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The University of the Free State (UFS) will join in the continental celebrations of Africa Month, hosting its annual Africa Day Memorial Lecture on 24 May 2023. The event, hosted by the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies, will feature Prof Motlatsi Thabane as the keynote speaker, and can be attended in person on the Bloemfontein Campus (attendance subject to RSVP) or followed online via live streaming.

During his lecture, Prof Thabane will explore the complex relations between African and white settler communities in the Mohokare Valley. His address, titled Josias Philip Hoffman and Moshoeshoe I꞉ Friendship in the Search for Justice in the Mohokare Valley in the Nineteenth Century, will look at how a community of white settlers fleeing British rule in the Cape Colony was added to African communities living in the Mohokare Valley at the beginning of the 1830s.

Prof Thabane is a renowned social history expert and a great admirer of Moshoeshoe I, and through reading about him, became a great admirer of Josias Hoffman. Prof Thabane taught History at the National University of Lesotho for many years, before taking up a two‑year appointment at the University of Eswatini in 2018.

Be part of the event

The Africa Day Memorial Lecture will also be livestreamed:

Date: 24 May 2023

Time: 17:30 for 18:00

Venue: Centenary Complex, Bloemfontein Campus (attendance subject to RSVP)