Mary Benson (campaigner)
Mary Benson (1919-2000) was a South African civil rights campaigner and author.[1]
Born in 1919, Benson served in the South African Women's Army during World War II.[1] After the war, she was secretary to film director David Lean.[1]
She became acquainted with the author Alan Paton, and read his novel Cry, the beloved country (1948), whose main theme was racial discrimination in South Africa.[1] This affected her greatly, and she became a campaigner for the rights of black people there.[2]
She worked with Michael Scott, (who, in 1946, was the first white man to be jailed for resisting South Africa's racial laws),[3] and helped to found the African Bureau.
She testified to the United Nations Committee on Apartheid in 1963, and was the first South African to do so.[2] She was placed under house arrest and "banned" in 1966. She subsequently left the country and lived in exile.
She appeared as a "castaway" on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 16 February 1997.[2]
She died in 2000.[1] Her papers, including correspondence with Semane Molotlegi and those relating to her biography of Tshekedi Khama, are archived in the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Oxford.[1]
Bibliography
- —— (1960). Tshekedi Khama. Faber and Faber.
- —— (1963). African Patriots. The story of the African National Congress of South Africa. Faber and Faber.
- —— (1986). Nelson Mandela. Hamilton. ISBN 978-0393022964.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Mary Benson Papers". University of Oxford. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
- 1 2 3 "Desert Island Discs - Castaway : Mary Benson". BBC Online. BBC. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
- ↑ "Scott, Michael, South Africa, Anglican". Dacb.org. Retrieved 2014-08-20.
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