Barry Streek

Barry Streek
Barry Streek (on the right) shaking hands with then president Nelson Mandela.
Born	(1948-08-30)30 August 1948 Eastern Cape, South Africa
Died	21 July 2006(2006-07-21) (aged 57) Kenilworth, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Occupation	journalist, author, parliamentary media manager
Nationality	South African
Genre	non-fiction

Barry Streek (30 August 1948 – 21 July 2006) was a South African political journalist and anti-apartheid activist.

Barry Streek was educated at Michaelhouse in Kwazulu-Natal after which he completed his national service in the South African Navy in 1966. At the time national service was mandatory for all white males of a certain age in South Africa. From 1967 to 1970 Streek studied politics and law at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, while contributing to the Daily Dispatch and other publications.

At Rhodes he joined the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students and was involved in many anti-apartheid activities at the university for which the then South African government later put a banning order on him. It was revealed in later years that the police special branch, with direct assistance from the university, had compiled a substantial file on Streek's anti-apartheid activities. While at Rhodes Streek also worked for the local committee of Helen Suzman's Progressive Party.

After graduation in 1971 Streek assumed duty as secretary-general of the National Union of South African Students in Cape Town. In July he issued a circular to the executive members of NUSAS describing the development of the post-1953 imposition of university apartheid based on a letter written for the annual student assembly in July 1968. By 1971 black tertiary students in South Africa were isolated and, some might say, offered at best a mediocre parody of a university education, on ethnically segregated campuses which deprived them of regular contact with South Africans whose ethnicity, and even mother-tongue, was different from theirs. These were the so-called 'tribal colleges'. With Streek's prompting, NUSAS was seeking to raise the awareness of its predominantly 'white' membership of the conditions under which other South Africans lived and studied while at university, a necessary strategy since students belonging to different 'population groups' were effectively barred from one another's campuses.