Martin Legassick

Biography

Martin Legassick (1940~) is an eminent and world renowned South African historian and theoretician and a lifelong activist. Legassick was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1947 he and his parents emigrated to South Africa. In 1960 he became a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. He later completed his PhD at the University of California.

In 1979, Martin Legassick, together with Paula Ensor, Dave Hemson and Rob Petersen, was suspended from the African National Congress for allegedly forming a faction. They regarded their suspension as undemocratic. They subsequently launched the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC. The Marxist Workers’ Tendency was affiliated to the Committee for a Workers' International, an international organisation of Trotskyist parties and the newspaper, The Militant. Legassick was expelled from the ANC in 1985.

In 1981 he left academia to become a full-time anti-apartheid activist. After the unbanning of the ANC in 1990 he was able to return home to Cape Town where he returned to academia. He later became a prominent activist working with the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, with Abahlali baseMjondolo, with the Mandela Park Backyarders and, more recently, the Democratic Left Front. wiki

Affiliations

• Research board (2007), Centre for Civil Society

Books

The Struggle for the Eastern Cape, 1800–1854: Subjugation and the Roots of South African Democracy, 2011 The Politics of a South African Frontier The Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the Missionaries, 2010 Towards Socialist Democracy, July 2007 Armed Struggle and Democracy : The Case of South Africa, July 2003 Skeletons in the Cupboard : South African Museums and the Trade in Human Remains, 1907–1917 by South African Museum, Martin Legassick, Alexander McGregor Memorial Museum, Ciraj Rassool January 2000, Foreign Investment and the Reproduction of Racial Capitalism in South Africa by Martin Legassick and David Hemson, January 1976