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An insider account of the ANC in power, 15 April |
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The School of Social Sciences and the Centre for Civil Society UKZN invite you to a Seminar: With my head above the parapet: An insider account of the ANC in power
Speaker: Ben Turok
Date: Tuesday 15 April 2014
Time: 13:00-14:30
Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College, UKZN
Topic:
‘I have been “in the struggle” for 69 years. I have worked with most of the top leaders of the ANC and its Alliance partners and grew in experience and stature in their company. Maverick MP sets out to describe and analyse the years in power, the achievements and the failures. It is now necessary to be objective as possible about the present condition of the ANC and its government, admitting the layer of uneasiness that is tangible everywhere, which lies like a haze over the body politic, threatening its future. There is a pervasive sense of disappointment with the character of the ANC today, its loss of direction and the slippage from its historical mission. That mission I have always understood to be to liberate the masses from poverty, discrimination and exploitation, and to win for them basic rights, human dignity and a measure of control over their own lives. This book will search for the sources of the decline and record my experience as a participant. I write as an insider, but not so deeply embedded as to need to be defensive. So this is no lament about what might have been, nor is it written in bitterness. I do not feel, as some who were participants, that my lifelong commitment has been betrayed. Rather, I want to stand back and try to work out what has gone wrong and why.’[1]
Speaker Bio:
Professor Ben Turok is a Member of Parliament in South Africa, representing the ruling party, the African National Congress. In the 1994 democratic government, he was first Head of the Commission on the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) in the Gauteng Provincial Cabinet and then moved to Parliament in 1995. He is currently the Co-Chair of the Committee on Ethics and Member’s Interests of both Houses in Parliament. He has been a member of the Liberation Movement for many decades, was an accused in the 1956 Treason Trial, served 3 years in prison, was in exile for 25 years, returning in 1990.
Ben Turok has three degrees, in engineering, philosophy and political science. He is the author of 20 books on Africa’s development economics and politics, has lectured at many universities across Africa, and presented papers at numerous conferences and seminars including the United Nations and the European Parliamentary Assembly. He taught at the Open University, UK, for many years, the University of Zambia, and is Visiting Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He presented papers at many international Conferences.
[1] Source: http://www.booksetc.co.za/?page_id=2124
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