Social Justice, Gender and Health Reading Group

Dr. Norman Levy was born in Johannesburg in 1929 and was a teacher in the early portion of his career. A member of the South African Congress of Democrats (allied to the African National Congress), he was arrested in 1956 on a charge of High Treason. The trial lasted for five years, but Dr Levy was acquitted in 1958. He was subsequently charged with membership of the South African Communist Party and for aiding and abetting the ANC, both of them banned organisations under the apartheid regime. For this offence he spent 54 days in solitary confinement and then served a three-year prison sentence under the Suppression of Communism Act, before leaving for London in 1968. In exile Levy served as Head of School of History at the Middlesex University, and continued to be involved in anti-apartheid activities, conducting research for the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on the South African labour system. He returned to South Africa after the fall of apartheid and played a major role in restructuring the public service and in creating a framework for Affirmative Action for government. In addition to serving as Professor in the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape, Levy was deputy chairperson on the Presidential Review Commission (1998), directed a survey of Intergovernmental Relations (2001-2) and was a committee member of the Classification and Declassification Review Committee (2003-4) for the placing of apartheid documents in the public domain. Although now retired, Levy continues to publish political commentary on contemporary events in South Africa. He has written on the South African migrant labour system, as well as, on Affirmative Action and Governance. Recently he completed an autobiographical memoir.