Gibbs Family Tree

Robert Vincent Molteno

Robert Vincent Molteno

Male 1943 - 2022  (79 years)

 

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Robert Molteno obituary

Greg Lanning

My friend Robert Molteno, who has died aged 79, was the editorial director of Zed Books for 27 years and helped build its reputation as the pre-eminent radical academic publisher concerned with the developing world.

Robert combined a sharp analysis of current issues with a commitment to scholars from the global south, seeking out authors whose work and ideas were ignored by mainstream publishers. The books he made available in English for the first time included Nawal El Saadawi’s The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World (1980), which drew attention to the widespread practice of female genital mutilation, and her bestselling novel, Woman at Point Zero (1983).

Among many important works commissioned by Robert were Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, by Cedric Robinson (1983), and Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, by Pervez Hoodbhoy (1991).

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Robert was introduced to political activism by his father, Donald Molteno, a human rights lawyer prominent in opposition to the apartheid regime. His British-born mother, Molly (nee Goldsmith), was a French teacher. Robert was educated at the Diocesan college in the city and then studied law at the University of Cape Town, where he was on the executive of the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students.

He graduated in 1965, and the following year married fellow student Marion Marquard, who later became a novelist under the name of Marion Molteno. He then undertook a master’s in political science at the University of Manchester (1968).

The couple moved to newly independent Zambia, where Robert taught public administration and political science at the University of Zambia. During that time he wrote Politics in Zambia (1974), with William Tordoff, and a textbook on civics for secondary schools. I first met Robert in Zambia in 1972 when writing a book about Africa, and we remained in close contact for 50 years.

In 1976, during a political crisis at the university, Robert was detained on spurious charges for two months without trial, and then deported. He and his young family settled in Clapham, south-west London, and Robert began working at Zed Books, where he stayed until 2005. He then worked at the International African Institute, based at Soas University of London, until retirement in 2008.

Alongside his publishing work, as a founder of the Wandsworth Association of School Parents Robert took a prominent role in campaigns to save the Inner London Education Authority from abolition. Though they did not succeed, he became convinced of the potential of community action.

After his retirement, he became an influential figure, both in Wandsworth and across London, in the Living Streets movement to create healthier, safer streets for pedestrians. Partly as a result of a wide-ranging survey organised by Robert, in 2019 Transport for London began reviewing all its pedestrian crossings to make them safer. He also pressed Wandsworth council to introduce a trial of protective school street closures in 2020, and it has now expanded the scheme.

Robert is survived by Marion, their daughters, May and Star, six grandchildren, and his brother Frank.

Owner of originalThe Guardian
Date1 May 2022
Linked toRobert Vincent Molteno

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