Eddie Roux

Eddie Roux (24 April 1903 2 March 1966) was a Transvaal Colony-born botanist, academic, writer, member of the South African Communist Party and anti-apartheid activist.

Early life He was born Edward Roux to Afrikaner father Phillip R. Roux, a pharmacist and botanist, who was involved in the Labour Party and English mother, Edith May Wilson. He grew up in Bezuidenhout Valley, Johannesburg. His political views were further moulded by the events of the 1922 Rand Rebellion. In 1929, he met Lancelot Hogben a biology professor at the University of Cape Town, a supporter of communism and who held meetings at his home with black activists. In order to improved language skills amongst Black people, he published a book in 1938 called Easy English for Africans. In 1948, he joined the University of the Witwatersrand's Frakenwald Research Station at the invitation of John Phillips and researched vitamins, potatoes, antibiotics, herbicides and grassland ecology. In 1962, he was granted a professorship at the university. Roux was eventually subjected to a banning order by Justice Minister John Vorster on 15 December 1964, preventing him from teaching or entering a university and it also included his academic books and articles, after he refused to name communist members of SACP even though he had not been a member since 1936. Students, as well as local and international academics, would protest against Roux's banning order.

Publications S.P. Bunting (1944) Harvest and Health in Africa The Veld and the Future Time Longer than Rope: A History of the Black Man's Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (1948) Botany for Medical Students A First Year Plant Physiology Rebel Pity: The Life of Eddie Roux (1970) Grass: The Story of Frakenwald