Melville Edelstein

Dr Melville Leonard Edelstein (1919 - 16 June 1976) was born to Nachum and Rose Edelstein in in King William's Town. His Litvak parents had first travelled to the UK and then Cape Town in 1896 before joining the masses of "boere-Jode" [Afrikaner or farmer Jews] where his parents had settled and Nachum started and ran a successful business.

Work

Dr. Edelstein was a sociologist and respected academic and had devoted his efforts to humanitarian and social welfare projects in Soweto. Serving as Deputy Chief Welfare Officer, Dr Edelstein instituted many projects aimed at assisting youth, disabled, poor and marginalized communities within Soweto, where he worked for some 18 years. While employed as a social worker for the Welfare Section of the Non-European Affairs Department, which fell under the City of Johannesburg, he showed great concern for the people of Soweto, where he served for 18 years.

Death

Dr Edelstein was one of only two white men who died in the Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976. He was stoned to death by a mob who did not know the work he did in the community of Soweto.

Earlier on the fateful morning, he greeted students as they passed his offices on Mputhi Street. However once the shock of the police shooting spread through their ranks, high spirits turned to anger, and Dr Edelstein was killed for being a white official in the wrong place at the wrong time. That morning, Dr Edelstein was hosting the official opening for a branch of his Sheltered Workshop Programme in Orlando East, designed to provide employment for disabled people. When news of the student protests reached the project, the ceremony was brought to a hurried end as dignitaries and workers were ferried out of the township. Concerned about the safety of a woman colleague, - Pierette Jacques, back at the Youth Centre in Youth Centre in Jabavu – Dr Edelstein drove through crowds of gathering students to get to her office. Edelstein then rushed through the offices, instructing staff to leave immediately. By the time he emerged from his office later that morning, the political temperature had been raised by deadly police shootings in the township. Edelstein walked straight into an enraged crowd of students, and in the heat of the moment, following the shock of the killing of schoolchildren by the police, he was stoned to death.