Students, Apartheid and the Ecumenical Movement in South Africa, 1960–1975

Students, Apartheid and the Ecumenical Movement in South Africa, 1960–1975 by TigersEye99

Marx, Fanon & Biko: Touchstones in a Time of Crisis?

Unemployed People’s Movement

Marx, Fanon & Biko: Touchstones in a Time of Crisis?

Arts Major, 5:00p.m., Tuesday 16 September

Our country is slipping into serious crisis. The state has been captured by a ruthless and predatory elite bent on plunder. The people’s struggles are being seriously repressed. From Ficksburg to Marikana and Durban activists are being murdered.

Last week we marked the anniversary of the assassination of Steven Bantu Biko. This week we are hosting a public discussion on the light that Biko, and other radical humanists like Karl Marx and Frantz Fanon, can shine into our darkening present.

Dear Mr Zuma, it’s time for you to go

Barney Pityana

by Barney Pityana, The Sunday Independent

This week I addressed a letter to the President of the Republic of South Africa, Jacob Zuma. I asked Zuma to resign his office in the interests of progress and development of our country. I charged that since he assumed office in 2009, the fortunes of our country have hit their lowest ebb on every possible indicator.

In Memory of Dr. Neil Aggett

IN MEMORY OF DR NEIL AGGETT
A Memorial Lecture at Kingswood College Grahamstown 24 September 2012

We do well in our country to critically examine our history and the stories of our heroes and heroines. It is a story and history that at times we ought not to be proud of, and at others it is a story that has brought out the best in so many of our people. It has been a story of endurance and fortitude, of critical engagement and refusal to live by a false consciousness. Like in all societies history brings out light and shadows, and does not always explain adequately social phenomena and human conduct.

Black Consciousness, Black Theology, Student Activism and the Shaping of the New South Africa

Pityana: SA must take responsibility for failures

Reverend Barney Pityana has taken a swipe at President Jacob Zuma and blamed South Africans for electing leaders without vision and basic competence.

- The Mail & Guardian

The Dispatch Online on Tuesday quoted Pityana as saying: "We must blame nobody but ourselves for the tragedy of our education system, a collapsing healthcare system, a bloated but inefficient civil service, pervasive crime and corruption that has become endemic."

"That is because we have elected a government without any intelligence collectively to understand what must be done ... We have a government trapped in ideological blinkers that believes and behaves like it is unaccountable."

Pityana was speaking in Grahamstown on Monday at Kingswood College's annual memorial lecture to celebrate the life of anti-apartheid activist Neil Aggett.

Barney Pityana's Sermon at the Marikana Massacre Memorial Service in Grahamstown

Marikana Memorial Service: Praying for a Just Peace

Presider: Bishop Ebenezer Ntali
Preacher: Prof. Barney Pityana

The Cathedral of St. Michael & St. George, Grahamstown 30 August 2012

Marikana Massacre Memorial Service in Grahamstown

27 August 2012

Unemployed People's Movement Press Statement

Marikana Massacre Memorial Service in Grahamstown

A memorial service for all who fell in the Marikana Massacre will be held in the Anglican Cathedral in Grahamstown on Thursday 30 August 2012 at 4:00 p.m. People of all faiths and people with no faith are all warmly invited to join the event. It will be held under the banner of a shared commitment to a just peace.

The Black Consciousness Movement

Steve Biko on the cover of Drum Magazine

By Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane, Bavusile Maaba and Nkosinathi Biko

The period 1967–1977 produced a substantial and coherent body of thought that was inspired by the ideas of Black Consciousness (BC). The writings in the SASO Newsletter and other BC publications, along with the outpouring of creative writing, constituted an unprecedented intellectual legacy in South Africa. From its beginnings as a student movement, BC became an intellectual movement surpassing the 1950s ‘Sophiatown renaissance’ that, in intellectual terms, produced a small group of journalists and creative writers.3 As BC spread into various communities it also became the training ground, through its ‘small scattered organisations’ (such as health clinics) that became the chosen path to black empowerment. Its programmes linked with people’s ‘material’ interests and were designed to train hundreds of followers who would in turn train thousands of others. Activity, not activism as such, marked BC strategy. It sought as far as possible to avoid direct political confrontation with the state, hoping to prevent premature elimination before it had even got off the ground. Its most astute exponents understood that if they formed a rigidly structured organisation the police would immediately destroy it. They intended their programmes to translate into responsibility and organisation, as in leadership training at formation schools.

Freeing Oppressed Minds

by N. Barney Pityana, Mail & Guardian, 26 August 2011

In a recent preface to the latest edition of Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu bemoans the fact that the values instilled by Black Consciousness are sadly lacking in our new South Africa. He goes on to say that Black Consciousness “has not quite completed its task”.