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22 February 2018 Photo Sonia Small
Histories of whites beyond whiteness the focus of inaugural lecture
Prof Hendri Kroukamp, Acting Vice-Rector, Academic, Prof Neil Roos, Professor in the Centre for Africa Studies, and Prof Heidi Hudson, Acting Dean: Faculty of The Humanities.

Growing up in a small milling village on the Natal South Coast sugar belt from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, Prof Neil Roos was exposed to poverty, privilege, liberalism, and racism. He carved out a promising academic career at the University of Natal, initially on white communists and the anomaly they represented in South African society - researching their histories in the Springbok Legion, a radical wartime kind of ‘trade union’ for soldiers.

During his doctoral work with the University of the North-West, he shifted his attention from the small number of whites who defied segregation and apartheid, to the large numbers who did not, and he began to engage with historical and comparative approaches to race. He was also interested in the sense of comradeship shown by white war veterans in the village where he lived, which included his own father, and used this interest to investigate the kinds of networks white veterans developed, as well as their role in movements like the war veterans’ Torch Commando and the Memorable Order of Tin Hats (MOTH). He used this history to show how white people were able simultaneously to ’oppose’ apartheid, yet accept its core premise of racial supremacy.

Possibility, dismay, and challenge
During his inaugural lecture on 14 February 2018 at the University of the Free State (UFS), Prof Roos addressed issues that delivered new insights under his fresh and rigorous research approach. “I intended to plot how histories of whites in South Africa have been written during several big historiographic moves, with sub-titles ‘possibility’, ‘dismay’ and ‘challenge’.” In the first section, ‘possibility’, he dealt with the vibrant 1980s-vintage South African social history, arguing that social histories of whites were at looked in a rather simplistic way. In ‘dismay’ he looked at the rise of cultural studies of whites in the new millennium which, he argued, tend to be self-absorbed, ahistorical and outside of any rigorous critique of society as a whole. In ‘challenge’ he proposed that contemporary political concerns, notably demands of the decolonisation movement, should inspire a new, activist, anti-racist history of race which draws on some of the strengths of the earlier social history movement as well as some of the techniques developed during the 1990s and the millennium to understand power, ideology and representation.

A new approach
Prof Roos proposes that histories of whites must more properly be histories of race. “This history must show the production of racial categories, reflect on the moral historiographies of being white, and the kinds of dehumanisation this demanded. It must also identify how and where whites transgressed, defied, opposed, or were simply docile. It must be emphatically anti-racist, and must absolutely avoid the possibility of apologia, of trying to gloss over or present with a human face histories of whites under colonialism, segregation and apartheid.” He also argued for an historical approach to present-day iterations of racial identity occurrences of racism, racial supremacy and racial violence.

“I intended to plot how histories of whites
in South Africa have been written during
several big historiographic moves.”

In arguing for the democratisation of studies about whites, Prof Roos argued that it is inconceivable that only whites write about histories of whites. He pointed out that black scholars bring fresh insights to the study of race, and of whites, and appealed for funding to be made available to black scholars pursuing these angles.  

Prof Roos, who is the author of Ordinary Springboks: White Servicemen and Social Justice in South Africa, 1939-1961, has held fellowships at the University of Chicago, the University of Technology Sydney, Harvard and Notre Dame. He is a professor in the International Studies Group and co-directs the Prestige Scholars’ Programme. He is the author of Whites in Apartheid Society, due for publication by Indiana University Press in 2018.

 

News Archive

Moshoeshoe Memorial Lecture to focus on Leadership challenges
2006-03-27

 Lecture to focus on Leadership challenges

 n Thursday 25 May 2006 – Africa Day – the University of the Free State (UFS) will host the inaugural King Moshoeshoe Memorial Lecture in honour of this great African leader and nation-builder.

 Prof Njabulo Ndebele, internationally renowned writer and academic, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town (UCT), will deliver the inaugural lecture at the Main Campus in Bloemfontein on the topic: Reflections on the Leadership Challenges in South Africa.

 “I see the lecture as part of a larger debate on leadership models, particularly the concept of African leadership, as well as the ongoing discourse about nation-building and reconciliation,” says Prof Frederick Fourie, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS.

 According to Prof Fourie, the Moshoeshoe project was launched at the UFS in 2004 to coincide with South Africa’s first decade of democracy and was part of the University’s centenary celebrations, having been founded in 1904.

 “Through this project the UFS seeks to honour a great African leader and demonstrate our commitment to transformation so as to create a truly inclusive and non-racial university,” said Prof Fourie.

 “As the founder of the Basotho nation, King Moshoeshoe is widely credited for his exceptional style of leadership, displaying the characteristics of diplomacy, reconciliation and peaceful co-existence in his efforts to unite diverse groups into one nation,” said Prof Fourie.

 As part of its ongoing Moshoeshoe project, the UFS commissioned a television documentary programme on the life and legacy of King Moshoeshoe. This was completed in 2004 and broadcast on SABC 2 later that year.


Abridged curriculum vitae of Njabulo S Ndebele

Professor Njabulo S Ndebele is currently Vice-Chancellor and Principal of UCT.

 Njabulo Ndebele began his term of office at UCT in July 2000, following tenure as a scholar in residence at the Ford Foundation’s headquarters in New York.  He joined the Foundation in September 1998, immediately after a five-year term of office as Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the North in Sovenga, at the then Northern Province.  Previously he served as Vice-Rector of the University of the Western Cape.  Earlier positions include Chair of the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand; and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Dean, and Head of the English Department at the National University of Lesotho.

 An established author, Njabulo Ndebele recently published a novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela to critical acclaim.  An earlier publication Fools and Other Stories won the Noma Award, Africa’s highest literary award for the best book published in Africa in 1984.  His highly influential essays on South African literature and culture were published in a collection Rediscovery of the Ordinary.

 Njabulo Ndebele served as President of the Congress of South African Writers for many years.  As a public figure he is known for his incisive insights in commentaries on a range of public issues in South Africa.  He holds honorary doctorates from Universities in the Netherlands, Japan, South Africa and the United States of America.  He is also a Fellow of UCT.

Njabulo Ndebele is also a key figure in South African higher education.  He has served as Chair of the South African Universities Vice-Chancellor’s Association from 2002-2005, and served on the Executive Board of the Association of African Universities since 2001.  He has done public service in South Africa in the areas of broadcasting policy, school curriculum in history, and more recently as chair of a government commission on the development and use of African languages as media of instruction in South African higher education.  He recently became President of the Association of the AAU and Chair of the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA).

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel:   (051) 401-2584
Cell:  083 645 2454
E-mail:  loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za 
26 March 2006

 

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