BUNTING, SIDNEY PERCIVAL
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Sidney Percival Bunting (1873-1936) was one of the founders of the Communist Party of South Africa and a leader in labor struggles in the early 20th century.
CAPTION PHOTO: Sidney Percival Bunting SOURCE: EA Library
He was born in London in 1873, into a family which had taken an active part in the liberal movement in Britain in the 19th century. Jabez Bunting, his great grandfather, had been a leader of the Wesleyaus. His father, Sir Percy Bunting, founded and edited the Contemporary Review. His mother, née Mary Hyett Lidgett, came from a devout Methodist background. Both his father and mother were involved in many social and political causes throughout their lives.
After graduating from Oxford University in 1900, Sidney Bunting fought in the Boer War with the British Army. At the end of the war he decided to remain in South Africa. He completed his law studies and then set up a law practice in Johannesburg. In March 1914 he was elected to the Transvaal Provincial Council as a South African Labour Party member.
He withdrew from the party in 1915 because he, and others to the left of the party, were against participation in World War I. Bunting then became one of the founders of the International Socialist League, which had as one of its concerns the predicament of African workers. With David I. Jones he founded the Industrial Workers of Africa, which they hoped would grow into a trade union. He played a major role in the “bucket strike” of 1918.
In 1921 he was one of the founders of the Communist Party in South Africa. In 1922 he participated in the Fourth Congress of the Communist International. In 1924, he was elected chairman of the party in South Africa. He and his wife Rebecca attended the Sixth Comintern in 1928, where they unsuccessfully argued against the decision by the Comintern that South African Communists were to bring about a “Black Republic.”
In 1929 he ran as a Communist candidate in Tembuland in the Transkei but he received only a small number of votes. He was expelled from the Communist Party in September 1931, by Douglas Wolton, who had received instructions from the Soviet Union to expel those considered to belong to the right wing of the party. Bunting died in 1936 without being readmitted to the party.
PATRICK O’MEARA
