Centre for Space, Place and Society

An emerging paradigm, framework, and approach to the interdisciplinary study of the persistence of harm in human society.

The CSPS Gender & Diversity Cluster invites you to this dialogue with Prof. Nyasha Mboti, University of the Free State (South Africa).

How does harm (oppression, injustice, inequality) persist instead of ending? How does life go on? How do people live with harm and in harm’s way? The problem of the persistence of oppression, harm and injustice is one of the fundamental problems of the 21^st century. When will it end? How will it all end? Apartheid Studies (AS) is an emerging interdisciplinary framework which utilises the notion of “apartheid” to study the persistence of harm in human society. It considers how oppression persists instead of ending. It studies how people live with harm and live in harm’s way. The problem is that oppression persists even where there is a fundamental disproportion of oppressors and oppressed. Oppressors cannot be present at all times in every place where the oppressed are. Yet, even in places where there is no constant presence of oppressors, oppression still persists. How is this the case? This is an original problem that demands wider reflection than has hitherto been allowed for in existing frameworks. So, how do oppressors, who are always in the minority (in the sense that one never sees the oppressor at all times in every place where the oppressed are), solve for this scarcity? How does one solve for this fundamental disproportion? The answer is: apartheid. Apartheid is the permanent solution to the disproportion and “enforceability problem” of oppression (Mboti 2023a; 2023b; 2023c; 2024). How many oppressors are “enough” to sustain oppression? That is, how does one continue to rule if, when, and where there is a shortage and scarcity of enforcers, supervisors, monitors, commanders, hegemons, and controllers? How does one continue to rule even if with a shortage and scarcity of enforcers, supervisors, commanders, hegemons, and controllers? In fact, it turns out that one does not need a one-to-one presence of oppressor to oppressed to sustain oppression. It turns out that, to sustain oppression, the oppressor does not need to be present at all times in every place where the oppressed are. Rather, all that is needed are states of apartheid. So, what is apartheid? How does it work? What is Apartheid Studies?

In this dialogue, Mboti addresses these questions and invites scholars from a diverse range of research interests to discuss and test the utility of “apartheid” as a paradigm and theoretical framework.

Prof. Nyasha Mboti is Head of Department of Communication Science and Associate Professor at the University of the Free State (UFS). He is the founder of the new field of Apartheid Studies which utilises, elaborates and develops the notion of “apartheid” as a theoretical framework and paradigm. His book on the topic, Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto (Africa World Press), has just been published.

References

Mboti, N. (2023a). Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto Vol. 1. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

Mboti, N. (2023b). Introducing Apartheid Studies (AS): A new forensic-inductive philosophy for abolishing harm. Filosofie & Praktijk (Philosophy and Practice 44(1), 58-73,

Mboti, N. (2023c). South African Silences, Japanese Erasures, Apartheid Studies: Blackman Ngoro and the Persistence of Apartheid. Communitas 28, 177-191.

Mboti, N. (2024). An Apartheid Studies Approach to the Study of Violence and Harm. In: Chitando, E., and Mlambo, O. (Eds.) Palgrave Handbook of Violence in Africa. London: Palgrave.