Archibald Mafeje
Welcome to the publication, “Representations.” This is a project designed to bring the perspectives of a wider variety of groups to the forefront of the anthropology classroom. To celebrate Black History Month, we are covering the accomplishments of 28 Black anthropologists across 28 days. Learn more about our project; read on for the amazing accomplishments of Archibald Mafeje.
Dr. Archibald “Archie” Boyce Monwabisi Mafeje contributed significantly to the scholarship of pan-African anthropological study and research. Throughout his career, Dr. Mafeje expanded on concepts that demanded the removal of colonial roots from the African education system. He fought tirelessly for the reclamation of Africa for its pre-colonial people — for Africans to be able to investigate its past and understand it through ways of knowing that remove Western ontological and political caps. He promoted the then-unprecedented idea that pan-African peoples should be able to speak for themselves, tell their histories, explore the cultural and natural resources Africa has endowed to it, and to decide its future. His academic focus, which often criticized methods and theories of anthropology as being Eurocentric, effectively worked towards decolonizing African identity and its historicized past.
Throughout his multiple academic positions, Dr. Mafeje consistently championed for the oppressed and fought segregation, often advocating for Black rights in apartheid South Africa. His demand for the removal of imperialist, Western ideologies from Black African anthropology generated a much-needed critique on the precepts of early anthropology as a discipline, and the manner in which academics pursued the study of the ascribed “other.” In pursuit of his scholarly achievement, Archie Mafeje became exiled from South Africa under apartheid-era segregation laws only returning in the early 2000s after such laws were lifted in the 1990s.
During his scholarly pursuits, Dr. Mafeje helped to create the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) — which removed the Western lens from pan-African research and prioritized an Afrocentric approach. He was a trailblazer in discourse on African agrarian landscapes, economic ability and stability, criticized prominent concepts of economic dualism, and emphasized the need for political liberation in African academia. In his later years, he highlighted the importance of ethnographic work in exploring historical narratives to create a more holistic image of past African lifeways. As an example, in his seminal book, The Theory and Ethnography of African Social Formations (1991), he outlines the relationship between political organization and economic power in early East African societies to establish an epistemological understanding of pre-colonial community development — separate from Western prerogatives and characterizations of African peoples.
Dr. Mafeje’s academic life began at Fort Hare University where the future academician studied zoology for roughly a year before transferring to the University of Cape Town (UTC) in 1957 — having been expelled from Fort Hare for instigating political activism. While at UCT, Mafeje pursued social anthropology, receiving both his undergraduate and master’s degree and leaving the university in 1963. Later, in 1967, Archie Mafeje earned his Ph.D. at Cambridge University. Dr. Mafeje’s doctoral thesis on rural Uganda, titled Social and Economic Mobility in a Peasant Society: A Study of Commercial Farmers in Buganda was submitted in 1968 — the same year as what is known as the “Mafeje Affair,” which led to apartheid Africa exiling the dynamic, burgeoning academic.
In 1967, Dr. Mafeje applied to become a lecturer at the University of Cape Town, wanting to return to his alma mater, and was granted the position that same year. He was to begin in 1968 — following the completion of his Ph.D. but the offer was later rescinded due to segregation laws in place preventing Black African professors from overseeing White students and their education.
The education minister, Jan de Klerk, stated that appointing a Black African lecturer would defy “the accepted traditional outlook of South Africa” (“Appointment of Black Professor”, p. 14). The act of rescinding Dr. Mafeje’s position led to a multi-day student sit-in, consisting of roughly 600 students, across the University of Cape Town and Witwatersrand University. It also prompted the Dean of Faculty of Arts at UCT, Professor M.W. Pope, to resign in solidarity with Dr. Mafeje, who was already well-liked by students and faculty from his time as a student and as an academician who was known to speak plainly and directly, confronting prejudice and social inequities. This protest was South Africa’s first sit-in and is remembered as being relatively peaceful, with demonstrators facing a smoke-bomb and false bomb-threat. During this time, protestors renamed the hall in which they were protesting to “Mafeje Hall” (“S. African Students Defy P.M”, p. 4). The experience of having this position revoked due to skin color further reified Dr. Mafeje’s work in “political, economic, and cultural emancipation” of Africa (Hendricks 2007: 1).
Ultimately, the protest could not overcome the structural racism and apartheid laws of South Africa that prevented Dr. Mafeje from claiming his deserved position as social anthropologist lecturer. In 1969, Dr. Mafeje became the Head of Sociology at the University of Tanzania in Tanzania, East Africa — but suffered multiple injuries in a car accident in 1971, the same year he wrote: “The Ideology of Tribalism,” which confronted concepts of the “dual economy” (Nabudere 2011: 14). This experience caused Dr. Mafeje not to return to the University of Tanzania. After leaving the University of Tanzania, he continued in academia as a visiting professor in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. Beginning in 1973, he joined the Institute of Social Sciences at the Hague as professor of Anthropology and Sociology. With this role, he became the “first African scholar to be distinguished in the Netherlands” (CODESRIA 4: 2007).
Dr. Mafeje’s dynamic life tells a story of both abject pain and unparalleled achievement. His ability to defy, challenge, and overcome forms of institutionalized racism — prominent in the roots of anthropology — reifies the ability of Black scholarship in anthropology. He boldly and completely demonstrated the need for inclusivity, reflexivity, and intersectionality that anthropology aims to be based in. Dr. Mafeje’s story is a rare one — even today, anthropology, as a discipline, has a problem with race and racism. Dr. Mafeje’s incomparable work to demand a completer and more veracious telling of the anthropology of Africa has created a space where modern academics can speak out and continue to work towards equity in understanding and knowledge creation.
Bibliography
Appointment of Black Professor is Blocked. (1968). Tyler Morning Telegraphy, 14.
CODESRIA (2007). Archie Mafeje: A Tribute. http://www.codesria.org/IMG/pdf/tribute_mafeje.pdf
Hendricks, F. (2007). EDITORIAL: A brief tribute to Archie Mafeje. African Sociological Review /Revue Africaine De Sociologie, 11(1), 1 3.http://www.jstor.org/stable/24487581
Nabudere, D.W. (2011). Archie Mafeje: Scholar, Activist and Thinker. African Institute of SouthAfrica.
Nyoka, B. (2012). Mafeje and ‘Authentic Interlocutors’: An appraisal of his epistemology. African
Sociological Review / Revue Africaine De Sociologie, 16(1), 2–16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24487685
S. African Students Defy P.M. (1968). The Sydney Morning Health, 4.
