Afrika-seminar: Menneskerettigheder i Sydafrika

TIME: Thursday, 13 October 2011, 13:15 -15:00

VENUE: Centre of African Studies, Auditorium 12, Købmagergade 46, 4th floor, 1150 Copenhagen K

TIME: Thursday, 13 October 2011, 13:15 -15:00

VENUE: Centre of African Studies, Auditorium 12, Købmagergade 46, 4th floor, 1150 Copenhagen K

This lecture will explore two ideas which, on the surface, seem contradictory: first, that a tradition of human rights thinking – albeit episodic and fragmented – can usefully be traced back over two centuries in South Africa and, second, that the embrace of human rights discourse by South Africans in the post-1990 era is surprising, not only given the history of institutionalised oppression under apartheid, but also because of the African National Congress has a record of regarding human rights with suspicion. It will try to explain how the Apartheid government and the ANC ‘discovered’ human rights at precisely the same time, in the mid-1980s. South Africa’s transition to a post-apartheid democracy, so often referred to as a `miracle’, is frequently celebrated as a triumph for global human rights.

The country’s new constitution, its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the moral authority of Nelson Mandela, stand as exemplary proof of this achievement. Yet, less than a generation after the achievement of freedom, the status of human rights in South Africa is uncertain. In government the ANC has displayed an inconsistent attitude to the protection, let alone advancement, of hard-won freedoms and rights, and it is not at all clear that a broader civic and political consciousness of the importance of rights is rooting itself more widely in popular culture.

Saul Dubow is Professor of History at the University of Sussex, and co-director of its Centre for Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies. His teaching and research concentrates on the history of modern South Africa from the early-nineteenth century to the present. He has published widely on the development of racial segregation and apartheid in all its aspects: political, ideological and intellectual. He has special interests in the history of race, ethnicity and national identity, as well as imperialism, colonial science, and global history.

He is Chair of the Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies. His most recent book is A Commonwealth of Knowledge. Science, Sensibility and White South Africa, 1820-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2006). He is currently completing work on the history of human rights in South Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, and completing a history of apartheid for Oxford University Press.

Discussant: Dr Steffen Jensen, Senior Researcher, Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (RCT, Copenhagen)