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Andrew Feinstein
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Andrew Feinstein
Andrew Josef Feinstein (/ˈfaɪnstin/ ⓘ FINE-steen; born 16 March 1964) is a South African former politician, economic advisor and investment banker, now activist, political consultant, filmmaker, campaigner and author, who specialises in the investigation of the arms trade and the corruption that accompanies it. He is the executive director of the small non-profit Shadow World Investigations, and serves on the board of Declassified UK.
Feinstein was elected in South Africa's first democratic elections following the abolition of apartheid and served as a member of parliament from 1994 to 2001 as a member of the ruling ANC party. After resigning his parliamentary seat in 2001, in protest against the ANC government's handling of the South African Arms Deal and exclusion of the Special Investigating Unit from the resulting anti-corruption probe, he worked as an investment banker and then became an investigative author and campaigner.
A former member of the UK Labour Party, Feinstein unsuccessfully stood against Keir Starmer in the 2024 general election in his constituency Holborn and St Pancras.
Andrew Feinstein was born in Cape Town to Viennese Holocaust survivor Erika (née Hemmer) and Ralph Josef Feinstein, who emigrated to South Africa from London after World War II and whose views have been described as "liberal Zionist". Thirty-nine members of his mother's family were murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz concentration camp and Theresienstadt, whilst she survived hidden in a Vienna coal cellar that Feinstein later visited as a boy. She was active in the Black Sash human rights organisation for liberal white women, while his father was a member of the left-wing anti-racist South African Congress of Democrats during the 1950s. She worked at a theatre employing racially-mixed staff in defiance of the apartheid laws and Feinstein met the young pianist Dollar Brand through her. Her wartime experiences and her work with anti-apartheid groups inspired Feinstein to become involved in the then-outlawed African National Congress (ANC) as a teenager in the 1980s.
Feinstein completed his secondary education at Wynberg Boys' High School in Cape Town in 1981; four years later he graduated with a BA (Honours) degree from the University of Cape Town. As a student, he took part in political activities in the townships outside Cape Town. He left South Africa to avoid conscription into the South African Defence Force and deployment in the South African Border War, and studied graduate-level economics and politics from 1985 to 1987 at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1990, he gained a Master of Philosophy degree in economics and politics from the University of Cambridge.
Feinstein returned to South Africa in 1991 and joined the African National Congress, now operating as a legal party. A back room politician, he came to be known as the ANC's "Mr Clean". He took part as a facilitator in the negotiations to end apartheid, starting from the first plenary meeting of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park in December 1991.
He was elected an ANC regional member of parliament under Nelson Mandela in the first democratic election in 1994. He served as a member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, where he chaired the Finance and Economics Committee and assisted in the establishment of the Gauteng provincial treasury and an economic affairs department. He was an advisor to member of the Executive Council of Gauteng (MEC) for finance and economic affairs, Jabu Moleketi, from 1994 to 1996. He also worked as an economic advisor to the premier of Gauteng, Tokyo Sexwale. He replaced Marcel Golding as a member of the South African Parliament's lower house in 1997. He served in Johannesburg South until the 1999 election, and then in the former Sea Point constituency in Cape Town and on the Atlantic seaboard of the Cape Province.
Feinstein introduced the first ever motion on the Holocaust in South African parliamentary history. He stated that previous suffering – by Afrikaners at the hands of the British colonizers, or of Jews by the Nazis – in no way justified the brutal oppression of Black South Africans or Palestinians.
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Andrew Feinstein
Andrew Josef Feinstein (/ˈfaɪnstin/ ⓘ FINE-steen; born 16 March 1964) is a South African former politician, economic advisor and investment banker, now activist, political consultant, filmmaker, campaigner and author, who specialises in the investigation of the arms trade and the corruption that accompanies it. He is the executive director of the small non-profit Shadow World Investigations, and serves on the board of Declassified UK.
Feinstein was elected in South Africa's first democratic elections following the abolition of apartheid and served as a member of parliament from 1994 to 2001 as a member of the ruling ANC party. After resigning his parliamentary seat in 2001, in protest against the ANC government's handling of the South African Arms Deal and exclusion of the Special Investigating Unit from the resulting anti-corruption probe, he worked as an investment banker and then became an investigative author and campaigner.
A former member of the UK Labour Party, Feinstein unsuccessfully stood against Keir Starmer in the 2024 general election in his constituency Holborn and St Pancras.
Andrew Feinstein was born in Cape Town to Viennese Holocaust survivor Erika (née Hemmer) and Ralph Josef Feinstein, who emigrated to South Africa from London after World War II and whose views have been described as "liberal Zionist". Thirty-nine members of his mother's family were murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz concentration camp and Theresienstadt, whilst she survived hidden in a Vienna coal cellar that Feinstein later visited as a boy. She was active in the Black Sash human rights organisation for liberal white women, while his father was a member of the left-wing anti-racist South African Congress of Democrats during the 1950s. She worked at a theatre employing racially-mixed staff in defiance of the apartheid laws and Feinstein met the young pianist Dollar Brand through her. Her wartime experiences and her work with anti-apartheid groups inspired Feinstein to become involved in the then-outlawed African National Congress (ANC) as a teenager in the 1980s.
Feinstein completed his secondary education at Wynberg Boys' High School in Cape Town in 1981; four years later he graduated with a BA (Honours) degree from the University of Cape Town. As a student, he took part in political activities in the townships outside Cape Town. He left South Africa to avoid conscription into the South African Defence Force and deployment in the South African Border War, and studied graduate-level economics and politics from 1985 to 1987 at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1990, he gained a Master of Philosophy degree in economics and politics from the University of Cambridge.
Feinstein returned to South Africa in 1991 and joined the African National Congress, now operating as a legal party. A back room politician, he came to be known as the ANC's "Mr Clean". He took part as a facilitator in the negotiations to end apartheid, starting from the first plenary meeting of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park in December 1991.
He was elected an ANC regional member of parliament under Nelson Mandela in the first democratic election in 1994. He served as a member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, where he chaired the Finance and Economics Committee and assisted in the establishment of the Gauteng provincial treasury and an economic affairs department. He was an advisor to member of the Executive Council of Gauteng (MEC) for finance and economic affairs, Jabu Moleketi, from 1994 to 1996. He also worked as an economic advisor to the premier of Gauteng, Tokyo Sexwale. He replaced Marcel Golding as a member of the South African Parliament's lower house in 1997. He served in Johannesburg South until the 1999 election, and then in the former Sea Point constituency in Cape Town and on the Atlantic seaboard of the Cape Province.
Feinstein introduced the first ever motion on the Holocaust in South African parliamentary history. He stated that previous suffering – by Afrikaners at the hands of the British colonizers, or of Jews by the Nazis – in no way justified the brutal oppression of Black South Africans or Palestinians.
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