Tony Leon – författare

In 2008, Tony Leon’s award-winning biography On the Contrary concluded with a chapter entitled “Future Imperfect”. Now, in the riveting new Future Tense, the topic and title has changed to capture and analyse the squandered and corrupted years since. Leon, with unique access and penetrating insight, presents a portrait of today’s South Africa and prospects for its future, based on his political involvement over thirty years with the key power players: Cyril Ramaphosa, Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk. His close-up and personal view of these presidents and their history-making, and many encounters in the wider world, adds vivid colour to the normal black and white picture painted of a country and planet in upheaval. Written during the coronavirus lockdown, Future Tense also examines the surge of both the disease and the response, which has crashed the economy and its future prospects, as well as the rise of a dangerous Julius Malema-led populism, and how this echoes global discontent elsewhere. As the founding leader of the official opposition, Leon also provides an insider view for the first time of the power struggles within that party, which saw the exit of its first black leader in 2019. There is every reason to fear for the future of South Africa but, as Leon argues, “the hope for a better country remains an improbable, but not an impossible, dream”.

Tony Leon, longest serving leader of the opposition in democratic SA and acclaimed columnist and analyst, goes behind the scenes of what happened when history was being made in this country and around the world. His first-hand account from a front-row seat at critical moments provides frank and informed opinion. He ranges in this book: His ringside role in the formation of the recent Government of National Unity following the 2024 elections: A reappraisal - based on close encounters - of some of the giants who made modern South Africa and the wider world, including FW de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, Harry Oppenheimer Ariel Sharon, Yassir Arafat, Boris Johnson, and the leaders of Argentina: He writes of life in modern politics, from the purgatory of social media to the perils of fundraising in tough times and the leaderless world led often by mediocre or populist grifters, far removed from the statesmen and women these times demand. In Being There, Leon reflects, too, on the nostalgia we often feel, through pain and pride, of childhood, school and the many ‘what ifs’ which inform a well-lived and varied life on the frontlines of South Africa and its history-in-the-making. And how a wrong turn, or too few votes, can change the course of one life. Written with his customary blend of humour and flair and with an eye on the future and what the present and the past foretell about it, Leon’s new book is both important and highly readable.

Tony Leon has written a book of unique insight into an unexplored aspect of the presidency and leadership of Nelson Mandela. Opposite Mandela relates the untold stories of how South Africa's first democratic president related to his political opponents. Leon served as leader of the Democratic Party during Mandela's presidency. Although they clashed, sometimes fiercely, on great issues of the day, Leon enjoyed an unusually warm relationship with Mandela and had direct access to the president's office. In this first-hand account, he relates some of the more consequential moments of those momentous times in South Africa's history-in-the-making through the lens of the opposition. Although this is a personal account, it also explores some of the major themes, from reconciliation to corruption, which not only marked that period but also laid the basis for the current challenges which confront South Africa today, nearly two decades after Mandela assumed the countrys highest office, the very moment when Leon's political leadership began.Insightful, and simultaneously serious and amusing, it lifts the veil on many unknown or unexplained benchmarks from that era: the personal animosity between Mandela and FW De Klerk, the decision of the Democratic Party to reject Mandela's offer of a seat in his cabinet and whether the extraordinary outreach of Mandela to the minorities was the shrewd calculation of a latter-day Machiavelli or the genuine impulses of a secular political saint. This highly readable and first-hand account considers in a balanced manner both the golden moments and the blind spots of one of the most consequential presidencies and leaders of the modern democratic age.