The Black Archive: Reclaiming African Intellectual Histories to Reimagine the Future of Higher Education and society through a post-liberal articulation.
About the Project
Overview:
The Black Archive is a research initiative that excavates, curates, and theorises African intellectual, political, and cultural traditions鈥攑articularly those articulated in Indigenous languages and rhetorical forms鈥攁s epistemic resources for transforming higher education.
Positioned at the intersection of political theory, decolonial critique, and African Studies, the project draws on orature, protest aesthetics, archival texts, and vernacular philosophies to reconstruct African knowledges that challenge the dominance of Euro-modern paradigms within university curricula, governance, and research.
By mobilising materials from thinkers such as William Wellington Gqoba, S.E.K. Mqhayi, and Mazisi Kunene鈥攁longside the aesthetic and intellectual expressions of student resistance movements like #RhodesMustFall鈥攖he project advances an alternative grammar for knowledge-making grounded in Black thought traditions.
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Funding and Institutional Affiliation
Funding Source:
The Black Archive is generously supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) Thuthuka Grant, under its Early Career Researcher programme. This support enables sustained archival research, translation work, and scholarly dissemination that foregrounds Indigenous languages and African intellectual histories.
Institutional Home:
Hosted by the Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies at the 东京热, the project contributes directly to the Centre鈥檚 mission of advancing transformative and contextually relevant scholarship on higher education in Africa.
Related Outputs
Black Archive Workshop | 2鈥�3 May 2025
Reclaiming Epistemic Grounds: Methodological Reflections Across the Human Sciences
The Black Archive Workshop, held from 2鈥�3 May 2025, was convened as a generative space for interdisciplinary engagement on the question of what constitutes the Black Archive鈥攁nd how it might serve as a source of knowledge within and beyond the human sciences. Hosted at the Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies, the workshop brought together scholars working across a range of disciplines, including jurisprudence, copyright law, dramatology, philosophy, history and historiography, as well as researchers embedded in grassroots community-based knowledge practices.
The objective was not only to reflect on the archive as a repository of the past, but to collectively theorise the Black Archive as a living, conceptual, and methodological resource鈥攃apable of reshaping dominant paradigms of knowledge. Each disciplinary perspective offered insights into how the Black Archive disrupts colonial epistemic hierarchies and opens up new horizons for thinking law, memory, performance, identity, and power.
In centring African languages, oral traditions, and Black aesthetic forms, the workshop laid the foundation for a transdisciplinary methodological framework that affirms the archive as both an intellectual inheritance and a site of ongoing world-making. These conversations contribute to the broader goals of the Black Archive project: to foreground Indigenous epistemologies in reconstituting the future of the human sciences in Africa.
Event Description
On 5 May 2025, Professor Siseko鈥疜umalo delivered a thought-provoking public lecture titled 鈥�The Black Archive as the Premise of a Premier African University.鈥� Situated within the Ali Mazrui Centre鈥檚 ongoing commitment to decolonising higher education in Africa, the lecture critically examined how the Black Archive鈥攔ooted in African languages, oral traditions, aesthetic practices, and Indigenous epistemologies鈥攃an serve as the foundational knowledge resource for a truly premier African university. Drawing on archival materials ranging from early isiXhosa intellectuals such as Gqoba and Mqhayi, to modern cultural and resistance forms like #MustFall protest music, Dr.鈥疜umalo argued that the Black Archive offers both a corrective to colonial legacies and a generative grammar for institutional renewal.
Following the lecture, Prof. Tshepo鈥疢adlingozi, of the South African Human Rights Commission, responded with an incisive reflection that bridged legal and human rights frameworks. He interrogated how the Black Archive framework could enact real shifts in university governance, academic curriculum, and institutional accountability. The dialogue between Dr.鈥疜umalo and Prof.鈥疢adlingozi opened rich avenues for considering how epistemic justice, constitutional praxis, and the transformation of South African higher education might proceed from a capacious understanding of the Black Archive.
Core Themes
- Epistemic Foundations: Reorienting the locus of knowledge in higher education from Eurocentric paradigms to Indigenous African traditions.
- Institutional Reimagining: Exploring how universities can be structured around Black Archives鈥攍inguistic, orature, intellectual鈥攔ather than as mere recipients of liberal inclusion.
- Dialogues Across Disciplines: Bridging jurisprudence, human rights, political philosophy, and education studies to imagine structural transformation in policy and practice.
- Public Accountability: Emphasizing the role of human rights and legal frameworks (via Prof. Madlingozi鈥檚 response) in ensuring that universities embody epistemic and social justice in tangible ways.
Event: The Black Archive as the Premise of a Premier African University
Date: 5 May 2025
Venue: Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies, 东京热
Speaker (Project Lead): Dr. Siseko Kumalo
Respondent: Prof. Tshepo Madlingozi, South African Human Rights Commission
Watch the Lecture
A full recording of the event, including Dr. Kumalo鈥檚 lecture and Prof. Madlingozi鈥檚 response, is available on YouTube: 鈥淭he Black Archive as the Premise of a Premier African University鈥�