Ben Turok Memorial Lecture
With Ben Turok’s passing in December 2019, South Africa lost a voice that gave expression to the cry for liberty for more than seven decades. IFAA launched the annual Ben Turok Memorial Lecture in his honour.
Although Prof Turok was an engineer by profession, his calling was politics, more properly, the political struggle for a society marked by equality and fundamental rights for all. He was foremost an activist but also a lecturer at universities in several countries, a Member of Parliament in South Africa’s first democratically elected parliament and a renowned debater, speaker and political analyst. Through his writings and interviews he not only articulated the aspirations of South Africa’s disenfranchised majority during the Apartheid era but was also a strong advocate for economic self-sufficiency after the transition in 1994. After retiring as parliamentarian, Prof Turok devoted his time to IFAA.
