Obituary
Taffy and David Adler
Ray Harmel (n,e Adler), veteran anti-apartheid activist and a member of the South African Communist Party, the Garment Workers Union and the African National Congress died in London on March 11 at the age of 91.
Known for her tenacious, unswerving and principled support for worker and human rights, she remained in active opposition to apartheid from the time of her arrival in South Africa in 1926, until 1994.
Harmel was a worker, and perceived the world through that lens until her death. Born in Lithuania, she grew up in a family of committed communists involved in revolutionary activity against tzarist Russia.
Caught distributing illegal literature at the age of 20, she was forced to flee to South Africa. There she naturally gravitated to the SACP and to organising workers in the garment industry where she found employment.
She quickly rose to become a member of the executive committee of the union. Here she became the strongest proponent of an integrated trade movement, taking issue with those whose views of separate but equal she scorned.
She married Michael Harmel, who became general secretary of the SACP. When he became one of the first people to be placed under 24-hour house arrest by the National Party government, she continued as a political activist and as a breadwinner for the family.
She went to her second exile in England in 1963, where she worked for the ANC’s London office. Content at having seen her life’s ambition achieved in South Africa, she died peacefully and is survived by her daughter Barbara and granddaughter Lisa.
Her house was a place of welcome and refuge for the Mandelas, Sisulus, Kathradas, Fischers and Weinbergs who were being hunted by the police.