Patrick Duncan (anti-apartheid activist)
Patrick Baker Duncan (1918–1967) was a political thinker and activist, whose three books promoted human rights in South Africa and expressed concern regarding the relationship of humans with the Earth. An anti-apartheid activist, Duncan was a supporter of universal suffrage who was harassed and imprisoned by the Apartheid regime for his dissident activities.
Early life
Born 1918 in
He went on to join HM Diplomatic Service in Basutoland in 1941 where he served as an Assistant District Officer before becoming Private Secretary to the High Commissioner, Sir Evelyn Baring, in Cape Town in 1946. In 1947 he returned to Lesotho as Assistant District Officer and became Judicial Commissioner in 1951. His book, Sotho Laws and Customs, a handbook based on decided cases in Basutoland together with the Laws of Lerotholi, was published in Cape Town by Oxford University Press in 1960, and reprinted in 2006.
His Assessor, Chief Leabua Jonathan, in later years became Prime Minister of Lesotho. Duncan's approach to development in Africa was broad as well as original: he believed that soil erosion was a major issue of land management and published a pamphlet on this subject, entitled "The Enemy", in 1943 (Morija: Lesotho), under the pseudonym 'Melanchthon', Greek for 'black earth'.[2]
Political career
In South Africa
After the
After his resignation from the Colonial Service in 1952, Duncan and his family moved to a farm in the Orange Free State on the border with Basutoland. In November 1952 the
In 1955 Duncan joined the Liberal Party of South Africa, within which he was to become a radicalising influence, often evoking antipathy from its more conservative leaders.[4] He worked as the National Organiser of the Liberal Party throughout 1956–57, although remained in close contact with the developing national movement in Basutoland and, in particular, with Chief Leabua Jonathan, whose BNP he helped found in late 1957 and early 1958.
In 1958 the Duncans moved to Cape Town where Patrick started the newspaper Contact, directed at a non-racial readership. Contact, a fortnightly tabloid, became a vehicle for his radicalism and his hostility to communism. The newspaper aroused resentment for its strong stance on various issues: for instance, it attacked Albert Luthuli, leader of the ANC (for allegedly allowing the ANC to be dominated by communists); it also advocated immediate universal adult franchise (which alarmed the more conservative members of the Liberal Party). Although, given the nature of its largely impoverished readership, Contact never achieved massive sales, it nevertheless had considerable impact, achieved partly by its identification with African nationalist movements throughout the continent. Duncan represented the Liberal Party at the All-African Peoples' Conference at Accra in 1958.
In 1959 he stood as the Liberal Party candidate in the Sea Point district of Cape Town for election to the Cape Provincial Council: in a forthright campaign, when asked if 'Natives and Coloureds' should be allowed to swim in the famous Sea Point swimming pools, he replied "Yes". The result of the 'swimming pool election' was a win by the United Party candidate with 4476 votes, against Duncan's 1505.[5]
His sympathy for nationalism, as well as his feelings about communism[
In exile
In March 1961, Duncan was served the first of his banning orders, which tried to curtail his political activities and his movements round the country. During 1960 and 1961, reports in Contact on the Communist Party had attracted even more than usual attention from the security police, and in 1961 Duncan was arrested and imprisoned in Roeland Street police cells. Asked to disclose the sources of his information on the banned Communist party, he refused. After three weeks of continuing refusal, he was released but then charged with publishing 'subversive literature'; Duncan refused to plead and wrote his own speech in defence of his actions, later published in Blom-Cooper's anthology, The Law as Literature (London: Bodley Head 1961). In March 1962 he was served another banning order which restricted him to the magisterial district of Cape Town. Defying this order, Duncan drove overnight to the Free State in a car with a false number plate, and was driven in the boot of a friend's car over the border into Basutoland, where he set up as a trader in two remote stores in the Quthing District, planning to use these as a base for further political activity in South Africa.[8]
In early 1963 he resigned from the Liberal Party and joined the PAC, the first white man to be accepted into its ranks.
In the same year, he published South Africa’s Rule of Violence, an analysis of the violent repression of political protest in the country. He was appointed PAC representative for the North African countries, based in Algeria, where military training was being provided for PAC recruits: his ability to speak French stood him in good stead. However, in 1965 he was dismissed from his post: the reasons given included the fact that he had sent a personal letter congratulating his old friend and colleague, Chief Leabua Jonathan, on winning the Lesotho general election (the PAC was allied to Leabua's opponents, the BCP); and that, without waiting for an accord from Headquarters, he had recognised the new Government of Algeria formed by Houari Boumedienne after his coup d’état in 1965.[10] However, Duncan remained a PAC member, and he took the decision to stay in Algeria, where he found work within a relief organisation, Comité Chrétien de Service en Algerie, part of the World Council of Churches.[11]
During the years 1964-7 he deepened the ideas he had first expressed in The Enemy in 1943 about the effect of humans on what is now called 'biodiversity', and wrote Man and the Earth[12] (published posthumously in 1975.). This analysis of the way people exploit the planet had a breadth which was exceptional at the time, and covered detailed issues in politics, history and science. He propounded an ethical system which he called 'Geism', 'a new morality based on the totality of the planet'. Though such ideas on what is now called sustainable development were beginning then to be familiar when applied at a local level (see for instance the ‘hima’ concept in Arabia), Duncan's special contribution was his call for a response, at a global level, to environmental challenges, within a broad ethical, philosophical and spiritual perspective.[13] This scholarly work is remarkable since it proposes an approach to dealing with the challenges at a prescient date (the mid-1960s), and at a time when Duncan might have been preoccupied with the more immediate struggle against apartheid.
Personal life
Married to Cynthia Ashley Cooper (later Lady Bryan) in 1947, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. He also had two sons with Gerda Joeckel.
While working for the relief organisation in Algeria, Duncan contracted a blood disease,
See also
Notes and references
- ^ Driver 2000, p. 35.
- ^ Driver 2000, p. 47.
- ^ Driver 2000, p. 69.
- ^ Driver 2000, p. 128.
- ^ Driver 2000, p. xv.
- ^ Driver 2000, p. xiii.
- ^ Lissoni 2008, p. 196.
- ^ Driver 2000, p. 217.
- ^ Driver 2000, p. 224.
- ^ Driver 2000, pp. 250–253.
- ^ Driver 2000, p. 257.
- ^ Hochschild 1997, p. 48.
- ^ Driver 2000, p. 263-267.
- ^ Patrick Duncan, Apartheid Foe, 48; Son of Ex-British Governor in South Africa Dies, The New York Times, 6 June 1967
- Duncan, Patrick; Basutoland. Laws, statutes (2006). Sotho laws and custom. Morija, Lesotho: Morija Museum Archives. ISBN 978-99911-794-0-7.
- Duncan, Patrick. Patrick Duncan, South Africa's Rule of Violence. ISBN 0-416-27630-X.1964. London: Methuen, 169 pp.
- Duncan, Patrick (1975). Man and the Earth. Peterhead, Aberdeenshire: Volturna Press. p. 232.
- ISBN 978-0-85255-773-0.
- Hochschild, Adam (1997). Finding the trapdoor: essays, portraits, travels. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-8156-0447-5.
- Lissoni, Arianna (2008). The South African liberation movements in exile, c. 1945-1970 (PDF) (PhD). School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
External links
- Archival Information can be found at the Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York: Duncan, Patrick (1918-1967) South African Political Journalist