About this site

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

Bunting, Brian Percy

The son of Sidney Bunting, he was a leader of the Communist Party of South Africa and a journalist. Born in 1920 in Johannesburg, he graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1939. He then worked as a sub-editor on the Rand Daily Mail and the Sunday Times of Johannesburg.

After serving in North Africa and Italy during World War II, he became assistant editor of The Guardian. Later he became chief editor of The Guardian and its successor publications, Advance, Clarion, Peoples' World, and New Age, which was published in Cape Town (except during the 1960 emergency) until it was banned in 1962.

He was assistant national secretary of the Springbok Legion and an editor of its journal, Fighting Talk. In 1946 he was elected to the Johannesburg district committee of the Communist Party, and later served on the party's central committee. He was arrested following the 1946 African mine strike, but charges against him were subsequently dropped.

From November 1952 to October 1953 he was a Natives' representative in the house of Assembly from Cape Western district. Elected to succeed Sam Kahn, he was, like Kahn, expelled from the Parliament because of his membership in the CPSA. Bunting was banned in 1952, detained in 1960, and placed under house arrest in 1962. He was prohibited from publishing in 1963 when he was a writer for Spark.

Shortly afterwards he left South Africa for London. His writings include The Rise of the South African Reich (1964 and 1969).

Source: sahistory.org.za

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.