The Black Radical Tradition form Toussaint to Biko and Beyond – 1791: Haiti; 1958: Ghana; 1968: USA; 1968: Grahamstown; 1987 Burkina Faso

The Black Radical Tradition form Toussaint to Biko and Beyond – 1791: Haiti; 1958: Ghana; 1968: USA; 1968: Grahamstown; 1987 Burkina Faso

A Colloquium, 2, 3, & 4 July 2017

The colloquium will be held in Grahamstown during the National Arts Festival. It is co-hosted by the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University (UHURU) and the Steve Biko Foundation (SBF). In preparation for the meeting participants are asked to familiarise themselves with Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism.

All events will be he held in the Humanities Seminar Room, 1 Prince Alfred Street.

Sunday 2 July – Day One

All delegates arrive in the afternoon.

Opening Keynote

5:00 – 6:30 Victoria Collis-Buthelezi – Mapping the Black World from South Africa

 Chair: Richard Pithouse

Monday 3 July – Day Two

8:30 – 9:00 Coffee

9:00 – 9: 30 Welcome by Thando Sipuye & Michael Neocosmos

9:30 – 11:00 Situating the Conversation in Grahamstown:

• Mikaela Erskog & Ntombizikhona Valela Reflections on the Black Student Movement
• Ayanda Kota (UPM) From Azapo to the Unemployed People’s Movement

Chair: Fezokuhle Mthonti

11:00 – 11:30 Tea

11:30 – 1:00 Two black Intellectuals

• Levi Kabwato – Re-inventing “madness” and “non-conformity” 30 years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination
• Ntombizikhona Valela – Militant Mother Madikizela: The Intellectual Genealogy of Winnie Mandela

Chair: Mikaela Erskog

1:00 – 2:00 Lunch

2:00 – 3:30 Tendayi Sithole – Steve Biko in Johnny Dyani’s Exiled Imagination: a meditation

• responses by Bongani Madondo & Fezi Mthonti

Chair: Thando Sipuye

3:30 – 4:00 Tea

4:00 – 5:00  Mikaela Erskog – Black Left Feminisims

– Response from Victoria Collis-Buthelezi

Chair: Chelsey Wilken

5:00 – 6:30 Achille Mbembe – Brief Remarks on Afropessimism

Chair: Michael Neocosmos

Tuesday 4 July – Day Three

9:00 – 9:30 Coffee

9:30 – 11:00 Popular struggles (1)

• Michael Neocosmos The Dialectic of Emancipatory Politics and African Subjective Potentiality
• Motlatsi Khosa Abahlali baseMjondolo & Living Ubuntu
• Richard Pithouse Reading academic gossip and fraud theoretically in light of Fanon, Robinson, Triouillot and others

Chair: Ntombizikhona Valela

 11:00 – 11:30 Tea

11:30 – 1:00 Popular struggles (2)

• Azwell Banda – Trade union struggles
• S’bu Zikode – Abahlalism

Chair: Fezi Mthonti

 1:00 – 2:00 lunch

2:00 – 3:00 Bongani Madondo – Skenke: Sonic Visitations Suite

– response from Tendayi Sithole

 Chair: Levi Kabwato

 3:30 – 4:00 Tea

4:00 – 5:00 Music & Poetry

• Fezi Mthonti – Four Women: Nina Simone as an Afro-American Vernacular Intellectual
• Chelsey Wilken – “We hear, then we remember”: Unpacking racial memory in Claudia Rankine’s ‘Citizen’

Chair: Michael Neocosmos

5:00 – 7:00 Robin Kelley – Southern Africa in the Making of Cedric J. Robinson’s Radical Theory and Practice

Chair: Richard Pithouse

7:00 Braai (there will be a vegetarian option)

Wednesday 5 July

All participants leave except for Robin Kelley, Tendayi Sithole & Fezi Mthonti who travel to the Steve Biko Centre in King William’s Town to speak on the importance of Steve Biko in the context of the Black Radical Tradition.