David Ernst obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/16/david-ernst-obituary

Version 0 of 1.

My father, David Ernst, who has died aged 73, was a Marxist anti-apartheid activist who survived torture, hunger strike and three years in prison in South Africa.

Born in Johannesburg into a traditional Jewish family, he was the son of Sam, a teacher and educationist, and Jayne, (nee Chanani), an accounting assistant. In 1959 David went to the University of Cape Town to study medicine, followed by the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal). But he spent much of his time at both institutions involved in leftwing political activity and fighting injustice. He became active in the anti-apartheid struggle, taking huge risks to help banned communist activists stay in contact with each other.

In early 1966 he was arrested and tortured by special branch officers in Pretoria, and held under a law that allowed for detention without trial for 90 days. In protest he began a hunger strike, demanding to be released or charged. He lasted 32 days without food until he was eventually charged alongside fellow activists Vic Finkelstein and the lawyer Rowley Arenstein, under the Suppression of Communism Act. As a result, he was imprisoned for three years at Pretoria central prison.

After his release in 1969, David was placed under house arrest but was then awarded a United Nations scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, to read medicine. He left South Africa on a permanent exit visa at the cost of his South African citizenship.

In Britain he remained politically active, and worked with Maurice Ludmer, one-time editor of Searchlight magazine, and others in the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement of the 1970s. Having qualified as a doctor at Birmingham University in 1974, he was also part of the Junior Hospital Doctors Association team that successfully negotiated with the government in 1975 for better working hours and pay for NHS doctors. By 1978 he had become a surgeon.

In Cambridge David had met his future wife Teresa Gonçalves, a nurse, and started a family. They eventually relocated to Lisbon, Portugal, in 1983, where David spent the rest of his life running a successful medical practice.

He is survived by Teresa, by his children, Daniel, Simon and me, and by seven grandchildren.