Academic, former ANC underground operative and past political prisoner Raymond Suttner speaks with Polity in a five-part video interview series, on:

1. The evolution of the ANC
2. Models of ANC leadership
3. The glorification of violence
4. The question of race
5. The State of the nation going forward

This series will go live on Creamer Media's Polity at www.polity.org.za on August 10, 2010.
For more information, contact Polity at newsdesk@polity.org.za

Biography:

Raymond Suttner was born in Durban in 1945. He has subsequently become a scholar in a range of areas including law, criminology, politics, history, sociology, gender and various others. He has published 30 and 50 Years of the Freedom Charter (with Jeremy Cronin, 1986, 2006), Inside Apartheid's Prison (2001), The ANC underground (2008) and edited the autobiography of Ray Alexander Simons in 2004. He is currently preparing a book on the Zuma era for Jacana media, named KwaZuma and Beyond (KwaZuma means Zumaland), likely to appear later this year. He has published articles in scholarly journals in South Africa and internationally in a range of areas.

He has held positions at four South African universities and is currently a research professor at UNISA and an honorary research professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. His academic career started in African studies and he has taught or held research positions in law, history and a range of other disciplines. His PhD is in history, sociology and politics.

Suttner has been a visiting fellow at Jadavpur University in Kolkata/Calcutta, India and has been awarded an honorary doctorate by an Indian university.

Politically Suttner has been involved initially as a liberal from his school days and later came to believe he had reached a dead end when he was supposed to study at Oxford University. Instead he was trained to conduct underground work for the ANC and South African Communist Party in the ‘dark years' of the early 1970s, in Durban where he held an academic position at the then University of Natal. After operating for 4 years he was arrested and tortured with electric shocks and spent 8 years in prison.

On release he became involved in the United Democratic Front while simultaneously maintaining illegal contacts with the ANC and SACP. In 1985 he again went underground in order to continue political work during the initial State of Emergency. He was deeply involved in popularising the Freedom Charter and people's power in the mid to late 1980s. Emerging publicly for a few months, he was arrested at the airport in June 1986 (en route to a meeting with the ANC in Zimbabwe) when a new state of emergency was declared. He was held for 27 months, 18 of these in solitary confinement, resulting from his being the only white who remained in detention. He was released in September 1988 under heavy restrictions including house arrest. During the last period of his detention Suttner had been allowed a pet love bird which he trained and housed inside his shirt. The bird emerged with him from detention.

After a year of house arrest, Suttner defied the restrictions in order to fly to Harare and attend the talks on potential negotiations leading to the Harare declaration. Faced with likely prosecution on return he decided to stay out longer and toured a range of countries including Zambia, UK, USA, Australia and the former USSR. He returned without clarity regarding potential charges, but it was on the eve of unbanning of organisations and his restrictions fell away.

Suttner returned to his lecturing post at the University of the Witwatersrand but was requested by Walter Sisulu to work full time for the ANC as head of political education in 1990. He was elected to the national executive in 1991 and the Central Committee of the SACP later that year.

As head of political education he was responsible for coordinating induction of new ANC members and initiated a range of written, audio and audiovisual productions, including the 5 part film Ulibambe Lingashoni, hold up the sun, for which he was executive consultant.
As a leader of the ANC/SACP alliance Suttner wrote a great deal on the emerging democratic order and debates over negotiations, including Slovo's proposed government of national unity. He also visited and attended/addressed meetings in all regions of the ANC and was involved in the march on Bisho9 where 33 people were killed and he was amongst those facing the gunfire.

In 1994 Suttner was elected to Parliament and became chair of the foreign affairs committee. In 1997 he was sent as an ambassador to Sweden until 2001. He did not return to active politics but while remaining engaged, concentrated on research. He has written a range of newspaper articles and appeared on television and radio.

He plans to prepare a biography of Chief Albert Luthuli on whom he has already written newspaper and scholarly articles.