Born in Cape Town, South Africa, I was educated at the University of Cape Town and Witwatersrand, before going on to Warwick University.
While I was at university in Johannesburg I was involved in the Soweto uprising of June 1976. It was a tragic event, but eventually led to the freedom of South Africa with the end of apartheid in 1991.
I have worked on Africa since the 1970’s, first for the Labour Party and then for the BBC.
I was Africa editor, until I retired in November 2012 and I am currently a Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and King’s College, both in London. I have acted as an adviser to the European Union, British government and the U.S. State Department.
I have written a number of books, including:
Understanding African Slavery, Hurst, London (forthcoming)
Understanding Ethiopia’s Tigray war, Hurst, London 2022 (with Sarah Vaughan)
Dr Abdullah Abdurahman: South Africa’s first elected black politician, Jacana Media, 2020
Understanding South Africa, Hurst, 2019 (with Carien du Plessis)
Robert Mugabe, Ohio University Press, April 2018 (with Sue Onslow)
Understanding Eritrea: Inside Africa’s most repressive state, Hurst, London, 2016
Promise and Despair: the first struggle for a non-racial South Africa, Jacana Media, Johannesburg, 2016
Who rules South Africa? (with Paul Holden), Jonathan Ball publishers, Cape Town. 2012
David Killingray, with Martin Plaut: Fighting for Britain. African Soldiers in the Second World War. Boydell and Brewer. February 2010
Ethiopia and Eritrea: Allergic to persuasion. Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2007 (with Sally Healy)
Unfinished Business: Ethiopia and Eritrea at war Red Sea Press, 2005, (editor, with Dominique Jacquin-Berdal)
War in the Horn Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1999 (with Patrick Gilkes)
Power! Black workers, their unions and the struggle for freedom in South Africa. Spokesman Press, 1984 (with Denis MacShane and David Ward)
Promise and Despair: the first struggle for a non-racial South Africa, Jacana Media, Johannesburg, 2016