RHODES UNIVERSITY · MAKHANDA, SOUTH AFRICA
Expanding the possibilities of
being human
being human
The AfroFutures Research Lab at Rhodes University studies how race is constructed, how it continues to inform our thinking about who counts as human, and how some people have historically been denied full recognition and possibility. We seek to reimagine futures that are not hostile to Black human flourishing.
Imagining different futures.
Race influences access to opportunity, power and belonging, people’s sense of being and social and political life, the communities they move within, and how they are treated by the structures of society. These are not only local questions: from South Africa to Australia and New Zealand, histories of colonialism, apartheid and anti-Blackness continue to shape the institutions and ideas that structure life today.
Led by Professor Mandisi Majavu, the AfroFutures Research Lab brings together ideas and methods from politics, history, sociology, anthropology and philosophy.
The Lab examines how inherited colonial structures continue to reproduce societal institutions that disadvantage and downgrade Black personhood. It also considers what these colonial legacies suggest about liberal democracies in post-apartheid South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
AfroFutures supports emerging researchers and works with academics, civil society and the creative arts to take these conversations beyond universities. Through this work, we aim to contribute to ongoing conversations about what it means to be a person in post-colonial states.
OUR APPROACH
VISION
A world in which difference is celebrated and protected for the common good.
MISSION
To advance interdisciplinary research that explores how race is imagined and policed. To that end, we seek to challenge oppressive racial ideologies, and to expand the possibilities of being human.
01.
Interdisciplinary Research
We use archival research, qualitative methods and theoretical analysis to understand how race is constructed and how it continues to structure societal institutions that disadvantage and downgrade Black personhood.
02.
Research Capacity Building
We support postgraduate students, postdoctoral fellows and early-career researchers through supervision, mentorship, writing retreats, teaching opportunities and research exchanges.
03.
Creative and Public Engagement
We work with researchers, civil society organisations and creative practitioners to make research more accessible and support wider conversations about race, identity, opportunity and belonging.
OUR RESEARCH
We examine how race is constructed, how it shapes inequality, how it informs our thinking about personhood, and how different futures can be imagined.
Racial categories and social being
We examine how racial categories are formed and expressed, from the construction of Blackness in post-apartheid South Africa, to Colouredness in different parts/provinces of South Africa to Whiteness after apartheid.
Race, power and inequality
We study how race intersects with gender, economics, science and politics to produce injustice, from party politics to economic life to the interaction of medical science and race today. We investigate how colonial constructions of being maintain structures that devalue and downgrade Black personhood.
Imagining different futures
We explore ways of thinking about Black futures that are constitutive of Black personhood, along with postcolonial futures that seek to transcend inherited structures of colonialism.
Director, AfroFutures Research Lab
Professor Mandisi Majavu
"At its heart, this work is concerned with freedom. How we could reimagine the human subject in ways that are freeing and liberating."
FEATURE STORY
Who we are, and who gets to belong
Professor Mandisi Majavu’s research traces how boundaries around race, personhood and belonging are built and defended. His work spans the political history of white racial formation in South Africa and extends to the anti-Black racism experienced by African people in Australia and New Zealand.
A central proposition in his work is that ideas about who counts as fully human are not fixed. They are made and remade through history, most powerfully through colonialism, which produced some as modern subjects while casting others outside the category of the human altogether. Apartheid reinforced these ideas further, building entire systems of citizenship, rights and belonging on the question of whose humanity would be recognised.
In South Africa and beyond, this history has taken a particular form: the structural negation of Blackness, a logic that continues to shape who is seen as fully belonging, and who is treated as its outside. Race, gender and citizenship work together to influence whose humanity is assumed, and whose must be constantly proven.
The AfroFutures Research Lab builds on this work, bringing researchers, students and creative practitioners together to open up new ways of engaging with Black personhood, racial categories and inequality.
Partner With Us
The AfroFutures Research Lab welcomes partnerships with funders, researchers, postgraduate students, civil society organisations and creative practitioners.
Together, we can deepen understanding of race and inequality while creating space to imagine different ways of being and living together.
AfroFutures Research Lab
Professor Mandisi Majavu
Director, AfroFutures Research Lab
Department of Political and International Studies
Rhodes University