Zuma must resign

ANC Youth League and SASO stalwart Barney Pityana calls on South African President Jacob Zuma to resign from public office.

Barney Pityana hails from Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape and attended the University of Fort Hare near Alice, also in the Eastern Cape. He was one of the founding members of the South African Students' Organisation of the Black Consciousness Movement with Steve Biko and a member of the African National Congress Youth League.

He was suspended from university for challenging the authority of the Afrikaans teachers and the apartheid principles of the then "Bantu education." He did receive a degree from the University of South Africa in 1976 but was barred from practicing law in Port Elizabeth by the apartheid government who also banned him from public activity.

In 1978 he went into exile, studying theology at King's College London and training for the ministry Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxford. Thereafter he served as an Anglican curate in Milton Keynes and as a vicar in Birmingham. From 1988 to 1992 he was Director of the Programme to Combat Racism at the World Council of Churches in Geneva.

Pityana returned to South Africa in 1993, following the end of apartheid. He continued working in theology and human rights, completing a PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town in 1995. He was appointed a member of the South African Human Rights Commission in 1995, and served as chairman of the commission from 1995 to 2001. He also served on the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights at the Organisation of African Unity in 1997. Professor Pityana became Vice-Chancellor and Principal for the University of South Africa in 2001 and held the position for nine years.

His call on Zuma to resign is timeous, relevant and well motivated in the best interests of all South Africans and further abroad. Copy the following link to your browser to read Pityana's letter, then decide for yourself:

www.sapromo.com/news/item/1560-zuma-asked-to-resign-from-public-office