Introduced by Dr Adam Branch, Director of the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge.
The 2018 Distinguished African Studies Lecture was an important intervention by Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza, holder of the AC Jordan Chair in African Studies at the University of Cape Town, into debates over decolonising African Studies in the UK, in South Africa, and globally. Professor Ntsebeza spoke on the intellectual history and legacy of Archie Mafeje, a key figure in the struggles to decolonise knowledge production on Africa. Mafeje earned his PhD in anthropology at Cambridge in 1966; in 1968, he was appointed Senior Lecturer at UCT, only to have the appointment reversed under pressure from the apartheid state, sparking student protests. Mafeje’s long transnational career brought him to the University of Dar es Salaam, ISS in The Hague, American University in Cairo, University of Namibia, and University of South Africa. In 2015, the Archie Mafeje room at UCT was occupied by students during the Rhodes Must Fall protests; in the words of the student occupiers, "We have chosen the Archie Mafeje boardroom to recognise his struggle against the very institutional racism we are fighting against."
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- Copyright: Lungisile Ntsebeza, Victoria Jones