Neville Edward Alexander (22 October 1936 – 27 August 2012) was a proponent of a

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

South Africa and a former

revolutionary A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective, to refer to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor. ...

who spent ten years on

Robben Island Robben Island ( af, Robbeneiland) is an island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometres (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, north of Cape Town, South Africa. It takes its name from the Dutch word for seals (''robben''), hence the Dutch/Afrik ...

as a fellow-prisoner of

Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...

Early life

Alexander was born in Cradock, Eastern Cape, South Africa to David James Alexander, a carpenter, and Dimbiti Bisho Alexander, a schoolteacher. His maternal grandmother, Bisho Jarsa was an

Ethiopian Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of ...

from ethnic Oromo, rescued from slavery by the British. He was educated at Holy Rosary Convent, Cradock, and matriculated in 1952. He spent six years at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

obtaining a BA in German and History (1955), completing his Honours in German a year later and an MA in German in 1957, his thesis was on the Silesia Baroque drama of Andreas Gryphius and

Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein Daniel Casper (25 January 1635 in Nimptsch, Niederschlesien – 28 April 1683 in Breslau, Niederschlesien), also spelled Daniel Caspar, and referred to from 1670 as Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, was a Baroque Silesian playwright, lawyer, diplom ...

. Having been awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowship place at the University of Tübingen he gained his PhD in 1961 for a dissertation on style change in the dramatic work of Gerhart Hauptmann.

The Apartheid years

By 1957, Alexander was already radicalised and a member of the Cape Peninsula Students' Union, an affiliate of The Non-European Unity Movement of South Africa. He joined the African Peoples Democratic Union of Southern Africa (APDUSA) which was established in 1960. However he was ejected from APDUSA in 1961 and with Dulcie September, Ottilie Abrahams, and Andreas Shipinga, among others, formed a study group of nine members in July 1962, known as the Yu Chi Chan Club (YCCC); Yu Chi Chan is the Chinese name for guerrilla warfare, which Mao Zedong used. The YCCC disbanded in late 1962 and was replaced by the National Liberation Front (South Africa), National Liberation Front (NLF), which Alexander co-founded. In July 1963, he, along with most members of the NLF, was arrested. In 1964, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit sabotage. From 1964–1974 he was imprisoned on

Post-Apartheid

After being released Alexander did pioneering work in the field of language policy and planning in South Africa from the early 1980s via organisations such as The Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA), as well as the LANGTAG process. He was influential in respect to language policy development with various government departments, including Education. His most recent work was focused on the tension between multilingualism and the hegemony of English in the public sphere. He founded and was director of PRAESA from 1992 until the end of 2011 and a member of the Interim Governing Board of the African Academy of Languages. In 1981, he was appointed Director of the South African Committee for Higher Education (SACHED). At the time of his death, he had retired from being director of PRAESA at the University of Cape Town. In 1994, his Trotskyist Workers Organisation for Socialist Action contested the elections. Alexander received the Linguapax Prize for 2008. The prize is awarded annually (since 2000) in recognition of contributions to linguistic diversity and multilingual education. The citation noted that he had devoted more than twenty years of his professional life to defend and preserve multilingualism in the post-apartheid South Africa and had become one of the major advocates of linguistic diversity.

Death

Alexander died from cancer following a short period of ill-health on 27 August 2012, aged 75. His personal archive was donated to the University of Cape Town's Special Collections library. In 2014, th
Neville Alexander Papers
were included in the library's Manuscripts and Archives collections. The university has also named a building on its upper campus after him.

References

External links

Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA)

Neville Alexander obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexander, Neville 1936 births 2012 deaths Deaths from cancer in South Africa People from Cradock, Eastern Cape South African people of Ethiopian descent South African activists South African Trotskyists University of Cape Town alumni University of Tübingen alumni Members of the Order of Luthuli