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Jeremy Cronin

South African politician (born 1949)

Summary

South African politician (born 1949)

Field	Value
name	Jeremy Patrick Cronin
office	Deputy Minister of Public Works
term_start	12 June 2012
term_end	June 2019
president	Cyril Ramaphosa
office2	Deputy Minister of Transport
term_start2	11 May 2009
term_end2	12 June 2012
president2	Jacob Zuma
successor2	Lydia Sindiswe Chikunga
birth_date
death_date
nationality	South African
party	South African Communist Party
otherparty	African National Congress
residence	Cape Town, South Africa
alma_mater	University of Cape Town (BA)
Sorbonne University (MA)

|honorific-prefix = Sorbonne University (MA)

Jeremy Patrick Cronin (born 12 September 1949) is a South African writer, author, and noted poet. A longtime activist in politics, Cronin is a member of the South African Communist Party and a former member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress. He served as the South African Deputy Minister of Public Works from 2012 until his retirement in 2019.

Early life

Cronin was brought up in a White middle-class Roman Catholic family in Rondebosch in Cape Town, South Africa. During adolescence, he considered the idea of entering the priesthood. After a year's military service, when he was conscripted in the South African Navy, Cronin won a bursary to study at the University of Cape Town in 1968; there he became a member of the Radical Student Society and was subsequently recruited into then-banned South African Communist Party (SACP).

In the early 1970s, Cronin studied for his Master's degree in Philosophy in France and returned to South Africa, where he began lecturing in the Philosophy department at the University of Cape Town.

Activism and imprisonment

Cronin's work in the propaganda unit of the SACP brought him to the attention of the South African Bureau of State Security; he was arrested on charges under the Terrorism and Internal Security Acts and tried in the Cape Town Supreme Court in September 1976, along with David Rabkin and his wife Sue. His wife Anne Marie died of a brain tumour during his imprisonment.

Poetry

Cronin's first book of poetry, Inside, was published in 1984 following his release from prison. Subsequent volumes include Even the Dead (1997) and Inside and Out (1999). His most recent collection, More Than A Casual Contact, was published in 2006. Among his best known poems is "Motho Ke Motho Ka Batho Babang", whose title is taken from the Sotho aphorism "A person is a person because of other people".

Poetry collections

Inside (1984)
Even the Dead: Poems, Parables and a Jeremiad (1997)
Inside and Out (1999)
More than a Casual Contact (2006)

Politics

Following Cronin's release from prison he began working with the United Democratic Front (UDF), founded in 1983, where he worked as the editor of its theoretical journal Isizwe (The Nation). He was also involved in various kinds of popular education, but in the late 1980s, increased harassment from the security forces forced him and his wife to leave South Africa and move first to London, then to Lusaka in Zambia, where he worked closely with Joe Slovo for the ANC/SACP alliance. In the 1990s, he worked in the SACP head office in Johannesburg, where he was deputy general secretary of the party. He became a member of parliament in 1999. His interviews with Helena Sheehan in 2001 and 2002 met with a storm of controversy, because of his left critique of the ANC during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. He was forced to apologise to the ANC in 2002. He delivered the Chris Hani memorial lecture, titled Why South Africa will never be like Zimbabwe, in Durban on 4 May 2008. On 10 May 2009, President Jacob Zuma appointed him Deputy Minister of Transport, and in 2012 he moved to become Deputy Minister of Public Works. In May 2019, he retired from parliament and government office.

Political writings

References

link. (13 September 2009 Who's Who)
(12 June 2012). "Changes to National Executive and South African Police Service". Government of South Africa.
Jenkin, Tim. (1987). "Escape from Pretoria".
Sheehan, Helena. (2001). "Interview with Jeremy Cronin".
[http://www.umuzi-randomhouse.co.za/jcronin.html Jeremy Cronin] {{webarchive. link. (4 October 2006 ''Random House'')
Sheehan, Helena. (2002). "Interviews with Jeremy Cronin".
Marais, Hein. (2011). "South Africa Pushed to the Limit". Zed Books.
Cronin, Jeremy. (5 May 2008). "Why South Africa will never be like Zimbabwe".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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