Presenter: Dr David M Matsinhe, Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg

Discussants:  Prof Monde Makiwane, Human and Social Development, HSRC  and Mr. Steven Gordon, Democracy, Governance and Service Delivery, HSRC
Moderated by Dr Ernest Nene Khalema, PhD

Venues in Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town (Videoconferencing facilities: see below)

Date: 17 June 2014

Time: 12H15 for 12h30  – 13H30  

Migration remains an enduring fundamental element of European ideas and practices translated and designed into an invention called South Africa. In order to construct a more meaningful appreciation of migration in South Africa, it is necessary to provide an exegesis of how European philosophies of Africa were translated and designed into what, as a common and banal practice, we call South Africa. In the same way as the present bears the imprints of the past, the current migration patterns in South Africa bear the imprints of the social and emotional history of the invention of South Africa, either as an imagined community or as a bounded territory.

Therefore, this seminar seeks to connect the dots, to draw the banal relationships, to expose the often invisible chains of interdependence, between the European philosophies of Africa through which South Africa was designed and built, on the one hand, and the current migration patterns, on the other hand. In so doing, this seminar seeks to go beyond the usual approaches which view capitalist interests to devalue and exploit black African labour as the fundamental force shaping the migration patterns in South Africa.

Kindly RSVP by 12 June 2014

Cape Town : HSRC, 12th Floor, Plein Park Building (Opposite Revenue Office), Plein Street, Cape Town. Contact Jean Witten, Tel (021) 4668004, Fax (021) 461 0299, or JWitten@hsrc.ac.za
Durban :  First floor HSRC board room, 750 Francois Road, Ntuthuko Junction, Pods 5 and 6, Cato Manor, Contact Ridhwaan Khan, Tel (031) 242 5400, cell: 083 788 2786 or RKhan@hsrc.ac.za
Pretoria : HSRC Video Conference, 1st floor HSRC Library Human Sciences Research Council, 134 Pretorius Street, Pretoria. Arlene Grossberg, Tel: (012) 302 2811, e-mail: acgrossberg@hsrc.ac.za