I am a born-and-bred South African writer, editor and speaker living in Cape Town. I’ve worked in advertising, on newspapers and their websites, and in television. My editorial work includes editing academic writing and books, sustainability reporting, and writing for various organisations and corporates, mostly on environmental, climate change and sustainability issues. As a journalist, I have special interests in inequality, social justice, HIV and environmental issues. This site chronicles my professional life, and there’s a more detailed résumé here. I tracked developments in South African civil society towards COP17, the UN climate conference in Durban, December 2011 on a separate dedicated blog.
Past affiliations
In the second of 2012, I was an interim committee member for the democracy campaign My Vote Counts. Until February 2012, I worked part-time, mostly on communications, at SAFCEI, a secondment from its board. I have worked for Incite Sustainability, where I have also been an associate. Between 2003 and 2005, I worked for the Nobel Prize-nominated Treatment Action Campaign and the associated Community Media Trust. From 1998 to 2001, I worked for the Mail & Guardian, including time spent as manager and editor of the M&G Online. In the 1990s, I also worked for a time as a freelance theatre critic for that paper. My career began at Ogilvy, the ad agency.
Leaves of language
The name of this blog is from an article written by Daisaku Ikeda in the Japan Times (‘Restoring our connections with the world’, Oct 12, 2006):
Our planet is scarred and damaged, its life-systems threatened with collapse. We must shade and protect Earth with ‘leaves of language’ arising from the depths of life. Modern civilization will be healthy only when the poetic spirit regains its rightful place.
Ikeda’s article begins by discussing the Man’yōshū (‘A Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves’), the oldest (1300 years) surviving collection of Japanese poems.
Banner photo
If it’s still a range of lowish mountains with red cliffs, and sweet green grasses, then it’s on the N7 north from Cape Town, near Vanrhynsdorp, August 2008, at the beginning of a bitterly cold and stormy weekend.
Contact
Comment here or email me at david dot lepage (at) gmail dot com.
– David Le Page
I really enjoyed reading your article in Business Day today.
Perhaps you may want to contact a company called Managed Care Economical Solutions a company who specializes in biotechnology and bio enzymes and based in Johannesburg. I heard about them whilst I was in Seychelles at the Seychelles Tourism Conference.