Permalink Submitted by Keyan Tomaselli on 22 September 2025
Organization/ affiliation:
Univ of Johannesburg / Univ of KwaZuku-Natal
For us back in South Africa, Leiden held something of a mystique as it retained interactions with some South African universities during the 1980s. International exposure is always enlightening, as was proven with the introduction of the MA degree. I was never part of the Leiden MA class, but I did visit there once in offering a lecture, and two of my books were published in conjunction with the Centre. The support offered for this project was superb.
In reading the commemorative book’s chapters, I am reminded of the idea of self-reflexivity. Academics are very good at studying something else, or other people, out there, but tend to become visibly anxious when they themselves are the subject of someone else’s gaze. But here the gaze is from within, a refusal to forget, an attempt to record experiences, and offer analysis of what was accomplished. Everywhere academics are complaining about instrumentalism, the metric economy and the turning of us into conveyer belts. The faster the belt the sooner we approach our own self-induced extinction. We are literally measuring ourselves to death. Knowingly.
As Prof Ntsebeza argues, we do this because we have learned to play the game, to ensure the conditions of our own small scale survival, as the wider world hurtles on its pre-determined path. I was a student at Wits in Anthropology and Sociology when the Archie Mafejee affair occurred. He became a rallying cry. I was not aware that he had been denied an interview many decades later when the gesture (and appointment) would have reaped global acclaim. Sometimes one simply has to invest in the symbolic, to make amends, to show the way.
Leiden has played its part, it has prepared a small cadre to pilot Africa into a rapidly reconfiguring world, and will hopefully continue to do so.
For us back in South Africa, Leiden held something of a mystique as it retained interactions with some South African universities during the 1980s. International exposure is always enlightening, as was proven with the introduction of the MA degree. I was never part of the Leiden MA class, but I did visit there once in offering a lecture, and two of my books were published in conjunction with the Centre. The support offered for this project was superb.
In reading the commemorative book’s chapters, I am reminded of the idea of self-reflexivity. Academics are very good at studying something else, or other people, out there, but tend to become visibly anxious when they themselves are the subject of someone else’s gaze. But here the gaze is from within, a refusal to forget, an attempt to record experiences, and offer analysis of what was accomplished. Everywhere academics are complaining about instrumentalism, the metric economy and the turning of us into conveyer belts. The faster the belt the sooner we approach our own self-induced extinction. We are literally measuring ourselves to death. Knowingly.
As Prof Ntsebeza argues, we do this because we have learned to play the game, to ensure the conditions of our own small scale survival, as the wider world hurtles on its pre-determined path. I was a student at Wits in Anthropology and Sociology when the Archie Mafejee affair occurred. He became a rallying cry. I was not aware that he had been denied an interview many decades later when the gesture (and appointment) would have reaped global acclaim. Sometimes one simply has to invest in the symbolic, to make amends, to show the way.
Leiden has played its part, it has prepared a small cadre to pilot Africa into a rapidly reconfiguring world, and will hopefully continue to do so.