Jeremy Cronin, then a 27-year-old lecturer in the philosophy and politics department of the University of Cape Town, was arrested in July 1976 and sentenced the following September to seven years' imprisonment (Index 1/1977). He was charged under the Terrorism Act and the Internal Security Act for having carried out African National Congress (ANC) underground work for several years. In sentencing him the judge said: ‘So far as you are concerned, Cronin, I get the impression from the political statement you made from the dock yesterday that you are quite unrepentant. I do not suppose that the prison sentence I am going to give you is going to reform you.’ Cronin was released a few months early in May 1983, bringing with him a large number of poems written in prison: some had been jotted down and escaped the prison authorities, others were memorised and written and worked on after his release. A collection of these, entitled Inside, was published in February 1984 by Ravan Press in Johannesburg (distributed in Britain by Third World Publishers). On the publication of Inside Stephen Gray, Professor of Literature at the University of Witwatersrand, asked Jeremy Cronin about conditions for writing poetry in prison in South Africa, about opportunities for his poetry reaching an audience, and what he sees as the main challenge for white poets in South Africa. We print his interview below, together with a selection of poems from Inside.

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In the year of the South African Communist Party’s centenary, Tom Lodge’s in-depth, scholarly work is a landmark achievement. The account is particularly strong in tracing the ideological currents that shaped the party and the changing and diverse sociology of its membership. The influential role of the party in helping transform the African National Congress into a mass-based campaigning formation from 1945 is a central focus. Lodge also traces the critical role of the party in the re-building, at first largely in exile, of a weakened ANC following the major strategic setback of the liberation movement in the mid-1960s. There is less focus on the reciprocal impact of the ANC upon the party, especially in the context of the practice of “dual membership” in both formations. This neglect is one factor in weakening the analysis of the post-1994 period in which the ANC has been the ruling party.

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