In a celebration of the life of John Saul, his friend and comrade Peter Lawrence remembers a tireless revolutionary, activist, and writer. One of the founding editors of ROAPE, Saul worked in Tanzania and Mozambique, where he analysed the struggles and possibilities for real independence and socialism. Later, he was a leading member and founder of Southern African liberation organisations in Canada. Lawrence marks a remarkable life and contribution to socialist politics.
John Saul, one of our founding editors, died on Saturday, 23rd September. He was the complete revolutionary socialist: a tireless academic-activist and writer, bibliophile, film and jazz buff, follower of almost every sport I can think of, and a regular contributor to and supporter of ROAPE. He had a prodigious memory of pretty much everything he read, watched and listened to. Educated at the Universities of Toronto, Princeton, and London, he taught at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), Tanzania, the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique, York University, Toronto.
In Tanzania he taught political science and was involved in attempts to transform the curriculum to support Tanzania’s socialist ambitions and begin what we would now call the decolonisation of university courses related to the development of the Global South and the interpretation of its history. I taught with John and with Tanzanian and other expatriate colleagues on an extraordinary and radical interdisciplinary course covering the history of Africa before and during its imperialist past and present, and so was able to witness the dynamism of his teaching and in doing so received some good training in how to run a seminar of more than 20 students ensuring that everyone participated.
John’s already well-established radical reputation had him down as being behind a student revolt against the administration (an account of which can be found in Karim Hirji’s The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher ), and there was also some hostility to the new course which all Humanities and Social Science students had to take. Not surprisingly his contract was not renewed. While in Tanzania, John had developed a close relationship with some members of the FRELIMO – the Mozambique Liberation Front – leadership based in Dar es Salaam. So before leaving Tanzania to return to Canada, he was invited to visit the areas of Mozambique liberated from Portuguese colonial rule and controlled by FRELIMO.
Returning to Toronto, John widened his solidarity with FRELIMO by co-founding the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of the Portuguese Colonies (TCLPAC) subsequently renamed the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa (TCLSAC) after the Portuguese colonies became independent. He wrote about the North American solidarity movements in one of his last books, On Building a Social Movement: The North American Campaign for Southern African Liberation Revisited.
Southern Africa then became the focus of John’s academic work. He returned to the now liberated Mozambique to teach at the FRELIMO party school and then at the Eduardo Mondlane University. It was at the day of his farewell party that Ruth First opened the letter bomb that ended her life.
Back in Canada, teaching political science at York University in Toronto, John was able to expand his connections throughout Southern Africa especially after its complete liberation in 1994, teaching at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. This led to more books on Southern Africa, including a study of the armed struggle to free Namibia, written with Colin Leys. John was awarded the fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada in 2004 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in African Studies from the Canadian Association of African Studies in 2011. He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Toronto in 2010 and Johannesburg in 2016.
He was involved from the beginning in the creation of ROAPE and contributed an article for the first issue on the revolutionary potential of the African peasantry. John was instrumental in promoting ROAPE and getting subscriptions in North America through his network of contacts as well as encouraging others to submit articles to the journal. He himself published often in ROAPE and over a span of 50 years published 20 books on Eastern and Southern Africa both as sole author and with others, notably Lionel Cliffe, Giovanni Arrighi, Colin Leys and most recently Patrick Bond. His last manuscript on the 30 years’ war for the liberation of Southern Africa is now with Cambridge University Press.
Throughout this life of commitment and revolutionary solidarity with the liberation struggles in Africa and its aftermath, John enjoyed the love and support of his family. His wife Pat, who died a year ago, was an educator herself working for the North York Board of Education and then seconded to York University to teach Urban Education as well as supporting the activities of TCLSAC. While in Mozambique she wrote new curricula for the Ministry of Education. Their son Nick is a food activist turning food banks into community centres where food is grown as well as consumed, now a major movement across Canada of which Nick is CEO. Their daughter Jo co-founded the Type bookshop in Toronto, now two bookshops which host events and activities for local communities, in both cases continuing their parents’ community work. Our solidarity go to Nick and Jo and their families.
John’s parting phrase I remember the most, apart from ‘the struggle continues’ is ‘we carry on’. And indeed, inspired by John’s example, we will!
Peter Lawrence is an editor of ROAPE, and a leading member of ROAPE’s editorial working group, as well as a founding member of the journal.
We will publish a fuller tribute to John and his work in due course but readers may in the meantime like to read the interview with him which can be found on our website here and a full list of his articles on roape.net can be found here.
Featured Photograph: John Saul taken at the Ruth First memorial symposium at Senate House in London (Ben Joseph, 7 June 2012).
It was with mixed emotions that I read your short obituary for John Saul — sadness of course for his passing and gratitude for my one contact with him, a contact that marked me deeply.
I was in Tanzania in 1970, a young doctoral student and correspondent for the Dutch VPRO radio organization, on an extended visit and I met John at the University of Dar es-Salaam where we spent an afternoon, unforgettable for me. We talked about many things; I remember in particular a discussion about some doubts I raised about the role of the then very small working class in Tanzania and its relation to the Ujamaa programme. John explained, in his typical calm and reasoned manner, the need to adapt Marxism to specific national class characteristics, that a socialist movement could not simply be put on hold awaiting a more ‘classical’ constellation of class forces. This sounds somewhat banal in my words here but John’s way of presenting it illuminated for me a great number of questions and issues on this and related questions; it convinced me then and convinces me now. I have never forgotten that afternoon overlooking Dar and his gentle and luminous intelligence and analytic depth.
In later years I seemed to hear that voice when reading his always stimulating and moving reports on the struggles in Mozambique and South Africa. I promised myself that I would come sometime to Toronto, hoping to hear that voice once again, but like so many things I have left it until it is too late.
Thank you John and thank you ROAPE for your words. I look forward to the promised longer biographical piece.