South Africa has not in earnest reckoned with the legacy of colonial apartheid. This is according to Professor Joel Modiri, the keynote speaker at Stellenbosch University’s (SU) seventh annual Africa Day lecture. SMF News was in attendance.
The event was the first in the series to be hosted by the newly appointed SU rector and vice-chancellor, Professor Deresh Ramjugernath. It took place in the SU Museum on 21 May.
“Post-apartheid South Africa suffers from a pronounced continuation of the broken social order inherited from apartheid,” said Modiri in his lecture titled The Three Deaths of Steve Biko: Towards a Jurisprudence of the Irreparable.
Modiri is the deputy dean of teaching and learning at the faculty of law at the University of Pretoria, as well as the head of the department of jurisprudence.
Stellenbosch University’s (SU) seventh annual Africa Day lecture was held at the SU Museum on 21 May. This was the first lecture in the series to be hosted by the new rector and vice-chancellor, Professor Deresh Ramjugernath. PHOTO: Anke Spies
Legacy of colonial apartheid
Modiri’s lecture was centred around what he called South Africa’s incomplete achievement of liberation and the legacy of Steve Biko, who was the intellectual founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, according to Modiri.
“We are living in the future created by colonial apartheid,” said Modiri. “The liberation struggle, which we today call the transformation struggle, is still open. Still in motion.”
Modiri presented a critical view of post-apartheid South Africa, in which the negotiations and compromises required for the “new South Africa” failed to address fundamental inequalities.
“South Africa is now in a conceptual and political crisis,” said Modiri. He said the “spatial, cultural, economic and psychic apartheid that crucially defined the racial reality” was not addressed in the transition to democracy in 1994.
Stellenbosch University’s (SU) seventh annual Africa Day lecture was hosted by the new rector and vice-chancellor, Professor Deresh Ramjugernath (left), in collaboration with Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, the director of the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (middle). The keynote speaker was Professor Joel Modiri, the head of the department of jurisprudence at the law faculty of the University of Pretoria (right). PHOTO: Anke Spies
The role of the university
“There is no possibility, I think, of a real serious reckoning with the history of this country […] without critical literacy,” said Modiri.
Most revolutionary possibilities begin at universities, according to Modiri, which only happens through literacy and knowledge.
“I think more effort needs to be put in the white community in particular. That doesn’t mean all young people shouldn’t learn a more critical version of history. All young people need to engage each other humanely,” said Modiri.
In an interview after the lecture, Ramjugernath said that the role of the university is to be in service of society, in addition to the generation and dissemination of knowledge.
Education should be broader than “technical disciplinary content”, according to Ramjugernath. “It’s about wider issues around social justice, democracy, [and] constitutionalism.”
Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, the director of the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ) and Professor Joel Modiri, the keynote speaker of Stellenbosch University’s seventh annual Africa Day lecture engaged in a discussion after Modiri’s lecture. This was facilitated by Dr Anell Daries, a Postdoctoral Fellow at AVReQ (right). PHOTO: Anke Spies
Time to ‘unlearn biases’
“I think such conversations are very important to have, and [it is] also important for us to unlearn our own biases,” said Solomzi Mphambo, a third year BA (Humanities) student. “Because at the end of the day universities serve a purpose of expanding an individual’s knowledge.”
The lecture was “a gift of how to know anew”, said Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, who is the director of the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ).
The event was jointly coordinated by AVReQ, the Centre for Collaboration in Africa and the Centre for the Advancement of Social Impact and Transformation, according to the university’s website.