Neville Alexander

Neville Edward Alexander ( born October 22, 1936 in Cradock, † August 27, 2012 in Cape Town) was a South African linguist and campaigner Nelson Mandela against the apartheid regime.

Life

Alexander was born in 1936 in Cradock in the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa. The father was a carpenter, his mother a teacher. He studied at the University of Cape Town German and history. His master's thesis he wrote about the Silesian baroque drama of Andreas Gryphius and Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein. He subsequently received an Alexander von Humboldt scholarship and studied at the University of Tübingen. There he received his doctorate in 1961 with a thesis on Gerhart Hauptmann.

By 1957 he had joined the anti-apartheid movement. Upon his return to South Africa he joined a sub-organization of the Non European Unity Movement and was one of the founders of the National Liberation Front ( NLF). In 1963 he was arrested and despite worldwide protests - convicted of high treason to ten years in prison - even in Germany. The punishment he served along with Nelson Mandela on the infamous prison island Robben Iceland. After the abolition of the apartheid regime he worked reinforced with multilingual projects and educational issues in South Africa.

Until his death he was director of the project Study of Alternative Education in South Africa ( PRAESA ) at the University of Cape Town and a member of the Executive Board of the African Academy of Languages ​​.

Awards

  • 2008: Linguapax Prize for his contributions to linguistics and multilingual education
  • 2013: Order of Luthuli in Silver ( posthumously )

Literature (selection )

  • Neville Alexander South Africa. The road from apartheid to democracy. Translated from English by Christian Grüny. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-48254-6
  • Neville Alexander, Jutta Limbach, Joachim Gauck: truth politics in Germany and South Africa. Three paths to terms with the past. Offizin -Verlag, Hannover 2001, ISBN 3-930-34527-7
  • Neville Alexander in Conversation: Using the power of languages ​​to the language of power. Edited by Lucijan bush. Drava Verlag, Klagenfurt 2011, ISBN 978-3-85435-658-5
  • Roland Czada: longing for Azania. Neville Alexander's life and work for an anti- racist South Africa. In: Osnabrueck Yearbook peace and science 19 V & R unipress. Göttingen 2012, pp. 193-204, ISSN: 0948-194 -X (online, PDF file, 209 kB)
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