CAS Director and A C Jordan Chair, Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza, is awarded the prestigious NRF 2017 Hamilton Naki Award

The Hamilton Naki Award was presented on 14 September to Professor Ntsebeza by the Minister of Science and Technology, Mrs Naledi Pandor.

Over 250 guests celebrated the event in honour of recognised research excellence in South Africa. 

The 2017 NRF Awards held under the theme ‘Sustainable Development through Knowledge Creation’ purposely put a spotlight on the role of knowledge creation in supporting and enabling South Africa’s sustainable development as envisaged in the National Development Plan (NDP). In her keynote speech, Minister Pandor stressed the important role that senior researchers  have to play in transforming South Africa into a knowledge intensive economy.  

The Hamilton Naki Award honours individuals achieving world-class research performance despite considerable challenges.

Today, Ntsebeza's research focuses on three themes: democratisation in the countryside, land and equity, and social movements in the land sector. In 2008, he was appointed the Department of Science and Technology NRF Research Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa: State and Civil Society Dynamics, building UCT’s Centre for African Studies into a major international focal point for research on Africa.