Born Molly Selikowitz in Lithuania in 1906, she came to South Africa as an immigrant in 1919. Petite, excitable, forceful, and a brilliant public speaker, according to Eddie Roux, she married Douglas Wolton about 1925 and together they became prime movers in the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) by the late 1920s. In mid-1929 she left South Africa with her husband and before her return in 1931, studied for some time at the Lenin School in Moscow. Convinced of the correctness of Comintern directives regarding the "Black Republic" policy, she became a key member of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) leadership during the purge of Sidney Percival Bunting and other alleged right-wing members of the party. A regular and popular speaker on the steps of the Johannesburg City Hall, she also wrote long and less popular theoretical pieces for Umsebenzi. In late 1932, after her husband had been issued a government order banning him from the Reef for 12 months, she moved with him to Cape Town and soon became involved in a tram and bus workers' strike. In August 1933, suffering from a weak heart, she left South Africa with her husband and daughter and thereafter lived in Britain. She died in 1947.
