HUMA Book Launch

Author: Adekeye Adebajo, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Introduction: This book of 100 essays written over the last three post-apartheid decades uniquely provides profiles of pan-African figures, mostly from Africa and its diaspora in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean. It thus covers the most important figures of   “Global Africa” - and some important non-African personalities - encompassing diverse historical and political figures, technocrats, activists, writers, public intellectuals, musical and film artists, and sporting figures. These include: Cecil Rhodes, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin, Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Margaret Thatcher, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Adebayo Adedeji, Martin Luther King Jr., Wangari Maathai, Ruth First, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Bell Hooks, Buchi Emecheta, Ali Mazrui, Edward Said, Angela Davis, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Burna Boy, Asa, Sidney Poitier,  Muhammad Ali, Pelé, Eusébio, Diego Maradona, Viv Richards, Jonah Lomu, Hakeem Olajuwon, and many others.

About the author: Professor Adekeye Adebajo is a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS). He was director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) for five years, and executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR) in Cape Town between 2003 and 2016.   He is the author of nine books including The Curse of Berlin: Africa after the Cold War; The Eagle and the Springbok: Essays on Nigeria and South Africa; and Thabo Mbeki: Africa’s Philosopher-King. He is the editor of 10 books including The Pan-African Pantheon: Prophets, Poets, and Philosophers; and Africa’s Peacemakers: Nobel Peace Laureates of African Descent. Professor Adebajo holds a doctorate from Oxford University in England where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and is a columnist for Business Day (South Africa), the Guardian (Nigeria), and the Gleaner (Jamaica).

Convenor: Amina Alaoui Soulimani 

More about the HUMA Book Lunch Series

Lunch will be served at 12:30 SAST (GMT+2).

Register to attend: send us an email at huma@uct.ac.za

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