Bunting was involved in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1950s and was briefly a native representative in the all-white House of Assembly from 1952 until 1953, when he was expelled for his communist affiliation.
[1][3] Thereafter he enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts at Wits University, where he edited a campus newspaper and served as president of the student representative council.
[6] After the war, Bunting was assistant national secretary of the Springbok Legion, an influential anti-fascist organisation for ex-servicemen, and edited its mouthpiece, Fighting Talk.
[1] Later the same year, he moved to Cape Town to work as assistant editor and then editor-in-chief of the CPSA's weekly newspaper, the Guardian, which was renowned for its progressive stance on race relations.
[1][3] When the Guardian was banned by the government, Bunting edited each of its several successor papers (the Clarion, People's World, Advance, New Age, and Spark),[1][6] working with Ruth First, Govan Mbeki, and others.
[1][4] According to Jeremy Cronin, Bunting began his maiden speech in Parliament with the phrase, "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted..."[2] He served a single term in the National Assembly, leaving after the 1999 general election.
[3] Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bunting remained not only a staunch communist but "an unreconstructed Stalinist, one of the last true believers in the Soviet Union";[5] those who knew him personally described him as stubborn and even severe in his adherence to his political principles.
[1][4][6] In 2009, Bunting was posthumously awarded the Order of Luthuli in Silver for "his excellent contribution to anti-apartheid literature and journalism and for his courage in exposing the evils of apartheid to the world".