Fleur de Villiers

Fleur de Villiers received a BA from the University of Pretoria and was subsequently awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard where she studied international politics at the CFIA and the Kennedy School with i.a professors Sam Huntington, Karl Deutsch and Stanley Hoffman.

As a journalist from 1960 to 1986, she was – successively - theatre critic, economics correspondent, leader writer, columnist, political correspondent and, from 1981 to 1986 assistant editor and opinion page editor of the Sunday Times, Johannesburg. As a travelling correspondent, she also covered UN Security Council sessions and major political events in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the United States, where she reported on Watergate and the 1980 and 1984 Presidential elections.

In 1986 she took up a two-year IISS Visiting Fellowship in London where she was also, for many years, editorial consultant and leader writer on Southern African issues for the Times. She has been both a programme consultant and frequent commentator for British and American television and radio and a visiting speaker at Oxford and Cambridge colleges, Harvard, the CSIS, the US Secretary of State’s Open Forum and at other academic institutions and international conferences in the US and Europe. Since 1988 she has been public affairs consultant to the De Beers Group of companies and – from 1988 to 1998 – to the Anglo American Corporation.

In recent years she has prepared submissions to the US Congress and written briefing documents for UK and Southern African governments on subjects ranging from arts funding to capacity building, minerals legislation and environmental issues in Africa. In 1998 she was instrumental in bringing about the first partnership between the corporate sector and the World Health Organisation, initiating and guiding corporate participation in the WHO’s polio eradication programme in Angola.

Awards include the English Academy of Southern Africa’s Pringle Prize for theatre criticism, the National Press Award for Enterprising Journalism, a US Leader Grant and the Nieman Fellowship. Publications include Professional Secrecy in South Africa (OUP 1982); Bridge or Barricade? (Jonathan Ball 1983); Apartheid – Capitalism or Socialism (Institute of Economic Affairs, London 1986) and numerous articles in The Times, the Times Educational Supplement, and British and American journals.

As well as the Chairmanship of the IISS Trustees, she is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and serves on the council of the South African Business Initiative (SABI). She has travelled widely – in Europe, Africa, North America, Russia, the Middle East and Asia. She lives in London.

Affiliations

• Public affairs consultant to the De Beers Group 1988+
• Vice-Chairman:, International Institute of Strategic Studies
• Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society
• Council of the South African Business Initiative