Archie Mafeje: Scholar, Activist and Thinker

Who is Archie Mafeje?

3 Dani W Nabudere Who is Archie Mafeje? Who is Archie Mafeje? Archibald Monwabisi Mafeje (or ‘Archie’ as he was fondly referred to) was born in the Eastern Cape, South Africa on 30 March 1936. He died in Pretoria two days before his 71st birthday on 28 March 2007. At the time of his death, Mafeje’s academic accomplishments had been recognised by CODESRIA, when in 2003 he was honoured as a life member of this continental social research organisation. He had served as its president and in 2001 had been made a member of its Scientific Committee. He remained on this committee until his death. In a special issue of the CODESRIA Bulletin, to which Mafeje had contributed many articles during his lifetime, he was praised by many contributors who paid homage to him as a ‘giant’ that had passed on. The special issue was entitled ‘Archie Mafeje: A Giant Has Moved On’. Kwesi Prah of the Centre for Advanced African Studies in Cape Town referred to him as a ‘Vignette’ and a ‘vibrant ... citizen of the world’;2 Katherine Salahi of Oxford University, who had met Mafeje in Cambridge during 1964, described him as a ‘Renaissance man’;3 the editorial written by Adebayo Olukoshi, the executive director of CODESRIA and Francis Nyamnjoh, the head of publications of CODESRIA, described Mafeje as ‘the quintessential personality of science’.4 Issa Shivji called him ‘a man of intellectual rigour and integrity’.5 This demonstrates the high regard of Mafeje held by those who knew him and had worked with him. Mafeje was also known as someone who kept his word. As the editors of the special issue described him, quoting John Sharp who knew him very well: ‘Archie was a scholar who spoke the truth, unfailingly, to power; and who over the years carefully worked out how best to support his political convictions by means of the research he did.’6 In ‘speaking truth to power’, Mafeje developed the counter-power of mastering the art of hard and uncompromising intellectual argument, ‘without resort to the personal animosity or the denial of respect for those with whom he came to argue’.7 All these facts emerge from this study, which shows Mafeje as a dedicated scholar and a convinced Pan-Africanist who came to defend his convictions without falling prey to the opportunism that afflicted many an African scholar in their search for prestige, which Mafeje dismissed as ‘petit-bourgeois’ opportunism. 4 Africa Institute of South Africa Archie Majefe: Scholar, Activist and Thinker Mafeje received his undergraduate education in Cape Town, where he obtained a BSc degree in Biology from the University of Cape Town (UCT). He followed this with a BA degree in Anthropology, with majors in Social Anthropology and Psychology. He later obtained a Masters degree in the same discipline, Anthropology, under the supervision of Professor Monica Wilson. He was appointed senior lecturer at UCT, but when his appointment was reversed at the insistence of the then apartheid regime, he left the country for Cambridge University in England where he completed his PhD in Anthropology and later became an assistant lecturer at that university. Mafeje’s first academic years and political activism have to be examined within this period of growth. Mafeje joined Professor Wilson who, as early as 1961, had embarked on a field research project involving the Langa Township, which was aimed at studying the lives of its inhabitants. Wilson considered himself an ‘insider’ since he spoke Xhosa as his mother tongue, but also because he was politically involved within the township. According to John Sharp, Mafeje supplied materials on these issues in abundance, as shown by the letters he exchanged with Professor Wilson and the relevant parts of the book they eventually edited together. His fieldwork provided Wilson with ‘much more ethnographic detail with which to work than his predecessor had managed’.8 This fieldwork turned out to have contributed to his political awakening and activism. This conclusion by John Sharp reinforces the fact that Mafeje’s field research in the Langa Township was very much connected to his developing a consistent political view of the consequences of the research and its political implications for South Africa and, indeed, the entire African continent. At an academic level, Mafeje indicated to Wilson that social anthropology was his ‘calling’ and ‘chosen field’ and wrote to Wilson that ‘there is nothing I enjoy more than working on the Langa study’.9 This view of Mafeje seems to have continued to...