citationHonorary Fellow of COL

Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika − this is ’s banning orders and incarceration by the national anthem and translated from Xhosa Government, he found the time means “God bless Africa”. This opening line and discipline required of a distance learner of the national anthem encapsulates the spirit to complete his BA in 1975 and BProc in 1976 and service of a visionary leader, theologian, at the University of South Africa (UNISA). lawyer, activist and custodian of human rights − Professor Nyameko Barney Pityana. In September 1977, Barney’s former roommate, and friend, died in detention while Some might say that Professor Pityana’s service in the custody of the South African Security to his country was genetically predestined. His Police. In the darkness of national despair, paternal grandfather, a celebrated Xhosa Barney, with his wife and daughter, took on poet, authored seven stanzas of Nkosi Sikelel’ the new challenge of living in exile in the iAfrika. However, we at the Commonwealth United Kingdom. He read Theology and Law of Learning have witnessed Barney’s career as at Kings College, London and Ripon College a testimony of his deep-seated conviction and Cuddesdon in Oxfordshire and was ordained abiding love for education, South Africa and Priest in the Anglican Church. The Reverend her people. Pityana continued his life’s work in human rights as Director of the World Council of Professor Pityana is a distance learner, Churches’ Programme to Combat Racism in respected intellectual and scholar. He has first- Geneva. In 1993, he returned to South Africa hand experience of the meaning of “learning and became the first Chairperson of the South through adversity”. During the 1960s and African Human Rights Commission in 1995. 1970s, as student activist and member of In 2001, he was appointed the first black Vice- the Black Consciousness movement, he took Chancellor of his alma mater, UNISA. on personal responsibility for dismantling racial discrimination in South Africa. Mr. President and Acting Chairman, I request Serendipity prevailed − he was not able to that you confer upon Professor Nyameko take up the scholarship waiting for him Barney Pityana the title of Honorary Fellow at Durham University because the South of the Commonwealth of Learning for his African authorities refused him a passport. In transformational leadership in restoring his words, this was “not a good move” by the democracy to distance learning in South Government. They would have done better to Africa and preparing UNISA to be one of the let him go because he then became president great mega-universities of the 21st century. of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO). In spite of numerous detentions,

CITATION READ AT THE EXCELLENCE IN DISTANCE EDUCATION AWARDS CEREMONY AT THE FIFTH PAN-COMMONWEALTH FORUM ON OPEN LEARNING – LONDON, UK, 14 JULY 2008