Eminent African scholar, Dr Ibbo Mandaza to deliver the annual Archie Mafeje Memorial Lecture
DATE: 22 March 2018
Pretoria, Thursday 22 March 2018 – The Human Science Research Council’s (HSRC) Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA), in collaboration with the University of South Africa’s Archie Mafeje Research Institute (AMRI) invites members of the media to the Annual Archie Mafeje Memorial lecture, to be held at Unisa, Kgorong Building on 28 March 2018.
The lecture will be delivered by Dr Ibbo Mandaza, a celebrated academic and politician. Dr Mandaza holds a BA and BSc honors degree in Political Science from the University of Zimbabwe and a Doctorate degree in Political Science from the University of New York. He is one of the Founding Trustees of the Non-Governmental Network, Southern African Political Economy Series (SAPES) TRUST.
To mark the 11th year since the passing of Professor Archibald Monwabisi Mafeje, the 2018 lecture will be held under the theme: ‘Rethinking intellectualism, intellectual spaces and methodologies’. With this theme the organisers seek to bring to the fore, and interrogate, the role intellectuals should play within the de-colonial debate in the Global South.
It will also serve as a platform to cross-examine modern issues relating to the state of academia on the African continent and the current state of academic debates in South African and African universities including teaching practices and methodologies.
The central premise would be to understand the effectiveness of public debates and intellectual dialogues amidst a new emerging culture of anti-intellectualism and mediocre scholarship.
This event will bring together scholars of different academic pursuits but Africanist in thinking to discuss these issues, some of whom include, UNISA’s Dr Somadoda Fikeni, Prof Harry Nengwekhulu, former IEC chairperson Dr Brigalia Bam and Dr Bongani Nyoka.The Archie Mafeje Memorial Lecture commemorates the academic and intellectual contribution of the late Professor Archibald Monwabisi Mafeje, one of the most gifted social science researchers and scholars to emerge in Africa in the last century. Mafeje was a towering intellectual who contributed to the contemporary African and global social research terrain. This lecture seeks to perpetuate Mafeje’s legacy of critical and engaged scholarship in support of progressive agendas of social transformation in the developing world.
Media are invited as follows:
Date: 28 March 2018
Time: 09h30 for 10h00 – 13h10
Venue: Kgorong Building, UNISA Muckleneuk Campus Pretoria.
For more information or to set up interviews, please contact Adziliwi Nematandani, 0827659191 or anematandani@hsrc.ac.za
Follow the conversation on #AMML2018
Notes to the editor
About the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)
The HSRC was established in 1968 as South Africa’s statutory research agency and has grown to become the largest dedicated research institute in the social sciences and humanities on the African continent, doing cutting-edge public research in areas that are crucial to development.
Our mandate is to inform the effective formulation and monitoring of government policy; to evaluate policy implementation; to stimulate public debate through the effective dissemination of research-based data and fact-based research results; to foster research collaboration; and to help build research capacity and infrastructure for the human sciences.
The Council conducts large-scale, policy-relevant, social-scientific research for public sector users, non-governmental organisations and international development agencies. Research activities and structures are closely aligned with South Africa’s national development priorities.
Archie Mafeje Research Institute (AMRI)
The Archie Mafeje Institute for Applied Social Policy Research, in short the Archie Mafeje Research Institute (AMRI), is a policy research institute based at Unisa. It is dedicated to promoting the legacy of Professor Archie Mafeje in terms of innovative knowledge production for applied social policy in pursuit of progressive change in African society.
This is through the provision of fresh thinking and novel policy ideas for the fight against poverty, inequality, social disintegration, lack of social justice, weak citizenship, collapse of institutions of community and family and other societal ills.
It conducts research and facilitates scholarly and policy debates based on a rigorous understanding of African social formations and a clear definition of societal transformation aimed at social justice and poverty eradication on the continent. In particular, AMRI is concerned with change that results from knowledge garnered from the experiences and thought patterns of ordinary Africans.
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For more information or to set up interviews, please contact:
Manusha Pillai
Mobile: 082 389 3587
Email: MPillai@hsrc.ac.za
Adziliwi Nematandani
Mobile: 082 765 9191
E-mail: anematandani@hsrc.ac.za