Athol Williams


Athol Williams is a South African poet and social philosopher. From 2009 to 2014, Williams published his poetry under the pseudonym AE Ballakisten.

Life and career

Williams was born in Lansdowne, Cape Town, South Africa and grew up in Mitchells Plain, the coloured township established under apartheid. Before becoming a professional writer and social philosopher, he worked in business for fifteen years, mainly as a strategy advisor.
Williams is the first person to earn five master's degrees from five global top-ranked universities. In addition to a bachelor's degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, Williams holds master's degrees from MIT Sloan School of Management, London Business School, the University of Oxford, Harvard University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. It was at the University of the Witwatersrand, in 1991, that he published his first poem, "New South Africa", in the student publication Wits Student. The poem captured the newfound optimism associated with the release from prison of Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid leaders in 1990.
He is the co-founder of Read to Rise, an NGO that promotes youth literacy by making appropriate books available to children in poor communities. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town specialising in corporate responsibility and ethical leadership and a Research Fellow in the Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of Stellenbosch.

Work

Williams's poetry typically addresses two broad themes, namely social justice or a mix of mysticism and inspiration. The philosophies expressed in his poetry echoes the concerns and dreams for human greatness found in the writings of Roberto Mangabeira Unger, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. His more recent writings paint images of hope, offering poignant insight into the path that humanity can follow to find harmony. "Light on man's condition, man's spirit, the purpose of my writing," he wrote in "A Consecration".

Poetry