John Langalibalele Dube Memorial Lecture

Speakers

• Dr Deborah Mindry
  

  Dr Deborah Mindry

  Deborah Mindry (she/her/hers) is a Research Anthropologist with UCGHI’s Women’s
  Health, Gender and Empowerment Center of Expertise. Her research interests include
  gender politics, NGOS and development, Sexual Reproductive Health, and HIV/AIDS.
  She has conducted qualitative ethnographic research in South Africa since the early
  1990s. Her research examines HIV, reproductive health, and gender dynamics in South
  Africa (Durban), Malawi (Lilongwe and Nkhoma), Uganda (Kampala) and USA (Los
  Angeles). She is currently working on a book manuscript, “I am HIV: Ordinary people
  daring to live and make change in South Africa” which challenges conceptions of
  Africans as victims of HIV, arguing instead that it is people on the ground who are
  figuring out how to live and thrive with an infectious disease.

• Mr Lukhona Mnguni
  

  Mr Lukhona Mnguni

  Lukhona is currently a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of KwaZulu- Natal, Durban, South Africa. He contributes significantly to the national discourse on a range of issues through his writing and commenting. He currently hosts a flagship show: Power Talk on POWER987 a commercial radio station in Gauteng Province. He has served the country in various ways, including presenting to the Presidential Commission of Inquiry investigating the feasibility of free higher education as well as being a contributing political analyst on eNCA, SABC news, Newzroom Afrika, 702 Radio, and many other platforms where he provides analysis of South Africa’s important news headlines on a regular basis. He continues to hold public seminars and give talks on key topics that focus on the development of South Africa within the context of the African continent and the world at large. He is a conference speaker, locally and abroad, invited by a variety of organisations from the banking sector to investors and various organisations in the civil society space. He also contributes to strategic sessions of various organisations, especially in the education sector. Lastly, he dedicates some of his time to availing himself as a board member to a few organisations that align with his values and vision for society.

• Mr Ngila Michael Muendane
  

  Mr Ngila Michael Muendane

  An ex-political prisoner, a published author, life coach and motivational speaker and the founder and Executive Member of SOULTALK, as well as the African Institute for Personal Excellence and Leadership (AIPEL). He is a foremost expert on the dynamics of mindsets. His interest in the subject dates back to the early 1970’s when he had a column, advising readers in a provincial newspaper, published then in Nelspruit, called the Northern Star.

  From 1963 to 1970 he was imprisoned on Robben Island as a political prisoner. While there, he studied Economics, Industrial Psychology and Political Science through UNISA. He subsequently went into exile to pursue his other heartfelt interest, the liberation of the oppressed. While in London he studied and taught hypnotherapy. This particular occupation expanded his understanding of the workings of the mind enormously.

  On coming back into the country in 1992 he hosted a radio programme on MetroFM, coaching and advising listeners for twelve years on air. He was in fact the first public motivational speaker and life coach in South Africa. On establishing AIPEL, he became instrumental in designing programmes on Self-mastery, Interpersonal Skills, Emotional Intelligence, Team Building, Leadership, Diversity management, Entrepreneurship, Sales Techniques and many other related training programmes. In 1997 Muendane produced and presented the SABC TV youth programme, “Switched On”.

  During his time in exile, he addressed several organisations on liberatory issues, including the UN Special Committee on Apartheid, The OAU, ILO, Non-aligned Movement, Anti- Apartheid Committee and the African Organisation for Trade Union Unity.

  Ngila Muendane is consulting editor of an encyclopaedia on Africa, ‘Know Africa’. As part of his consulting work he runs courses on personal transformation for individuals, in the corporate world, government and educational institutions of higher learning. He also runs self-mastery seminars for inmates and warders in the country’s prisons as part of his contribution in rehabilitating people with criminal backgrounds. Alongside his work in the country’s prisons, he also works with the police, conducting self-mastery programmes for them. He also engages himself with the education of this country by helping to improve the culture of learning and teaching through seminars and workshops. He is frequently invited by different churches to deliver addresses on self-mastery and relationships.

  He had a stint in the South African parliament, as an MP from 1997 to 2000. An arm officer in the SANDF, Muendane carries the rank of Lt. Colonel.

  Besides regular television and radio interviews, he also contributes to several newspapers commenting about various issues that pertain to the life of this country. Some of these publications are the Sowetan, City Press, Farmers Weekly and Sunday World.

  He is the author of books, which include “Discover Your Purpose, Destroy Failure”; “I am an African”; “The Leader South Africa Never Had” and “The Africanist Path to Selfdetermination”.

• Professor Cherif Keita
  

  Professor Cherif Keita

  A native of Mali, Chérif Keita(Ph. D, University of Georgia) is the William H. Laird Professor of French and the Liberal Arts at Carleton College(Minnesota), where he teaches Francophone literature of Africa and the Caribbean, as well as advanced languages courses. He has published widely on both social and literary issues in contemporary Africa: the Novel and social change in Mali, Oral tradition, and the relationship between music, literature and popular culture in West Africa.

  He is the author of Massa Makan Diabaté: un griot mandingue à la rencontre de l’écriture(L’Harmattan, 1995), of Salif Keita: l’oiseau sur le fromager(Le Figuier, 2001), Salif Keita: l’ambassadeur de la musique du Mali(Grandvaux, 2009) and Outcast to Ambassador: The Musical Odyssey of Salif Keita(Amazon, 2011). He has also directed and produced a trilogy of documentary films about a number of ground-breaking 19th and 20th century black intellectuals in South Africa: “Oberlin- Inanda: The Life and Times of John L. Dube”(2005, Special Mention at Fespaco), about the first President of the ANC, “Cemetery Stories: A Rebel Missionary in South Africa”(2009), and “uKukhumbula uNokutela/Remembering Nokutela”(2014), about a forgotten woman pioneer of the South African struggle for democracy. These films have been screened on many continents and have been covered by media outlets such as NPR, the BBC, RFI and in newspapers in South Africa, West Africa and the US.

  His latest film, “Namballa Keita: A Soldier and His Village”(2020), tells the story of his late father’s service in the French colonial troops(Tirailleurs sénégalais) during WW II. He has led off-campus study programs to South Africa, Mali and more recently to Senegal.

• Professor Heather Hughes
  

  Professor Heather Hughes

  Heather Hughes (she/her) is Professor of Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Lincoln, UK, and a Fellow of the Archive and Public Culture Project at UCT. Her research interests are broad and include: the meaning of biography; women’s 20th century struggles in South Africa; racialized leisure spaces; the connections between memory, history, heritage and identity, especially in relation to war; the nature of the archive.

• Professor Nceba Gqaleni
  

  Professor Nceba Gqaleni

  Professor Gqaleni is a member of the WHO African Regional Expert Committee on Traditional Medicine for COVID-19 and Project leader of the KwaZulu-Natal Indigenous Knowledge-Based Healthy Lifestyle Strategy to fight COVID-19 and beyond. He has served on the Interim Traditional Health Practitioners Council of South Africa appointed by the Minister of Health. He is also a member of the task team drafting SA’s Policy on African Traditional Medicine, and South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) Working Group on African Traditional Medicines. He previously served on the Presidential Task Team on African Traditional Medicine, and Deputy Chairperson of the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Council on AIDS.

• Professor Simangaliso Kumalo
  

  Professor Simangaliso Kumalo

  Professor R Simangaliso Kumalo is an Associate Professor of Public Theology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Pietermaritzburg campus. He is the Director of the Centre for Constructive Theology (CCT) and Academic Leader of the Theology and Ethics Cluster in the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics. He is also the immediate past-President of the Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa (2016-2018). His research focus is on Religion and Governance, Religion and the Environment, Church and Politics and Public Theology and the Social History of Methodism in Southern Africa. He has written five books and about 60 peer-reviewed articles in books and journals.