Salim Vally on Neville Alexander and the National Question

Neville Alexander Commemorative Conference

‘Enough is as good as a feast’

by Enver Motala & Salim Vally, Mail & Guardian

A three-day conference focused on the themes expressed through the work of Neville Alexander.

Neville Alexander's 50 years of engagement as a public and committed intellectual came under scrutiny at a conference hosted by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University from July 6 to 8.

The Life and Times of Neville Alexander

Neville Alexander Commemorative Conference Programme

Theme: ‘The Life and Times of Neville Alexander’ 6 – 8 July 2013

Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

Day 1 Saturday 6th July 2013

15:00-16:00 Registration

16:00-16:15 Opening and Welcoming

Derrick Swartz, Vice-Chancellor Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Language policy in South Africa and the unfounded fears of a Zulu hegemony

by T.O. Molefe, Africa is a Country 

Given South Africa’s stated commitment to multilingualism, you might not think that a requirement from one of the country’s universities that its students learn an indigenous African language would raise much alarm. Yet alarm has nonetheless been the reaction from a few unexpected quarters to the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s announcement that all first-year students enrolled from next near onwards will be required to develop “some level” of isiZulu proficiency by the time they graduate.

Neville Alexander's books available online

Education and the Struggle for National Liberation in South Africa
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35930902/Education%20and%20the%20Struggle.pdf 

Language Policy and National Unity in South Africa/Azania
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35930902/Language%20Policy%20and%20National%20Unity.pdf 

Three essays on Namibian history
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35930902/Namibian%20History.pdf 

Neville Alexander 1936-2012 A prophet rather than a politician

By Francis Wilson, The Cape Times

With the death this week of Neville Alexander South Africa has lost one of it's greatest, and possibly least appreciated, sons. Political thinker & activist; teacher & author; academic of renown and genuine revolutionary Neville Alexander inspired generations of people into action and yet spent most of his life apparently in the political wilderness. Yet his work and his ideas will live on.

Born in Cradock in 1936, son of a carpenter and a remarkable mother who was the daughter of an Ethiopian Galla, or Oromo, slave who had been rescued from an Arab dhow by the British---poachers turned game-keepers---in 1888 and then sent with 63 others (many of whom were young children and all under 18) to school at Lovedale in the Eastern Cape. Many returned to Ethiopia but Neville's grandmother stayed on to live in South Africa.

Opinion Obituaries Neville Alexander: Revolutionary who changed many lives

by Brian Ramadiro, Salim Vally & Jane Duncan, The Mail & Guardian

The death of Neville Alexander on August 27, coming as it does in the wake of the massacre of mineworkers at Marikana, is a double blow. He had the breadth of intellect and depth of knowledge to help the world to understand the significance of these events.

Throughout his life Alexander,  who was born on October 2 1936, maintained the important combination of being both an activist and a scholar. His activism saw him imprisoned on Robben Island for 10 years and subjected to house arrest for a further six years.

Dr. Neville Edward Alexander (22-10-1936 - 27-09-2012)

by Nicolas Magnien, South African History Online

Neville Edward Alexander was the first of six children of Dimbiti Bisho Alexander, a primary-school teacher, and David James Alexander, a carpenter. It was in the rural Eastern Cape that he initially kept a strong anti-White sentiment, nurtured by the idea that all Whites were oppressors, an idea which he inherited from his father. Alexander was introduced to coloured militancy and progressivism at an early age. On the other hand, his mother taught him to respect everyone, in addition to introducing him to Christian values.

Neville Alexander: The Politics of Truth

Professor Alexander delivers a speech at the Steve Biko Seminar on the 23rd of September 2011 at the Durban University of Technology.

South Africa: An Unfinished Revolution?

by Neville Alexander, The Fourth Strini Moodley Annual Memorial Lecture, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 13 May 2010

In her historical novel, A Place of Greater Safety, which is played out against the backdrop of the Great French Revolution through an illuminating character analysis and synthesis of three of that revolution's most prominent personalities, viz., Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Jacques Danton and Camille Desmoulins, Hilary Mantel imagines the following conversation between Lucile Desmoulins and Danton:

So has the Revolution a philosophy, Lucile wanted to know, has it a future?

She dared not ask Robespierre, or he would lecture her for the afternoon on the General Will: or Camille, for fear of a thoughtful and coherent two hours on the development of the Roman republic.  So she asked Danton.

"Oh, I think it has a philosophy," he said seriously.  "Grab what you can, and get out while the going's good."

Neville Alexander - a linguistic revolutionary

by Khadija Patel, The Daily Maverick

Neville Alexander

In April this year, higher education minister Blade Nzimande raised the ire of many South Africans when he suggested proficiency in an “African” language would be a prerequisite for graduating from higher education institutions. Speaking in isiZulu, Nzimande said: "Akukwazi ukuba yithi kuphela ekuthiwa sifunde isingisi nesibhunu bakwethu, kodwa ezethu iyilimi nabanye bangazifundi [We can't be expected to learn English and Afrikaans, yet they don't learn our languages"].