Dr Aubrey Mokoape's address to the Black Students' Movement

The Rhodes to Perdition: Why Rhodes was never ready for the BSM

Ntombizikhona Valela, The Daily Maverick

In the past couple of weeks university students from Wits, UCT and Rhodes have been making a call for the transformation of the institutional cultures at the abovementioned universities. Wits students from the Political Studies Department issued a demand for the change in the curriculum in order to include African and global South thinkers from Frantz Fanon, to Lewis Gordon, to Angela Davis. UCT students are currently engaged in a campaign to have the statue of Cecil John Rhodes removed and Rhodes University students, in particular those belonging to the Black Students Movement, have made a call for the change of the University’s name as part of getting the ball rolling on achieving meaningful transformation.

BSM member Lihle Ngcobozi addresses Dr Stephen Fourie on behalf of the movement demanding to know why BSM has been prevented from entering the Admin Building. (Kate Janse Van Rensburg)

Colloquium: Popular Struggles Then & Now

Thabo Mbeki: I am an African

Marikana & it's Afterlives in Popular Struggles in South Africa Today

In Conversation with Eusebuis McKaiser on #RhodesMustFall

What about ‘Rhodes (University) must fall’?

For the past few weeks, staff and students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) have been protesting for the removal of a statue celebrating Cecil John Rhodes – arguably the most ambitious and destructive imperialist in the history of Southern Africa. But today, the issues that remain in his wake are far broader and further-reaching than the mere removal of a statue. Jonis Ghedi Alasow The Daily Maverick

On Wednesday last week, a group of Rhodes University students held a meeting to show solidarity with students at UCT, whilst also discussing the name of our own university and the lack of meaningful transformation here. The meeting was closely surveyed by the Campus Protection Unit. Following the meeting, students embarked on a peaceful march to the administration building to raise their concerns. University authorities locked them out with no justification.

Out With The Old: Exploring the Myth of the ‘New’ South Africa

Sisonke Msimang, The Con

In the past few weeks there has been much consternation about the de facto existence of the dompas in the Western Cape community of Worcester. The dreaded dompas was a humiliating fact of life in apartheid South Africa; my father had one and his memories of it are vivid and painful. The passbook was arguably the most visible aspect of the system of apartheid. Any white man could stop a black one on the street and ask to see his pass. In this way, the pass gave power to petty bureaucrats and ordinary white men. Passbooks allowed racial authority to be invoked on a pretty random basis, and this of course instilled fear in the hearts of black families. When black women resisted the pass in the 1920s and then in the more famous marches of the 1950s, it was because they had seen the effects of the passbook on their menfolk.

One Needs a Strong Stomach

Siphokazi Magadla, The Con

The Texture of Shadows by Mandla Langa is set in 1989 South Africa, amid murmurs of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the unbanning of national liberation movements by the apartheid state. Not knowing how events will unfold in the country, a group of guerillas of the People’s Army in Angola are infiltrated as couriers carrying a trunk with highly classified contents that could potentially put the lives of those in the liberation movement in jeopardy if it were to land up in the wrong hands.

Rhodes Must Fall

Tribute to Black Consciousness Era Poets

Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment

Youlendree Appasamy

This assignment will be examining Nesbitt’s concerns with modernity and the dialectic of the universal and the singular/particular in the Haitian Revolution. The concept has rightly been problematised by the events of the Haitian Revolution – not showing a lack in the universal concept of modernity but rather how the slaves of the Haitian Revolution were actively de-centring the seemingly fixed centre of modernity. The universality of modernity (as a European centred) will be examined to further elaborate on how the significance of the Haitian Revolution was most pronounced in the “symbolic domain” (Nesbitt, 2008: 189).

Launch of Steven Friedman's New Book on Harold Wolpe - 17 March 2015

Irene Calis on Everyday Forms of Resistance in Palestine

The Legacy of Frantz Fanon

Hamza Hamouchene, CounterPunch

Frantz Fanon died a few months before Algeria’s independence in July 1962. He did not live to see his adoptive country becoming free from French colonial domination, something he believed had become inevitable. This radical intellectual and revolutionary devoted himself, body and soul to the Algerian National liberation and was a prism, through which many revolutionaries abroad understood Algeria and one of the reasons the country became synonymous with Third World revolution.

Mandla Langa speaking at the Grahamstown launch of 'The Texture of Shadows'

Noor Nieftagodien on Squatter Movements in the Vaal in the 1940s

A Wholly Other Time? Fanon, the Revolutionary and the Question of Organization

Nigel C Gibson: "A Wholly Other Time? Fanon, the Revolutionary, and the Question of Organization" by puzzelle

Mwelela Cele's introduction to Mandla Langa

Launch of The Texture of Shadows by Mandla Langa at Rhodes University in Grahamstown (eRhini) on Thursday the 5th of March 2015 at 17:00pm. 

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Greetings to Academics and Students. As has been mentioned, my name is Mwelela Cele and I am the Librarian at the Steve Biko Centre Library and Archive, where our concern is with both the past and the future, honouring the legacy of Steve Biko, and facilitating the application of his philosophy to help improve the current conditions and prospects of the disadvantaged, and the prospects of future generations. The Steve Biko Centre is situated in Ginsberg King William’s Town (eQonce). I greet you all, and all protocol observed.

I would like to begin by thanking Rhodes University’s Unit for Humanities (UHURU) for organising this launch and giving me the opportunity to introduce Mandla Langa. Similarly I also thank most sincerely Siphokazi Magadla from the Rhodes University Politics Department, and Dr Richard Pithouse for inviting me to this launch, and for giving me this honour.

Nursery Rhyme

- Aimé Césaire

It is this fine film on the swirls of the cloudy wine of the sea

It is this great rearing of the horses of the earth

halted at the last moment on a gasp of the chasm

it is this black sand which roughs itself up on the hiccup of the abyss

it is this stubborn serpent's crawling out the shipwreck

this mouthful of stars revomited into a cake of fireflies

this stone on the ocean tugging with its drool

at a trembling hand for passing birds

here Sun and Moon

form the two cleverly engaged toothed wheels

of a Time ferocious in grinding us

Nirbhaya film: Solidarity is what we want, not a civilising mission

Kavita Krishnan, Daily O

I am beset with a growing sense of unease at the global publicity campaign surrounding the release of a film by Leslee Udwin called India's Daughter. The film's subject is the December 16, 2012 Delhi gang rape and the movement that followed it. The film is to be released on March 8, and we can discuss it after we have seen it. But I would like to flag some concerns about the "Daughters of India" campaign that is due to be launched in the wake of the film, and about the response to the film in India.

On Language & Disruptive Pedagogy

There was a social media storm recently after a Rhodes University lecturer used isiXhosa in a history class – and then told unhappy students it was their duty to learn the local language. A version of this event posted on Facebook prompted many discussions on issues of language, privilege and power. After two weeks of debate, the lecturer, Naledi Nomalanga Mkhize, explains the reasoning behind her assertion. The Con

With almost 10 years’ experience in teaching and education activism behind me, having taught hundreds of students each year, one of the things that remains a mainstay of my career is that delicate combination of teaching through nurturing and through disruption.

Mandla Langa's New Novel to be Launched on the 5th of March

Rhodes University Unit for the Humanities (UHURU) is pleased to announce that Mandla Langa’s acclaimed new novel, The Texture of Shadows, will be launched in Grahamstown at Barrett Lecture Theatre 1 at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday 5th of March.

Mandla Langa will be introduced by Mwelela Cele from the Steve Biko Centre and Siphokazi Magadla from the Rhodes Politics Department will be the discussant.