Brian Bunting was a South African activist and journalist known as a stalwart of the South African Communist Party.
20 Facts About Brian Bunting
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Brian Bunting represented the African National Congress in the National Assembly from 1994 to 1999.
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Brian Bunting went into exile in England from 1963 to 1991 to avoid state persecution.
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Brian Bunting spent several decades as a member of the Central Committee of the SACP.
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Brian Bunting was born on 9 April 1920 in Johannesburg in the former Transvaal.
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Brian Bunting's parents were communists and founding members of the Communist Party of South Africa in 1921; Jeremy Cronin later described Bunting's father, Sidney Bunting, as "the key early architect" of the party.
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Brian Bunting attended Jeppe High School in Johannesburg and matriculated early, at the age of 15.
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Brian Bunting formally joined the CPSA, although he said that he had always taken his membership for granted, having grown up in the party.
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Brian Bunting initially refused to fight in World War II, viewing it as an imperialistic war, but he enlisted after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
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Brian Bunting served in the army's information service on the North African front.
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Brian Bunting was briefly arrested during a strike by black mineworkers in 1946.
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From 1952, Brian Bunting personally was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act, which circumscribed his political activity and ability to publish.
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Brian Bunting was involved in the dissolution of the CPSA and then its re-emergence underground as the South African Communist Party.
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Brian Bunting worked for TASS, a Soviet news agency, and edited the African Communist, the official journal of the SACP.
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Brian Bunting served on the Central Committee of the SACP, ultimately for over fifty years.
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In South Africa's first post-apartheid elections in 1994, Brian Bunting was elected to represent the African National Congress, the SACP's close ally, in the new multi-racial National Assembly.
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Brian Bunting thereby returned to the seat that he had been expelled from 41 years earlier.
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Brian Bunting married Sonia Isaacman on the day that he moved to Cape Town in 1946.
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Brian Bunting's health deteriorated in mid-2007 and he died on 18 June 2008, aged 88, at home in Rondebosch, Cape Town.
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In 2009, Brian Bunting was posthumously awarded the Order of Luthuli in Silver for "his excellent contribution to anti-apartheid literature and journalism and for his courage in exposing the evils of apartheid to the world".