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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
Dr Susan Levine (Social Anthropology), a recipient of
UCT’s Distinguished Teacher Award in 2011.
Through the AGI and Gender Studies, AXL students and
staff benefited from the visit of internationally acclaimed
documentary film-maker and writer Yaba Badoe (Ghana)
in August. Badoe spent a week at UCT giving seminars
and screening her award-winning documentary
The
Witches of Gambaga,
which explores the negative
impact of cultural beliefs and superstition in parts of
Africa. The visit was co-ordinated in collaboration with
the faculty’s African Cinema Unit.
The Linguistics section hosted a successful residential
seminar, titled
Language and Desire, which was
attended by
AXL postgraduates, affiliates and faculty
members.
The three SARChI Chairs held within AXL have, through
a first-class array of seminars, digital production and
research publications, continued to stimulate the school
and wide range of affiliated researchers and writers.
AXL also published three issues of
Feminist Africa
and two
editions of
Social Dynamics
in 2012
.
The
African Feminists:
Talking the Walk
is another project that connects UCT
academics and students with their counterparts in different
African contexts. Initiated in 2011 by the African Gender
Institute, the programme presents the work and ideas of
African feminists in order to answer the question: What do
African feminists look and sound like? Key events included
seminar presentations, book launches, documentary
screenings and panel discussions, including a visit from
feminist activist Sara Longwe, who gave a talk on “Legal
Voice: feminist activism from the body up” – an account of
her legal struggles for equality in Zambia.
An important milestone for AXL has been the establishment
of the Centre for African Languages Diversity, a research
unit headed by Dr Matthias Brenzinger, created to stimulate
the study and documentation of African languages to
promote linguistic diversity on the continent. Through
its scholarship programme and collaborations with
international institutions, the unit will soon attract MA and
PhD students from around Africa.
A Champion for Integrated
African Studies
Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza has been appointed as
the new AC Jordan Chair in the School of African and
Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics (AXL). This
professorial chair in the field of African Studies was
established at UCT in 1993 and is named after Archibald
Campbell Mzolisa Jordan, who was a pioneer in the field
of African Studies under apartheid.
Research Project
The value of the school, according to
its director, Associate Professor Jane
Bennett, is its ability to examine famil-
iar themes more critically, in new ways
and from a quintessentially Afrocen-
tric perspective.
According to Professor Ntsebeza, Africans, in
particular South Africans, do not know enough
about their own continent and have yet to prioritise
a meaningful study of African issues. The AC Jordan
Chair aims to address this challenge by championing
the integration of African Studies into research,
teaching and learning at undergraduate and
postgraduate level across the institution.
Examples of this commitment to an African agenda
can already be found in UCT’s Afropolitanism drive,
and in the work of the School of African and Gender
Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics and the
recently established Centre for African Language
Diversity, as well as in the teaching of isiXhosa in the
Health Sciences.
African Studies is in a sense inherently cross- and
multidisciplinary, providing an opportunity for
individuals from different disciplines and professions
to address selected topics, problems or themes
related to Africa.
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