Roux, Edward

Edward Roux was born in the northern Transvaal, South Africa, in 1903, the son of an English mother and an Afrikaner father. He grew up in Johannesburg, where his father opened a pharmacy in 1907. Roux's father was a free-thinker and Roux, while still a student, helped found the Young Communists League in 1921. In 1923 he joined the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). After completing his first degree at the University of the Witwatersrand he was awarded a scholarship to Cambridge University, where he spent the years 1926-1929 completing a PhD and carrying out research on plant physiology. In 1928 he visited Moscow as a South African delegate to the 6th Congress of the Communist International. He returned to South Africa in 1929, and by 1930 was engaged on full-time political work as editor of 'Umsebnzi', the Communist weekly. He remained active until 1935 when he was removed from the party's political bureau for aleged right wing sympathies. He left the CPSA in 1936 and took no direct part in politics for the next 20 years. He returned to his academic career and in 1945 he joined the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he became professor of botany in 1962. In 1957 he became an active member of the multiracial Liberal Party of South Africa. Although 'named' as a former member of the CPSA in 1950 he was not singled out for persecution by the Nationalist government until the early 1960s. In 1963 he was forced to resign from the Liberal Party under new ruled banning 'named' persons, and in 1964 he was issued a full array of banning orders, prohibiting him from teaching, publishing, attending gatherings, being quoted, or leaving Johannesburg. He died in 1966. Publications S P Banting - A Political Biography , 1944; Longer than Rope [the first major history of African nationalism in South Africa], 1948, numerous articles and pamphlets. His autobiography Rebel Pity: The Life of Eddie Roux was written with his wife Winifred, and published posthumously in 1970.