Achille Mbembe. Image: Supplied
Research Professor in History and Politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), Achille Mbembe, will deliver the keynote address at the 16th Annual Ruth First Memorial Lecture.
Mbembe is the author of many books including On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Critique of Black Reason (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016); Necropolitics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019) and Out of the Dark Night. Essays on Decolonization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020). He is the winner of the Gerda Henkel Prize (2018) and the Ernst Bloch Prize (2018).
This year’s theme is Migrancy and Populism. South Africa has a long and difficult history of migrancy both within and across its borders. After recent comments by Joburg Mayor Herman Mashaba, ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule, SAFTU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi on immigration and migrants, is SA politics and discourse normalising xenophobia? Will this year’s national election demonstrate a new populism?
As part of this programme, and in a bid to bring forward new young voices, two Ruth First fellows were appointed to look into these questions, Bongani Kona and Nickolaus Bauer. These fellows will present their work at the memorial lecture on Thursday, October 3, 2018.
For more information and to book your seat, please click here.
