Ben Turok
Ben Turok was an anti-apartheid activist, Economics Professor and a South African member of parliament as a member of the African National Congress.Biography
Turok was born in to poor working-class Jewish parents in Byelorussia in 1927, who were radicalized by the secular Jewish socialist Bundist movement. and his parents migrated to Libau, Latvia when his father became involved in the Jewish labor movement. Later, seeking safety, Turok's father moved the family to the then Union of South Africa in 1934. He graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1950. Returning to South Africa in 1953, he joined the South African Congress of Democrats and in 1955 became its secretary for the Cape western region, acting as a full-time organizer for the Congress of the People. He was the African representative on the Cape Provincial Council.
Turok was the father of Fred Turok, Ivan Turok and Neil Turok, a cosmologist, and founder of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Muizenberg, South Africa. Turok was instrumental in helping draw up the Freedom Charter and also served time in jail under apartheid. Ben died on the morning of 9 December 2019. He was 92 years old.
