This colloquium asks how universities in South Africa, and the scholars and activists housed within them, can respond to stormy political waters and to potentially competing visions of justice and transformation.
Date: Thursday, 4 September 2025
Time: 13:00-17:00 (SAST)
In-person venue: Ground Floor, Wartenweiler Library, Wits University
Online: Link to be shared once RSVPed.
RSVP: Lenore.Longwe@wits.ac.za, stating whether you will attend in-person or online.
Description:
This colloquium considers competing and complementary approaches to race and nationality in South African higher education, at a moment that marks ten years since the RhodesMustFall and FeesMustFall protests as well as being characterised by the increasing visibility and weaponisation of national and international xenophobia. It poses this question as a reflection not just on the Fallist movements, but on a three-decade long history of contentious post-Apartheid efforts to align the country’s universities with broader commitments to equity and progressive social change. Current attacks on academic institutions represent them as sites of illicit patronage of apparently unqualified foreigners, while foreign academics themselves navigate bureaucratic mazes and hostile atmospheres. What can these contradictions tell us about the processes of transformation and change that were meant to be invigorated by #RMF? The colloquium also considers future institutional trajectories in an era of resource scarcity, persistent domestic and global inequality, and rampant populist anti-intellectualism. At its heart, it asks how universities, and the scholars and activists housed within them, can respond to stormy political waters and to potentially competing visions of justice and transformation. What might it mean to be an African university in South Africa, and what will it take to realise that vision?
Speakers: Ahmed Veriava (Wits University), Srila Roy (Wits University), Mxolisi Makhubo (University of Johannesburg), Fikile Masikane (University of Pretoria), William Mpofu (Wits University), Samia Chasi (Wits University) and Salim Vally (University of Johannesburg).
Organisers: A collaboration between the Wits Internationalization and Strategic Partnerships Office, the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, the Wits-Oxford Mobility Governance Lab, the NRF-DST SARChI Chair in Mobility and the Politics of Difference, and the NRF-DST SARChI Chair in Critical Diversity Studies.
