Hilda Bernstein is another exemplar of what we have in previous posts termed “laudable communism,”* which differs in significant and sundry ways from, say, the Party-State Communism of the former Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (countries in which indispensable Liberal principles and values indissolubly linked to democratic theory and praxis were severed from putatively Marxist or socialist ideas and ideals of one kind or another). Immediately below is Bernstein’s (edited) entry on Wikipedia, followed by a brief yet well-written biography by Tanya Barben (found at Revisions: Expanding the Narrative of South African Art).
“Hilda Bernstein was a British-born author, artist, and an activist against apartheid and for women’s rights. She was born Hilda Schwarz in London and emigrated to South Africa at the age of 18 years and became active in politics. She married fellow activist Lionel ‘Rusty’ Bernstein in March 1941, and together they played prominent roles in the struggle to end Apartheid in South Africa. After her husband was tried and acquitted in the Rivonia Trial in 1964, government harassment forced them to flee to Botswana, an ordeal described in her 1989 book The World that was Ours. They lived in Britain for some years where she further established herself internationally as a speaker, writer, and artist. She returned with her husband to South Africa in 1994 for the South African election in which fellow activist Nelson Mandela was elected President. She died at the age of 91 in Cape Town, South Africa.
Bernstein was born in London to Russian-Jewish immigrants Simeon and Dora Schwarz. When she was ten her father, who was a lifelong Bolshevik and had been the Russian Trade Attaché to Britain, was recalled to the Soviet Union. He was not able to return to Britain, and after his death she quit school to work before emigrating to South Africa at the age of 18 to work in journalism. In response to the rise of fascism in Europe, she became involved with the Labour Party. This party, however, did not share her growing concern with apartheid and she left it to join the South African Communist Party, the only South African party with no racial segregation. She demonstrated her speaking and organizing skills on the party's district committee and national executive committee.
Through her political activities she met Lionel ‘Rusty’ Bernstein, whom she married in March 1941. In 1943 she was elected to the city council of Johannesburg by a then all-white electorate, the only member of the Communist Party to do so. She used this position for three years as a platform for publicizing the injustices of apartheid. In the 1950s she became more focused on organizing with women. She was a founding member of the multi-racial Federation of South African Women in 1956, and she was one of the organizers of the Women’s March to Pretoria. Her writings were appearing regularly in periodicals in South Africa and other nations in Africa and Europe.
As early as 1946 the South African government began its attempts to limit her activities and minimize her political influence. In that year she was convicted of assisting an illegal strike of black mineworkers. In 1953 the government banned her membership in a list of organizations, and in 1958 extended this ban to prohibit her from writing or publishing. In 1960 she was detained during the state of emergency declared after the Sharpeville massacre. She was therefore required to go underground with her political work.
In 1963 her husband Rusty was one of 19 African National Congress leaders arrested at Johannesburg suburb of Rivonia. Rusty was acquitted at the Rivonia Trial, but was soon rearrested and released on bail to house arrest. Hilda Bernstein fled from their home as the police were on the way to arrest her. They fled to Botswana, crossing the border on foot. In exile, the Bernsteins eventually settled in Britain where they continued to work in support of the African National Congress. She also dedicated her written and oral communication skills to the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the British peace movement. Her writings and speaking engagements were numerous in Europe, the United States, and Canada. [….]
Rusty and Hilda Bernstein returned to South Africa in 1994 to participate in the South African election which was the first democratic election where all races were allowed to vote, and see the end of apartheid and their fellow ANC member Nelson Mandela become president.
In 1998, both Rusty and Hilda were awarded honorary degrees from the University of Natal for their role in helping to bring democracy to South Africa. Rusty died at their home in 2002. In 2004 she was awarded the Luthuli Silver Award for her ‘contribution to the attainment of gender equality and a free and democratic society’ in South Africa. She died from heart failure at the age of 91 at her home in Cape Town, South Africa. She was survived by their four children: Toni, Patrick, Frances, and Keith Bernstein. In March 2011, the country of Gambia issued a postage stamp in her honor, naming her as one of the Legendary Heroes of Africa.”
Hilda Bernstein
By Tanya Barben (Revisions: Expanding the Narrative of South African Art)
“… [A] remarkable woman, [Hilda Bernstein] … was an accomplished artist, a significant recorder of South Africa’s liberation struggle and a political activist who was hounded by the Security Police, detained, banned repeatedly and forced to go into exile with her family. She also had to endure the uncertainty of the 1964 Rivonia Trial in which her husband, Rusty (Lionel), was appearing on a charge of treason as a co-accused with Nelson Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada, Dennis Goldberg, Walter Sisulu, Harold Wolpe and others. All expectations were that they would be given the death sentence, but Rusty was released on account of lack of evidence.
A committed feminist, Bernstein, together with Ray Alexander Simons, founded the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) which was to become what was once described as ‘the most dynamic of women’s organisations in the history of South Africa.’ Although neither women were able to attend FEDSAW’s inaugural conference on account of their being banned, they helped to draw up the Women’s Charter (the forerunner of the following year’s Freedom Charter), which not only articulated a strong feminist emphasis but also reflected on the political, social and economic conditions of the oppressed black people of South Africa. She became the first communist to be elected to public office by an all-white electorate when she won the Hillbrow seat on the Johannesburg City Council during the War years. She was an extremely effective public speaker whose words were grounded on hours of reflection and intense research.
Fellow activist and friend, Helen Joseph, described Bernstein as a ‘warm-hearted communist’ who was, Joseph adds, free from the chauvinism and dogma that so often characterised communism and its adherents. She shared a cell with her and others during the detentions of the 1960 State of Emergency and mentioned Bernstein’s contribution to raising the spirit of the detainees. Joseph recognised that Bernstein’s love for her own children, Toni, Patrick, Frances and Keith, was the catalyst for her concern for the suffering of all women, black women in particular. This concern, in fact, manifested itself before she became a mother. Bernstein’s political activism was driven partially by her intense desire to leap the divide between the various sections of the South African population. The Bernstein’s home in Observatory, Johannesburg, became a magnet for like-thinking South Africans of all races.
… [I]n the 1960s … she took up painting classes at the University of the Witwatersrand at Rusty’s suggestion. As a communist she was a ‘listed’ person who was likely to be placed under 24-hour house arrest. The painting classes, he thought, might provide her with the opportunity to get out of the house for some hours every week. These were the first formal art classes she was to attend, although her artistic ability was evident in the advertising and newspaper cover work she produced, and in the expressive and insightful caricatures of her fellow detainees she sketched during the State of Emergency. [….]
Hilda Watts was born in 1915 in London to East European parents. Her father, Simeon Schwartz, hailed from Odessa in the Ukraine. He had come to Britain to avoid the Tsar’s draft, and was quickly assimilated into London’s working-class environment (he considered himself a member of the upper working-class). Her mother, Dora, was also an East European who had come to London as a young girl, essentially as the unpaid servant to her brother and his family. She was deprived of a school education as a child but developed into a self-taught lover of the arts and admirer of Ruskin. Simeon changed his name to Samuel Watts to counteract the anti-German sentiment of the Great War period. He was a fervent supporter of the Bolsheviks and became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic’s representative in Britain. In 1925 he was summoned to Moscow and Bernstein was not to see her father again although for some time correspondence flowed between London and Moscow. In one letter she told her father of her interest in art. When it was quite clear that Simeon was not going to return to his family, Dora decided to move to South Africa. Bernstein was 18 when she arrived in this country. She soon began to be aware of the complexities of race relations in South Africa and considered what she saw as an insult to humanity. She joined the Communist Party of South Africa and that was where she met Rusty. Despite the age gap (he was five years younger) she was attracted to his strength and vigour and the fact that they shared the same idealism. They remained devoted to each other for the rest of their lives.
Following Rusty’s discharge at the Rivonia Trial he continued to be hounded by the apartheid authorities. So many of their friends and comrades were in prison or had gone into exile, and Molly Fischer, a much-loved friend, had died tragically. They, too, had to make the painful decision to leave South Africa. This they did by fleeing across the border into what was then the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Eventually they were joined by their three youngest children and their eldest, Toni, who had married Ivan Strasburg, also a political activist. Bernstein spent her time in exile working tirelessly for the African National Congress (ANC). She became a sought-after public speaker internationally. She found the time to turn to her interest in art, [taking] formal art classes and [holding] exhibitions. Her art found its way into many public and private collections. Her artwork was also been used in many publications for the Anti-Apartheid Movement. She and Rusty returned to South Africa in 1994 to vote in South Africa’s first democratic election. They were the recipients of honorary degrees from the University of Natal and in 2004 she was awarded the South African honour, the Luthuli Award in silver, for her ‘contribution to the attainment of gender equality and a free and democratic society’ in South Africa.
The Bernsteins settled in Cape Town where both continued to write and Bernstein to pursue her art interests. Rusty died in 2002. Hilda painted and drew until her death from a heart attack in 2006.”
* For example (and by way of illustration, far from a comprehensive list): such individuals, groups, and political parties as Paulo Freire, Pete Seeger, Brian Percy Bunting, Lionel Forman, Ruth First, Joe Slovo, Bram Fischer, Yusuf Dadoo, Moses Kotane, J.B. Marks, Thabo Edwin Mofutsanyana, Rachel (Ray) Simons and Jack Simons, Lionel ‘Rusty’ Bernstein, George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Cyril Briggs, Claudia Jones, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Howard “Stretch” Johnson, Harry Haywood, William L. Patterson, Richard Wright, Anne and Carl Braden, Dorothy (Ray) Healey, Angela Y. Davis …; and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)/CPI(M)] in West Bengal and Kerala (and other Indian states), the Palestine Communist Party, “Red Chicago,” “Alabama Communists during the Great Depression,” Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit, the Communist Children’s Movement in the U.S. (summer camps and other programs), Camp Wo-Chi-Ca (created under the auspices of the International Workers Order or IWO—the Communist Party-oriented split-off of the Workmen’s Circle), Communists in the Civil Rights Congress ….
References and Further Reading
- Bernstein, Hilda. Death is Part of the Process. London: Sinclair Browne, 1983.
- Bernstein, Hilda. For their Triumphs and for their Tears: Conditions and Resistance of Women in Apartheid South Africa. London: International Defence & Aid Fund [for South Africa], (August) 1975.
- Bernstein, Hilda. A Life of One’s Own. Houghton [South Africa]: Jacana, 2002.
- Bernstein, Hilda. South Africa: The Terrorism of Torture. London: International Defence & Aid Fund [for South Africa], 1972.
- Bernstein, Hilda. No. 46—Steve Biko. London: International Defence & Aid Fund [for South Africa], (April) 1978.
- Bernstein, Hilda. The World That Was Ours: The Story of the Rivonia Trial. London: SAWriters, 1989.
- Bernstein, Rusty. Memory Against Forgetting: Memoirs from a Life in South African Politics, 1938-1964. London: Viking, 1999.
- Frankel, Glenn. Rivonia’s Children: three families and the price of freedom in South Africa. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1999.
- Meredith, Martin. Fischer’s Choice: A Life of Bram Fischer. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2002.
See too the compilation on South African Liberation Struggles
Comments