Naledi Pandor, South Africa's Minister of Science and Technology, is leading an African bid to build the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a pioneering radio telescope that aims to peer into deep space, becoming a kind of time travel machine to the early days of the universe.
Pandor--whose first name means "star" in Setswana, one of South Africa's official languages--comes from a well-known South African family. Her grandfather, Z.K. Matthews, was both a legendary leader of the ANC, the African National Congress, and a widely respected academic. In 1923 he became the first African to obtain a BA at a South African university. He was a member of a commission of inquiry which investigated education in East Africa in the 1930s.
He later served in several prominent posts, including heading the University of Fort Hare, southern Africa's equivalent of pioneering tertiary institutions such as Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and Makerere University in Uganda.
Pandor's father, Joe Matthews, served as a cabinet minister in Nelson Mandela's first unity government, representing the Inkatha Freedom Party.
While attending negotiations on climate change in Durban, AllAfrica asked her about both the SKA bid and her family, particularly her grandfather.
Who is this person who is leading Africa's bid for the world's largest telescope?
I was born in this wonderful city of Durban, where the conference on climate change, COP17, is being hosted. I had a very interesting upbringing, in that my father, Joe Matthews, was one of the "treason trialists", as was his father, my grandfather Professor Z.K. Matthews.
These were black political leaders, mainly, or leaders of the democratic movement in South Africa--156 of them - who were arrested as having committed treason by leading what was called in 1952-1953 the Defiance Campaign.
And Z. K. Matthews is credited with calling the congress in Kliptown [South Africa], where the Freedom Charter was adopted, which led to the trial?
Well, Z.K. Matthews is renowned in the African National Congress for having made the proposal at a conference of the ANC, that we should craft our own bill of rights and a charter, called a Freedom Charter, which would spell out the desires and intentions of the democratic and progressive movement in South Africa. So he is credited for having been part of those who sat down and tried to put the bare bones to what eventually became the Freedom Charter. The Congress of the People was held in 1955, and, as the world knows, it was a very successful congress and was, in fact, the foundation for the bill of rights which is now in South Africa's constitution.
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But he wasn't only a political leader, he was an academic leader as well.
Z.K. Matthews was recognised by many of his contemporaries and by many people today as an African leader who made a great contribution to South Africa but to Africa as well. He came from very humble beginnings. His grandfather was a miner. They were migrants from Botswana, so our great-great grandfather - and his father also - worked in the diamond mines until he was injured in an accident and could no longer work in the mines, and then began a small cafe in a township in Kimberley.
My grandfather was the first African to acquire a degree from the University of South Africa and proceeded to then study up to the doctoral level. He became a lecturer at the University of Fort Hare, which was his alma mater, but interestingly then eventually became its principal. He also was principal at one time of a school right here in KwaZulu-Natal, called Adams College, at which many African leaders from Uganda, Kenya, Botswana, Lesotho, actually got their initial education.
So he's really, I think, a person who was acknowledged as having been a significant contributor to many areas of development in Africa.
The significant thing about him was that he was an all-rounder. He certainly was an educator but also a very religious man. Various theologians have written articles about him and his theological/political stand, as it were, because the basis of his political belief was the equality of humanity, which he said was elaborated in all the Christian and other great religious books. He is acknowledged as having articulated a perspective that was based on his strong religious belief, but also in the belief that all persons are deserving of equal rights.
How the Square Kilometre Array bid reflects Africa's intellectual heritage >>
