Robert M. Resha

Robert M. Resha was born in 1920, in Bolotwe, Queenstown. A prominent member of the new generation of leaders who emerged in the African National Congress (ANC) during and after the 1952 Defiance Campaign. He completed eight years of formal school and in his late teens went to work as a miner on the Reef. After several years he was dismissed as troublemaker, and he took up free-lance journalism, moving to Sophiatown in Johannesburg around 1940. He later became sports editor of New Age and also wrote for The World. By the late 1940s, he had become an active member of the ANC Youth League and in 1952 he was jailed for participation in the Defiance Campaign. His wife Maggie, a nurse also went to prison as a volunteer.

Aggressive, shrewd, and powerful on the public platform, Resha was co-opted onto the ANC national executive committee in December 1952. In early 1953 he replaced Diliza Mji as Transvaal president of the Youth League, and when bans restricted the league's national president, Joe Matthews. Resha took over as acting president during 1954 and 1955. The government scheme to remove African residential areas west of Johannesburg involved Resha as volunteer-in-chief in the ANC's frustrated efforts to mobilize resistance in Sophiatown in the mid-1950s. One of Resha's speeches of late 1956, in which he said ANC volunteers must 'murder' if called upon to do so, became a prize exhibit in the Treason Trial. As one of the first-string accused in the trial, Resha was held with 29 other defendants until the final acquittal in March 1961.

In 1959, during the course of the trial, he helped to launch the ANC's economic boycott campaign at a mass meeting in Durban. He was shortly thereafter banned from attending gatherings and restricted to Johannesburg. After his acquittal in the Treason Trial, he left South Africa and became a major representative of the ANC in exile, serving in Algiers and other ANC offices abroad and on numerous occasions speaking for the ANC before United Nations committees. He died in London in 1973. His wife was at the time general secretary of the All Africa Women's Conference based in Algiers.

		Robert M. Resha 1920 - 1973


Robert M. Resha was born in 1920, in Bolotwe, Queenstown. A prominent member of the new generation of leaders who emerged in the African National Congress (ANC) during and after the 1952 Defiance Campaign. He completed eight years of formal school and in his late teens went to work as a miner on the Reef. After several years he was dismissed as troublemaker, and he took up free-lance journalism, moving to Sophiatown in Johannesburg around 1940. He later became sports editor of New Age and also wrote for The World. By the late 1940s, he had become an active member of the ANC Youth League and in 1952 he was jailed for participation in the Defiance Campaign. His wife Maggie, a nurse also went to prison as a volunteer. Aggressive, shrewd, and powerful on the public platform, Resha was co-opted onto the ANC national executive committee in December 1952. In early 1953 he replaced Diliza Mji as Transvaal president of the Youth League, and when bans restricted the league's national president, Joe Matthews. Resha took over as acting president during 1954 and 1955. The government scheme to remove African residential areas west of Johannesburg involved Resha as volunteer-in-chief in the ANC's frustrated efforts to mobilize resistance in Sophiatown in the mid-1950s. One of Resha's speeches of late 1956, in which he said ANC volunteers must 'murder' if called upon to do so, became a prize exhibit in the Treason Trial. As one of the first-string accused in the trial, Resha was held with 29 other defendants until the final acquittal in March 1961. In 1959, during the course of the trial, he helped to launch the ANC's economic boycott campaign at a mass meeting in Durban. He was shortly thereafter banned from attending gatherings and restricted to Johannesburg. After his acquittal in the Treason Trial, he left South Africa and became a major representative of the ANC in exile, serving in Algiers and other ANC offices abroad and on numerous occasions speaking for the ANC before United Nations committees. He died in London in 1973. His wife was at the time general secretary of the All Africa Women's Conference based in Algiers.