Patrick Duncan (anti-apartheid activist)
Encyclopedia
Patrick Baker Duncan 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.
, was the son of Sir Patrick Duncan. Duncan was educated first in South Africa and later in England, at Winchester College
and at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1938 his friendship with a fellow Balliol student, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
, led to an invitation to stay with the von Moltke family in Germany: he thus came into contact with the anti-Nazi opposition group, the Kreisau Circle
, and also spent three weeks in an Arbeitsdienst voluntary labour camp. Both experiences had a profound influence on him. In October 1939, having returned to South Africa, he travelled back to England hoping to join the army, but was rejected on medical grounds, because, since the age of 11, he had been lame, with a knee he couldn't bend due to an injury from a cricket ball that caused osteomyelitis
.
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’.
won the 1948 General Election in South Africa, Duncan decided to involve himself directly in South African politics. Four factors were especially important in influencing this decision. First, he had developed a profound horror of racism. Secondly, he had become deeply influenced by the theories of the Mahatma Gandhi, particularly the concept of satyagraha
. Thirdly, he had by then realised that for the African majority in South Africa the constitutional politics of the time were meaningless and hopeless. Fourthly, he always had an intense feeling of personal destiny, partly as the consequence of his father’s career, which had culminated in his being Governor-General of the Union of South Africa.
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 ANC
and the South African Indian Congress
agreed to his participation in their defiance campaign. With Manilal, son of the Mahatma, Duncan led a procession into the African location in Germiston, where they and others were arrested. Duncan was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour, for breaking the law requiring whites to possess a permit before visiting a location; he served only two weeks, as ill health forced him to pay a fine in lieu of the remainder of his sentence. At this point he was working closely with the Congress movement, but soon considerable mutual distrust developed as a result of his suspicions that the ANC was being manipulated by members of the South African Communist Party
, which had been secretly revived in 1953.
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. 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.
His sympathy for nationalism, as well as his feelings about communism, led Duncan to support the anti-pass campaign led by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1960. In particular he played a crucial role in Cape Town during the negotiations between the PAC and the police after the march of 30,000 blacks from the townships into the city centre. The defeat of the campaign and the banning of the African political movements contributed to Duncan’s growing disillusion with merely non-violent opposition to apartheid.
, 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.
In early 1963 he resigned from the Liberal Party and joined the PAC, the first white man to be accepted into its ranks. After corresponding with Robert Kennedy, Duncan visited America as a representative of the PAC to try to affect US policy on South Africa; he was still, at this stage, still very pro-American, and he received some encouragement from members of the Kennedy administration. In July 1963 he addressed the UN Special Committee on Apartheid. However, while Duncan and his family were visiting England, the Resident Commissioner of Basutoland declared him a prohibited immigrant in that country. Duncan continued to work in the PAC and, in 1964, was sent to investigate financial malpractices at the PAC office in Dar es Salaam.
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. 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.
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 (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. 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.
While working for the relief organisation in Algeria, Patrick contracted a blood disease, aplastic anaemia and died in London, in 1967.
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and expressed concern regarding the relationship of humans with the Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
. An anti-apartheid activist, Duncan was a supporter of universal suffrage
Universal suffrage
Universal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and non-citizens...
who was harassed and imprisoned by the Apartheid regime for his dissident activities.
Early life
Born 1918 in JohannesburgJohannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
, was the son of Sir Patrick Duncan. Duncan was educated first in South Africa and later in England, at Winchester College
Winchester College
Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...
and at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1938 his friendship with a fellow Balliol student, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was a German jurist who, as a draftee in the German Abwehr, acted to subvert German human-rights abuses of people in territories occupied by Germany during World War II and subsequently became a founding member of the Kreisau Circle resistance group, whose members...
, led to an invitation to stay with the von Moltke family in Germany: he thus came into contact with the anti-Nazi opposition group, the Kreisau Circle
Kreisau Circle
The Kreisau Circle was the name the Nazi Gestapo gave to a group of German dissidents centered on the Kreisau estate of Helmuth James Graf von Moltke. The Kreisauer Kreis is celebrated as one of the instances of German opposition to the Nazi regime...
, and also spent three weeks in an Arbeitsdienst voluntary labour camp. Both experiences had a profound influence on him. In October 1939, having returned to South Africa, he travelled back to England hoping to join the army, but was rejected on medical grounds, because, since the age of 11, he had been lame, with a knee he couldn't bend due to an injury from a cricket ball that caused osteomyelitis
Osteomyelitis
Osteomyelitis simply means an infection of the bone or bone marrow...
.
He went on to join HM Diplomatic Service in Basutoland
Basutoland
Basutoland or officially the Territory of Basutoland, was a British Crown colony established in 1884 after the Cape Colony's inability to control the territory...
in 1941 where he served as an Assistant District Officer before becoming Private Secretary to the High Commissioner, Sir Evelyn Baring
Evelyn Baring
Evelyn Baring may refer to:* Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer , Consul-General of Egypt from 1883–1907* Evelyn Baring, 1st Baron Howick of Glendale , his son, and Governor of Kenya from 1952 to 1959...
, in Cape Town in 1946. In 1947 he returned to Lesotho
Lesotho
Lesotho , officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a landlocked country and enclave, surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. It is just over in size with a population of approximately 2,067,000. Its capital and largest city is Maseru. Lesotho is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The name...
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
Lerotholi
Lerotholi Letsie was the paramount chief of Basotho from November 20, 1891 to August 19, 1905.-Leadership of Basotho:...
, was published in Cape Town by Oxford University Press in 1960, and reprinted in 2006.
His Assessor, Chief Leabua Jonathan
Leabua Jonathan
Joseph Leabua Jonathan was the second Prime Minister of Lesotho. He succeeded Chief Sekhonyana Nehemia Maseribane following a by-election and held that post from 1965 to 1986.-Early life and career:...
, 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’.
Personal life
Married to Cynthia Ashley Cooper (later Lady Bryan) in 1947, he had two sons and two daughters.In South Africa
After the National PartyNational Party (South Africa)
The National Party is a former political party in South Africa. Founded in 1914, it was the governing party of the country from 4 June 1948 until 9 May 1994. Members of the National Party were sometimes known as Nationalists or Nats. Its policies included apartheid, the establishment of a...
won the 1948 General Election in South Africa, Duncan decided to involve himself directly in South African politics. Four factors were especially important in influencing this decision. First, he had developed a profound horror of racism. Secondly, he had become deeply influenced by the theories of the Mahatma Gandhi, particularly the concept of satyagraha
Satyagraha
Satyagraha , loosely translated as "insistence on truth satya agraha soul force" or "truth force" is a particular philosophy and practice within the broader overall category generally known as nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. The term "satyagraha" was conceived and developed by Mahatma...
. Thirdly, he had by then realised that for the African majority in South Africa the constitutional politics of the time were meaningless and hopeless. Fourthly, he always had an intense feeling of personal destiny, partly as the consequence of his father’s career, which had culminated in his being Governor-General of the Union of South Africa.
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 ANC
ANC
ANC commonly refers to the African National Congress, a revolutionary movement which became the ruling political party in South Africa in the 1994 election.ANC may also refer to:-Organizations:...
and the South African Indian Congress
South African Indian Congress
The South African Indian Congress was an organization founded in 1924 in Natal , South Africa. The congress is famous for its strong participation by Mahatma Gandhi and other prominent South African Indian figures during the time. Umar Hajee Ahmed Jhaveri was elected the first president of the...
agreed to his participation in their defiance campaign. With Manilal, son of the Mahatma, Duncan led a procession into the African location in Germiston, where they and others were arrested. Duncan was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour, for breaking the law requiring whites to possess a permit before visiting a location; he served only two weeks, as ill health forced him to pay a fine in lieu of the remainder of his sentence. At this point he was working closely with the Congress movement, but soon considerable mutual distrust developed as a result of his suspicions that the ANC was being manipulated by members of the South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party
South African Communist Party is a political party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H...
, which had been secretly revived in 1953.
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. 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
Leabua Jonathan
Joseph Leabua Jonathan was the second Prime Minister of Lesotho. He succeeded Chief Sekhonyana Nehemia Maseribane following a by-election and held that post from 1965 to 1986.-Early life and career:...
, 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
All-African Peoples' Conference
The All-African Peoples' Conference was a conferenceof political parties and other groupsin the late 1950s and early 1960s in Africa.It was attended bydelegates from independence movementsin areas still under European colonial rule,...
at Accra in 1958.
In 1959 he stood as the Liberal Party candidate in the Sea Point
Sea Point
Sea Point is one of Cape Town's most affluent and densely populated suburbs, situated between Signal Hill and the Atlantic Ocean, a few kilometres to the west of Cape Town's Central Business District . Moving from Sea Point to the CBD, one passes through first the small suburb of Three Anchor Bay,...
district of Cape Town for election to the Cape Provincial Council
Cape Provincial Council
The Cape Provincial Council was the legislature of the Cape Province of South Africa. It was created by the South Africa Act 1909, with effect from the formation of the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910...
: 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.
His sympathy for nationalism, as well as his feelings about communism, led Duncan to support the anti-pass campaign led by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1960. In particular he played a crucial role in Cape Town during the negotiations between the PAC and the police after the march of 30,000 blacks from the townships into the city centre. The defeat of the campaign and the banning of the African political movements contributed to Duncan’s growing disillusion with merely non-violent opposition to apartheid.
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 BasutolandBasutoland
Basutoland or officially the Territory of Basutoland, was a British Crown colony established in 1884 after the Cape Colony's inability to control the territory...
, where he set up as a trader in two remote stores in the Quthing District
Quthing District
Quthing is a district of Lesotho. It has an area of 2,916 km² and a population in 2006 of approximately 120,502. Quthing, also known as Moyeni, is the capital of the district or camptown, and the only town in the district...
, planning to use these as a base for further political activity in South Africa.
In early 1963 he resigned from the Liberal Party and joined the PAC, the first white man to be accepted into its ranks. After corresponding with Robert Kennedy, Duncan visited America as a representative of the PAC to try to affect US policy on South Africa; he was still, at this stage, still very pro-American, and he received some encouragement from members of the Kennedy administration. In July 1963 he addressed the UN Special Committee on Apartheid. However, while Duncan and his family were visiting England, the Resident Commissioner of Basutoland declared him a prohibited immigrant in that country. Duncan continued to work in the PAC and, in 1964, was sent to investigate financial malpractices at the PAC office in Dar es Salaam.
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. 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.
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 (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
Hima
A himá "inviolate zone" refers to an area set aside for the conservation of natural capital, typically fields, wildlife and forests - contrast ḥaram, which defines an area protected for more immediate human purposes....
’ 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. 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.
While working for the relief organisation in Algeria, Patrick contracted a blood disease, aplastic anaemia and died in London, in 1967.