How Leon Trotsky sparked the birth of a revolutionary bookshop in Cape Town
1 July 2021: The words ‘radical bookshop’ cast their shadow on a coffee table inside Surplus bookshop in Woodstock, Cape Town. Filled with the revolutionary’s speeches and essays, the book sparked Marais’s interest in politics.
Towards the back of the shop, next to a shelf labelled “Apartheid Ephemera”, a coffee machine stands at the entrance to a doorway that leads to the kitchen, signalling to visitors that food and drink are available. But the books are the main attraction and for would-be buyers Surplus is a treasure trove.
. It was the first political book he was given and, unbeknown to either of the two, would become the first book in a collection that Marais estimates to be 40 000 strong. “1985 was an important year for my generation, like 1976 was for others,” he says, referring to the year he was exposed to political ideas and got involved in activism. While in high school, Marais joined the United Democratic Front’s youth movement in Silvertown. “It was never large, it was never more than 30 people.
“Politics means connecting to the world. The best activists that I knew – and I would hardly list myself among them – would embrace everything. They thought everything was worth reading.” In 2020, Marais had secured funding to run a library for students at Athlone High School, but the project fell apart when the schools closed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and he was left without an income. To make ends meet, he sold books from his collection to The Book Shoppe in Tokai, which is how he met the owner, Ray van Wyk.
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