Fort Hare University to honour Madiba
Johannesburg: The University of Fort Hare is to hold a Festival of Ideas to celebrate the 90th birthday of one of it's former students - Nelson Mandela. According to Sahm Venter of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the two-day festival themed "Fort Hare as a space for African Liberation," will kick off on 29 August.
She said over the past two years, the university has undergone a process of reflection and re-imagination of its future, inspired by Madiba and other liberators.
On the first day, there will be a thought-provoking debate with students, academics and other members of the university by panelists, who are yet to be announced.
On the last day, Fort Hare students will host a jamboree involving debates, poetry sessions, discussion circles and other creative engagements around the core questions facing the society.
These questions will revolve around issues such as liberation, gender, collective futures, new understandings of race, culture, language and identity, she said.
Since the beginning of his birthday celebration last month, the former state president has received about 50,000 birthday cards, telephone calls and email messages from around the world.
Fort Hare University in South Africa was a key institution in higher education for black Africans from 1916 to 1959.
After matriculating, Madiba started to study for a Bachelor of Arts at the Fort Hare University, where he met Oliver Tambo, and the two became lifelong friends and colleagues.
At the end of Madiba's first year, he became involved in a boycott by the Students' Representative Council against the university policies, and was asked to leave Fort Hare.
In the struggle years there was much anti-apartheid activity, including the Black Consciousness Movement of the late Steve Biko.
A few students became politically active and opposed the apartheid authorities who enjoyed the unqualified support of the Fort Hare authorities since it became a university in 1972.
Some of South Africa's politically-active alumnus of the university includes Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Robert Sobukwe and Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
Some of the well-known Fort Hare alumnus from neighbouring countries includes Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, Elias Mathu and Charles Njonjo.
The first black Zimbabwean medical doctor, Tichafa Samuel Parirenyatwa is among the many non-South Africans who spent formative years at Fort Hare.
Article published courtesy of BuaNews.
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