Leo Kuper (20 November 1908 – 23 May 1994) was a South African sociologist specialising in the study of genocide.

Early life and legal career

Kuper was born to a Lithuanian Jewish family. His siblings included his sister Mary (d. 1948), who in later life directed the Johannesburg Legal Aid Bureau. Kuper trained in law at the University of the Witwatersrand, receiving there his BA and LLB degrees. As a lawyer, he represented African clients in human-rights cases, and also represented one of the country's early non-segregated trade unions. He supported the establishment of South Africa's first legal aid charity.

Wartime service

Kuper served with the Eighth Army in Kenya, Egypt, and Italy, as an intelligence officer, from 1940 to 1946. After the war he organised the National War Memorial Health Foundation, which provided social and medical services for disadvantaged people from all backgrounds.

Scholarly and political activities

In 1947, Kuper went to the University of North Carolina, where he earned an M.A. in sociology. He was subsequently appointed Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Birmingham in England. At Birmingham, Kuper directed a research project intended to help the city of Coventry recover from the bombing it received during World War II. This project culminated in the publication of Living in Towns (1953). Kuper completed a doctorate in sociology at the University of Birmingham in 1952, and moved to Durban, South Africa, as Professor of Sociology at the University of Natal. Kuper was an active opponent of apartheid. Under his headship, the Sociology Department at the University of Natal was the only integrated academic department in South Africa. Kuper and his colleague Fatima Meer were subjected to surveillance by the apartheid government, and classes taught in the department were infiltrated by government spies, resulting in a chilling effect. During his time in Durban, Kuper co-founded the Liberal Party of South Africa, and became chairman of its Natal branch. On 6 December 1956, Kuper and Alan Paton spoke on behalf of the Liberal Party at a fundraising event in Durban in aid of the Treason Trial defendants. They and four other speakers were arrested and charged under a segregationist statute, the Natal Provincial Notice No. 78 of 1933, accused of "holding, or attending, or participating in ... a meeting of natives". Of the ensuing trial, Paton recalled: "I remember only one thing ... I said to [Leo Kuper] that although this was the first time I had sat in the dock, I did not mind it at all. He said to me, with that gentle smile which was one of his great characteristics, 'I don't like it at all.'" On 1 August 1957, all six defendants were acquitted on appeal. During the 1960s, Kuper moved to Los Angeles, California, United States, where he took up teaching and researching at UCLA and was appointed professor of sociology. His publications include The Pity of it All, Passive Resistance in South Africa, and The Prevention of Genocide. His book Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (1981) was particularly widely cited. Kuper was a founding member of the International Council of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. In the mid-1980s, he founded International Alert, with the support of Michael Young, Martin Ennals and others.

Personal life

In 1936, Kuper married anthropologist Hilda Beemer, with whom he had two daughters: the international human rights lawyer Dr Jenny Kuper and the painter and sculptor Mary Kuper.

Works

Notes and references