R.M. 西格尔

Ronald Michael Segal (14 July 1932 – 23 February 2008) was a South African activist, writer and editor, founder of the anti-apartheid magazine Africa South and the Penguin African Library.

Life

Ronald Segal was born on 14 July 1932, into a rich South African Jewish family. He was educated at Sea Point Boys' High School, before studying at the University of Cape Town and then Trinity College, Cambridge.

Returning to South Africa in 1956, he founded the anti-apartheid magazine Africa South. After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, he went into exile with Oliver Tambo, and settled in England, continuing his anti-apartheid political activity and pursuing activity as a writer. Segal's best-known work is The State of the World Atlas (first edition, 1981), which he co-founded with Michael Kidron, another South African-born Jew, who shared most of his political views.

In 1962, he married Susan Wolff, daughter of solicitor Eric Wolff and Camille, née Cohen, whose own mother was a Sieff, of the Marks & Spencer family. They had a son and two daughters. The family lived at Walton-on-Thames, in "a fine manor house".

After Segal was unbanned from South Africa, he visited the country several times, receiving a hero's welcome on stage alongside Mandela, Tambo and Slovo in 1992. Segal died on 23 February 2008.

Works

Tokolosh of the Townships, 1960

Political Africa: A Who’s Who of Personalities and Parties, 1961

African Profiles, 1962

Into Exile, 1963

Sanctions against South Africa, 1964

The Anguish of India, 1965

The Race War: The Worldwide Conflict of Races, 1966

America’s Receding Future

The Americans: A Conflict of Creed and Reality, 1969

The Struggle Against History, 1971

Whose Jerusalem? The Conflicts of Israel, 1973

Decline and Fall of the American Dollar, 1974

Southern Africa: New Politics of Revolution, 1976

Leon Trotsky: a biography, 1979

(with Michael Kidron) The State of the World Atlas, 1981

The Black Diaspora, 1995

Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora, 2001