(National Library of South Africa: Cape Town Cape Times Negative Collection) Sachs and Butcher were among the first white South Africans to join the campaign in Cape Town. ![]() The fist signifies strength in unity and the upright thumb signifies optimism that the struggle will succeed. Albie Sachs with Joseph Nkatlo and Mary Butcher giving the thumbs-up sign while singing “Nkosi Sikilel’ iAfrika” at a Defiance Campaign meeting (April 12, 1952). On his sixth birthday, with the war raging in Europe and North Africa, he received a card from his father, saying he hoped Albie would grow up to be a soldier in the fight for liberation. Solly and Ray separated when Albie was small, but Solly’s example of political activism remained a powerful influence on young Albie. South Africa, as part of the British Empire, went to war against Nazi Germany, but the young Albie was aware that many of his white neighbors were sympathetic to the Nazis and their racist ideology. In 1931, Solly Sachs was expelled from the Communist Party for his independent views, but he remained a highly visible labor leader and was a frequent target of government investigation.Īlbert Louis, known from childhood as Albie, was only four years old when World War II began in Europe. Emil Sachs, known as Solly, became the leader of South Africa’s Garment Workers Union, and made it a vehicle for promoting the rights of all workers, including black Africans and women, who were shunned by other labor organizations. At the time, the Communist Party was one of the few political organizations in South Africa open to members of all races, and the only major multiracial party to advocate racial equality. Two years later, he joined the struggle for racial equality.īoth Emil Sachs and Ray Ginsberg joined South Africa’s communist youth movement in the 1920s. Albie Sachs entered the University of Cape Town at 15. Memory of this oppression informed the Sachs family’s view of their new country, where native Africans were denied many of the rights freely granted to European immigrants. ![]() ![]() Under the Tsar’s rule, Jews throughout the empire were subjected to constant discrimination and frequent outbursts of mob violence, with the open encouragement of the state. His father, Emil Solomon Sachs, and his mother, Ray Ginsberg, had both immigrated as children from Lithuania when it was still part of the Russian Empire. Albert Louis Sachs was born in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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