Patrick Duncan (anti-apartheid Activist) - Early Life

Early Life

Born 1918 in Johannesburg, 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’.