“The Bonfire of 1908: Passive Resistance Then and Now”
A Colloquium: University of the Witwatersrand. Aug 18, 9h00-16h00

Venue: Wits Club, University of the Witwatersrand, East Campus

Please RSVP (for catering purposes) to Beatrice Abel (babel@the-edge.org.za), 011-339-1757.
For further details contact Isabel Hofmeyr (Isabel.hofmeyr@wits.ac.za), 011-717-4140/2.


Speakers:

Dr P K Datta
Dr Datta is a noted historian of India based at Delhi University. His monograph Carving Blocs won the Rabindra Purashkar award in 2003. He has worked on South Africa-India interactions and his article on the meanings of the Anglo-Boer War in India recently appeared in the South African Historical Journal.

Prof Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie
Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie is Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town. She is the author/editor of four books: Not Slave, Not Free (1992), From Canefields to Freedom: a Chronicle of Indian South African Life (2000) and Sita: The Memoirs of Sita Gandhi (2003). In 2004, her biography Gandhi’s Prisoner: The Life of Gandhi’s Son Manilal won the Via-Afrika/MNet Award for non-fiction.

Dr Robert Muponde
Robert Muponde lectures in the English Department at the University of the Western Cape. He is a leading international authority on Zimbabwean literature. His publications include a co-edited collection on the Zimbabwean writer, Yvonne Vera Sign and Taboo: Perspectives on the Poetic Fiction of Yvonne Vera (2003) and Manning the Nation. Father Figures in Zimbabwean Literature and Society (2007). He has also done work on the Kenyan writer Ngugi and Gandhi.

Prof Rehana Ebr-Vally
Rehana Ebr-Vally is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pretoria. She is an expert on the histories and cultures of the South African Indian community, a topic covered in her monograph Kala Pani: Caste and Colour in South Africa.

Prof Ari Sitas
Ari Sitas is Professor of Industrial, Organisational and Labour Studies at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. In addition to being one of the leading sociologists in the country, he has a distinguished record as a dramatist, poet and cultural activist. He was recently awarded a fellowship from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, to further his research on “issues of reconciliation”.

Prof Crain Soudien
Crain Soudien is Professor of Education and head of the School of Education at UCT. He has published in the areas of sociology of education, race, class and gender; policy shifts in education; museum and heritage education. He played a leading role in a comparative project on social exclusion in India and South Africa.

Prof Raymond Suttner
Raymond Suttner is Head and Professor in the Walter and Albertina Sisulu Knowledge and Heritage Centre, within the School for Graduate Studies, College of Human Sciences, UNISA. He has published widely in the fields of jurisprudence, African customary law, sociology, gender studies, history, international law and politics. He also works on South African/Indian relations. In April 2007 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Netaji Subhas Open University.

Prof Goolam Vahed
Goolam Vahed is Associate Professor in the School of Anthropology, Gender and Historical Studies, University of Kwazulu-Natal. He is a leading scholar of South African Indian history and has published widely in the field. Recent books include The Making of a Political Reformer: Gandhi in South Africa (2005) (with Surendra Bhana) and Inside Indenture (2007) (with Ashwin Desai).

Sponsored by the Gandhi Centenary Committee, the Centre of Indian Studies in Africa and the Consulate General of India in Johannesburg.