Author, Eastern Cape farmer, and liberal politician Errol (EK) Moorcroft died this week aged 85. Tributes have poured in for Moorcroft who has been described as a democrat, a “gentleman and a scholar”, and a devoted servant of South Africa’s democracy. Moorcroft was particularly well known for his passionate anti-apartheid stance in parliament during the turbulent 1980s.
He was born into a farming family in Adelaide in 1940 and spent his early years on the family farm. He later went to school at Queen’s College Boys’ High in Queenstown (Komani). In 1959 he graduated from the Grootfontein College of Agriculture.
From there he went on to Rhodes University to read for a bachelor of arts degree, which he obtained in 1964. His academic excellence earned him the Abe Bailey Bursary which allowed him to attend the University of Oxford in England, from where he graduated with a Master of Letters (MLitt) degree in 1967. At Oxford, he was awarded a blue for rugby, a sport in which he also represented Eastern Province.
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He lectured at Rhodes University in 1968 but returned to farming between 1968 and 1981. He was fluent in isiXhosa, and had a lifelong love for trees, which grew in abundance on his Clifton Farm in the Winterberg. He cut his teeth in politics in 1981 with the then Progressive Federal Party as its member for the Albany constituency, which had, as its population centre, Makhanda.
He later became a Democratic Party (the successor party to the PFP which later became the Democratic Alliance) member of the Senate of South Africa in 1994 and continued serving until 1999 in the National Council of Provinces. He succeeded Ken Andrew as DP federal chairperson in 1997, returning to the National Assembly in 1999. He served as that party’s spokesperson on the environment and later agriculture, land affairs, tourism, water affairs, and forestry.
He retired from politics in 2004 and returned to farming in the Winterberg. One of his dearest friends, former Springbok rugby captain Tommy Bedford, said Moorcroft was a “truly wonderful fellow”.
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