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Emeritus Professor, University of South Africa and Visiting professor and strategic advisor in Faculty of Humanities., University of Johannesburg

Raymond Suttner, based in Johannesburg, is a scholar and a social and political analyst. He was actively involved in the liberation struggle against apartheid, both in legal political activities and illegal underground work. He served two periods of imprisonment and after release in 1988 was under house arrest, totalling 11 years.

At one point he was in the leadership of the African National Congress, South African Communist Party and the United Democratic Front. Currently he is in disagreement with the directions taken by the ANC/SACP alliance and the ANC-led government.

As a scholar Suttner has held positions at six South African universities. Currently he is strategic advisor and visiting professor in the Humanities Faculty at University of Johannesburg and emeritus professor at the University of South Africa.

Suttner holds BA, LLB, LLM degrees from the University of Cape Town and completed an inter-disciplinary PhD (history, sociology and political studies) at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 2007 he was awarded a D.Litt Honoris causa from the Netaji Subhas Open University in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, for contribution to the development of higher education.

Suttner’s research interests include politics, history, sociology, gender and sexuality, law, criminology, questions related to identity and representation, interpreting Nelson Mandela and Chief Albert Luthuli-the meanings of their lives. He also examines threats to South African democracy and possible emancipatory routes towards recovering and enhancing the democratic promise of 1994.

He has published Inside Apartheid’s Prison, 2001 (UKZN press and Ocean Press, which was runner up for the Alan Paton prize), which has just been reissued with a new introduction in May 2017, The ANC Underground, 2008 (Jacana, and 2009, Lynne Rienner). Together with Jeremy Cronin he wrote 30 Years of the Freedom Charter (Ravan Press and Ohio University Press, 1986), banned for possession by the apartheid government and 50 Years of the Freedom Charter, 2006 (UNISA Press).Recovering Democracy in South Africa was published by Jacana media in late February 2015, and published in New York in hardback by Lynne Rienner later that year).

Apart from over 85 articles in academic journals, Suttner presented the TB Davie Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town, in 1984, published as a booklet entitled, The Freedom Charter-the People’s Charter in the Nineteen Eighties. He also delivered the Harold Wolpe memorial lecture in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban in 2005, subsequently published in Development Southern Africa, leading to subsequent articles debating his ideas.

Currently Suttner writes a regular column for Creamer Media’s website: polity.org.za and is interviewed on video on current issues. These are found on the Polity website and YouTube. Almost all the articles are reprinted in the Daily Maverick.

Experience

  • 2017–present
    Visiting professor and strategic advisor in Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg

Honours

DLitt (honoris causa) Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata, India