Barney Pityana | |
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| Born | Nyameko Barney Pityana 7 August 1945 |
| Nationality | South African |
| Citizenship | South African citizenship |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation(s) | Human rights lawyer, politician and theologian |
| Religion | Christianity (Anglican) |
| Church | Anglican Church of Southern Africa |
Nyameko Barney Pityana FKC GCOB (born 7 August 1945) is a human rights lawyer and theologian in South Africa. He is an exponent of Black theology. [1]
Pityana was born in Uitenhage and attended the University of Fort Hare. He was one of the founding members of the South African Students' Organisation of the Black Consciousness Movement with Steve Biko and Harry Ranwedzi Nenwekhulu. [2] He was also a member of the African National Congress Youth League,[ citation needed ] and was suspended for challenging the authority of the Afrikaans teachers and the apartheid principles of "Bantu education".[ citation needed ]
Pityana received a degree from the University of South Africa in 1976 but was barred from practicing law in Port Elizabeth by the apartheid government.[ citation needed ] He was banned by the apartheid government from public activity.[ citation needed ] Pityana went into exile in 1978, studying theology at King's College London and training for the ministry Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxford. [3] Thereafter he served as an Anglican curate in Milton Keynes and as a vicar in Birmingham. [3] From 1988 to 1992 he was Director of the Programme to Combat Racism at the World Council of Churches in Geneva. [3]
Pityana returned to South Africa in 1993, following the end of apartheid. He continued working in theology and human rights, completing a PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town in 1995. [3] He was appointed a member of the South African Human Rights Commission in 1995, and served as chairman of the commission from 1995 to 2001. [3] He also served on the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights at the Organisation of African Unity in 1997. Professor Pityana became Vice-Chancellor and Principal for the University of South Africa in 2001 and held the position for nine years.
In 2008 following the resignation of former President Thabo Mbeki as a President of South Africa, Prof Pityana and other former prominent ANC members formed a rival party to the ANC called Congress of the People. Those former ANC members and leaders included Allan Aubrey Boesak, Mosiuoa Gerard Patrick Lekota, Smuts Ngonyama, William Mothipa Madisha, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and many others who worked for the formation of COPE secretly.
Up to date, Prof Barney Pityana has not announced his return to the African National Congress instead the cabinet that is led by Cyril Ramaphosa appointed him at age 76 to chair the National Lotteries Commission.
He was the rector of the College of the Transfiguration (Anglican) in Grahamstown (from 2011 until 2014), [4]
He is the President of Convocation of the University of Cape Town. [5]
His work in human rights has been widely recognised, and in December 2002, he was awarded an Honourable Mention of the 2002 UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education. [6]
He is founder of Congress of the People in 2008 and he has never made an announcement to leave it or join another political organisation. He is known to be a vocal critic of the former ANC leadership under Jacob Zuma, [7] called for the resignation of Zuma, [8] and has links with grassroots movements opposed to the ANC. [9]
The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election installed Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa. Cyril Ramaphosa, the incumbent national President, has served as President of the ANC since 18 December 2017.
Bantu Stephen Biko was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he was at the forefront of a grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known as the Black Consciousness Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. His ideas were articulated in a series of articles published under the pseudonym Frank Talk.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and founding member of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), serving as the first president of the organization.
Mamphela Aletta Ramphele is a South African politician, anti-apartheid] activist, medical doctor and businesswoman. She was a partner of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, with whom she had two children. She is a former vice-chancellor at the University of Cape Town and a former managing director at the World Bank. Ramphele founded political party Agang South Africa in February 2013 but withdrew from politics in July 2014. Since 2018, she has been the co-president of the Club of Rome
The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. The BCM represented a social movement for political consciousness.
[Black Consciousness'] origins were deeply rooted in Christianity. In 1966, the Anglican Church under the incumbent, Archbishop Robert Selby Taylor, convened a meeting which later on led to the foundation of the University Christian Movement (UCM). This was to become the vehicle for Black Consciousness.
The South African Students' Organisation (SASO) was a body of black South African university students who resisted apartheid through non-violent political action. The organisation was formed in 1969 under the leadership of Steve Biko and Barney Pityana and made vital contributions to the ideology and political leadership of the Black Consciousness Movement. It was banned by the South African government in October 1977, as part of the repressive state response to the Soweto uprising.
Otta Helene Maree, known as Helen Zille, is a South African politician. She has served as the Chairperson of the Federal Council of the Democratic Alliance since 20 October 2019. From 2009 until 2019, she was the Premier of the Western Cape province for two five-year terms, and a member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament. She served as Federal Leader of the Democratic Alliance from 2007 to 2015 and as Mayor of Cape Town from 2006 to 2009.
The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was an important force for liberalism and later radicalism in South African student anti-apartheid politics. Its mottos included non-racialism and non-sexism.
Makhenkesi Arnold Stofile was a South African politician and anti-apartheid activist who served as the second Premier of the Eastern Cape from 1997 to 2004. After that, he was Minister of Sport and Recreation from 2004 to 2010. He was also a member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (ANC).
General elections were held in South Africa on 22 April 2009 to elect members of the National Assembly and provincial legislatures. These were the fourth general elections held since the end of the apartheid era.
Derek Andre Hanekom is a South African retired politician, activist and former cabinet minister currently serving as the interim Chairman of South African Airways.
Internal resistance to apartheid in South Africa originated from several independent sectors of South African society and took forms ranging from social movements and passive resistance to guerrilla warfare. Mass action against the ruling National Party (NP) government, coupled with South Africa's growing international isolation and economic sanctions, were instrumental in leading to negotiations to end apartheid, which began formally in 1990 and ended with South Africa's first multiracial elections under a universal franchise in 1994.
Mohamed Enver Surty is a South African politician who served as the Deputy Minister of Basic Education in the cabinet of President Cyril Ramaphosa from 2009 till 2019. He is a member of the African National Congress.
Max Price is a former vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. He succeeded Njabulo Ndebele and held this position for 10 years from 19 August 2008 until 30 June 2018.
The Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria Faculty of Law, South Africa, is an organisation dedicated to promoting human rights on the continent of Africa. The centre, founded in 1986, promotes human rights through educational outreach, including multinational conferences, seminars and publications such as Human Rights Law in Africa, The African Human Rights Law Journal, the African Human Rights Law Reports and The Constitutional Law of South Africa. The centre, which was founded during Apartheid, assisted in adapting a Bill of Rights for South Africa and contributed to creating the South African Constitution. In 2006, the centre received the UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education, particular recognising for the LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa and the African Human Rights Moot Court Competition.
David Patrick Hamilton Russell was a South African Anglican bishop.
Aelred Stubbs was an Anglican priest and monk, influential in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa during the 1970s.
Mkhuseli "Khusta" Jack is a South African politician, businessman and anti-apartheid activist. Jack currently serves as the chairperson of Build One South Africa. He previously served as the deputy mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay.
Frances Rix Ames was a South African neurologist, psychiatrist, and human rights activist, best known for leading the medical ethics inquiry into the death of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who died from medical neglect after being tortured in police custody. When the South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) declined to discipline the chief district surgeon and his assistant who treated Biko, Ames and a group of five academics and physicians raised funds and fought an eight-year legal battle against the medical establishment. Ames risked her personal safety and academic career in her pursuit of justice, taking the dispute to the South African Supreme Court, where she eventually won the case in 1985.
Robben Island Prison is an inactive prison on Robben Island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometers (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, Cape Town, South Africa. Nobel Laureate and former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there for 18 of the 27 years he served behind bars before the fall of apartheid. Since then, three former inmates of the prison have gone on to become President of South Africa.
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