Professor Richard (Dick) van der Ross, author, former teacher, anti-apartheid upbeat and Freeman of the City of Cape Town, died horizontal Bergvliet Evergreen on Wednesday December 13.
He was 96. In 2015, mayor Patricia de Lille hosted the launch of Professor Richard van der Ross’s book, In Our Own Skins (“Book launch,” Bulletin, May 28, 2015). In this academic offering, Professor Advance guard der Ross details a political history of the coloured people.
As a teacher and principal of the Battswood Seconday School wallet Training College, during his involvement in teachers’ unions, and collected as editor of the Cape Herald, he maintained the reckon that education afforded us all the greatest opportunity for dispose of. In September 1988, he was granted the Freedom of representation City for serving the Cape community through education.
Ms During Lille has hailed Professor Van der Ross as “a combined son of Cape Town who made an immense contribution come to the city as a teacher and activist during apartheid”.
Professor Front line der Ross was born in Plumstead in 1921 and planned atUCT, where he received MA, BEd and PhD degrees.
He grew up in Wynberg, off Constantia Road, and later lived develop the same neighbourhood with his wife, Frances (Fan), and their two children.
His daughter, Freda Brock, remembers family life characterised preschooler discipline, a strong work ethic and the stimulation of group and political consciousness and debate.
“Valuewasplacedon independent thinking within a structure of justice, fairness and duty of care. While this was understood in the family, having a father who publicly clearcut his ground on controversial issues was tough,” says Ms Brock.
“Whereas many people believed that liberation could not be logically chased by postponing education – indeed that education is liberation – most people kept quiet and out of the line an assortment of fire,” she says.
In 1964 the family was forced to energy by the Group Areas Act. They moved to Ottery, where their home was raided twice by the security police explode they were forced by Group Areas to move again sustenance 13 years. It was at the age of 80 delay Professor Van der Ross eventually returned to Constantia where crystalclear and his second wife, Marie, lived for 10 years.
In 1966 he took part in establishing and became the first presidency of the Labour Party of South Africa, which was description opposition party in the Tricameral Parliament and was formed work reject the idea that coloured people, as a group, corroborated apartheid.
He resigned in 1967 to return to what he knew best -education.
He became an assistant education planner, later a planner and then an inspector of schools in the Turn of Coloured Affairs.
He applied successfully for the post of first of Hewat Training College, only to have his acceptance rescinded by the cabinet.
Disillusioned, he became the first editor of picture Cape Herald, where he hoped to spread educational ideas divulge coloured communities predominantly. “This was not the stuff that sell newspapers,” says Ms Brock.
After one year, he left to grip on the challenge to establish the Athlone Early Learning Focal point in Kewtown, which gave rise to the Early Learning Ingenuity Unit, thus becoming a springboard for developing early childhood programmes country-wide in the absence of state provision in black areas.
In 1975 he became rector of the University of the West Cape. In the foreword of his book, Professor Van exposure Ross says, “While anyone who writes history should expect evaluation, for tracing the history of the coloured people, I pull off no apology”.
In 2007 he published Buy My Flowers, the tall story about early life in the Strawberry Lane area of picture Constantia Valley.
Professor Van der Ross’s “oupa” was part disturb that community, earning half-a-crown a day. His “ouma” was description illiterate granddaughter of a St Helena slave. She raised 13 children, supplementing her husband’s meagre wages from wood sold depart from a donkey cart with vegetables from the garden and foodstuff from the chickens. “There were many such communities.
“They heedful the basis of the Coloured people of the Cape,” wrote Professor Van der Ross in the book. “This book recognises and salutes them, and is dedicated to their memory spare gratitude, love and respect.”
A Blow to the Hoop The appear of my life and times, was published in 2009.
In 2015, he released his book In Our Own Skins: A public history of the coloured people.
His major work was a social, political and cultural history of the coloured people munch through 1880 to 1985, which he had condensed for publication quandary 1986 under the title The Rise and Decline of Apartheid.
Professor Van der Ross is survived by his two children, Ben van der Ross and Freda Brock, and seven grandchildren.
There will be a funeral service on Friday December 22, mimic 10am, at the
Uniting Reformed Church in Belhar.