About me

John Young is a writer, researcher and editor. 

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John went to school in Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha. In 2006 he wrote and project-managed a history of his old school on the occasion of Grey High School’s 150th anniversary, The Spirit of the Tower. After obtaining a BJourn and a teaching diploma at Rhodes University, John started teaching at Milnerton High School in Cape Town. The publication of his University of Cape Town honours thesis, Observatory, A Town in the Suburbs, inspired him to take up writing full-time. At the time he was chairman of the Observatory Civic Association. 

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Assignments on the history of Langa Cricket Club on its 21st anniversary and publishing house Juta followed. The Langa history was well received. Juta accepted and paid for the manuscript but did not publish what was intended as the third part of the company’s history. 

As a freelance writer John has supplied copy to many newspapers and magazines in South Africa, India, Britain and Australia.

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John has been writing about business and investment in South Africa and Africa since 2008. His writing and editing work for Global Africa Network on a freelance basis covers a suite of nine provincial business and investment journals such as Gauteng Business, and South African Business, all of which are annual publications. He also contributes to two quarterly business-to-business magazines, Opportunity and The Journal of African Business.

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John’s book on history of the first windfarm in the Tsitsikamma included a biography of the man who initiated the project, Mike Msizi, and the Mfengu people on whose land the windfarm was built. Just Imagine. The story of Mike Msizi, the Tsitsikamma Mfengu and the Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm won the 2016 John Kannemeyer Award for Biography awarded by the SA Independent Publishers’ Association.

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Since 2021, articles have been published by the Financial Mail on subjects ranging from the inauguration of a new stock exchange in Cape Town to the successful business model of the South African Sevens rugby team.

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For Jacana Media in 2022, John edited Rory Riordan’s book on the key years of struggle against apartheid in the Eastern Cape, Apartheid’s Stalingrad: How the townships of the Eastern Cape defied the apartheid war machine.

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When he left fulltime teaching, John became the Director of the Cwesi Community Learning Centre, a night school operating on the premises of Wynberg Boys’ High School. Soon after leaving that post, he was asked to be on the board of help2read, a literacy charity which has helped more than 23 000 children to read since 2006. 

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John loves cricket. He coached the game as a teacher at Milnerton High and then for another 13 years as the First XI coach at Pinelands High. For 10 years he coached cricket with Bob Woolmer during holiday coaching courses and also acted as Bob’s administrative assistant.

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John has travelled to Denmark several times studying issues such as the water sector, the green economy, energy efficiency and how the media can play a role in raising awareness of green issues. John speaks Danish fluently, having been an exchange student in that country in 1976/77.