A certain legal practitioner: reconstructing the life of Shulamith Muller
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2012-08-01
Authors
Muller, Ruth Nathanya
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This study is a partial historical biography of the life of one woman, Shulamith
Muller. The child of a Jewish immigrant family, she traversed many of her
native country's generally impermeable social boundaries to become truly South
African. She married an Afrikaner, product of another closed, white community
but her politics, and that of her husband, led them both into a completely
different South Africa. In this wider world her commitment to, and belief in, the
rule of law, justice and the principle of equality before the law gave her a place
in a broader black community of her many clients and political comrades, both
rural and urban. The study also documents the role of this same irrepressible
woman in a political “coup” within another closed society, that of the Pretoria
Communist Party in the 1940s, which reflected many of the tensions that were
playing out on a larger world stage.
Description
M.A. University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanties, School of Social Sciences (History), 2012