Professor Norman Duncan, Vice-Principal: Academic at the University of Pretoria, cordially invites you to a public lecture by Prof Sylvia Tamale, Founder and Coordinator of the Law, Gender and Sexuality Research Centre, Makerere University in Uganda.

Title: Peeling Away the Layers of Colonisation: The Case of the African Academy

Date: Tuesday, 13 August 2019

Time: 17:00 –19:00

Venue: Senate Hall, Hatfield Campus, University of Pretoria

Dress: Day wear

RSVP click here by 12 August 2019

Enquiries Ms Maliga Govender, 012 420 2444 Persons with disabilities are kindly requested to contact Neo Maseko on 012 420 2631 if assistance is required.

Any discussion of decolonisation must first grapple with the content and intent of coloniality. Coloniality is manifested at two fundamental but interlinked levels. The first involved the expropriation of indigenous worlds by imperial colonisers. Such expropriation included the coralling of indigenous peoples and their ecological spaces for the benefit of imperialism. It ended with formal independence but the extraction and exploitation of indigenous worlds continues today through neoliberal capitalism and globalisation. Second-level coloniality is much more insidious and dangerous. It involves the colonisation of the mind, patterns of knowledge and social structures of indigenous peoples. Historically, the African Academy has, if unwittingly, been key in facilitating level two coloniality. This lecture addresses ways that Africa’s academies can break free of colonial legacies and domination. It discusses five layers or sub-systems of colonisation that we have to painstakingly peel away in the second-level decolonisation of our institutions of higher learning. Those layers lie on a potent kernel, which is the engine that pumps fuel into the veins of the layers. That kernel is called internalised colonialism. Consequently, the lecture commences with a brief discussion of how internalised colonialism operates before tackling the five layers that we need to peel away from their launch engine in decolonising the Academy.

Professor Sylvia Tamale is a leading African feminist and a multidisciplinary scholar based at Makerere University’s Law School in Uganda. She is the founder and coordinator of the Law, Gender and Sexuality Research Centre at the same university. Prof Tamale was the first female Dean of Law in Uganda and has been a Visiting Professor at several universities including Oxford, Pretoria and Zimbabwe. Prof Tamale combines academia with activism and adopts a critical approach to the Law that aims at enhancing students’ transformative personal growth and agency. She has served on national and international boards, including the Global Commission on HIV and the Law. She is the author of numerous publications including the groundbreaking African Sexualities: A Reader (editor, 2011) and When Hens Begin to Crow: Gender and Parliamentary Politics in Uganda (Westview Press, 1999). She holds a Bachelor of Laws from Makerere University, a Masters in Law from Harvard University and a PhD in Sociology and Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota. She has won several awards for defending the human rights of marginalised groups such as women, sexual minorities, people living with HIV/AIDS and refugees.