Professor Barney Pityana

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citationHonorary Fellow of COL Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika − this is South Africa’s banning orders and incarceration by the national anthem and translated from Xhosa apartheid 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, Steve Biko 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.

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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project STEVE McDONALD Interviewed by: Dan Whitman Initial Interview Date: August 17, 2011 Copyright 2018 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Education MA, South African Policy Studies, University of London 1975 Joined Foreign Service 1975 Washington, DC 1975 Desk Officer for Portuguese African Colonies Pretoria, South Africa 1976-1979 Political Officer -- Black Affairs Retired from the Foreign Service 1980 Professor at Drury College in Missouri 1980-1982 Consultant, Ford Foundation’s Study 1980-1982 “South Africa: Time Running Out” Head of U.S. South Africa Leadership Exchange Program 1982-1987 Managed South Africa Policy Forum at the Aspen Institute 1987-1992 Worked for African American Institute 1992-2002 Consultant for the Wilson Center 2002-2008 Consulting Director at Wilson Center 2009-2013 INTERVIEW Q: Here we go. This is Dan Whitman interviewing Steve McDonald at the Wilson Center in downtown Washington. It is August 17. Steve McDonald, you are about to correct me the head of the Africa section… McDONALD: Well the head of the Africa program and the project on leadership and building state capacity at the Woodrow Wilson international center for scholars. 1 Q: That is easy for you to say. Thank you for getting that on the record, and it will be in the transcript. In the Wilson Center many would say the prime research center on the East Coast. McDONALD: I think it is true. It is a think tank a research and academic body that has approximately 150 fellows annually from all over the world looking at policy issues.
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26 N. Barney Pityana
26 STEVE BIKO: PHILOSOPHER OF BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS N. Barney Pityana Let a new earth arise . Let another world be born . Let a bloody peace be written in the sky . Let a second generation full of courage issue forth, Let a people loving freedom come to growth, Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood . Let the martial songs be written, Let the dirges disappear . Let a race of men rise and take control . – MARGARET WALKER, “FOR MY PEOPLE” I HAVE INTRODUCED THIS CHAPTER with an extract from Margaret Walker’s poem “For My People” .1 It is a verse from the African-American experience of slavery and dehumanisation . The poem was first published in 1942, and could be viewed as a precursor to the civil rights movement . It ends with a “call to arms”, but it is also an affirmation of the struggle for social justice . This poem resonated with Steve Biko and Black Consciousness activists because the call for a “new earth” to arise, the appeal to courage, freedom and healing, constituted the precise meaning and intent of the gospel of Black Consciousness . Margaret Walker does not so much dwell on the pain of the past or of lost hopes . She recognised the mood of confusion and fallacy that propelled 391 THE PAN-AFRICAN PANTHEON the foundation of the Black Consciousness Movement so many years later on another continent and under different circumstances . The poem is confident and positive in asserting the humanity of black people and of their capacity to become agents of their own liberation .
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250 Introduction
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Biko Met I Must Say, He Nontsikelelo (Ntsiki) Mashalaba
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Open Praxis Special Edition.Indd
Professor Nyameko Barney Pityana was Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of South Africa (Unisa) from 2001 until his retirement in 2010. He was a member of the ICDE Executive Committee between 2008 and 2010, and founding chairperson of the African Council for Distance Education between 2004 and 2008. This special edition of Open Praxis pays tribute to the achievements of Professor Pityana in furthering the cause of open and distance learning in South Africa, on the African continent and worldwide, and looks ahead to the future of ODL. OPEN PRAXIS Contributors to this special edition are: Olugbemiro Jegede (Guest Editor), Mandla S. Makhanya, Sir John Daniel, Brenda M. Gourley, Nicholas H. Allen, Susan C. Aldridge, Tolly S.A. Mbwette, James C. Taylor and Wayne Mackintosh. Special Edition: A Tribute to Nyameko Barney Pityana The ICDE Executive Committee at their meeting in Oslo, Norway, March 2010. From left to right: Fredric Litto, Denise Kirkpatrick, Nyameko Barney Pityana, Tian Belawati, Frits Pannekoek, Marta Mena. Guest Editor: Olugbemiro Jegede INTERNATIONAL www.icde.org COUNCIL FOR OPEN AND DISTANCE EDUCATION www.openpraxis.com ISBN: 978-82-93172-07-9 October 2011 ISSN 0264-0210 Open Praxis Special Edition: A Tribute to Nyameko Barney Pityana Guest Editor: Olugbemiro Jegede October 2011 CONTENTS Page 1 Editorial – Olugbemiro Jegede: When the Unthinkable Happens 1 2 Mandla S. Makhanya: Tribute to Professor Nyameko Barney Pityana 5 3 Sir John Daniel: Unisa’s Unique Academic Odyssey 8 4 Brenda M. Gourley: Force Majeure: Necessity Being the Mother of Invention 10 5 Nicholas H. Allen and Susan C.
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