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10
Contents
editorial
NYOKABI KARIŨKI
On Learning that one of the first Electronic Works was by an African, Halim El-Dabh
MARIMBA ANI
An Aesthetic of Control
JANNIKE BERGH in conversation with HAIDAR EID
Even Ghosts Weep in Gaza
WANELISA XABA
White psychology, Black indecipherability and iThongo
Theme African Psychology
DYLAN VALLEY & BISO MATHA RIALGO
An Epidemic of Loneliness - introduction to the African Psychology theme section of herri #10
KOPANO RATELE in dialogue with ARYAN KAGANOF
Psychology Contra Psychology: In Search of the Most Appropriate Definition of African Psychology
N CHABANI MANGANYI
On Becoming a Psychologist in Apartheid South Africa
THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN
African Psychology: serving as a reminder of human universals which have been lost or forgotten in mainstream Western psychology.
AUGUSTINE NWOYE
From Psychological Humanities to African Psychology: A Review of Sources and Traditions
SAM MATHE
Naming
ZETHU CAKATA
Ubugqirha: healing beyond the Western gaze
KOPANO RATELE
Dethingifying
PUMEZA MATSHIKIZA
A Psychological Explanation of Myself
SYLVIA VOLLENHOVEN
The Elephants in the Room
GWEN ANSELL
A New African String Theory: The Art of Being Yourself and Being with Others
ISMAHAN SOUKEYNA DIOP
Exploring Afro-centric approaches to mental healthcare
KOPANO RATELE
Four (African) Psychologies
LOU-MARIE KRUGER
Hunger
FIKILE-NTSIKELELO MOYA
"We are a wounded people."
CHARLA SMITH
Die “kywies” by die deur
KOPANO RATELE
Estrangement
MWELELA CELE
Sisi Khosi Xaba and the translation of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth into isiZulu
HUGO KA CANHAM
Leaving psychology to look for shades and complexity in despair
MALAIKA MAHLATSI
When Black academics leave historically White institutions
PAUL KHAHLISO
AGAINST COLONIAL PSYCHOLOGY
KOPANO RATELE
The interior life of Mtutu: Psychological fact or fiction?
MTUTUZELI MATSHOBA
Call Me Not a Man
WILFRED BARETT DAMON
James Joyce En Ek
ASHRAF KAGEE
Three friends in Gaza: We grieve, we mourn, we condemn, we deplore, we march, we demonstrate, we attend seminars and webinars, we wave flags, we wear keffiyas, we show off our t-shirts, but still the killing continues.
KOPANO RATELE AND SOPHIA SANAN
African Art, Black Subjectivity, and African Psychology: Refusing Racialised Structures of Aesthetic or Identity Theories
galleri
DATHINI MZAYIYA
Musidrawology as Methodology
STEVEN J. FOWLER
Dathini Mzayiya – the sound of the mark as it comes into being.
NONCEDO GXEKWA
Musidrawology as Portraits of the Artist Dathini Mzayiya & his Art
NONCEDO GXEKWA & NADINE CLOETE
Musidrawology as Methodology: a work of art by Dathini Mzayiya
NJABULO PHUNGULA
Like Knotted Strings
SPACE AFRIKA
oh baby
STRAND COMMUNITY ART PROJECT
Hands of the Future
DENIS-CONSTANT MARTIN
The Blue Notes: Searching for Form and Freedom
DESMOND PAINTER
'with all the ambivalence of a car in the city...'
KOPANO RATELE
Ngoana Salemone/Mother
SOPHIA OLIVIA SANAN
Art as commodity, art as philosophy, art as world-making: notes from a conversation with Kopano Ratele on African Art, Black Subjectivity and African Psychology
ROBIN TOMENS
"Why don't you do something right and make a mistake?"
SIMON TAYLOR
On The Ontological Status of the Image
borborygmus
NAPO MASHEANE
Manifesto ea mokha oa makomonisi
MAKHOSAZANA XABA
Curious and Willing: Ngazibuza Ngaziphendula, Ngahumusha Kwahumusheka
RICHARD PITHOUSE
The Wretched of the Earth becomes Izimpabanga Zomhlaba
FRANTZ FANON/ MAKHOSAZANA XABA
The Wretched of the Earth - Conclusion
EUGENE SKEEF
Yighube!
VUYOKAZI NGEMNTU
Amahubo
MBE MBHELE
Who cares about Mandisi Dyantyis Anyway?
KARABO KGOLENG
Women and Water
BONGANI TAU
Notes on Spirit Capital
ADDAMMS MUTUTA
Conflict Cultures and the New South Africa
ADAM KEITH
A Conversation with Debby Friday
DICK EL DEMASIADO
Some Notes on Cumbia and Dub
MULTIPLE AUTHORS
Thinking decolonially towards music’s institution: A post-conference reflection
frictions
AAKRITI KUNTAL
Still
FORTUNATE JWARA
In between wor(l)ds
KHADIJA TRACEY HEEGER
A Love Letter
SHAFINAAZ HASSIM
Take your freedom and run
MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO
10 New Poems
KHULILE NXUMALO
Two Poems For
HENNING PIETERSE
Translating Van den vos Reynaerde (Of Reynaert the Fox) into Afrikaans
OSWALD KUCHERERA
Words to Treasure
MTUTUZELI MATSHOBA
To kill a man's pride
KELWYN SOLE
Political Fiction, Representation and the Canon: The Case of Mtutuzeli Matshoba
SABATA-MPHO MOKAE
Maboko a ga Alexander Pushkin 1799 - 1837
NAÒMI MORGAN
Why translate Godot into Afrikaans?
TENZIN TSUNDUE
Three Poems
claque
DILIP M. MENON
Hugo ka Canham’s Riotous Deathscapes
BARBARA ROUSSEAUX
Undoing Fascism: Notes on Milisuthando
WAMUWI MBAO
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Reclaiming the Territory of the Mind
SISCA JULIUS
Ausi Told Me: My Cape Herstoriography
SERGIO HENRY BEN
Read. Write. Relevance. A review of Herman Lategan's Hoerkind.
MARIO PISSARRA
the Imagined New is a Work in Progress
MPHUTHUMI NTABENI
The city is mine by Niq Mhlongo: A review
KARABO KGOLENG
The Comrade’s Wife by Barbara Boswell
DOMINIC DAULA
Pain, Loss, and Reconciliation in Music and Society
KNEO MOKGOPA
Normal Bandits: Mix Tape Memories by Anders Høg Hansen
ADDAMMS MUTUTA
‘Southern Cinema Aesthetics’: broadly imagined in multiple frames
RUTH MARGALIT
Writing the Nakba in Hebrew
LESEGO RAMPOLOKENG
Coming to Johnson
ekaya
KOPANO RATELE
From "Wilcocks" to "Krotoa": The Name Changing Ceremony
ARYAN KAGANOF
The herriverse: Introducing a new kind of Research Method, one that is Structural or even Meta- insofar as it exists in the Reader’s Navigation of the Curated Space and the Possible Contingent Connections as much as in the Objects being Curated; an Epistemic Construction therefore, that is obliquely but absolutely determined by Ontologically Unpredictable Exchanges.
MARTIJN PANTLIN
Introducing herri Search
off the record
UHURU PHALAFALA
Keorapetse Kgositsile & The Black Arts Movement Book Launch, Book Lounge, Cape Town Wednesday 24 April 2024.
PALESA MOKWENA
Lefifi Tladi - "invisible caring" or, seeing and being seen through a spiritual lens
CHRISTOPHER BALLANTINE
Edmund "Ntemi” Piliso Jazzing Through Defeat And Triumph: An Interview
DENIS-CONSTANT MARTIN
CHRIS McGREGOR (1936-1990): Searching for Form and Freedom
SHAUN JOHANNES
In Memoriam Clement Benny
VEIT ERLMANN
"Singing Brings Joy To The Distressed" The Social History Of Zulu Migrant Workers' Choral Competitions
SAM MATHE
Stimela Sase Zola
MARKO PHIRI
Majaivana's Odyssey
EZEKIEL MPHAHLELE
The Non-European Character in South African English Fiction
BASIAMI “CYNTHIA” WAGAFA
Hyper-Literary Fiction: The (meta)Poetics Of Digital Fragmentation – an interview with August Highland
feedback
DIANA FERRUS
Thursday 20 February, 2020
LWAZI LUSHABA
Saturday 4 April 2020
NJABULO NDEBELE
Sunday 5 December 2021
BEN WATSON
6 June 2023 20:50
FACEBOOK FEEDBACK
Facebook
herri_gram FEEDBACK
Instagram
the selektah
LERATO “Lavas” MLAMBO
Real human person – a mix by Lavas
SIEMON ALLEN & CHRIS ALBERTYN
Celebrating the genius of Ntemi Edmund Piliso: A mix-tape of twenty five tunes recorded on 78rpm shellac in 25 years – 1953 to 1968
ALEKSANDAR JEVTIĆ
Stone Unturned 18: The Static Cargo of Stars
PhD
WARRICK SWINNEY
Stick Fighting against extinction: end beginnings and other dada nihilismus polemics
hotlynx
HOTLYNX
hotlynx
shopping
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contributors
the back page
ELMI MULLER
Fugitive reflections on pain, death, and surgery
DICK TUINDER
Rob Schröder (13 November 1950 - 6 July 2024)
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  • Theme African Psychology

MALAIKA MAHLATSI

When Black academics leave historically White institutions

Historically White universities across South Africa are losing some of their best academics to historically Black universities and universities that merged with historically Black colleges and technikons in the democratic dispensation. I first started noticing this a few years ago when my alma mater, Rhodes University, lost a radical feminist sociologist, Professor Babalwa Magoqwana, and radical feminist historian, Professor Nomalanga Mkhize, within a very short space of time. Both moved to Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha.

Soon thereafter, the Politics and International Relations department at the same university lost the Black Consciousness radical scholar, Professor Mlamuli Hlatswayo, to the University of KwaZulu Natal. Beyond the confines of Rhodes University, many academics are leaving historically White universities. Brilliant scholars like Professor Pumla Gqola, the SARChI Chair for African Feminist Imagination, left the University of the Witwatersrand, initially for Fort Hare University and then, for Nelson Mandela University. Many young academics are doing the same thing. Examples include: radical philosopher and Harvard South Africa Fellow, Dr Siseko Khumalo, who left the University of Pretoria for Fort Hare University; Dr Pedro Mzileni, who left the University of Free State for the University of Zululand; public administration scholar, Professor John Molepo, who left North West University for the University of Mpumalanga etc. The list is long – and growing.

There are several reasons, both personal and professional, why Black academics are leaving historically White universities to teach at historically Black institutions. Some of these reasons have been expressed publicly, such as in the case of Dr Mzileni who was subjected to unimaginable humiliation at the University of the Free State, where he was accused by right-wing organisations of teaching “racism” when he explained the systematic violence of land dispossession in South Africa.

Hundreds of scholars across the world, myself included, signed a petition in support of Dr Mzileni when the university put him through a cruel disciplinary process – the second within the space of just a few months. We signed this petition because Dr Mzileni was the face of all Black academics – men, women and non-binary people who were being hurled at the margins and who had to endure racist treatment in historically White universities which, despite their demographic changes, remain resistant to structural change.

In such a space, Black academics cannot thrive because they must battle not only the coloniality of academia in general, but also, the abuse that is meted out on them in their workplaces that are supposed to offer, at the very least, support. But as we saw with Dr Mzileni, support is not something that Black academics can bank on from their employer in historically White universities. The complaints about Dr Mzileni being a “racist” came from an external right-wing organisation and rather than protecting him, his employer, the University of the Free State, chose to close ranks with fellow Whites. This is the reality for many Black academics, some whom I spoke to when I was writing my book, Corridors of Death: The Struggle to Exist in Historically White Institutions just four years ago.

As an emerging scholar and a Black woman, I am deeply conflicted about the decision by progressive Black academics to leave historically White universities. On one hand, I believe that Black academics must protect their mental health at all costs by removing themselves from spaces that demean, dehumanise, de-civilise and diminish them. They need a genuine community in spaces where their humanity is not constantly being put on trial – literally and figuratively. On the other hand, in South Africa, historically White universities are increasingly changing demographically.  

The end of the apartheid era in 1994 saw the desegregation of universities. With doors of learning now open, hundreds of thousands of Black people who were previously denied access to these institutions were able to enroll and receive an education. Thus, three decades into the democratic dispensation, the proportion of Black students is, in many of these universities, higher than that of White students. This is the case for universities like Rhodes where just a few years ago, White students constituted the majority. The situation has changed, with Black students now constituting the majority of the student body at the university. It is for this reason that I worry that with Black academics leaving, Black students are being left at the altar of Whiteness to endure unimaginable forms of violence, including both the physical violence of colonial spatiality and the epistemic violence of the erasure of Black knowledge forms in formal curricula.

I studied Geography at Rhodes University until Honours level (and years later, completed my MSc in Water Resource Science there, at the Institute for Water Research). During my time at the university, the Department of Geography had one Black lecturer, Professor Thembela Kepe. Professor Kepe wasn’t even based at Rhodes University but taught for a few months annually. He supervised my Honours research from Canada where he’s teaching at the University of Toronto. The implications of never having been taught by progressive Black academics in the Geography department is being felt now when I’m doing my PhD in Geography and having to unlearn so many regressive ideas that I learned as an undergraduate and later, Honours student.

It helps that my supervisor is Professor Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, an authority on decoloniality who is currently the Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South With Focus on Africa, at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, where I am enrolled. But the amount of unlearning that I am having to do because of the kinds of knowledges that I was exposed to in the hands of White academics who did not engage with decolonial scholarship in teaching the intersectionality of race, gender, class and geographies, is major and difficult. When subjects like Geography are taught to Black students, in Africa, without academic references from African scholars and progressives in the Global South, it undermines the struggle to rewrite the narrative of Black people as “the wretched of the earth”, and of the natural environment divorced from indigenous knowledge forms, practices, beliefs, cultures and spirituality. This is why I am conflicted. I want Black academics to leave the violence of historically White universities, but their going leaves devastation in its wake.

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