 Birth Notes:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/david-philip-publisher-who-resisted-apartheid-1641047.htmll
Death Notes:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/david-philip-publisher-who-resisted-apartheid-1641047.htmll
Sources of information or noted events in his life were:
Obituary. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/david-philip-publisher-who-resisted-apartheid-1641047.htmll
David Philip: Publisher who resisted apartheid
To have survived 24 years publishing, under apartheid, books that were often anathema to the regime and opposed the "separate development" ethos of Afrikaner Nationalism, was the fine achievement of David Philip and his much-loved wife and business partner Marie. For 30 years David Philip Publishers, the imprint that they launched together, made available works that other publishers were too wary to publish, and earned themselves in the process the close attention of the security services. Alan Paton and Nadine Gordimer were among the writers they published.
Philip was at Magdalen College, Oxford, after six months' war service guarding Italian POWs in South Africa, when the Afrikaner Nationalists under Dr Malan narrowly won the 1948 General Election, beginning their 46 years of power. Philip returned to Cape Town in 1950 and entered the book trade as an assistant in and then manager of a side-street bookshop. In 1953 Leo Marquard, the distinguished South African historian and liberal leader, brought him into the Cape Town office of Oxford University Press, where, on Marquard's retirement, he became editorial manager in 1962, after a spell (1959-62) setting up the Press's Harare (then Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia) office.
Though not himself a political animal, Philip held fast to the Cape liberal tradition of which his great-great-grandfather, the missionary leader Dr John Philip (1775-1851), champion of the indigenous underdogs, had been a sterling exemplar, and b๊te noire of most of the white Cape Colony. The Sharpeville "Emergency" of 1960 intensified state repression, with, over years, draconian laws, the loss of habeas corpus for up to 180 days (the Philips' younger daughter, Kate, was detained as a student leader in 1984), and the extension of the death penalty for political "crimes". Running for cover, the media, including publishers, imposed self-censorship or accepted the state variety. The OUP, post-Marquard, was no different. Philip saw Paton's biography of the great South African liberal Jan Hofmeyr through the press in 1964 but the diktat that OUP, Cape Town, should publish only school text-books made up Philip's mind. In 1971, he resigned, as Marie did from Longman's Cape Town office, and, cashing in his OUP pension, they launched David Philip Publishers (DPP) from their suburban house.
Then followed three decades of what the Philips called "book to mouth" existence, with none of the foreign subsidies that eased life for more demonstrative but shorter-lived anti-apartheid publishers. Nor did they receive any government orders, and suffered an early baptism of fire with the banning in 1972 of their Student Perspectives on South Africa, as well as police raids, tapped telephones and the need for constant vigilance. Cash-flow crises were frequent when the overdraft was at its limit. During one such, the Philips even withdrew their own stake in the company pension fund to pay the staff. Yet they produced a stream of serious, good literature, promoting new authors, black and white, with occasional books by the great. Paton's Apartheid and the Archbishop (1973) was an early success, as were novels and stories by Nadine Gordimer, at whose bidding Jonathan Cape allowed DPP full rights on her South African editions.
Such co-publishing, much of it with his old OUP colleague James Currey, of the Heinemann group and later under his own imprint in England, brought great benefits, with DPP importing titles from many British and US publishers. Providentially, in the old sense, their best-seller was Collins's Anglican prayer book for southern Africa. DPP published South African writers dropped by censorship-conscious competitors, or who were simply out of print, and recruited new ones. Authors they published in hardback or in the Africasouth paperback series launched in 1982 included Stephen Gray, Bessie Head, Dan Jacobson, Alex La Guma, Todd Matshikiza, Ezekiel Mphahlele, William Plomer, Can Themba, and Francis Wilson. They even reissued banned classics by wearing down the Publications Appeal Board with applications.
When the apartheid era ended in 1994 there was recognition, though no great rewards. In 1995 the English Academy of Southern Africa awarded the Philips their gold medal. In his acceptance speech David recalled that he and Marie, despite another State of Emergency, in 1987 "decided to publish an investigation into detention and torture in South Africa \endash a decision that a committee might not easily have been able to approve". The book was "a powerful indictment of our security police", wrote a reviewer. Philip confided recently that Detention and Torture in South Africa by Don Foster et al. was the book of which he was proudest.
He was always self-effacing, his hesitant manner and quiet charm masking steely integrity and will. In 2001 and 2002 he and Marie enjoyed the awards of honorary degrees from the Universities of KwaZulu Natal and the Western Cape. In the latter year they were invited to Encaenia in Oxford and, somewhat uncharacteristically, processed in their new sky-blue UWC gowns, before the handing over to Rhodes House library of a complete set of DPP publications. That year the Philips retired and sold up to New Africa books, who retained the David Philip imprint, with David and Marie Philip as consultants and directors
Occupation. Founded and directed David Philip Publishers.
Web Based Info. http://www.geni.com/search?search_type=people&names=Marie+Philip
And
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/david-philip-publisher-who-resisted-apartheid-1641047.htmll
And
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6004772.ece
And
http://ancestry24.com/wp-content/uploads/pages/Genealogies%20of%20old%20South%20African%20Families/page_02859.pdf
And
http://www.identitynumber.org/research/marriage-transcriptions-maiden-results1.php?id=17994709
David married Dr. Marie Alfreda Van Ryneveld, daughter of Reginald Clive Berrange Van Ryneveld and Marie Alfreda Blanckenberg, on 9 Apr 1953 1.,2 (Dr. Marie Alfreda Van Ryneveld was born on 6 Oct 1930 1,2,3.)
Sources of information or n events in their marriage were:
Web Based Info. http://ancestry24.com/wp-content/uploads/pages/Genealogies%20of%20old%20South%20African%20Families/page_02859.pdf
And
http://www.identitynumber.org/research/marriage-transcriptions-maiden-results1.php?id=17994709
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