Freedom, Race and Social Cohesion: historical and contemporary African perspectives.

A Colloquium at UNISA 4^th-5^th March 2014

Call for papers

At the time when the 50^th anniversary of attempts at African unity are being celebrated, it is perhaps also important to reflect on the general demands and struggle for freedom which underlay the pan-African dream and which African independence had promised its peoples.  Rather than merely celebrating an organisation of states, it is fundamentally important to reflect on the ideals which produced them and how they have been experienced by people since.  After all it was as recently as the 1980s that a Nigerian peasant was asking ‘When will independence end?’  (Raufu Mustapha, 1996)[1].  It is a sad fact that popular dissatisfaction with the state in Africa is widespread.