Tony Leon

Tony Leon is an award-winning author, noted speaker and consultant, and has had two highly successful careers in both frontline South African politics and international diplomacy.

Currently the Chairman of Resolve Communications (Pty) Ltd., he also consults to business in South Africa and abroad, writes a weekly column for South Africa’s leading news site, and addresses various audiences.

For twenty years Tony Leon was a Member of Parliament in South Africa, and for thirteen years he led the Democratic Alliance. He is the longest serving Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, since the advent of democracy in April 1994.

A trained lawyer, Leon actively participated in the critical constitutional negotiations that led to the birth of a democratic South Africa. He has been at the forefront of national and international events, both as a front-ranking parliamentarian and renowned orator and writer and as a Vice-President of Liberal International. He has addressed many international conferences, institutes and think tanks from the Council on Foreign

Relations (Washington DC, and New York City) and the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), London, to the German Council on Foreign Relations, Berlin, the European Parliament in Brussels and to the World Economic Forum, Oxford Union and Yale Political Union.

Tony Leon has been widely published in academic journals and in the media and has authored articles for inter alia, Time Magazine, The Spectator, Harvard International Review, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Financial Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph, and the New Statesman.

He has published six books: “Hope and Fear: Reflections of a Democrat” (Jonathan Ball 1998), the SA bestsellers “On the Contrary: Leading the Opposition in a Democratic South Africa” (Jonathan Ball 2008), which won the prestigious Recht Malan Prize for nonfiction that year. Pan MacMillan published “The Accidental Ambassador”, in April 2013. In May 2014, he launched his new book “Opposite Mandela – Encounters with South Africa’s Icon”, to critical acclaim. In 2021, his book “Future Tense -Reflections on my Troubled Land” was published in both South Africa and in the United Kingdom. Historian Niall Ferguson wrote, “Anyone who wants to understand South Africa today…simply has to read this book.” In 2025, a bestseller “Being There-Backstories from the political front” was published, highlighting encounters with world leaders including Henry Kissinger and Boris Johnson and Yassir Arafat.

After standing down from the leadership of the opposition in 2007, he was awarded a Fellowship at the Institute of Politics, John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He led a study group and seminar series on Development and Democracy in Africa”. In 2008 he was invited as a fellow to the Cato Institute in Washington DC, where he published a paper on liberal democracy in Africa: (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11717)

On the nomination of the President of South Africa, he served as South African Ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, based in Buenos Aires, from 2009 to 2012.

In 2016 and 2017, he was visiting professor of political practice at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, IDC, Herzliya, Israel.

In November 2026, the Mayor of Cape Town bestowed the City’s civic honours on Tony with a citation noting, “Tony Leon has made an indelible mark on South Africa’s democratic landscape as a politician, diplomat, author and public intellectual whose principled leadership and commitment to constitutional values have influenced the nation’s political discourse and development for decades. “

Nelson Mandela said of Tony Leon, on his retirement from political leadership
(2007):” Your contribution to democracy is enormous, you have more support for all you have done than you might ever read about.”