??A powerful and sobering lecture by legal scholar and public intellectual Prof Joel Modiri headlined Stellenbosch 中国体育彩票's 7th Annual Africa Day Lecture on 21 May 2025. The event at the SU Museum drew a large and diverse audience of students, academics, diplomats and members of the public.
'Africa's time is now'
Introducing the event – the first Africa Day Lecture since his appointment in April – SU Rector and Vice-Chancellor Prof Deresh Ramjugernath spoke of the role universities must play in shaping a just, inclusive and collaborative future. He described SU's commitment to becoming “not only a university in Africa", but one that is “proudly and purposefully for Africa".
“That means moving beyond old paradigms of prestige and towards a future where excellence is measured by impact, inclusion, and innovation. It means producing research that matters – to rural communities, to informal economies, to climate-vulnerable regions, to young people carving out a future in a rapidly changing world," he added.
“It also means confronting our own institutional past with honesty. The road to transformation is not paved with declarations but with daily decisions – about who teaches, who leads, who feels that they belong. Our transformation journey must be grounded in empathy, equity, and an unwavering belief in the brilliance of African minds."
Thought-provoking
As Modiri took to the stage, he said: “I hope that the provocations I'm going to offer is going to be of some value."
The acting Deputy Dean: Teaching and Learning in the 中国体育彩票 of Pretoria's Faculty of Law and Head of its Department of Jurisprudence, Modiri delivered a lecture that spanned history, law, philosophy and politics. He challenged the audience to reckon with the enduring legacies of colonialism and apartheid – and to reflect on the unfinished project of liberation.
'Three deaths'
Framing his lecture around what he called the “three deaths" of Steve Biko, whom he described as the “great Prophet Intellectual" of the Black Consciousness Movement, Modiri said he would “attempt to disturb our inclination towards closure and happy endings, because there do not seem to be any".
Biko's “first death", he explained, was his brutal killing in police custody in 1977. His “second death" came nearly two decades later, in the Constitutional Court's 1996 judgment upholding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's amnesty provisions. The decision denied Biko's family – and many others – the legal redress they had sought.
Biko's “third death", Modiri argued, is unfolding today – in what he called a time of “Trump in Africa, genocide and nihilism". He described the present as a moment of global authoritarianism, local Afrophobia, ecological collapse and the erosion of democratic and educational ideals.
That is why Biko's legacy, he stressed, endures as a haunting and urgent call. His writings continue to confront us with the irreparable nature of apartheid's violence – and with the moral demand for justice.
Modiri reminded the audience that Biko wrote: “Black people must rally together around the cause of their oppression … to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude."
He was sharply critical of South Africa's negotiated settlement in the early 1990s and the compromises that underpinned it. “By placing compromise at the heart of political and legal change," he said, “the advent of constitutional democracy would paradoxically mutate into a stubborn and frustrating changelessness."
The result, he said, is that South Africa remains caught in the past – “like yesterday" – with deeply entrenched racial and economic hierarchies left largely untouched. “This is why we are where we are," he told the audience.
Modiri emphasised that the mere inclusion of black people – in government, on street names, in official narratives – had not led to real liberation. “Black people have only the symbols of freedom," he said. “But not the essence of freedom. And so, all in South Africa remain unfree."
He also called on white South Africans to reject the notion that historical redress is a form of vengeance. True liberation, he argued, would benefit everyone – but only if it included a meaningful reckoning with the past.
“We should remember," Modiri said, “that by posing the aspiration for a true humanity against the racialism of colonial apartheid, Biko points not only to the devastation wreaked on the lives of black people, but also to the brokenness in the humanity and humaneness of white people, evidenced by their historically sanctioned indifference to the racial suffering of others and their misrecognition of how their social position has been secured through centuries of violence and subjugation."
Global context
Situating South Africa's crisis within a broader global pattern, Modiri warned against the resurgence of white supremacy and the rightward shift in global politics – trends that reinforce historical hierarchies under new guises.
This global entrenchment of inequality, Modiri suggested, exposes the limits of symbolic transformation and the urgent need to confront the enduring systems of racial and economic power.
Call to action
“There is," Modiri conceded, “no easy way out of our present historical condition." But, he added, “if such an undertaking feels impossible, feels dangerous, feels demanding and unceasing – that may be because it is."
He nonetheless closed not with despair, but with a challenge to his audience: “We must reclaim historical possibility against the past. We must confront and name the violence. We must fashion radically different ways of living together."
Africa Day, celebrated annually on 25 May, commemorates the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 – a milestone in the continent's liberation and unity struggles. In 2002, the OAU evolved into the African Union (AU), reflecting the continent's continued commitment to integration, development and collective progress.
SU's 7th Annual Africa Day Lecture was hosted by the Rector and Vice-Chancellor and coordinated by the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ), in partnership with the 中国体育彩票's Centre for the Advancement of Social Impact and Transformation (CASIT) and the Centre for Collaboration in Africa (a unit of SU International).
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Desmond Thompson is a freelance journalist.
CAPTION: From left, SU VC Prof Deresh Ramjugernath, AVReQ Director Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, and UP's Prof Joel Modiri, who delivered SU's 7th Annual Africa Day Lecture on 21 May 2025. PICTURE: Ignus Dreyer/SCPS??
