About

Barry Gilder was born in Durban, South Africa in 1950. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1972. From 1974 to 1975 he served on the National Executive Committee of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). In 1976 he went into exile where he joined the African National Congress.

From 1979 to 1980 he underwent military training with the ANC’s armed wing in Angola, then intelligence training in the then Soviet Union, and from 1985 to 1989 headed the ANC’s underground regional intelligence directorate in Botswana and served on the Regional Political Military Committee.

From 1990 to 1992 he was Administrative Editor of Africa Information Afrique, a development news agency, first in Zimbabwe and then in South Africa after his return from exile in 1991. He then served as Head Communications and later Deputy Director of the Matla Trust until he was deployed into the new democratic government at the beginning of 1995. He served as General Manager and later Deputy Director-General of the South African Secret Service from 1995 until 1999 and then as Deputy Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency from 2000 to 2003.

In 2003 he was appointed Director-General of the Department of Home Affairs and in 2005 was appointed Coordinator for Intelligence with the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee until his retirement from government in 2007.

In 2010 he helped to set up the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), a policy think tank, and served as its Director Operations until early 2013 when he left to spend two years abroad in New Delhi.

In September 2013 he was appointed as a Senior Visiting Fellow in the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Governance. In 2014 he re-joined MISTRA as Manager Publications and in 2016 re-assumed the role of Director Operations.

In 2019 he was appointed as South Africa’s ambassador to Syria and Lebanon and was based in Damascus until late 2013. He now freelances as an editor and proofreader, together with his wife, Reneva Fourie, in their company Amazwi Creatives.

He is the author of Songs and Secrets: South Africa from Liberation to Governance (Jacana 2012, Hurst 2012). From 2016 to 2017 he read for a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand, for which he wrote a novel entitled The List, which was released by Jacana Media in September 2018. While serving in Damascus, he undertook a PhD in Creative Writing with the University of the Witwatersrand which resulted in his second novel At Fire Hour, published by Jacana Media in September 2023. This novel won the best novel award in the South African Literary Awards 2024.