An academic citation for Dr Motsoko Pheko on the occasion of an Honorary Doctoral degree conferring by UNiSA, 2022. By Thami ka Plaatjie.

THE THINC FOUNDATION PUBLISHES THIS CITATION FOR DR PHEKO BY THAMI KA PLAATJIE, FORMER PAN-AFRICANIST LEADER, IN HONOUR OF DR MOTSOKO PHEKO, WHO PASSED ON 19th APRIL, 2024.

Speaking on the occasion of his doctoral graduation ceremony in 1946, Dr B. W. Vilakazi ( after whom the Vilakazi street in Soweto has been named) counselled and admonished his audience thus: “ You must not only look at the eminence that I have achieved but at the depths from whence I have arisen. “

 Dr Motsoko Pheko can also use this moment as a tocsin to echo these sentiments on his conferment with a doctoral degree from the University of South Africa.  The depths of oppression and deprivation from whence he came have placed him on a higher pedestal of academic eminence.  It is both timely and befitting that he will be robbed in the scarlet of the Honorary Doctorate by this historic universe(city).

Through his elaborate, insightful and extensive body of work, Dr Pheko has done humanity a yeoman service. In his elaborate career, his lifelong activism has launched a virulent opposition to oppression. This academic honour is an attestation and testimony to the recipient that he has traversed vast alleys in the knowledge-seeking rustication journey and, in the process, helped to broaden humanity’s sense of knowledge acquisition and insightful comprehension about a particular field of human endeavour. Such a recipient is celebrated for “Professing” deep knowledge of the subject or field of study and has, over the years, sustained that feat with a vast treasure trove of a considerable body of work. 

Originality and creativity are the twin attributes that are wedded to his work. Standing on his vast body of work has enabled Dr Pheko to tower shoulder and hair follicle above and higher than most others, and thus, it befits him to be robed with the laurels of this coveted attainment. He was no political plumber at the behest of foreign interests. It is meet that we should shout in laudatory ululation to his eminent attainment.

 Dr Pheko has circumnavigated several fields of study and professions such as theology, literature, diplomacy,  parliamentary politics,  liberation struggle, history and indigenous knowledge arenas.   To every craft and field of human endeavour, he applied himself assiduously. An admitted Advocate of the  High Court of South Africa and Zambia, respectively, Dr Pheko has written extensively on law and indigenous jurisprudence.  He was not a Lilly-livered pseudo-leftist but an unrepentant Pan-Africanist and as Pan-African as the Pope is Catholic. 

Dr Pheko 's vast travels in Africa and Europe have consolidated his  Pan-Africanist thesis as the ultimate panacea to the ills of humanity and the dispossession of Africans at home and abroad. During his peripatetic sojourns, he hoisted the Pan-Africanist flag very high.  As a chief representative of the PAC at the United Nations Observer mission, he was a diplomat with no mean adroitness and great astuteness. When called upon to put the line of Sobukwe a cross, Dr Pheko would gesticulate and gyrate with rapid ease and un-curated clarity. When addressing the menace of apartheid, he would be roused into a frenzy of antagonism, mouthing epithets of denunciation. 

A persuasive and eloquent critique of oppression and apartheid, Dr Pheko was menacingly armed with the pen that moved the rubbish debris strewn in his wake to smithereens. He did not delight in bathing in cheap publicity. Even in the most adverse circumstances, Dr Pheko has never shied away from hoisting Sobukwe ‘s flag. When his solitary voice loquaciously pounded in the corridors of power, he never relented.

Some of his elaborate and fascinating writings included the following: African Renaissance Saved Christianity, Who Are The Africans?, Indigenous Names and Identity, African Religion re-discovered, Christianity through African Eyes, My Ups and Downs: a black Christian in Southern Africa, The Early Church in Africa.

One of his elaborate books, which became a rejoinder to oppression, was titled Apartheid: The Story of the Dispossessed People. This book was a standard text to most leftist activists in the 1980s and poured unreserved affront unto the rapine system of racism. This book became a serious volte-face in the resistance political literature. 

Another pounding salvo to the heart of apartheid was his book aptly titled South Africa: Betrayal of a colonised people: issues of international human rights law. Perhaps one of his best efforts was reserved for the book on his lifetime mentor, Robert Sobukwe, titled The Land Is Ours: The Political Legacy of Mangaliso Sobukwe. He published this book in 1994 when South Africa took her juvenile steps toward the new horizon of hope. 

His book on Sharpeville has helped to jettison the prevalent jaundiced representation of the heroic struggle of this township. Sharpeville was no accident of history but a concerted outcome of our people’s struggle against the system of Pass Laws. 

An avid and indefatigable researcher, Dr Pheko did not spare his many colleagues in the PAC when he sat them down to chronicle their experiences and role in the struggle. As their leader, he humbled himself and became a student seeking knowledge from them. Truth-seeking is a solitary and humbling quest. 

Those efforts paid off handsomely with the publishing of The History of Robben Island Must Be Preserved: Robben Island Prisoners Speak. One of the fascinating stories in that collection is that of a peasant activist from Engcobo in the Eastern Cape named John Dlevalile Ganya. Ganya was imprisoned twice on Robben Island and was accused no 2 in the infamous Bethal Treason Trail after Zephania Mothopeng in 1978. They were charged with “ predicting and organising the June 16 Student uprising in Soweto. “ The fact that history books on the Soweto Uprising are mute about the role of these struggle icons is another affront to reality and is emblematic of efforts to airbrush true history. 

Most of Dr Pheko ‘s books are self-published, which has made them unattractive to mainstream bookstores. This is partly answerable to the difficulty and scant nature of their diminutive circulation and availability. Worse still, even those internationally published have not been re-published for the general readers simply because they militate against the master narrative that Dr Pheko vehemently sought to torpedo.

Most universities are only comfortable with parading, parroting, and regurgitating mainstream ideas, and they have very little appetite for radical Pan Africanist Thought. They will easily churn out readers in Classical and Contemporary European thoughts void of any African flavour and insight. That is why we have a plethora of universities in South Africa, but none of them can boast and claim to be a truly African university.  The universe of their enquiry is not in the propinquity of their situatedness. But peripheral to it. 

This honour by Unisa must help re-appraise, re-acquaint, and re-animate us to the hidden treasure trove within visible sight and reach. This honour must lead to the publication of a collection of his extensive writings. An encyclopedia of sorts would not be a mean ask in this regard. Visiting lecture series and extensive dialogical encounters with students must follow to help them glean and harvest those insightful thoughts. 

Dr Pheko obtained his junior degree at Unisa in the mid-1950s, and the fact that this alma mater has seen it fit to bestow him with these academic feathers is apropos and timely at his mature age of 88.

Let us allow Percey Bysshe Shelley to have the last word when he penned a tribute to his alter ego, John Keats; thus, 

“The splendours of the firmament of time 

Maybe eclipsed, but are extinguished not; 

 Like stars to their appointed height, they climb,” 

 

Rise to your appointed place, Noble Son of Africa: This is a well-deserved feat by Unisa.  History‘s unflattering pages must be kind to the memory of Dr Pheko. 

We shout in the timeless and revered salutation: Izwe Lethu.