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| Affiliation | Democratic Alliance |
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| Name | Tony Leon |
| Address |
, , South Africa |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
December 15, 1956
(67 years)
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| Contributor | 411 Name Removed |
| Last Modifed | 411 Name Removed
Apr 19, 2004 09:09pm |
| Tags |
Caucasian - Jewish - Judaism - Straight -
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| Info | Anthony James Leon, South African politician, is the leader of South Africa's main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance.
Tony Leon was educated at the University of Witwatersrand, where he was President of the Law Students' Council and Vice-President of the Students' Representative Council. He became an attorney, and in 1986 a lecturer in the Law Department at the same university.
Leon grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era, when the African National Congress and other organisations representing the black majority were illegal. In 1974 he became an organiser for the Progressive Party, then South Africa's only legal opposition party.
In the same year he was elected to the Johannesburg City Council, where he became Leader of the Opposition. In 1989, he was elected to Parliament for the Progressive Party's successor, the Democratic Party. He was an advisor to the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) and a delegate to the multi-party negotiations that led to the end of apartheid and the establishment of a multi-party democracy in 1994.
Leon was elected to the first democratic National Assembly, at which the ANC under Nelson Mandela won a huge majority. He became Leader of the Democratic Party, then a minor party of white liberals. In 1999, after the second democratic election, when the old Nationalist Party lost most of its support, he became Leader of the Opposition.
Leon has built a high media profile as Opposition Leader, effectively criticising the ANC government of Mandela's successor, President Thabo Mbeki, for failing to deal with South Africa's huge problems of poverty, unemployment and the AIDS epidemic. He has however alienated some of his party's liberal supporters by supporting the death penalty.
At the April 14, 2004 elections, however, the ANC actually increased its vote. Although Leon's Democratic Alliance also increased its vote, it did so at the expense of other opposition parties.
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