Archie Mafeje
Archibald Boyce Monwabisi Mafeje, commonly known as Archie Mafeje, was a South African anthropologist and activist. Born in what is now the Eastern Cape, he received degrees from the University of Cape Town and the University of Cambridge. He became a professor at various universities in Europe, North America, and Africa. He spent most of his career away from apartheid South Africa after he was blocked from teaching at UCT in 1968.
In exile, Mafeje participated in anti-apartheid activism. His work in anthropology was closely tied to his political activism, and he used his scholarship as a tool to critique the social and economic structures that underpinned the apartheid system in South Africa. He was particularly interested in land ownership and resource allocation issues, and argued that apartheid was built on a foundation of unjust land distribution and exploitation.
A Marxist, Mafeje as a social theorist was known for his critiques of colonialism, apartheid, and other forms of oppression in Africa. A prominent member of the African left, he was critical of Western academic traditions and argued for developing an African-centered approach to social theory and anthropology. Mafeje's Marxist perspective and his contributions to African social theory have impacted scholarship and activism in Africa and beyond. His work has influenced debates about African identity, autonomy, and independence.
Life and career
Early life and education
Archibald Boyce Monwabisi Mafeje was born on 30 March 1936 in Gubenxa, a remote village in the Ngcobo, Cape Province, Union of South Africa. The Mafeje isiduko comes from the Mpondomise, a Xhosa sub-ethnic group. His father, Bennett, was the headmaster of Gubenxa Junior School, and his mother, Frances Lydia, was a teacher. His parents were married in Langa, Cape Town, in 1934, before moving to Gubenxa, and later to the village of Ncambele in Tsolo. Both were members of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Archie was the oldest of 7 siblings, the others being Vuyiswa, Mbulezi, Khumbuzo or Sikhumbuzo, Mzandile or Mlamli, Thozama, and Nandipha.In 1951 and 1952, Mafeje completed his Junior Certificate at Nqabara Secondary School, a Methodist missionary school in Willowvale. There, Nathaniel Honono, the school's headmaster and leader of the Cape African Teachers' Association, introduced Mafeje and other pupils to the politics of the Non-European Unity Movement. The school was perceived as one of the best black secondary schools in South Africa; however, following the Bantu Education Act of 1953, the apartheid government later took over the school in 1956.
Mafeje then matriculated in 1954 to Healdtown Comprehensive School in Fort Beaufort, a Methodist missionary with a list of alumni that includes Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe. There, Mafeje was deeply influenced by Livingstone Mqotsi, a history teacher, and started participating actively in groups connected to the Non-European Unity Movement. Bongani Nyoka asserts that at Healdtown, Archie became a radical atheist. Mafeje joined the Fort Hare Native College, a black university in Eastern Cape, in mid-1955 to study zoology, but he left after one year.
File:Archie Mafeje August 1961 with Welsh Makanda in Cape Town.jpg|thumb|Archie Mafeje with Welsh Makanda on Adderley Street in Cape Town in 1961
Mafeje enrolled in the University of Cape Town in 1957, joining a minority of less than twenty non-white students on a campus of five thousand. At UCT, he initially enrolled for a Bachelor of Science in biology but failed to pass the required courses. Mafeje recalled that as a biology student in the late 1950s, he was taught the same by my white professors who nonetheless regarded him as "the other". He switched to studying social anthropology in 1959. In 1960, he completed a Bachelor of Arts in urban Sociology with honours, followed by a Master of Arts with distinction in political anthropology, before leaving the university in 1963. At UCT, he was part of the Society of Young Africa and the Cape Peninsula Student Union. Francis Wilson, Fikile Bam and Mafeje held political debates with other students at the "Freedom Square" below the Jameson Hall steps. While they were compelled to read Lenin and Trotsky for their degree, Fikile Bam remembered that Mafeje would frequently refer to Lenin in their theoretical and political disputes while being able to quote the exact passages down to the page numbers. Nonetheless, Mafeje's friends recalled that certain SOYA members found his intellectualism and preference for theoretical argument irritating because they believed he spent too much time "hobnobbing with whites".
Monica Wilson supervised Mafeje's master's project. Mafeje used his knowledge of the Xhosa language and his father's connections to complete fieldwork in Langa between November 1960 and September 1962. Mafeje published part of this independently, and then Monica Wilson wrote a scientific paper based on the work titled Langa: A Study of Social Groups in an African Township, published as a book by Oxford University Press in 1963. However, in the early 1970s, as Mafeje's critique of Western anthropology increased, Mafeje would distance himself from the book, and pointed to Wilson's underlying Christian liberal ideology and liberal functionalism as limitations that favoured Eurocentric theoretical approaches. Mafeje also completed fieldwork about the 1960s elections and political processes in the area for Gwendolen M. Carter.
On 16 August 1963, Mafeje spoke to a group that was gathered illegally and as a result was detained. He was sent to Flagstaff to stand trial. He was fined and sent back to Cape Town instead of being prosecuted. Mafeje then moved to the UK initially as a research assistant at the University of Cambridge after being recommended by Wilson, but then completed a Doctor of Philosophy in social anthropology under Audrey Richards' supervision at King's College, University of Cambridge, in the late 1960s. While working on his PhD, he lived in Uganda and carried out surveys on African farmers, while also working as visiting lecturer at Makerere University. His doctoral thesis was titled Social and Economic Mobility in a Peasant Society: A Study of Commercial Farmers in Buganda.
Richards had doubts about Mafeje's work ethic' and ability to be an academic,' particularly when handling theories, text analysis, and fieldwork. A letter by Mafeje to Richards after his PhD speaks to their relationship:
The Mafeje affair
Mafeje sought to return to UCT and applied for a senior lecturer post that UCT widely advertised in August 1967. He was unanimously offered a post as senior lecturer of social anthropology by the UCT Council. By law, the UCT could only admit white students unless suitable courses were not available at black universities. Still, the law did not explicitly bar UCT from hiring non-white faculty. Mafeje was scheduled to start in May 1968, but the UCT Council withdrew Mafeje's employment offer because the government threatened to cut funding and impose sanctions on UCT should it appoint him.The council's decision angered UCT's students and led to protests followed by a sit-in, on 15 August 1968, to pressure the council to reverse the decision. The sit-in gained international coverage and was considered part of the global protests of 1968 that received support from students mounting barricades in Paris and London. However, after nine days, the protest crumbled when counter-protesters stormed the building with weapons and dogs while the photos of some of the protesters were passed around to identify targets for the counter-protesters.' Students who participated in the sit-in later insisted that they had never met Mafeje and never sought to learn what had become of him. Ntsebeza asserts that, in the eyes of the students, the Mafeje affair was not about Mafeje, the individual, but rather about academic freedom and the autonomy of universities.
In an interview in London, Mafeje said "the whole thing is so superficial. The students talk about this university autonomy business. But do they think they can have a free university in a society that is not free". He continued, 'Suppose I had been allowed to join the faculty of Cape Town University would they have protested against the fact that I would be forced to live off the campus?... that I would have to have a permit to stay in Cape town? So long as I can sit with them for a few hours a day in the university canteen, many of them would call that academic freedom." However, Mafeje was surprised by the number of protesters.
Mafeje pursued a career abroad. In the 1990s, during the negotiations to end apartheid, UCT would offer Mafeje his 1968 senior lecturer position on a one-year contract, but he declined the position as he was already a well-established professor. Mafeje said he found the offer "most demeaning".' In 1994, Mafeje applied for the A.C. Jordan Chair in African Studies at UCT, but his application was rejected as he was deemed "unsuitable for the position". Mahmood Mamdani, an Indian-born Ugandan professor, was appointed instead. He left after having disagreements with the administration on his draft syllabus of a foundation course on Africa called Problematizing Africa. This was dubbed the Mamdani Affair.
In 2002, UCT Vice-Chancellor Njabulo Ndebele re-opened the matter of the so-called Mafeje affair. In 2003, UCT officially apologised to Mafeje and offered him an honorary doctorate, but he did not respond to UCT's offer. In 2008, after Mafeje's death, on the incident's 40th anniversary, UCT formally apologised to Mafeje's family. Mafeje's family accepted the apology.
Academic career
Mafeje assumed a senior lecturer position in 1969, before becoming a full professor and the head of the sociology department, at the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. However, he was seriously injured in a vehicle accident in 1971, after which he had to leave for Europe for reconstructive surgery. He did not return following a spat with the principal of the university and the dean of the faculty. Between 1972 and 1975, Mafeje chaired the Urban Development and Labour Studies Program at the International Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands where he first met Shahida El-Baz, an academic and activist from Egypt who would later become his wife. In 1973, at age 36, Mafeje was appointed Queen Juliana Professor of Development Sociology and Anthropology by a Parliamentary act. He became a Dutch citizen and was appointed one of the Queen's lords with his name engraved on the prestigious blue pages of the Dutch National Directorate, becoming one of the first Africans to receive this honour.With Mafeje's assistance, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa was founded in 1973. He was appointed Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at American University in Cairo in 1978 until 1990, and later in 1994. He was known for not giving his students tests, as he preferred essays on which he could make significant comments. According to his daughter Dana, Mafeje thought that "exams are for stupid people".
Mafeje joined the Southern Africa Political Economy Series Trust in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1991 on a visiting fellowship. However, Mafeje left in the same year due to a disagreement with the trust's executive director, Ibbo Mandaza, who wanted Mafeje to keep 09:00 to 17:00 office hours. In 1992, Mafeje began a one-year visiting fellowship at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, in the US. After working at Northwestern, Mafeje was chosen to lead the University of Namibia's Multidisciplinary Research Center in 1993. Mafeje's wife said his life was made a living hell by racist Namibians within and outside the university to the extent that he required a bodyguard. The experience severely impacted Mafeje, and departed Namibia and returned to AUC in Cairo in 1994.
Mafeje served as a senior fellow and guest lecturer at several North American, European, and African colleges and research centres. Throughout his career, Mafeje was a consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organization. In 2000, Mafeje returned to South Africa after spending more than 30 years in exile to take the position of a Senior Research Fellow at the African Renaissance Centre at the National Research Foundation. He also joined CODESRIA's Scientific Committee in 2001.