Mary Benson (campaigner)
| Dorothy Mary Benson | |
|---|---|
| Born |
8 December 1919 Pretoria, South Africa |
| Died | 19 June 2000 London, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Language | English |
| Subjects | Apartheid, Internal resistance to apartheid, African National Congress, Nelson Mandela, Albert Lutuli, Athol Fugard, Barney Simon |
Mary Benson (8 December 1919 – 19 June 2000) was a South African civil rights campaigner and author.
Born in 1919 in Pretoria, Benson served in the South African Women's Army during World War II. After the war, she was secretary to film director David Lean.
Benson 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), becoming his secretary in 1950. With Scott, Benson helped to found the African Bureau.
In 1957, Benson was appointed secretary to the Treason Trial Defence Fund. In 1961, Benson took on another secretarial role, moving to Natal to assist Chief Albert Lutuli when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Through all this work, Benson became familiar with the African National Congress (ANC). She assisted Nelson Mandela's escape from South Africa in 1962, and interviewed several prominent figures in the ANC, including Walter Sisulu and James Calata. Based upon these experiences, she wrote the first general history of the ANC: The African Patriots (Faber & Faber, London, 1964).
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, settling in London, England.
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