I am sorry to have to tell you of the death of my brother Peter Duminy. He died this morning at the age of 89 after a steady deterioration. Old age, I guess. He matriculated in 1948, the year Jack Spence was Head Prefect (I have no recent news of him but he must also be approaching 90).
Peter in his matric year produced a weekly ‘newspaper’, The School Argus, together with Ron Schuurink and Dave Hagen, who are probably now also pretty well forgotten, although they both went on to be of some importance. It was not printed but was posted on the notice board in the library, where it was eagerly read by many.
Here is an obituary I was able to write yesterday for the CXPress.
PETER DUMINY
Peter Duminy, who died this morning at Strombolis retirement village, had a long association with Plettenberg Bay. On a visit from Johannesburg in 1962, he was lucky to buy a plot halfway up Hill Street, overlooking the Lookout beach. It had just been placed on the market after it was found that Hill Street could not proceed directly down the hill, as had originally been planned. The house de Meermin, designed by his brother-in-law John Stegmann, was the first to be supplied with municipal electricity and was for many years a well-known landmark.
The son of JP Duminy, the Vice-Chancellor of UCT, he grew up in Pretoria, where he matriculated at Pretoria Boys High in 1948, before graduating at Rhodes with a BA/LLB in 1952. In 1953, while completing an honours degree in Economics, he was chairman of the SRC. A committed opponent of the apartheid government, he was a foundation member of the South African Liberal Party when it was formed in May of that year. Although he completed his articles with Lunnon and Tindall in Pretoria, he decided against pursuing a career in Law and joined the Sunday Times, where he was involved in the foundation of the Financial Mail in 1959, later becoming its deputy-editor under the legendary George Palmer.
In 1968 he transferred to the Economist in London and three years later became editor of the Australian weekly Finance Week, when it was launched by Rupert Murdoch in 1971. Publication was halted due to lack of demand after only a few editions had been printed, whereafter Peter became the Economist’s far-Eastern correspondent, based in Tokyo, before returning to Australia to head the publicity section of the Broken Hill Corporation. After his retirement in 1991 he returned to South Africa, where he was SACCOB’s parliamentary representative in Cape Town during the last years of white rule. After the death of his mother in 1997, he lived at de Meermin in Plettenberg Bay, where he was a generous host to friends and family from all over the world and where he later operated a bed-and-breakfast (the house was sold in 2004 and subsequently demolished).
During his last active years, he was a member of the committee of the Van Plettenberg Historical Society, hIs special interest being the preservation of the Timber Shed, from which his ancestor Francois Renier Duminy had taken the first load of timber in 1788. He continued to use his considerable intellectual abilities and writing skills and was the editor of Trevor McGlashan’s republication of Pat Storrar’s book Plettenberg Bay and the Paradise Coast in 2001. Unmarried, he lavished kindness and love on members of his family and his friends.
Andrew Duminy