Basil Davidson

Basil Davidson was born in Bristol, United Kingdom on 9 November 1914 and left school at 16 and moved to London. In 1938, he gained a job at the Paris correspondent of The Economist and later as the diplomatic correspondent of The Star.[2] He travelled widely in Italy and Central Europe in the 1930s.[2]

Davidson was recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and MI6, D Section. He was sent to Budapest, Hungary in December 1939 under the cover of establishing a news service. In April 1941, with the Nazi invasion, he fled to Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In May, he was captured by Italian forces and was later released as part of a prisoner exchange.[3]

From late 1942 to mid-1943, he was chief of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) Yugoslav Section in Cairo, Egypt, where he was James Klugmann's supervisor. He parachuted into Bosnia on 16 August 1943, and spent the following months serving as a liaison with the Partisans, as he would describe in his 1946 book, Partisan Picture. Davidson moved east into Srem and the Fruška Gora. He was nearly captured or killed several times. SOE higher-ups sent him to Hungary to try to organize a rebel movement there, but Davidson found that the conditions weren't ripe and crossed back over the Danube into the Fruska Gora. The Germans encircled the Fruška Gora in June 1944 in a last attempt to liquidate the Partisans there, but Davidson and the others made a narrow escape. After the Soviets moved into Yugoslavia, Davidson was airlifted out. Davidson had enormous appreciation for the Partisans and the communist leader Josip Broz Tito.

From January 1945 Davidson was liaison officer with partisans in Liguria and Genoa, Italy. He was present for the surrender of the German forces in Genoa on 26-27 April 1945.[4] He finished the war as a lieutenant-colonel and was awarded the Military Cross and was mentioned in despatches on two occasions.[5]

Davidson returned to journalism after the war. He was employed initially by The Times in Paris but was widely considered to have communist sympathies after his wartime role as the Cold War began. He left in 1949 and became the secretary of the pressure-group, the Union of Democratic Control (UDC) and began to work for the left-leaning New Statesman.[5] However, the Cold War prevented him from returning to Central Europe and instead Davidson instead became interested in Africa after being invited to South Africa by trade unionists opposed to Apartheid. He published several articles and books critical of white-rule in South Africa and colonial rule in Africa, passing to the Daily Herald (1954-57) and the Daily Mirror (1959-62).

He began a career as a popular writer. He published five novels and 30 other books, mainly on African history and politics. These consolidated his reputation as one of the leading authorities on Africa in the era of independence. From 1969, Davidson was involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement and eventually became the movement's vice-president. He was a strong supporter of Pan-Africanism, especially from the 1980s, and was critical of the white-minority government in Rhodesia and of the American-backed UNITA in Angola.[5] He spent long periods in Angola and Eritrea during its struggle for independence from Ethiopia. In 1984, Davidson produced an 8-part documentary series for Channel 4 entitled Africa.[5]

Although not an academic, Davidson gained a reputation as an authority on African affairs and received a number of honorary positions at universities, including the School of Oriental and African Studies. Davidson also gained honorary degrees from universities in Europe and Africa, as well as a number of civic decorations.[5] In 1976, he won the Medalha Amílcar Cabral. He received honorary degrees from the Open University of Great Britain in 1980, and the University of Edinburgh in 1981. For his film series Africa, he won the Gold Award, from the International Film and Television Festival of New York in 1984. In 2002 he was decorated by the Portuguese president Jorge Sampaio as Grande Oficial da Ordem do Infante D. Henrique.