Robert Knox ″Jack″ Cope (3 June 1913 – 1 May 1991) was a South African novelist, short story writer, poet and editor.
He moved to Cape Town, where he worked for the Marxist Guardian newspaper from 1941 to 1955, in various capacities including cultural critic and, at one stage, general editor.
His Communist sympathies ended, however, with disillusionment after the revelation of Joseph Stalin's crimes in Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech.
Cope's first novel, The Fair House (1955), considers the Bambata Rebellion of 1906 in an attempt to account for the later racial and political conditions in South Africa.
The 2011 film Black Butterflies tells the story of the relationship between Ingrid Jonker and Jack Cope, who is portrayed onscreen by Irish actor Liam Cunningham.