Sidney Luckett

I was born and raised in Bloemfontein (South Africa) into a family that was a religious ‘gemors’ – a Catholic father and Dutch Reformed mother got married in the Methodist church because neither of their respective churches would marry them. I matriculated at Grey College and went on to Stellenbosch University to do a BSc and play rugby! Little was I aware of the profound changes that Stellenbosch was to have on my life. Under the influence of the staff in the Political Philoposhy department, Rick Turner and Johann Degenaar I became an agnostic and started cutting my teeth in politics. From there I went on to Oxford University (UK) where I did a master’s degree in economics. But again, more significant than the studies were the people I met: a fellow Rhodes Scholar who was a Vietnam veteran studying Chinese literature, a supervisor who was born in Alexandra (Egypt) and who introduced him to the delights of middle-eastern food, and black South African exiles, many of whom were memb