Archie Mafeje

This comprehensive treatment of Archie Mafeje as a thinker and researcher analyses his overall scholarship and his role as a theoretician of liberation and revolutionary theory Social scientist Archie Mafeje, who was born in the Eastern Cape but lived most of his scholarly life in exile, was one of Africa's most prominent intellectuals. This ground-breaking work is the first of its kind to consider the entire body of Mafeje’s oeuvre and offers a much-needed engagement with his ideas. The most inclusive and critical treatment to date of Mafeje as a thinker and researcher, the book analyses his overall scholarship and his role as a theoretician of liberation and revolution. Author Bongani Nyoka's main argument is that Mafeje’s superb scholarship developed out of his experience as an oppressed black person and his early political education, which merged with his university training to turn him into a formidable cutting-edge intellectual force. There are three main parts to the book. Part I evaluates Mafeje's critique of the social sciences, part II focuses on his work on land and agrarian issues in sub-Saharan Africa and part III deals with his work on revolutionary theory and politics. The book engages in the act of knowledge decolonisation, making a unique contribution to South Africa’s sociological, historical and political studies.

Voices of Liberation: Archie Mafeje should be understood as an attempt to contextualise Mafeje's work and thinking and adds to gripping intellectual biographies of African intellectuals by African researchers. Mafeje's scholarship can be categorised into three broad areas: a critique of epistemological and methodological issues in the social sciences; the land and agrarian question in sub-Saharan Africa; and revolutionary theory and politics (including questions of development and democracy). Noted for his academic prowess, genius mind, incomparable wit and endless struggle for his nation and greater Africa, Mafeje was also hailed by his daughter, Dana El-Baz, as a `giant' not only in the intellectual sense but as a human being. Part I discusses Mafeje's intellectual and political influences. Part II consists of seven of Mafeje's original articles and seeks to contextualise his writings. Part III reflects on Mafeje's intellectual legacy.

Archie Mafeje was an independent Pan-Africanist and cosmopolitan individual who sought to understand the world at a global level in order to locate Africa within that tapestry. In many ways, Archie Mafeje was one of the African intellectual pathfi nders. He contributed immensely to the African people's search for self-understanding, self-determination and political emancipation as they struggled against alienation and misrepresentation. In recognising the academic and intellectual contribution of Archie Mafeje, this monograph also refl ects on the African people's journey for emancipation in the search for African identity, self-control and self-understanding.

This contribution to African social sciences presents an original theory of social formations with a new methodolgical approach, raising new perspectives on the classic issues of exploitation, class and social change in African societies. A distinguished academic sociologist and anthropologist, the author critically reviews the works of orthodox anthropologists, questioning the impact on African Studies of both development theory and classical ethnography. Within a context of redefining forms of political organizations, he uses research on the East African Lacustrian Kingdoms to analyse the articulation of the relationship between political and economic power. He rejects articulation theory and the concept of feudalism.

Global imperial designs, which have been in place since conquest by western powers, did not suddenly evaporate after decolonization. Global coloniality as a leitmotif of the empire became the order of the day, with its invisible technologies of subjugation continuing to reproduce Africa’s subaltern position, a position characterized by perceived deficits ranging from a lack of civilization, a lack of writing and a lack of history to a lack of development, a lack of human rights and a lack of democracy. The author’s sharply critical perspective reveals how this epistemology of alterity has kept Africa ensnared within colonial matrices of power, serving to justify external interventions in African affairs, including the interference with liberation struggles and disregard for African positions. Evaluating the quality of African responses and available options, the author opens up a new horizon that includes cognitive justice and new humanism.

This innovative book is a forward-looking reflection on mental decolonisation and the postcolonial turn in Africanist scholarship. As a whole, it provides five decennia-long lucid and empathetic research involvements by seasoned scholars who came to live, in local people's own ways, significant daily events experienced by communities, professional networks and local experts in various African contexts. The book covers materials drawn from Botswana, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. Themes include the Whelan Research Academy, rap musicians, political leaders, wise men and women, healers, Sacred Spirit churches, diviners, bards and weavers who are deemed proficient in the classical African geometrical knowledge. As a tribute to late Archie Mafeje who showed real commitment to decolonise social sciences from western-centred modernist development theories, commentators of his work pinpoint how these theories sought to dismiss the active role played by African people in their quest for self-emancipation. One of the central questions addressed by the book concerns the role of an anthropologist and this issue is debated against the background of the academic lecture delivered by René Devisch when receiving an honorary doctoral degree at the University of Kinshasa. The lecture triggered critical but constructive comments from such seasoned experts as Valentin Mudimbe and Wim van Binsbergen. They excoriate anthropological knowledge on account that the anthropologist, notwithstanding his or her social and cognitive empathy and intense communication with the host community, too often fails to also question her own world and intellectual habitus from the standpoint of her hosts. Leading anthropologists carry further into great depth the bifocal anthropological endeavour focussing on local people's re-imagining and re-connecting the local and global. The book is of interest to a wide readership in the humanities, social sciences, philosophy and the history of the African continent and its relation with the North.

This comprehensive treatment of Archie Mafeje as a thinker and researcher analyses his overall scholarship and his role as a theoretician of liberation and revolutionary theory Social scientist Archie Mafeje, who was born in the Eastern Cape but lived most of his scholarly life in exile, was one of Africa's most prominent intellectuals. This ground-breaking work is the first of its kind to consider the entire body of Mafeje’s oeuvre and offers a much-needed engagement with his ideas. The most inclusive and critical treatment to date of Mafeje as a thinker and researcher, the book analyses his overall scholarship and his role as a theoretician of liberation and revolution. Author Bongani Nyoka's main argument is that Mafeje’s superb scholarship developed out of his experience as an oppressed black person and his early political education, which merged with his university training to turn him into a formidable cutting-edge intellectual force. There are three main parts to the book. Part I evaluates Mafeje's critique of the social sciences, part II focuses on his work on land and agrarian issues in sub-Saharan Africa and part III deals with his work on revolutionary theory and politics. The book engages in the act of knowledge decolonisation, making a unique contribution to South Africa’s sociological, historical and political studies.