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Tony Harding was born in Cape Town in 1957 and completed his schooling at Bishops, an elite learning establishment holding desperately on to the legacies of white English-speaking identity, in 1974. He attended the University of Cape Town, where he studied sociology and politics, rather than law, as would have been preferred by his family, and then became a conscript into the South African Defence Force between 1978 and 1981. After intervention by his family he was given an opportunity to be trained as a journalist on the liberal Rand Daily Mail and other South African newspapers between 1981 and 1983 and left journalism to avoid further military conscription. He worked with rural youth organisations from 1983 to 1990 and then for various intermediary NGOs before joining the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights in 1995 as a special advisor. He was assigned responsibility for managing land claim investigations in South Africa’s four northern provinces (Gauteng, North-West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga), until he joined provincial government in 2000. Since completing a sabbatical and writing Lekgowa he has been involved in promoting social entrepreneurship in rural areas and spends a considerable amount of time working on the challenges of conflict between mining companies and rural communities, as well as enjoying watching his wife fulfil her dream of becoming a farmer. He describes himself, ironically, as a gentleman farmer.

 

Opgedateer/Updated: 2010-08-26
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