Cape Town - Friends and family of the late anti-apartheid and education activist Abraham Elias “Ernie” Lennert will be saying their final goodbyes to him at a memorial service to be held in Goedverwacht on Saturday morning.
Lennert, known for his pragmatic role in the fight for equal and inclusive education for South Africans of colour during the apartheid era, died at his home on March 28, at the age of 88.
He was a member of the Non-European Unity Movement, the Teachers’ League of South Africa and the New Unity Movement, organisations that shared his passion for a socialist and liberated South Africa.
New Unity Movement secretary Mickey Titus said Lennert’s sharp observation, constructive criticism and encouragement in museum activities were profitable and would always be remembered.
“By the time Ernie became a teacher, the indigenous people of South Africa had been dispossessed of most of their land. This was the South Africa which he found himself in when he proudly took up his first teaching post at a school in the village of Witteklip in the Eastern Cape in 1951.
“His reaction was to oppose this enslavement of the minds of his students. He rightly called such education ‘gutter education’.
“Ernie was a firm believer in education for liberation. He believed it was his duty to educate students so that they may know the world to change the world. He will be missed but his contributions to the liberation of our people will never be forgotten,” said Titus.
Federation of Cape Civic Associations chairman Edwin Jacobs said: “Lennert will be fondly remembered as a thorough gentleman who was always willing to serve wherever his skills were needed. His unique sense of humour, abiding humanity, guidance, ideological abilities and experience of struggle will be sorely missed.”
Cape Argus