David Ivon Jones
Names: Jones, David Ivon
Born: 1883, Aberystwyth, Wales
Died: 13 April 1924
In summary: Rabbit hunter, politician and founder member of the CPSA.
David Ivon Jones was born in 1883 in Aberystwyth, Wales. Suffering from tuberculosis, he came to South Africa for his health in 1909. He joined F. H. P. Creswell's Labour Party and was elected its general secretary in 1914, also winning a seat on the Transvaal Provincial Council the same year.
In 1915, with W. H. Andrews and others, he broke with the Labour Party to form the International Socialist League (ISL), which in 1921 merged into the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). Within the ISL, he andS. P. Bunting were the leading proponents of the view that blacks were the true proletariat. Even though Jones combined this view with a somewhat paternalistic belief that whites would inevitably be the vanguard of the socialist revolution, he was ahead of his time in urging the promotion of trade unionism among Africans.
With Bunting between 1917 and 1919 he attempted to form a broad workers' movement called the Industrial Workers of Africa, but the effort came to little. Jones also started some of the first night classes for African workers. According to Roux, Jones was a good linguist and "a man full of dynamic spiritual energy."
In 1918, while undergoing health treatment in Pietermaritzburg, he was convicted of illegally publishing a pamphlet. The Bolsheviks Are Coming, but the conviction was reversed on appeal. In 1920 Jones left South Africa for the south of France, and from France he went to Russia to attend the second congress of the Communist International. Remaining in Russia, he translated a number of Lenin's works into English before dying in a Yalta sanatorium in 1924.
References
- Gerhart G.M and Karis T. (ed) (1977). From Protest to challenge: A documentary History of African Politics in South Africa: 1882-1964, Vol.4 Political Profiles 1882 – 1964. Hoover Institution Pres: Stanford University.
- Anon, David Ivon Jones, from the BBC, [online], Available at www.bbc.co.uk. [Accessed on 7 June 2011]
- Anon, David Ivon Jones, from the South African Communist Party, [online], Available at www.sacp.org.za [ Accessed on 7 June 2011]
- Hunter I, The Delegate For Africa: David Ivon Jones 1883-1924, from Revolutionary History, [online] Available at www.revolutionaryhistory.co.uk [Accessed on 7 June 2011]
