Picture: Canva
Professor Jack Spence, who has died at the age of 94, was a significant influence in South African and UK academic circles, establishing himself among Britain’s leading academic experts on South Africa.
Affable and charming, he was a great mentor and inspiration to a generation of scholars studying South African politics, and especially the transition from apartheid to democracy. He was involved in the doctoral supervision of a generation of South African scholars, including Deon Geldenhuys, Chris Landsberg and Peter Vale.
He built strong links with the South African Institute of International Affairs and the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House. Spence was someone for whom the sobriquet “wise” was merited. His counsel to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and various UK consultancies, such as Oxford Analytica, was regarded as informative rather than illuminating.
........
Spence was a fixture at most academic conferences on South Africa’s future, especially during the eighties and nineties, when matters were finely balanced and cool heads were needed.
........
Spence was a fixture at most academic conferences on South Africa’s future, especially during the eighties and nineties, when matters were finely balanced and cool heads were needed. Without doubt, he significantly contributed to the debate, a calming and balanced presence during a time when inflammatory and divisive opinions threatened at various stages to upend the political apple cart.
Spence was born and grew up in Krugersdorp, attended Pretoria Boys High School and read history at the University of the Witwatersrand, going on to the London School of Economics, where he switched to the emerging field of international relations.
He returned to South Africa to lecture at the University of Natal, then returned to the UK to the University College, Swansea, where he was appointed senior lecturer. In 1973, he accepted the politics chair at Leicester University, becoming the head of department. After a brief period as that university’s pro-vice chancellor, he returned to scholarship as the director of studies at Chatham House. His final move was to the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, where he was the professor of diplomacy.
He was a prolific author on international affairs and South African issues, and, inter alia, edited International Affairs, the Journal of Southern African Studies and the British Journal of International Studies.
Spence was a liberal in the Alan Paton tradition, and this set his writing against the powerful Marxist school, which set out to capture South and southern African studies in the 1970s and 1980s.
- David Willers was assistant director of the South African Institute of International Affairs, 1979-1981.