Arundhati Roy responds eloquently to this question: “There is really no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard”.
The above resonates with Nelson Mandela University and the University of Fort Hare’s annual Phyllis Ntantala and Prudence Mabele Memorial Public Lecture, which is now in its second year and is part of ongoing scholarly efforts to search for African women voices and deliberately illuminate their illustrious work, courage and commitment to justice.
The public lecture is jointly convened by Mandela University’s Centre for Women and Gender Studies interim director Professor Babalwa Magoqwana, SARChI Chair in African Feminist Imagination Professor Phumla Gqola at Mandela University, and SARChI Chair in Sexualities, Genders and Queer Studies Professor Zetu Matebeni at Fort Hare.
Following on last year’s theme, Let’s Hear Them Speak, the Joint Memorial Public Lecture Committee is inviting all to listen to women Speaking Truth to Power. The illustrious Ugandan poet, academic, activist, writer and mother Dr Stella Nyanzi will deliver the lecture.
This annual public lecture is a continuation of the quest to memorialise women and build a feminist archive that lives and breathes itself across teaching and learning institutions and beyond. It is a way of fetching the stories, voices and lived experiences of women in the spaces and sites that they are perched in. Allowing women to share their own archives, embodied and other wise, these become rich and fertile sources of knowledge, wisdom and ‘herstorical’ guides.
Date: 27 July 2023
Venue: Miriam Makeba Hall, University of Fort Hare
Time: 16:00 - 18:00