Frank Chikane

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Frank Chikane 2014

Frank Chikane (born January 3, 1951 in Bushbuckridge ) is a South African clergyman and politician who was in opposition to the apartheid regime and who was an advisor to the government formed by the African National Congress (ANC) after 1994 .

Life

Frank Chikane was born to James and Erenia Chikane. James Chikane was a minister for the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (AFM). Frank Chikane grew up in Soweto and attended Naledi High School there. From 1972 he studied at the University of the North to become a doctor. But he was involved in the opposition Black Consciousness Movement - among others together with Cyril Ramaphosa - and led actions against the apartheid government, so that in 1974 he had to leave the university without a degree.

Chikane worked as a preacher in the Kagiso township near Krugersdorp . In 1977 he was imprisoned and tortured for a month under the Terrorism Act (officially General Laws Amendment Act, Act No 83 of 1967 ). He was also arrested several times in the following years. In 1980 he was ordained as a pastor at the AFM. Within the church he organized soup kitchens and adult education courses and was therefore dismissed from the AFM in 1981. From then on he worked for six years at the Institute for Contextual Theology, which was run by the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and was close to liberation theology . During this time, Chikane played an important role in founding the opposition movement United Democratic Front . He gave the first keynote address at the founding congress in Mitchell's Plain in August 1983. Until 1985 he was Vice President of the UDF for the Transvaal . In 1985 he was one of the initiators of the apartheid-critical Kairos Document , which caused a sensation nationally and internationally as a theological paper. Among other things, the document describes civil disobedience to injustice as justified. Chikane was charged with treason that same year, but the charges were dropped. In 1987 he succeeded Desmond Tutus as General Secretary of the SACC. In 1988 his autobiography No life of my own was published.

In 1989, Chikane was assassinated. His underwear had been poisoned with paraoxon . During a trip through Namibia he collapsed and was only barely rescued. Two weeks later, he was in the United States when severe symptoms of poisoning reappeared. The attack went back to the then police minister Adriaan Vlok and the head of the South African Police , Johan van de Merwe. Together with other accomplices of the then secret police unit Civil Cooperation Bureau , they were sentenced to long suspended sentences in 2006. Previously, Vlok Chikane had washed his feet as a sign of repentance .

In 1990, Chikane was re-approved as a minister for the Apostolic Faith Mission. Chikane earned a Masters Degree in Theology from the University of Natal in 1992 . In 1994 he was replaced as SACC General Secretary and began his work as General Director of the office of the then Vice President and later President Thabo Mbeki . In 1995 Chikane graduated from Harvard Kennedy School with a Master of Public Administration , from 1995 to 2009 he was a Research Fellow in Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town . In 1997 the ANC elected him to the National Executive Committee. In 1999 he became General Director of the Mbeki Presidential Office. After Mbeki's tenure ended in 2008, he worked as an informal advisor to Presidents Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma .

In 2010, Chikane wrote the Chikane Files, an eight-part series about his time as a consultant, which appeared in several South African newspapers and was criticized by the ANC leadership. In 2012 his book Eight days in September: the removal of Thabo Mbeki was published about the overthrow of Mbeki, which he compares to a coup .

Chikane is president of The Apostolic Faith Mission International. From 1987 to 2010 he was Honorary President of the South African Nebo Youth Congress. He has been married to the former lecturer Kagiso Chikane since 1980, with whom he has three sons.

Honors

Works

  • 1988: No life of my own. Autobiography.
    • German as: My life does not belong to me. Verlag der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Mission, Erlangen 1990, ISBN 3-87214-196-1 .
  • 2012: Eight days in September: the removal of Thabo Mbeki.
  • 2013: The things that could not be said: from A (ids) to Z (imbabwe).

Web links

Commons : Frank Chikane  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h portrait at sahistory.org.za (English), accessed on January 18, 2015
  2. ↑ a b Report on Chikane at nytimes.com (English), accessed on January 18, 2015
  3. ↑ a b Reconciliation or chaos: Report about Chikane at motherjones.com (English), accessed on January 18, 2015
  4. ↑ Portrait at southafrica.net (English), accessed on January 18, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Chikane, Frank
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African clergyman and politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Bushbuckridge