David Ivon Jones was born in Wales in1883 and died in 1924 in the Soviet Union. In his death-bed ‘Political Testament’, Jones urged his comrades to ‘carry out the great revolutionary mission imposed on colonies in general and South Africa in particular with revolutionary devotion and dignity, concentrating on shaking the foundations of world capitalism and British imperialism’.
The ‘Delegate for Africa,’ as Jones was known in the Communist International, is now commemorated by a plaque on the Unitarian chapel in his native town of Aberystwyth. But it is in South Africa that his legacy is particularly treasured today by the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress.
This collection of his articles and speeches, in both Welsh and English, testifies to his deep humanitarian and communist principles. They embody and express his love for his Welsh homeland, for his adopted South Africa and its native peoples and for revolutionary Russia and its working class and peasantry.
David Ivon Jones was a patriot and an internationalist, who unsparingly committed himself to the liberation of all humanity.