Morris Alexander

Morris Alexander (; 4 December 1877 – 24 January 1946) was a South African lawyer and politician who was a leading figure of Cape Town's Jewish community. He is best known for his successful campaign to have Yiddish recognized as a European language by colonial authorities, allowing thousands of Jews to immigrate to South Africa. A prominent liberal, Alexander served in the South African House of Assembly from 1910 until his death in 1946.

Biography Early life and education Morris Alexander was born on 4 December 1877, in Znin, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia in the German Empire. He was the eldest of seven children of Abraham Alexander and Flora Lewin. His family were German Jews; they moved to the South Africa in 1881. He interrupted his private education in Cape Town in 1891 to financially support his parents in Johannesburg, taking jobs first as a clerk for the National Bank and then as an employee of the Cape Colony rail service.

Alexander enrolled at South African College in 1893, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1897. He then attended St John's College, Cambridge, receiving a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1900. He was called to the bar in June of that year and began a law practice in Cape Town on 15 November 1900. Alexander would be appointed King's Counsel in 1919, and at some point taught law at Diocesan College.

Political career Alexander was elected to the Cape Town City Council in 1905, serving until 1913. The couple's home in Cape Town would become a meeting place for visiting Indian dignitaries, through which Alexander became associated with Mahatma Gandhi.

Beginning in the 1920s, Alexander and Ruth developed irreconcilable political differences. While Alexander was a more traditional liberal, Ruth was a Marxist feminist. In the 1921 general election, she convinced Alexander not to join Jan Smuts's South African Partywhich she viewed as increasingly racist – and instead run as an independent candidate. Ruth was irked with her husband in 1923 when he declared that Judaism was "the very antithesis of Bolshevism" in a speech condemning the Rand Rebellion. She was further radicalized when her sister was arrested at the Loray Mill strike in the United States.

The couple's breaking point came in 1930, when Alexander supported a successful bill enacted by the government of J. B. M. Hertzog which gave white women the right to vote. Ruth, increasingly frustrated with her husband's pragmatic liberalism, criticized this law as regressive for excluding non-white women and for being a method to further dilute the non-white vote. Ruth initially declared her intention to not register to vote, but upon being informed by Alexander that not registering was a crime, she instead stated her intent to divorce him "the moment their children were old enough to care for themselves". Ruth left South Africa with her lover in 1933; two years later, she and Alexander divorced. Two months after his divorce, Alexander married Enid Asenath Baumberg of Sydney, Australia. Throughout the 1930s, Alexander was a strong opponent of the growing Nazi movement in South Africa.

Alexander died in Cape Town on 24 January 1946. His second wife Enid published his biography in 1957, and his papers are held at the University of Cape Town Libraries.