Mary Benson (campaigner)

This article is about the South African author and activist. For other people with the same name, see Mary Benson.

Mary Benson (1919-2000) was a South African civil rights campaigner and author.

Born in 1919, Benson served in the South African Women's Army during World War II. After the war, she was secretary to film director David Lean.

She became acquainted with the author Alan Paton, and read his novel Cry, the beloved country (1948), whose main theme was racial discrimination in South Africa. This affected her greatly, and she became a campaigner for the rights of black people there.

She worked with Michael Scott, (who, in 1946, was the first white man to be jailed for resisting South Africa's racial laws), and helped to found the African Bureau.

She testified to the United Nations Committee on Apartheid in 1963, and was the first South African to do so. She was placed under house arrest and "banned" in 1966. She subsequently left the country and lived in exile.

She appeared as a "castaway" on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 16 February 1997.

She died in 2000. Her papers, including correspondence with Semane Molotlegi and those relating to her biography of Tshekedi Khama, are archived in the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Oxford. Other papers, including material relating to her biography of Nelson Mandela and correspondence with fellow anti-apartheid activists, forms part of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies archive collections held at Senate House Library.

See also

• List of people subject to banning orders under apartheid

Bibliography

• Benson, Mary (1960). Tshekedi Khama. Faber and Faber. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)
• Benson, Mary (1963). African Patriots. The story of the African National Congress of South Africa. Faber and Faber. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)
• Benson, Mary (1986). Nelson Mandela. Hamilton. ISBN 978-0393022964. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)