The Institute for African Alternatives (IFAA) will hold the inaugural Ben Turok Memorial Lecture at Cape Town’s Community House on 30 November to mark the anniversary of the death of its founder and former director, struggle stalwart Professor Turok, who passed away on 9 December 2019.

The keynote speaker will be world-renowned development economist, and a personal friend of Turok’s, Prof Ha-Joon Chang, who is highly regarded within left-leaning academia for challenging the central orthodoxies of development economics. 

Prof Chang, who was born in South Korea and now lectures in the Faculty of Economics at Cambridge University, has published numerous articles and more than 20 books, including Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective -- for which he won an award from the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy -- Rich Nations, Poor Policies and the Threat to the Developing World and the best-selling 23 Things That They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. He has been a consultant for international organisations, such as the ILO, the World Bank and various UN agencies, and for NGOs and various governments, including South Africa.

Prof Chang’s speech is expected to focus primarily on the state and the economy in the era of globalisation, particularly in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. He will consider the role of the state in middle income countries with high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment, referring specifically to South Africa.

Former South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, who is Chairperson of IFAA’s Board of Directors, will provide the opening address.

The event is being held with the support of the Institute for Social Development at the University of the Western Cape.

“IFAA is holding this event not only in memory of a leading political activist, but also to keep alive his legacy and the principles for which Ben fought,” said economist and adult educator Zunaid Moolla who replaced him as director of IFAA.

“These are turbulent times and the people and government of South Africa need the kind of principled leadership that Ben Turok offered. He never departed from the ANC’s founding principles of equality, non-racialism and justice, and he fought for most of his life to remove the vestiges of apartheid and colonialism that still cause havoc and suffering. 

“He spoke out when necessary, and called his own party, the ANC, to account when it betrayed its supporters and the people of this country.” 

The Memorial Lecture comes amid Covid-induced economic chaos, emerging signs of collapse in governance and uncertainty following the indecisive local government elections. 

At this time it is worth remembering Prof Turok and his legacy; his voice is needed now more than ever. In his last editorial published in IFAA’s New Agenda: A South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy he wrote: 

“Our huge inequalities in wealth are intolerable, including the incredible gap between top managers and employees. Our legacy of social discrimination based on colour is unacceptable, including the persisting divide between affluent suburbs and desolate townships. Our state-owned enterprises, which are supposed to be engines for development, are actually serving as employment agencies for a small overpaid middle class. The public service has been allowed to slip into a dream walk where form filling and token effort is enough to bring in a stable income for officials.

“All this points to an urgent need for civil society and progressive intellectuals to raise their voices and demand a much more serious effort by all concerned to rebuild our country on a better foundation.”

Professor Turok is remembered for his unwavering demand for economic justice and human rights for South Africa’s marginalised and impoverished majority. For seven decades, Turok spoke out against discrimination, oppression and inequality, since the early 1950s as a founder member of the ANC-linked Congress of Democrats. 

He turned his back on white privilege and dedicated himself, as a member of the ANC, to the struggle against apartheid, for which he was harassed, banned, detained and later sentenced to three years in prison for attempted sabotage. He fled South Africa by crossing the border on foot into Botswana and spent 30 years in exile before returning home after the unbanning of the ANC.

A former MP in South Africa’s first democratic parliament, an economist who helped write parts of the Constitution, a trade unionist, a much-published academic, an intellectual, political analyst, true struggle stalwart and an activist, Ben Turok’s work will continue via New Agenda and the Institute for African Alternatives which he established in exile 30 years ago, and in the demands and actions of millions of South Africa who want nothing less than a better future for all. 

The Ben Turok Memorial Lecture will be held on 30 November from 17:00 to 19:00. Attendance of the live event is regrettably by invitation only in compliance with Covid restrictions. To attend online, send an email to admin@ifaaza.org with the subject line “I would like to attend the Ben Turok Memorial Lecture”. The first 200 applications will be sent a link.