South Africa and Palestine Discussion With H.E. Dr Barry Gilder

This event is organised by the Cambridge Centre for Palestine Studies (https://ccps21.org/), co-hosted by the Centre of African Studies

Please register to attend by emailing: theccps21.org@gmail.com

From 1974 to 1975, H.E. Dr Barry Gilder served on the national executive of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). In 1976 he went into exile, initially to the UK, to avoid serving with the apartheid army during its invasion of Angola. He joined the ANC in London and in 1979 joined its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and underwent military training in Angola and military and intelligence training in the then Soviet Union. From 1983 to 1989 he served in the underground leadership structures of the ANC in Botswana. He returned to South Africa in 1991 and from 1992 to 1994 worked with the Matla Trust, set up by Nelson Mandela to provide voter education to the previously disenfranchised. After the ANC’s 1994 election victory, he was deployed into the newly created state intelligence services, serving from 1995 to 1999 as General Manager Foreign Offices and later Deputy Director-General of the South African Secret Service (SASS), and – from 2000 to 2003 – as Deputy Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). From 2003 to 2005 he served as Director-General of the Department of Home Affairs. Between 2005-2007 as South Africa’s Coordinator for Intelligence. From 2019 to 2023 he served as South Africa’s ambassador to Syria and Lebanon.