Eli Weinberg
1908-1981
Obituary in Sechaba, September 1981
On July 18, 1981, Comrade Eli Weinberg left us, but for good. Born in the port of Libau on the Baltic Sea (in what is today part of the Soviet Union) in 1908, Eli experienced the harsh reality of the First World War and the liberating influence of the Great Socialist October Revolution in 1917. He was then still young.
At the age of 16 he joined a trade union and became involved in its activities. It was with this working class background and experience that he left Latvia in 1929 and arrived in Cape Town on the 9th December the same year. In 1932 he joined the Communist Party of South Africa and from 1933 to 1953 he was active in the trade union movement in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. By 1948, Comrade Eli had already incurred the wrath of the racist regime and he was restricted from carrying out his trade union work. From 1953 onwards he was placed under further banning orders and when the State of Emergency was declared in 1960 he was detained for a period of three months. In 1964, he was arrested together with the late Bram Fischer and held in detention for seven months. After a lengthy trial, Comrade Eli was found guilty of being a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. On his release in 1970 he was banned for five years and restricted to his house and was required to report daily to the police.
Comrade Eli made his name not only as a trade unionist and revolutionary but also as a people's photographer. His recently published book "A Portrait of the People" portrays our struggle and movement vividly. His photographs were reproduced by the people's press, "New Age", "Guardian", "People's World", "Advance", "Clarion" and "Spark". His interest in photography goes back as far as 1926 when he was an assistant in a photographic studio and later as a professional photographer. He contributed regularly to exhibitions and in 1964 one of his photographs of a group of Sotho women won him a prize of a silver medal and 100 dollars.
Comrade Eli also trained young photographers; one of his students was the late comrade Joe Gqabi who was recently assassinated in Zimbabwe.
In 1976, at the height of the Soweto uprisings, Comrade Eli was instructed by the ANC to leave the country for Tanzania where he was later joined by his wife, Violet. They lived in Dar es Salaam.
Comrade Eli has been involved in all aspects and phases of the work of the movement including the paste up and distribution of the announcement of the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC, on the night of December 16, 1961.
The ANC dips its revolutionary banner to Comrade Eli Weinberg. We send our sympathies to his family, especially Comrade Violet, his daughter Sheila and grandson Mark.
