The 5th Annual Neville Alexander Commemorative Conference will take place on Friday, 8 September, 2017, at the University of Johannesburg.

Intellectual, author, revolutionary and struggle hero Neville Alexander, who passed away in 2012, was a fierce proponent multilingual education. He was the co-founder of the National Liberation Front, and spent ten years on Robben Island as a fellow prisoner of Nelson Mandela. After being released, he founded the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa and served as Director of the South African Committee for Higher Education. In 2008, he was awarded the International Linguapax Award for the preservation of linguistic diversity.

The Neville Alexander Commemorative Conference will reflect on the impact Alexander made to multilingual education and discuss the way his ideals can be adopted and advocated.

Event details

Date: Friday, 8 September 2017
Time: 9 am to 4.30 pm
Venue: UJ Hockey Club, 46 Radnor St, Westdene, Johannesburg
RSVP: By 30 August to Katlego Tshiloane (katlegot@uj.ac.za or 011 559 1148) for catering purposes

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Professor Salim Vally, Director of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg, posted on Facebook:

This announcement of the 5th Annual Neville Alexander Commemorative Conference coincides with Alexander’s birthday. He was hospitalised five years ago shortly before the Marikana massacre and passed away on the 27th of August 2012.

Although in a weakened state he was aware of the massacre and his words two years earlier at the Strini Moodley Memorial Lecture criticising those who viewed the present state as neutral or developmental was prescient, “The final deducation, languageisillusionment will come, of course, when the repressive apparatuses of the state … turn their weapons on the masses to protect the interests of the capitalist class.”

A year earlier speaking in honour of the late Black Consciousness activist Sipho Maseko he said: “The sincere, indeed the naïve, belief in the values of freedom, equality, solidarity and democracy that drove all of us at the time, has been systematically eroded by the irruption of the narcissistic, dog-eat-dog virus that is spreading across the globe in the current era of the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism.” Invoking Cabral’s exhortation, he urged the youth to “return to the source”. These and other essays will be made available at the conference including an article titled: ‘Race’ is skin deep, humanity is not. The essay focused on the racist remarks attributed to Mzwanele (then Jimmy) Manyi presently in the news for acquiring the Gupta-owned media outlets.

The conference programme will include a presentation by UCT’s archivist Andre Landman who compiled – over a period of nine months – the Neville Alexander Papers comprised of 240 archival boxes. The Papers affords the public a glimpse into the mind and the praxis of arguably one of South Africa’s key intellectuals. The Papers have recently acquired material from the Alexander Defence Committee archives housed at the University of Wisconsin. The Committee was established when Alexander and ten other South Africans (including Dulcie September assassinated in Paris and the late judge Fikile Bam) were sentenced to long prison terms in 1963. Prominent personalities associated with the Alexander Defence Committee included Northrop Frye, Stokely Carmichael, Stuart Hall, Bertrand Russell, Theodor Adorno, Isaac Deutscher, and C.L.R. James. New acquisitions include a fascinating handwritten fifty-five page essay, ‘A Note on Beauty’ that Alexander wrote on Robben Island examining the notion through socio-historical, psychological and philological dimensions.

The trailblazing and popular Africa History course first serialised by the Learning Post in 1980 will be made available to conference participants. Alexander was the chief author of the series. The republishing and consolidation of this series will make an important contribution to the national debate on the decolonisation project. The conference will also include panel discussions and presentations on Alexander’s seminal contributions to various aspects of education, language and the national question. It will also discuss current and future projects and initiatives.

In a country that continues to be polarised along many axes including ‘race’, class and gender, Alexander’s humanism, humility and disdain for narcissism and malfeasance remains inspirational.

Please join us for this exciting programme. It is essential that you RSVP by the 30th of August to Katlego Tshiloane (katlegot@uj.ac.za or 011 559-1148) for catering purposes. Please pass on – apologies for cross-posting. Pic. of Neville Alexander courtesy of Eugene Cairncross.

Categories Non-fiction South Africa

Tags Neville Alexander Neville Alexander Commemorative Conference Salim Vally