Leon Louw

Leon Louw is a South African intellectual, author, speaker and policy advisor. He is the executive director and cofounder of the Free Market Foundation, a nonprofit organisation ranked at number 123 in a CEOWorld's 2017 list of the most influential think-tanks in the world. He is a regularly featured speaker and writer in South African and international media. He has addressed many prominent organisations, including the US Congress hearings on apartheid, the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, the Hoover Institute, and the United Nations.

In 1987, at a conference of the Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA) in Port Elizabeth, Louw said that the struggle against apartheid was about winning freedom, not power, for black South Africans, and that whites were concerned that a black government would be coercive. He argued that democracy and economic freedom were interdependent concepts which cannot exist in each other's absence. In the same year, at a symposium in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia, Louw said that a peaceful solution to apartheid South Africa's race conflict would be to include blacks in the freedoms whites had until that point enjoyed. Whites, on the other hand, would require security of their already-existing freedoms, against a potentially-vengeful black government. Above all, he said that the solution must include "the abolition of apartheid, full equality before the law and citizenship for all".

Louw co-authored with his wife Frances Kendall two books: South Africa, the Solution (Amagi, 1986) and Let the People Govern (Amagi, 1989). He ghost-wrote a novel set in India, The Deal Maker (2010, Rupa, Delhi), and co-authored Towards Freehold - Options for Land and Development (JUTA, 1988), and McGregor’s Economic Alternatives (JUTA, 1990). He has contributions in many publications, and wrote Habits of Highly Effective Countries (LRP, 2000), which is a statistical and empirical analysis of the characteristics associated with countries considered "winners" and "losers".

In the early 1980s, Louw was the Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry into Ciskei Economic Policy.

Louw is married to Frances Kendall (1978) and has three daughters, Justine, Camilla and Katherine. His current interests, recreations and hobbies include philosophy, classical music, travel, the outdoors, chess, jogging, cycling and gym.

In 1977, Louw was the Legal Manager at the Association of Chambers of Commerce of South Africa.

Louw was one of the co-founders of the Free Market Foundation of Southern Africa (FMF) in 1975, and is currently the Executive Director of the organisation. He often represents the FMF in print and broadcast media, and at FMF events.

Leon Louw was born in the town of Krugersdorp on 18 March 1948 to a conservative Afrikaner family. After his mother died in his infancy, he was raised by relatives in Potchefstroom, where he attended preschool and started primary school. When his father remarried, he was moved to the new family home in Johannesburg where he completed primary school and attended secondary school. After matriculating, he studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand (1965–1968), after which he completed his BJuris (1969-70) degree through the University of South Africa whilst serving legal articles at a law firm.