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This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

Slovo, Joe

1926 - 1995

Joe Slovo was born in Lithuania and moved to South Africa at the age of nine. He studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand, eventually becoming an advocate at the Johannesburg Bar. He was an active member of the SACP from the 1940s and was named under the Suppression of Communism Act. Slovo was also a founder member of the Congress of Democrats in 1953 and was one of the 156 accused in the 1956 Treason Trial.

Slovo left South Africa in 1963 and continued working for the ANC and the SACP abroad. In 1977 he established an operational centre for the ANC in Maputo. He was also a member of the Central Committee of the SACP and Chief of Staff of uMkhonto weSizwe until 1987. In 1985 he became a member of the ANC National Executive Committee and in 1991 he was elected Party Chairman of the SACP.

He served as Minister of Housing in the Mandela government from 1994 until his death in 1995.

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.