ABSTRACT
Leo Kuper was born in Johannesburg on 24 November 1908. He practiced as an attorney in Johannesburg; he also worked closely with Legal Aid, a group of trade unionists and African leaders active in improving living and labour conditions, and took part in interracial organisations. He was reading widely in political theory, literature, history and anthropology. He enlisted as a private, was subsequently promoted to lieutenant and then captain, and, for two years, served outside of South Africa — in East Africa, Egypt and Italy. In 1961 Leo became Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles, and, though no longer directly involved in politics, continued in his teaching and in his writing to analyse conflicts and to seek ways of resolving them. His latest book, The Pity of It All, a comparative study of revolution in Algeria, Zanzibar, Burundi and Rwanda, is the most recent culmination of that work.
