Mary Klopper, who has died aged 89, had a wealthy and sheltered childhood and went on to become a dedicated campaigner for leftwing and humanitarian causes. She was born in South Africa to a Welsh mother and a liberal-minded manager of a Johannesburg goldmine. She was educated privately by governesses and became fluent in French, Italian and German.
In the late 1930s she attended University College London and the London School of Economics. Mary, with her command of languages, worked to support German refugees.
With war in 1939 Mary joined the South African Army Women's Corps, and was attached to the intelligence corps in Kenya, deciphering Italian coded military communications. After the war she was sent to Italy to find and reward Italian peasants who had sheltered South African prisoners of war.
On returning to South Africa in 1946, Mary Turvey, as she then was, entered leftwing politics. She had met a medical student, Arnold Klopper, and they married in the late 1940s. Arnold was one of a rare breed of socialist Afrikaaners: he was chairman of the Union of South African Students.
When the National Party was elected in 1948, and implemented apartheid, Arnold was advised, in view of the number of arrests, to leave South Africa. He was in any case attracted by the dream of all socialist doctors, a national health service, and joined a London hospital as a house surgeon. Mary followed and returned to the LSE to complete her studies, before joining Fenner Brockway as a fulltimer for the Movement for Colonial Freedom.
After London came Edinburgh, followed by Aberdeen in 1955. Arnold was by then eminent internationally in obstetrics research. He was chairman of Aberdeen CND. Mary was also active in the city in anti-apartheid and women's aid. She got 4,513 votes as Labour parliamentary candidate for North Angus and Mearns at the 1964 general election. When Arnold was on a research fellowship in New York she worked with the New York-based leftwing Monthly Review. She was an energetic member of the North of Scotland Hospitals Board.
The beautiful Sea Cottage at Newtonhill near Aberdeen, where they lived, was seldom empty of visiting South Africans and Ugandans, and leading medical scientists and political activists from many parts of the world. They all benefited from Mary's powerful intellect and her exceptional skill in the kitchen. She is survived by Arnold.
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