SPEAKERS’ PROFILES:

Alan Hirsch

Alan Hirsch was appointed the Director of the Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice at UCT in 2013.

Born in Cape Town, he studied Economics, Economic History and History at UCT, Wits and Columbia respectively.

After completing research in economics and teaching at UCT, Hirsch joined the South African Department of Trade and Industry in 1995, managing industry and technology policy. He moved over to the Presidency in 2002.

He managed economic policy in the South African Presidency, represented the Presidency at the G20, and was co-chair of the G20 Development Working Group.

Hirsch has served and currently still serves on several boards, and is associated with a range of policy research initiatives including the International Growth Centre for which he is the Zambia Country Director and the European Centre for Development Policy Management where he is a board member.

He was a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School, was a regular visiting professor at the Graduate School of Governance at Maastricht University and a member of the OECD secretary-general’s Inclusive Growth Advisory Group.

He writes about economic development issues, including being published in Season of Hope – Economic Reform under Mandela and Mbeki and recently co-editing The Oxford Companion to South African Economics.

Ishmael Mkabela

Ishmael Mkhabela is Founder and CEO of Interfaith Community Development Association.

Mkhabela is also a co-facilitator, organiser and leader of Dinokeng Scenarios Public Engagement Programme and serves as Trustee of Children's Hospital.

He acts as Chairperson of National Housing Board, Johannesburg Social Housing Company (JOSHCO), Foundation, Central Johannesburg Partnership, Kabo Development Trust and Aggrey Klaaste Nation Building Foundation.

Appointed as a Trustee of Finmark Trust, Jim Khazamula Trust, Donaldson Trust, Jade Africa and National Business Initiative (NBI), Mkhabela received SA Council of Churches Award for selfless contribution to the South African Struggle for Democracy.

Murphy Morobe

Morobe was born on 2 October 1956 in , completing his matric at Isaacson High School, and this was where he became increasingly interested in politics and history, by reading up on them at libraries.

In 1972, he joined the South African Student’s Movement (SASM), as he saw unity and community development as important. He was also starting to think about doing something against the education system and as a whole. The group was very influenced by Black Consciousness ideology, and also organised cultural activities.

In 1973, many members of the SASM committee were detained, therefore weakening its structure and the following year, Morobe helped with its reorganisation and was elected treasurer.

In 1976, SASM was to play an important role in the Soweto Uprising, and it was the first time that Morobe took part in a demonstration and in August of that year, the Soweto Students' Representative Council (SSRC) was formed and Morobe became its Deputy Chairman. The group played a role in organising campaigns and protests, and almost all Soweto schools were involved in the SSRC.

In December 1976, Morobe was arrested for the first time and was moved around from prison to prison, kept in solitary confinement, asked to testify against the ANC, tried for conspiracy to commit sedition and eventually sent to Robben Island.

He was released only in May 1982, and by this time had completed three matriculation subjects. After his release, Morobe returned to politics and joined the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and served on the Executive of the Soweto Youth Congress.

Morobe also became involved with the General and Allied Workers’ Union, and it was through this that he participated in the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983.

Morobe became very active in the UDF during the 1980s, and served on the Executive. From October to December 1984 Morobe was again detained.

During 1984 Morobe left the county to approach the British government and the United Nations for help, and in 1985 he went to the USA, Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Denmark. In 1985, he was elected to the Transvaal Regional Executive of the UDF, and took over Mosiuoa Lekota’s work when he was detained. In 1986 he was again detained from January to March.

In 1994, Morobe became the Chairperson and CEO of the Financial and Fiscal Commission in . He was part of the Council on Higher Education (CHE), which was established as part of the Higher Education Act of South Africa. He left this post in 1999.

He is also the current Chairman of the South African National Parks Board (SANP) and the International Fundraising Consortium, an organisation that provides grants to the non- governmental sector.

Morobe has also been appointed as Director on the board of Old Mutual South Africa, and has filled the role of Chairman of Ernst & Young South Africa. Mr. Morobe attended high school in Soweto during the 1970's and furthered his studies at various institutions in management and leadership.

Morobe has been an Independent Non-Executive Director of Remgro Limited since June 18, 2007 and Rand Merchant Insurance Holdings Limited and RMB Holdings Ltd since August 2014.

He served as a Director at Kagiso Media Ltd. from November 1, 2006 to June 30, 2013. In 1990, he was awarded a fellowship at Princeton University. He served as Director of Old Mutual Life Assurance Company (South Africa) Limited.

He is National Director of the Programme Improve Learner Outcomes and continues to be involved in various social causes relating to youth development, environment and conservation.

Peter Magubane

Peter Magubane earned world acclaim for his photographic work of the Soweto uprisings from June through to August of 1976.

He was arrested then released in December of 1976 and from 1978 until 1980 he was also employed as a correspondent for Time magazine. In 1980, he left South Africa for New York.

Coverage of the June 16 student uprisings of 1976 earned him worldwide acclaim and led to a number of international photographic and journalistic awards, one of which was the American National Professional Photographers Association Humanistic Award in 1986, in recognition of one of several incidents in which he put his camera aside and intervened to help prevent people from being killed.

Magubane also took photographs for several United Nations agencies, including the High Commission for Refugees and UNICEF, being particularly committed to exposing the plight of children and documenting traditional societies. His photographs have appeared in Life magazine, the New York Times, National Geographic and Time magazine.

He became attracted to photography after taking pictures using a Kodak Brownie camera as a schoolboy. He was highly inspired by the works of great photographers of the day, especially those from Drum magazine, who encouraged him to start working there as soon as the opportunity arose.

That opportunity came in the form of an opening as a driver and messenger but three months later he made his way into the hands of Jurgen Schadeberg who trained him to be his darkroom assistant until he went on in first assignment as field photographer to cover the 1955 ANC convention in Bloemfontein.

In the 1950s, Magubane covered many important political events, including the treason trials and demonstrations against the Pass Laws and in 1958 he was honoured with being the first Black South African to win a photographic prize in the country – first and third prizes were awarded to him for Best Press pictures of the year.

Between 1963 and 1964 he worked in London as a freelancer and it was during this time that he held an exhibition of his work, becoming the first black South African to do this.

After his freelance years, Magubane came back to South Africa in 1966 and started working for the Rand Daily Mail from 1967 until 1980. In June of 1969, he was arrested while photographing protestors outside Winnie Mandela’s jail cell. After days of interrogation and solitary confinement, the charges were dropped a year later but he was banned from taking any photographs for five years.

In March of 1971, he was arrested again, spent 98 days in solitary confinement, and then jailed for six months. When the banning order was lifted he resumed work for the Rand Daily Mail.

The Missouri School of Journalism presented Magubane with the Missouri Honorary Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism in 1992, for his lifelong coverage of apartheid and five years later, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mother Jones Foundation.

Magubane received the 1997 Leica Lifetime achievement Award, given jointly by the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography and the Leica Camera Group.

In recent years he has stopped doing news work and has become an art photographer, documenting post- apartheid culture and publishing books on this.

Leonard “Lenny” Gentle

Leonard Gentle is a labour activist.

He has BA (Hons) and BSc degrees from the .

He is the director of the International Labour and Research Information Group (ILRIG), an NGO that produces educational materials for activists in social movements and trade unions.

He has been an anti-apartheid activist for many years and has worked as an organiser for the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers' Union (SACCAWU), the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (NUMSA) and as an educator for the International Federation of Workers' Educational Associations (IFWEA).

Leonard is interested in and has been published on matters concerning national and international political economy.

Nyameko Barney Pityana

Nyameko Barney Pityana was born on 7 August 1945 in in the . An exceptional child, the young Pityana earned the Andrew Smith Scholarship that enabled him to attend Lovedale, a progressive Scottish-run missionary school in Alice.

During his senior years at Lovedale, Pityana began to develop an interest in politics and joined the African National Congress Youth League. It was also a period in which the relatively liberal ethos of Lovedale was being replaced by a conservative culture, through the introduction of -speaking teachers.

In 1963, Pityana was expelled from Lovedale for forcefully articulating the inequities of Bantu education and the apartheid system.

After completing his matric at Newell High School in New Brighton, , Pityana enrolled at the then University College of Fort Hare in 1966, where his political activism and commitment intensified. He became very involved in various progressive Christian organisations.

He became a founder member of the University Christian Movement and later the South African Students' Organisation, both of which were eventually banned by the apartheid Government.

In 1969, Pityana's leadership and mobilisation of students at Fort Hare culminated in his expulsion from the university. His continued activism in the community soon attracted the attention of the State and between 1973 and 1978; Pityana was subjected to a series of detentions and banning orders.

In 1978, exhausted after a year in detention, Pityana went into exile in England, together with his wife and child. By this time, he had already completed his BA and B Proc degrees through the University of South Africa (Unisa). He enrolled for further studies at King's College in London and obtained an Honours degree in 1981.

In the years that followed, he undertook training for the Anglican Ministry at Ripon Cuddesdon College in Oxford and also became ordained as an Anglican priest. He served as parish priest in Milton Keynes and Birmingham for several years. During this time, the struggle against apartheid was intensifying both inside the country and internationally. Pityana played a key role in mobilising support on the international front. As director of the World Council of Churches' Programme to Combat Racism – a position he held between 1988 and 1992 – his activities proved decisive in the final dismantling of apartheid and the eventual agreement to enter into negotiations.

Pityana returned to South Africa in 1992 and joined the University of Cape Town from January 1993 to 1995. In October 1995, Pityana was appointed as the chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commission. In June 1997, he was elected to the Africa Commission on Human and People's Rights at the Organisation of African Unity’s Assembly of Heads of State and Government in Harare.

Pityana obtained his PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Cape Town in 1995 and was admitted as an attorney of the High Court of South Africa in February 1996.

He holds honorary degrees from Trinity College, Hartford (1996) and from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (1999). The Psychology Society of South Africa awarded him life membership in 2000.

In 2001, he was awarded the Tribute Achievers Award for Leadership. The following year, he was appointed as a fellow of King's College London and in the same year he was given an honourable mention in the 2002 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's Prize for Human Rights Education.

Pityana became the first black vice-chancellor and principal of Unisa on 27 November 2001, a position he still holds today.

Throughout his life, Nyameko Barney Pityana has remained focused on the fight for human rights and the battle against racism. His life reflects a determined effort to end racism and injustice. Through his endeavours and example he has embodied an unshakeable commitment to build a free, non-racial and just society and world.