Patrick Baker Duncan (1918–1967) was a political thinker and activist, whose three books promoted
human rights
Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...
in South Africa and expressed concern regarding the relationship of
humans
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
with the
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
. An anti-
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
activist, Duncan was a supporter of
universal suffrage
Universal suffrage (also called universal franchise, general suffrage, and common suffrage of the common man) gives the right to vote to all adult citizens, regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, ethnicity, or political stanc ...
who was harassed and imprisoned by the Apartheid regime for his dissident activities.
Early life
Born 1918 in
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...
, was the son of
Sir Patrick Duncan. Duncan was educated first in South Africa and later in England, at
Winchester College
Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of ...
and at
Balliol College
Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...
, Oxford. In 1938 his friendship with a fellow Balliol student,
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (11 March 1907 – 23 January 1945) 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. He w ...
, 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
The Kreisau Circle (German: ''Kreisauer Kreis'', ) (1940–1944) was a group of about twenty-five German dissidents in Nazi Germany led by Helmuth James von Moltke, who met at his estate in the rural town of Kreisau, Silesia. The circle was com ...
, and also spent three weeks in an ''
Arbeitsdienst
The Reich Labour Service (''Reichsarbeitsdienst''; RAD) was a major organisation established in Nazi Germany as an agency to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarise the workforce and indoctrinate it with Nazi ...
'' 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 (OM) is an infection of bone. Symptoms may include pain in a specific bone with overlying redness, fever, and weakness. The long bones of the arms and legs are most commonly involved in children e.g. the femur and humerus, while the ...
.
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
Lesotho ( ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a country landlocked country, landlocked as an Enclave and exclave, enclave in South Africa. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the Thabana Ntlenyana, highest mountains in Sou ...
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 Letsie (1836–1905) was the paramount chief of Basotho (modern Lesotho) from November 20, 1891 to August 19, 1905.
Leadership of Basotho
Lerotholi became leader after his father's death in 1891. In 1898, he fought and defeated his unc ...
, was published in Cape Town by Oxford University Press in 1960, and reprinted in 2006.
His Assessor, Chief
Leabua Jonathan
Joseph Leabua Jonathan (30 October 1914 – 5 April 1987) 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
Born in Le ...
, 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’.
Political career
In South Africa
After the
National Party 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
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...
, 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
The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...
and the
South African Indian Congress
The South African Indian Congress (SAIC) was an organisation founded in 1921 in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), South Africa. The congress is famous for its strong participation by Mahatma Gandhi and other prominent South African Indian figures durin ...
agreed to his participation in their
defiance campaign
The Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws was presented by the African National Congress (ANC) at a conference held in Bloemfontein, South Africa in December 1951. The Campaign had roots in events leading up the conference. The demonstrations, ...
. With Manilal, son of the Mahatma, Duncan led a procession into the African location in
Germiston
Germiston, also known as kwaDukathole, is a small city in the East Rand region of Gauteng, South Africa, administratively forming part of the City of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality since the latter's establishment in 2000. It functions a ...
, 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
The South African Communist Party (SACP) is a communist party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), tactically dissolved itself in 1950 in the face of being declared illegal by the governing Na ...
, which had been secretly revived in 1953.
In 1955 Duncan joined the
Liberal Party of South Africa
The Liberal Party of South Africa was a South African political party from 1953 to 1968.
Founding
The party was founded on 9 May 1953 at a meeting of the South African Liberal Association in Cape Town. Essentially it grew out of a belief that ...
, 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
Joseph Leabua Jonathan (30 October 1914 – 5 April 1987) 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
Born in Le ...
, 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
The All-African Peoples Conference (AAPC) was partly a corollary and partly a different perspective to the modern Africa states represented by the Conference of Heads of independent Africa States. The All-Africa Peoples Conference was conceived to ...
at Accra in 1958.
In 1959 he stood as the Liberal Party candidate in the
Sea Point
Sea Point (Afrikaans: ''Seepunt'') 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 (CBD). Moving from ...
district of Cape Town for election to the
Cape Provincial Council
The Cape Provincial Council was the provincial council 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. The first election to the provinc ...
: 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
The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (known as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)) is a South African national liberation Pan-Africanist movement that is now a political party. It was founded by an Africanist group, led by Robert Sobukwe, that ...
(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 solely 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
Basutoland, where he set up as a trader in two remote stores in the
Quthing District
Quthing is a district of Lesotho. Moyeni (also known as Quthing), is the camp town or capital of the district. There are two of the most important sets of dinosaur footprints in the region. There is a large panel of Bushman paintings at Qomoqomon ...
, 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 F. Kennedy
Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, ...
, 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.
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,
aplastic anaemia
Aplastic anemia is a cancer in which the body fails to make blood cells in sufficient numbers. Blood cells are produced in the bone marrow by stem cells that reside there. Aplastic anemia causes a deficiency of all blood cell types: red blood c ...
and died in London, in 1967.
Patrick Duncan, Apartheid Foe, 48; Son of Ex-British Governor in South Africa Dies
''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', June 6, 1967
See also
*List of people subject to banning orders under apartheid
__NOTOC__
This list of people subject to banning orders under apartheid lists a selection of people subject to a "banning order" by the apartheid-era South African government. Banning was a repressive and extrajudicial measure used by the South ...
Notes and references
*
* 1964. London: Methuen, 169 pp.
*
*
*
*
External links
* Archival Information can be found at the Borthwick Institute for Archives
The Borthwick Institute for Archives is the specialist archive service of the University of York, York, England. It is one of the biggest archive repositories outside London. The Borthwick was founded in 1953 as The Borthwick Institute of Histori ...
, University of York
Duncan, Patrick (1918-1967) South African Political Journalist
{{DEFAULTSORT:Duncan, Patrick
1918 births
1967 deaths
South African people of Scottish descent
People from Johannesburg
South African people of British descent
South African prisoners and detainees
White South African anti-apartheid activists
South African expatriates in the United Kingdom
Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford