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20 May 2022 | Story Rulanzen Martin

The Africa Day Memorial Lecture has always been a platform for scholars to critically reflect on and engage with subject matter pertaining to Africa and her people. This year’s lecture will be no different when Prof Bagele Chilisa, post-colonial scholar from the University of Botswana, will deliver this year’s lecture on the topic: Research and knowledge production: Africa and the call for a fifth research paradigm.  

“In this lecture, Kwame Nkrumah’s call for Africa-centred knowledge, Claude Ake’s promotion of endogenous knowledge, and Ngungi wa Thiongo’s decolonisation of the mind recall Africa’s innovations in the COVID-19 crisis, celebrate Africa’s unity of mind, and claim Africa’s space in the global knowledge production,” writes Prof Chilisa.

The lecture is hosted annually by the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS). Previous speakers include, among others, Dr Rahul Rao, Prof Alcinda Honwana, and Prof Walter D Mignolo, who delivered the 2021 memorial lecture. 

Premiere at 19:00 on YouTube to join the lecture click on video below. 

Time: 19:00


For more information, please contact Portia Khate at KhatePB@ufs.ac.za

Click to view documentVisit the dedicated #AfricaMonth webpage here 



About the speaker: 
Prof Chilisa is a renowned post-colonial scholar, researcher, author, educator, and an important African thought leader. Some of the courses she has been facilitating for more than 30 years include research design, policy design, and measurement and evaluation courses, among others. As a full Professor at the University of Botswana, she has supervised more than 50 master’s dissertations and PhD theses with diverse academic discourse and has served as external examiner for PhD theses in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. 

Her interest in community-based research has driven her to write extensively on indigenous knowledge, as well as to publish a book titled Indigenous Research Methodologies – a book that has sparked international discourse on the importance of indigenous methodologies, especially in Africa.  With more than 80 publications, Prof Chilisa was recognised as the Researcher of the Year and awarded UB Research Team Leadership at the University Research Awards Ceremony in 2019.

Other UFS events celebrating #AfricaMonth 

2022 Africa Week: ‘African Higher Education – Celebrating African Education’

The University of the Free State Office for International Affairs, in collaboration with the Unit for Institutional Change and Social Justice, will be hosting its fifth annual Africa Day commemoration.

In accordance with COVID-19 protocols/rules, the different activities will have limited capacity for attendance, but live streaming will be made available to the rest of us. This may change at any given time, according to circumstances as determined by the relevant departments of the institution. 

You are all cordially invited to tune in; please RSVP on the links below for attendance (attendance is limited). In the meantime, save the date and the links below. 


Opening Ceremony: South Campus
Date: 23 May 2022
Venue: Open space outside the cafeteria
Time: 13:00-15:00
RSVP link: https://events.ufs.ac.za/event/1534/  


Celebratory Dialogue: Bloemfontein Campus
Date:
25 May 2022 
Venue: Centenary Complex 
Time: 16:00-19:00

Closing Ceremony: Qwaqwa Campus
Date: 27 May 2022
Venue: B11 EMS 
Time: 12:30-15:00

For more information, please contact Bhekumusa Zikhali at ZikhaliBN@ufs.ac.za 

News Archive

Public Protector addresses large audience
2012-04-23

Adv. Madonsela condemns corruption and poor service delivery in South Africa.
20 April 2012

Audio of the lecture


Video of the lecture

Apartheid cannot be blamed for poor service delivery in the country - corruption should shoulder the blame. Eighteen years into democracy, South Africa still has a long way to go before it becomes the society it envisaged for itself.

“We are not there yet,” South Africa’s Public Protector, Adv. Thuli Madonsela, told a packed Wynand Mouton Theatre on the University of the Free State’s Bloemfontein Campus on Tuesday 17 April 2012. She delivered a public lecture on “Academic freedom and corruption in the context of secrecy laws”.

“Are we closer to becoming a society where values such as human dignity are sacrosanct, where freedom for everyone is the order of the day?” Adv. Madonsela asked the audience comprising students, academics and community members. She said corruption is the silent thief that steals the country’s constitutional dream, causing the poor to live undignified lives.

Adv. Madonsela appealed to students and academics to help retrieve the constitutional dream. In encouraging academic discourse on corruption, she said corruption is not only one person’s problem, but that of everybody. She told academics they could help develop the law and so help in the fight against corruption.

Adv. Madonsela, who spent most of Tuesday on the Bloemfontein Campus, met with senior management from the university as well as students earlier.

Her public lecture late on Tuesday afternoon had the Wynand Mouton Theatre bursting at the seams. Some members of the audience sat on the steps inside the theatre to hear the lecture.

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