Professor Barney Pityana
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”.
[Show full text]