr political motivations, .o Ild like to start by asking you about when yqu - your parents when you first.,left Lithuania to go to South Africa - can you tell me if your parents were political, how you got politicised, and if you remember your first contacts with African people? J.S. Vo, mymother died when I was 12 and I dortt really remember much gbout her except at the personal leyel - it waq too e.rly to have any kind of discussion I - I supposp. My father I think was apolitiQal in general. He had a nostalgia for eastern Europe, and.dugI g the..war alA the immigrants dqveloped some kind qf claim tEj have some of thp hemour ef the Red Army come off them, as it were, so I yas.,i- anenvirorment *r a boarding house in the Jewish section of Johannesburg, where gonerlly thqre was a grpat sympathy for..- for the Soviet Unio durin the war and it'. there that I sort of imbibed left - broad left politics in - In the Antqrngtioal sense, not inthe local sense, because in thlq locaA sense they were all terrible racists, so they,.thought it was O.K. for Soviet Union and the rest but not - not for South Africa, so it - and the" - well# that that was the sort of bkckgrpurde Then at school I was *rflyo ced 4y ar Irish teacher, who was terribly anti-British, and had often told us stories about, you k-ow, the - the the conquqst of Ireland #nd so on, and he always rqlated it to this scene in South Africa and he - at that stage they had the _ the discussion group contred on what was known as the left book club,_and they also had thq junior left-book club and he took me along t. thq junior left book club, and that w~s the first t~me that_,I actually sat.next to a black man and felt very uncomfort.ble throughout the meeting and I - I - he didr't_I wasn't toomfortable in the sense that I resented it, I ws just - it was just terribly unusual and I wa,.very self-conscious because Itd never since coming to South Africaoever sat next to a black man on an equal basis at a meeting or at a table, and I remember that very clearly - it was a very traumatic occasione.. J.F. How old were you there? J.S. I must have been about 13 - 13 - or close .to 1p, and it was that same year that I left, scIool because my father was out of a job, and went to wvrk in a - a wholesale chemist, biggest in Jolburg, ^nd then became active as _4 trade unionist - I became a shop pteward and we had a - a strike, and I was sacked as a result of that - although we won the strikep but four months later they 0.4cked me and I then worked for angther commercial firm as, a despatch clerk, and then the party instructed all of us to join the army, or whites at any ratev and I -_you knowt by then - well, that was when I wgs sort of ,16 - I'd worked, for thrqe, four years,- my father, who himself hd joined the army, but main.y because he was unemployed, wouldn't sign fqr me and they - it wasn't a conscript army in South Africa, it was a velurtekr army, so if you were under 21 you had to get your parentst permission, and he refusedto sign, but he said if I bluffed my age then hkq wouldn't pull. me out so a few of us when we reaphed the age of maturity where we cquld reasonab-ly say we were 21, which was about 17 or - I think I was 17 then - they - they knew - the recruiting office knew, but they - you know, they didn't care. J. SLOVO. PAGE 2. J.S. And well,soI - I joined the army, but it was - when I worked for - for this firp, (.......) Brothers and KXnovsky (?) which has noi bfcom. S.A. Druggists t#ey the biggest sort of drug wholesalers - itts there at that point I joined the party, got involved with the trade unins, the 7i4tioal Union of Distributive Werk qrs - so that is a came. J.F. And was it any big step for you then to join Jhe party? J.S. Well, I tried - I sed to go along on Sunday rights - we ad a - a sort of Hyde Park corner outside the Johannesburg City Hall - the party had a regular platform or - seven ecleck on §urday evenings, and we were regularly q@ttackqd by the J lack shirts - you knew, this is during.the war and I remember trying to join - I was In..short trousers actually at, that stage and - and a l3gading party guy by the name of Izy Wolfser, whq was a very, very impressive oratep, spoke, and thqn after he had spoken I.was so impressed - I don't remember what he spoke about.- I -,came up and asked me to Joln the party, Rnd he looked down a my short trousers and said I'd better wait a while, so I waited a while and eventually joined the party and seqrt of, yen knowj dLdall the V4hinge tIat party people did. We used togEO and address mee.ings in the townships and sell (?) every Sunday morning - go fron door lo door Roll the GuardiAn, thpq party literature - and vll, thern I wert, as I say,.after a while, after all these troubles and sackngs and so on, I Joined the army, and wher I c4me.,out because I was an kg-servicema, I was given special dispensation to write a Watriq exemption exam,,,whigh wa really sort of like make a sentence out of cat - I mean they weren't particularly worried about ex-servicemeno - and I got this gr.4, and went to uniyersity, becampa a lawyer. J.P. Because my focus is on non-racialism, I wonder if you can go back to that moment wherq you sat next to the black man for the first time and just tell me a bit about how that progresseoI that you were able to work with blacks. And you also spoke about how the whites were terrible racists, the ea.gly CP.peopje. Is that semkthing that.... J.S. Well, noj - not in mytime - I mean the CP p.oplo were n'it racists.... J.F. Just when you spoke about the people early on you yourself said that, that they were left but in a.... J.S. No, no, well, they werentt CP people - I mean I'm talking about the sort of east Eyropear immigrant community - they_,were mqmbers of a - a club called the Jewish Workers Club, which wag sort of left inclLned and sang Soviet lands (?) gre dear to every toiler and so on, bt most pf them were very backiard on the racial question, but they werentt members of the party - I mean these were the port of just Immigrant oemuity, where there was a general well oa sympathy for - for - for Sqviet socialism and so on - theytd 41 loft egte' Europe as a result of pogrees and so on - net fre t~e Soviet Uri", but from the qurroundig areas like Latvia, Lithuania, Esloni&a Poland, and they had this image, you know, that the Soviet Union wgs a - a qotrast to the kind of country they'd pome from, and they hgdn't ineVgrated in South Africa really - they continued to speak Yiddish ands you know - so they weren't CcP people - mean you know - I - I think in g.qneral wqllq in - in the CP itqelf, well, I - I doubt very much whether one could say there was ary sigrificanr r~cist tendency, except the kind of tendency which is just inherited from .4 papt life, which is - is intuitive more orless bgsed on - on upbringing fperhaps a bit of ar~ogance on the part of whites, a b.t of resentment on the part of blacks, wLch every now and again surfaces in - i" personal relationships, but not at the political level - I mean that still exists and will - will continue to exist for some time.