Human Rights Commissioner Pregs Govender will deliver the keynote address to launch the third annual Human Rights Week on 15 March 2010 in the Eden Grove Blue Lecture Theatre, Rhodes University.
The Dean of Students' Office runs a number of awareness weeks throughout the year that includes the Human Rights Week, to highlight social issues and create a platform through which students can engage with major national role players around critical questions such as HIV/AIDS, rape and climate change.
The Human Rights Week is timed to coincide with Human Rights Day which is commemorated on 21 March 2010. This year Rhodes will also be focusing on the 50th commemoration of the Sharpeville massacre and the legacy the Sharpeville event has left for the country.
Pregs Govender, author of the autobiography ‘Love and Courage – A story of insubordination’, is a fearless voice of justice and an honest and inspiring politician. Rhodes is honoured to have her launch Human Rights Week and we look forward to learning from her love and courage," says Larissa Klazinga, warden of Ruth First Residence and former Lillian Ngoyi Hall Warden.
During the struggle against apartheid, Govender served as an activist and as a school and university teacher. She joined the trade union movement where she served as National Educator of the Clothing and Textile Union, before founding and heading South Africa’s first Workers’ College, based at the University of the Western Cape in 1991. The college specialised in training workers to become leaders of the trade union movement.
During the political transition she mobilised an estimated two million women to ensure women’s rights in the Constitution as the manager of a national campaign for the Women’s National Coalition for a Women’s Charter. The Charter was endorsed by Parliament in 1994 and subsequently by each of the nine regional parliaments.
In South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, Govender was elected as an ANC MP to the National Assembly. She is a Commissioner for the Commission on Globalisation, a former Ashoka Fellow, and a former Research Fellow at the African Gender Institute.
Pregs has received several awards including the first Ruth First Fellowship for courageous writing and activism, as well as the "Inspiration Award" from the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) in recognition of her initiative, leadership, and commitment to advancing gender equality and social justice around the world.
In 2001, she was the only ANC MP to vote against the arms deal when it came into effect in the Defense Budget Vote and she chaired Committee hearings on the gendered impact of HIV/AIDS. Her presentation of this report to the ANC Caucus broke the painful silence by presenting an alternative to that of the President and the Minister of Health.
This report helped ensure Cabinet’s 2002 commitment, which included all three of the report’s recommendations on treatment for HIV/AIDS. Govender resigned from Parliament in 2002 after the Task Team Hearings on child rape.
As a board member of the Women's Hope Education & Training Trust and the African Gender Institute she was also awarded a one year Fulbright New Century Scholarship in 2004.
Govender now chairs the Independent Panel of Experts currently reviewing SA’s Parliament and is a member of the Panel of Eminent Persons tasked with developing a global Human Rights Agenda by December 2008.