Unisa online - African knowledge does matter

Prof Jimi Adesina (Intellectual Heritage Project Leader), Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, Prof Mandla Makhanya (Pro-Vice-Chancellor), Prof Ben Magubane, Mrs Thembi Magubane & Prof Tinyiko Maluleke (Executive Director: Research)

“A teacher, a philosopher, a researcher, a writer, in a word, a polymath,” were the appellations chosen by the South African Deputy President, Kgalema Motlanthe, to describe Prof Bernard Makhosezwe Magubane at the gala dinner of the African Knowledge Producers Series Conference on 27 August 2010 at the Muckleneuk campus.

With the theme “African knowledge procedures: a critical engagement”, the conference had a special focus on the life and works of Prof Ben Magubane, who turned 80 in August 2010, while also critically engaging with the works of leading African scholars in the fields of the social sciences, humanities, and literature.

Deputy President Motlanthe pointed out in his keynote address that throughout Prof Magubane’s life, he had refused to give in to assumptions that Africa was destined to be the object of history, and not the subject at the centre of history.

“In other words, and correctly so, he has sought to reconceptualise Africa from the perception of being a receptacle of foreign ideas, to the one being a tributary to the confluence of the fluid universal knowledge system.”"I therefore submit that part of our obligations in honouring Prof Magubane, especially from the academic viewpoint, is to both produce and nurture African scholars geared to meeting this critical objective,” he asserted.

In acknowledging the plaudits heaped upon him, Prof Magubane was characteristically modest. “Who would have thought that the work of a country boy from Colenso would be celebrated over two days?” he queried diffidently, as he outlined his life journey over 80 years and the support he had received.

The conference was a joint project of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Unisa, the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) , the Freedom Park Trust, the South African Democracy Education Trust (SADET), the National Research Foundation (NRF), the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Intellectual Heritage Project (Rhodes University).