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| Women changing Africa Mamphela Ramphele right end |
Editing, re-reporting by
Carolyn Bennett
Carolyn Bennett
Renowned academic and anti-apartheid activist Mamphela
Ramphele launches new party, political platform “Agang” ─ meaning “build” ─
to stand in South Africa’s 2014 elections and unseat the “corrupt.”
The devaluation of the African National Congress’s moral
leadership is clearly evident throughout the country, reads an article this
week at South Africa’s News 24. Their traditional power base’s “crippling
apathy” in making their mark and making their voices heard during every
election “further deepens the hole in which we are being dragged down,” the article said.
Ramphele entry into the fray a wake-up call
“Credentials are everything,” News 24 said, “[and] Mamphela
Ramphele has them. The ANC had them.
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| Mamphela Ramphele |
“Ramphele is a former activist in the mold of the Black
Consciousness Movement. She is highly educated and has taught at one of South
Africa’s premier universities. She has led the World Bank, chaired one of the
largest boards of mines in the country; all no easy tasks. Compare this to the
majority of ministers and leaders in government circles,” News 24 says. “The comparison
is deafening and other parties would be short-sighted not to see Ramphele as a
genuine threat to their votes ─ ANC very much included.
“This is a new era and it is time for liberation heroes to
step aside. Their contributions were invaluable to the democracy in South
Africa but the ones clinging on in power now are unraveling all that hard work.”
T
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hough the road for her newly established Agang Party SA and its
platform is bound to be rocky, Mamphela Ramphele’s entry into the sphere of
politics “can be seen as a breath of fresh air,” News 24 said. She is “a worthy
player.”
Today’s Deutsche Welle article on this story reports, “The
renowned author, economist and business woman commands a lot of respect from
academics and civil society across the country.”
Hers has been a “long walk to politics,” DW writes. “Born in
1947 at the Bochum District of the Limpopo Province in the northern part of
South Africa, in her early years active in the student movements that fought
the oppressive Apartheid regime, Mamphela Ramphele is one of the few South
African women who have had a major impact on South African public life.”
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| Mamphela Ramphele |
Profile in brief
P
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hysician, academic and businesswoman, Mamphela Aletta
Ramphele is a South African who was an activist against apartheid. Dr. Ramphele
was also a managing director at the World Bank and a vice chancellor at the
University of Cape Town. This month, Mamphela Aletta Ramphele announced the
formation of a new political party, Agang (in Sotho, it means ‘Build’). The new
party will challenge South Africa’s African National Congress or ANC.
Ramphele completed her medical credentials in the early
1970s at University of the North and Natal Medical School (now the Nelson Rolihlahla
Mandela Medical School). And though the apartheid government banished her to
the town of Tzaneen (1977-1984) and put her under constant security police
surveillance, she worked continually with the rural poor, formed the Isutheng
Community Health Program, and set about empowering women.
She did medical internships at Durban’s King Edward VIII
Hospital and Livingstone Hospital in Port Elizabeth. In the 1980s, she worked
with the South African Students Association (SASO) and held research positions at
University of Cape Town (UCT) and worked with Professor of Economics Francis
Wilson at the South African Development Research Unit (SALDRU) and Livingstone
Hospital.
C
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| Mamphela Ramphele |
ontinuing her academic studies, Ramphele took her Ph.D. in
Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town and a Bachelor of Commerce
degree in Administration at the University of South Africa as well as diplomas
in Tropical Health and Hygiene and Public Health at the University of the
Witwatersrand. In the 1990s, Ramphele was deputy vice chancellor at the University
of Cape Town and a visiting scholar at the U.S.-based Kennedy School of
Government. She has authored and edited several books. Among them:
Laying Ghosts to Rest: Dilemmas of
the transformation in South Africa (2008)
Across Boundaries: The Journey of a
South African Woman Leader (1996)
Mamphela Ramphele - A Life (autobiography
1995)
A Bed called Home (1993) based on
Ramphele’s Ph.D. thesis The Politics of Space dealing with life in the migrant labor
hostels of Cape Town (Social Anthropology)
Restoring the Land (ed., 1992)
dealing with ecological challenges facing post-apartheid South Africa.
Bounds of Possibility: The Legacy
of Steve Biko (co-ed., 1991)
Uprooting Poverty: The South
African Challenge (co-author, 1989, received the 1990 Noma Award, an annual
prize given to African writers and scholars whose work is published in Africa)
drawing together research conducted by the second Carnegie inquiry into poverty
and development in South Africa.
Beyond the entrenched and corrupt
Ramphele has reportedly labeled South Africa’s current rulers “unaccountable” and “corrupt.” Though there were glimpses of “a
liberation movement transforming itself into a democratic governing party … during
the (Nelson) Mandela administration,” she says, “the rest of the ANC …, from
the very beginning, was more about taking control and … stepping into the shoes
of the former colonizer.”
The approach of her developing party, she says, is based on
a “consultative process”: an approach that goes “from village to village,
township to township, young people, old people, rich people, poor people ─
because the country belongs to all of us.”
M
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edical doctor turned business woman, renowned academic and
anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele proposes a fully fledged political
party based on “intensive consultation with South Africans across the divide.”
Her party and political platform Agang (translated “build”) plans to stand in her
country’s 2014 elections.
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| Mamphela Ramphele |
Mamphela Ramphele argues,“the golden oldies must go
into the sunset.”
Sources and notes
“Ramphele aims to capitalize on social media,” February 18,
2013, http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Ramphele-aims-to-capitalise-on-social-media-20130218
“Mamphela Ramphele - a worthy player in SA politics.” February
19, 2013, http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Mamphela-Ramphele-a-worthy-player-in-SA-politics-20130219
“Agang funded locally, says Ramphele,” February 19, 2013, http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Agang-funded-locally-says-Ramphele-20130219
“South Africa’s new party set to challenge ANC,” February
19, 2013, Deutsche Welle, http://www.dw.de/south-africas-new-party-set-to-challenge-anc/a-16608322
“South African businesswoman set to threaten ANC’s dominance”
(by JOHANNES MYBURGH), Wednesday, January 30, 2013, http://www.africareview.com/News/S-African-businesswoman-set-to-threaten-ANC-dominance/-/979180/1679456/-/gi4o5oz/-/index.html
Wikipedia note
Mamphela Aletta Ramphele, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamphela_Ramphele
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