Brian Bunting was a South African journalist and lifelong communist who fought against racial oppression, eventually being elected as an ANC MP in 1994.

Brian Percy Bunting was born in 1920 in Johannesburg. His father, Sidney Bunting, had been a founding member and later general secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) before his expulsion in the 1930s.

Brian Bunting graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1939, whereupon he worked as a sub-editor at the Rand Daily Mail and the Sunday Times of Johannesburg. After war service in North Africa and Italy, he returned to South Africa where he edited a series of left-wing publications: The Guardian, Advance, Clarion, Peoples’ World and New Age. As each newspaper was banned, it re-emerged under a new name. He worked closely on such publications with other militant journalists such as Govan Mbeki, the father of President Thabo Mbeki, and Ruth First, who was later murdered by the apartheid security police.

After the Second World War Bunting was appointed assistant national secretary of the anti-fascist Springbok Legion and editor of the legion’s publication, Fighting Talk. Despite the experiences of his father, Bunting was an active communist throughout his career. In 1946 he was elected to the district committee of the Communist Party in Johannesburg. In the same year he was arrested — but not charged — after the 1946 African miners strike. In 1952 he was elected as a “Natives representative” to the South African Parliament — at that time some blacks had the vote but could elect only white “representatives” — but he was unable to take up his seat owing to a banning order served on him. The CPSA had been banned in 1950 and re-emerged underground as the South African Communist Party (SACP).

In 1946 Bunting was married to Sonia Isaacman who was an equally committed communist. In 1956 she was arrested and charged as one of the 156 accused in the Treason Trial. None was found guilty but the trial dragged on until 1961. From the mid-1950s Bunting was a member of the SACP’s central committee and he exerted a significant influence on the party during that turbulent decade. In 1960 he was detained after the Sharpeville massacre and in 1962 he was placed under house arrest. In 1963 he and Sonia fled South Africa on the instructions of the party.

Settling in London, the Buntings remained members of the SACP. Bunting edited the SACP’s quarterly journal, The African Communist and contributed regularly to the Soviet news agency Tass and the Soviet newspaper, Pravda. He wrote two important books while in exile: The Rise of the South African Reich (Penguin, 1964) and Moses Kotane: South African Revolutionary (1975). Like many SACP members, his loyalty to the Soviet Union never faltered. In the early 1990s Bunting returned to South Africa and was elected as an ANC MP in 1994. He served in Parliament until 1999 and remained a member of the SACP until ill-health made travelling difficult in mid-2007. The SACP described him as “a gentle personality, a lucid thinker, deeply loyal to his fellow comrades and organisations” and one who “embodied the best non-racial traditions of our struggle”.

Bunting, whose wife died in 2001, is survived by their two sons and a daughter.

Brian Bunting, journalist and politician, was born in 1920. He died on June 18, 2008, aged 88