Nyasha Mboti | University of the Free State (original) (raw)

Videos by Nyasha Mboti

This is Lecture 4 in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studi... more This is Lecture 4 in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studies (CASt). The lectures deliver in-depth understanding of the key elements of the Apartheid Studies framework. If you have an abiding interest in truth and justice, and reflecting on the present and meditating about the future, these weekly lectures are the right place to start. Lecture 4 is a continuation of Lecture 3.

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This is the introductory lecture in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for ... more This is the introductory lecture in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studies (CASt). The lectures deliver in-depth understanding of the key elements of the Apartheid Studies framework. If you have an abiding interest in truth and justice, and reflecting on the present and meditating about the future, these weekly lectures are the right place to start. Lecture 1 introduces the series and discusses the notion of the "apartheid loophole" and why it needs closing.

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This is Lecture 2 in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studi... more This is Lecture 2 in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studies (CASt). The lectures deliver in-depth understanding of the key elements of the Apartheid Studies framework. If you have an abiding interest in truth and justice, and reflecting on the present and meditating about the future, these weekly lectures are the right place to start. Lecture 2 is a continuation of Lecture 1.

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This is Lecture 3 in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studi... more This is Lecture 3 in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studies (CASt). The lectures deliver in-depth understanding of the key elements of the Apartheid Studies framework. If you have an abiding interest in truth and justice, and reflecting on the present and meditating about the future, these weekly lectures are the right place to start. Lecture 3 is a continuation of Lecture 2.

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This is Lecture 5 in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studi... more This is Lecture 5 in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studies (CASt). The lectures deliver in-depth understanding of the key elements of the Apartheid Studies framework. If you have an abiding interest in truth and justice, and reflecting on the present and meditating about the future, these weekly lectures are the right place to start. Lecture 5 is a continuation of Lecture 4.

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This is Lecture 6 in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studi... more This is Lecture 6 in the Freeway Lecture Series, brought to you by the Centre for Apartheid Studies (CASt). The lectures deliver in-depth understanding of the key elements of the Apartheid Studies framework. If you have an abiding interest in truth and justice, and reflecting on the present and meditating about the future, these weekly lectures are the right place to start. Lecture 6 is a continuation of Lecture 5.

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Papers by Nyasha Mboti

Communitas, 2023

This article is a "forensic inductive" reflection on the silences and erasures, in South Africa a... more This article is a "forensic inductive" reflection on the silences and erasures, in South Africa and Japan, that mark the last years of Zimbabwean journalist Roderick Blackman Ngoro. Ngoro was ostracised in South Africa after he penned a controversial blog article about "Coloureds". After the affair, Ngoro relocated to Japan, continuing his journalistic research on racism. He returned quietly to South Africa a few years later to pursue doctoral studies at Wits University in Johannesburg. In late January 2010, Ngoro was found dead in his room at the University. Police did not suspect any foul play. This article deploys a purposive set of snapshots as part of a reflection on how Ngoro's last few years in South Africa and Japan illustrate the persistence of apartheid. The problem of undetectable crime scenes is considered by means of specific inductive forensics of snapshots that allow a demonstration of how, at the crime scenes of apartheid, no foul play is detectable. Forensic induction is a methodology drawn from the author's emerging work in apartheid studies, seeking to explain how the worlds of the oppressed are crime scenes in which people live with harm and live in harm's way. The article concludes that the complex ironies that attend Ngoro's last few years cannot make sense if not looked at through the lens of apartheid as a paradigm and theoretical framework (by which to detect persistent crime scenes). Such a paradigm has utility in detecting the persistence of harm, from South Africa to Japan.

Filosofie & Praktijk, 2023

This article introduces the new field of study known as Apartheid Studies (AS), locating it as a ... more This article introduces the new field of study known as Apartheid Studies (AS), locating it as a forensic inductive philosophy of liberation from the global south. I map how AS began and where it is going, and introduce some of its key theoretical and methodological constructs. This way we establish that apartheid was neither limited to South Africa nor abolished in 1994. Instead, apartheid is a superposed, fungible, metamorphosing global problem that exists to this day wherever human beings are oppressed and unjustly treated by being invoiced differential Rates of Oppression (ROp). Due to this, apartheid is reproduced not as something harmful but, rather, as a mere interface and as just any other service (apartheid as a service-AaaS). The article proposes that a systematic, forensic-inductive understanding of the ROp is an effective antidote against apartheid harm wherever it is found.

This paper, to be presented at the 22nd SPM Conference at Tallinn University, Estonia, uses the o... more This paper, to be presented at the 22nd SPM Conference at Tallinn University, Estonia, uses the opening line of Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran’s “I don’t care” to make a case for a ‘phenomenology’ of apartheid. I draw on fragments from Brazil, England, the US, France, Australia, Canada, Bulgaria, Singapore, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Palestine, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, and so on, to show that the foremost phenomenon of the 21st century is – quite simply – apartheid. To my mind the notion of apartheid is perhaps the best suited for a full and adequate understanding of our modern times. But what is apartheid? I define apartheid, among other things, as 'the capacity to carry a pass'. Apartheid functions by invoicing the cost of oppression on the oppressed themselves. Human beings everywhere (I use the term blackbodies, drawn from physics) participate in their own oppression when they find themselves at parties that they do not want to be at. This paper anticipates my book, Apartheid Studies, due to be launched at the end of 2020. Apartheid Studies is a new field of studies which I founded in 2012 after the Lonmin massacre in South Africa when 34 miners were murdered on live national television by police.

Communicatio, 2016

This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored what white and Indian stud... more This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored what white and Indian students at a South African university felt and knew about HIV prevention. The study explored the knowledge, perceptions and attitudes of white and Indian male students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s (UKZN) Howard College towards medical male circumcision (MMC) as an HIV prevention procedure. The study was prompted, in part, by a cynical tweet by Justine Sacco, which implied that HIV is an exclusively black disease. More substantially, the research aimed to fill a gap in studies of non-black student demographics with regard to HIV prevention. The level of knowledge and the attitudes of white and Indian male students were explored to establish the acceptability of HIV prevention amongst these two demographics. To what extent do non-black students care about HIV prevention and prevalence amongst themselves? The prevention method selected for the study was MMC – a choice informed by UKZN’s formal adoption
and roll out, in 2013, of MMC as its latest HIV prevention strategy for students and staff. The study, which sampled 40 students, was rooted in the Health Belief Model, which explains health behaviour change in terms of barriers, benefits and cues to action, as well as the Social Ecology Model, which recognises the interwoven relationship between individuals and their greater environment. A qualitative, interpretive, exploratory research design was employed. Data were collected using semi-structured interview questions, and analysed thematically. The findings suggest a relatively widespread perception that white and Indian
students are not at risk of HIV, demonstrating that the association of HIV with a specific race is both a sad fact and a sign of enduring prejudice and stigma.

Journal of African Cinemas, 2014

A discussion of violence and visual discourse in Africa

Racism is and has been understood differently in different eras and geographic contexts, but acro... more Racism is and has been understood differently in different eras and geographic contexts, but across space and time there are also commonalities: the reliance on stereotypes in definition and justification of race, the construction of difference, the process of Othering, or the biased superficiality of the criteria for credit, blame, reward and punishment. The appearance of people is consistently rated over their substance or character (Fozdar et al. 2009). According to Goldberg (1993: 42) racist discourses may be categorized as aversive, Racist activities includes a range of crimes against humanity, including genocide, apartheid, colonialism, slavery, and a related spectrum from homicide, aggravated assault, mobbing, harassment, incitement, demonization, de-humanization, de-legitimization, discrimination, defamation, and insult to bias. Racism in communication and in the media consists of the last eight of those activities as well as of structural and systemic conditions, inequalities of power, which are the main focus of this article. In particular, we investigate the purported and frequently invoked differences in racist media communications between modern and postmodern varieties. Is racism changing? And if so, what is the role of the media?

This article examines the nature of social media ‘talk’ generated by reality television (TV) audi... more This article examines the nature of social media ‘talk’ generated by reality television (TV) audiences of Khumbul’ekhaya, a popular South African ‘docureality’ or ‘social reality’ series that has aired on SABC 1 since 2006. The article uses waThiong’o’s (1981) re-interpretation of the notion of ‘empty space’ to examine Khumbul’ekhaya viewers’ feedback on Facebook. In the article I argue that this social media ‘talk’ reflects the fact that audiences typically treat Khumbul’ekhaya as an ‘empty space’ or a canvas which they variously reconstitute in their own languages.

This book chapter is an exploration of the cinematic politics of the Lions Gate film about the Rw... more This book chapter is an exploration of the cinematic politics of the Lions Gate film about the Rwandan Genocide, "Hotel Rwanda".

This chapter questions the so-called objectivity of researchers. It examines the complex issues t... more This chapter questions the so-called objectivity of researchers. It examines the complex issues that thrust themselves onto the relationship between research methods and researcher subjectivity.

Does a Zimbabwean film industry exist? The answer is complex. The answer depends on two issues. T... more Does a Zimbabwean film industry exist? The answer is complex. The answer depends on two issues. The first is one's chosen definition of a film industry. The second is the extent of one's knowledge of realities on the ground. This article discusses the state of the Zimbabwean film industry. It argues that the Zimbabwean film industry, like most in Africa, is necessarily a work in progress. Since the country's ‗flag' independence in 1980, the industry has been in a search for itself. A general feature has been the search for ways with which to replace thirty-year old colonial heritages of filmmaking, distribution and exhibition. Initially the industry sought growth through state support, a phenomenon that partially mirrored state support of the Ghanaian film industry under Nkrumah. Part of the state's ambiguous strategy involved growing the industry through marketing the country as a Hollywood set. Financial losses in the mid 1980s, however, caused the state to rapidly retreat from the idea of a state-supported national cinema. This withdrawal coincided with the imposition of World Bank sponsored austerity measures known as Structural Adjustment Programmes. The Zimbabwean film industry has been an orphan ever since. For about a decade, starting in the 1990s, the orphaned industry found a foster-mother in western-sponsored NGOs which used the film industry as a chalkboard to teach message-heavy morality films. The project to take back agricultural land from whites that started in the early 2000s, followed by the collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar, marked the end of a decade-old dominance of the NGO-film in Zimbabwe. The end of the NGO-film paved way for the current state of affairs which can be described as a three-layered coexistence. Middling state and NGO support of the film industry, on the one hand, co-exists with increasingly confident independent filmmaking clusters, on the other hand. Cheaper cameras and editing equipment, added to a nascent straight-to-DVD model somewhat mirroring the production of Bongo films in Tanzania and those of Nollywood, have seen the Zimbabwean film industry emerge anew in a digitally-based third coming. What was traditionally a minority activity is now open to broader participation. The future, though, remains an unknown x. Private investors are still reluctant to invest in the film industry. Funding, distribution and profitability are still sore points. Nevertheless, for the first time, what seem like true foundations are being laid.

Witdraai is home to a few hundred ≠Khomani who resettled there after the successful land claim of... more Witdraai is home to a few hundred ≠Khomani who resettled there after the successful land claim of 1999. In all, the first phase of their claim granted them ownership of six farms totaling about 40,000 hectares of land. Before this restitution, the Bushmen had been an “Other-diaspora” dispersed by the forces of apartheid and colonialism. Being a small settlement in the vast Kalahari in Northern Cape Province, close to the
Botswana border, Witdraai is rarely a cartographic highlight where the province’s main towns, cities and localities are concerned. For over a decade the ≠Khomani have been involved in trying to find solutions to the problem of appropriate development of the six farms for sustainable communal benefit. Alcohol abuse among many of the residents, however, seems to be complicating the search for lasting solutions. This
article uses visual stills, collected during the 2011 trip to the Kalahari by University of KwaZulu–Natal researchers from the Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS), to investigate alcohol use/abuse amongst some of the people living at or near Witdraai. The article applies “cultural mapping” of a different sort, focusing selectively on visual traces of the corporeal existence of “alcohol” in the sand-dune landscape of Witdraai against a backdrop of commercial tourist branding of the landscape.

This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored what white and Indian stud... more This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored what white and Indian students at a South African university felt and knew about HIV prevention. The study explored the knowledge, perceptions and attitudes of white and Indian male students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s (UKZN) Howard College towards medical male circumcision (MMC) as an HIV prevention procedure. The study was prompted, in part, by a cynical tweet by Justine Sacco, which implied that HIV is an exclusively black disease. More substantially, the research aimed to fill a gap in studies of non-black student demographics with regard to HIV prevention. The level of knowledge and the attitudes of white and Indian male students were explored to establish the acceptability of HIV prevention amongst these two demographics. To what extent do non-black students care about HIV prevention and prevalence amongst themselves? The prevention methodselected for the study was MMC – a choice informed by UKZN’s formal adoption and roll out, in 2013, of MMC as its latest HIV prevention strategy for students and staff. The study, which sampled 40 students, was rooted in the Health Belief Model, which explains health behaviour change in terms of barriers, benefits and cues to action, as well as the Social Ecology Model, which recognises the interwoven relationship between individuals and their greater environment. A qualitative, interpretive, exploratory research design was employed. Data were collected using semi-structured interview questions, and analysed thematically. The findings suggest a relatively widespread perception that white and Indian students are not at risk of HIV, demonstrating that the association of HIV with a specific race is both a sad fact and a sign of enduring prejudice and stigma.

This working paper draws, loosely, on common law to argue that White people cannot legally be Afr... more This working paper draws, loosely, on common law to argue that White people cannot legally be Africans or even belong to the continent.

ReaGilès are pre-fabricated, self-contained, education and entertainment complexes situated on 40... more ReaGilès are pre-fabricated, self-contained, education and entertainment complexes situated on 400m² sites at local schools or public open spaces consisting of a 60-seat cinema, 30-seat computer and Internet facility, community care and policing centre. These complexes are intended to service historically underserviced peri-urban black dormitory townships of South Africa and to help create jobs, especially amongst the youth, women and the disabled. The ReaGilè concept, on roll-out, has the potential to revolutionise exhibition and distribution in local film industries in ways mirroring the ground-breaking Nollywood straight-to-DVD
model. The article discusses the potential of the
ReaGilè concept to offer solutions to the twin crises of 1) representation stemming from existing film distribution networks that limit micro-budget filmmakers, and 2) of government departments and local municipalities’ tendency
towards dividing practices that objectivise the subject through frustrating development via delays, paperwork, never-ending meetings, fees, endless formalities and legalities, and red
tape. The authors posit that ReaGilè has the potential to creatively disrupt and redesign formal distribution models and to fracture the narrow modernisation paradigm they deploy, replacing them with a responsive communication re/ordering and flexible distribution that restore subjectivity to the disenfranchised South African subject (the filmmaker and audience from the township).

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Communitas, 2023

Filosofie & Praktijk, 2023

Communicatio, 2016

Journal of African Cinemas, 2014

A discussion of violence and visual discourse in Africa

This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored what white and Indian stud... more This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored what white and Indian students at a South African university felt and knew about HIV prevention. The study explored the knowledge, perceptions and attitudes of white and Indian male students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s (UKZN) Howard College towards medical male circumcision (MMC) as an HIV prevention procedure. The study was prompted, in part, by a cynical tweet by Justine Sacco, which implied that HIV is an exclusively black disease. More substantially, the research aimed to fill a gap in studies of non-black student demographics with regard to HIV prevention. The level of knowledge and the attitudes of white and Indian male students were explored to establish the acceptability of HIV prevention amongst these two demographics. To what extent do non-black students care about HIV prevention and prevalence amongst themselves? The prevention methodselected for the study was MMC – a choice informed by UKZN’s formal adoption and roll out, in 2013, of MMC as its latest HIV prevention strategy for students and staff. The study, which sampled 40 students, was rooted in the Health Belief Model, which explains health behaviour change in terms of barriers, benefits and cues to action, as well as the Social Ecology Model, which recognises the interwoven relationship between individuals and their greater environment. A qualitative, interpretive, exploratory research design was employed. Data were collected using semi-structured interview questions, and analysed thematically. The findings suggest a relatively widespread perception that white and Indian students are not at risk of HIV, demonstrating that the association of HIV with a specific race is both a sad fact and a sign of enduring prejudice and stigma.

Why are there no Apartheid Studies in South Africa? Why is there not a single Centre for Aparthei... more Why are there no Apartheid Studies in South Africa? Why is there not a single Centre for Apartheid Studies on any of the 19 South African universities? This paper outlines the urgent need for the field of Apartheid Studies.

This article defends an alternative account of ubuntu and makes a novel proposition about African... more This article defends an alternative account of ubuntu and makes a novel proposition about African morality and ethics. In doing so, it refutes the normative account of ubuntu premised on the aphorism umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (persons are persons through other persons). According to this “greatest harmony” account, Africans are harmonic collectivists and sharers, linked together by community-defining conveyor-belts of moral and ethical goodwill “gifts.” It is assumed that an African theory of right action produces harmony and reduces discord. I aver, however, that such a prima facie interpretation, notwithstanding its intuitive appeal, is still open to some rather strong doubt.

Communicatio, 2013

Who qualifies as an African? Or a South African?

This article illustrates how heteroglossia functions in G.H. satirical play, The Honourable MP. H... more This article illustrates how heteroglossia functions in G.H. satirical play, The Honourable MP. Heteroglossia describes the coexistence, as well as the clashing, of distinct voices within a text. It can be shown that while the playwright has a distinct (and seemingly dominant) voice operating in the play -expressed mainly via the sets of characters he creates and the roles he creates for them, as well as through the play's general mise en scène -there are other voices in the play as well, operating in spite of the playwright's wishes. The 'other' voices specifically function through exceeding the playwright's, simultaneously confirming and contradicting the central message of the play. It is not what the writer says in the end that is important, but what is made out of what is left after the writer has had his/her say. Meaning finally resides in the surpluses of the text. Audiences ultimately hear what they hear, what they think they hear, and what they want to hear. The ear, rather than the voice, is finally transcendent.

Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, 28:2, 178-198, May 1, 2014

This article illustrates how heteroglossia functions in G.H. Musengezi’s (1984) satirical play, T... more This article illustrates how heteroglossia functions in G.H. Musengezi’s (1984) satirical play, The Honourable MP. Heteroglossia describes the coexistence, as well as the clashing, of
distinct voices within a text. It can be shown that while the playwright has a distinct (and seemingly dominant) voice operating in the play – expressed mainly via the sets of characters
he creates and the roles he creates for them, as well as through the play’s general mise en scène – there are other voices in the play as well, operating in spite of the playwright’s wishes.
The ‘other’ voices specifically function through exceeding the playwright’s, simultaneously confirming and contradicting the central message of the play. It is not what the writer says in
the end that is important, but what is made out of what is left after the writer has had his/her say. Meaning finally resides in the surpluses of the text. Audiences ultimately hear what they
hear, what they think they hear, and what they want to hear. The ear, rather than the voice, is finally transcendent.

Riches (2001) is a short film directed by Zimbabwean filmmaker Ingrid Sinclair. The film is about... more Riches (2001) is a short film directed by Zimbabwean filmmaker Ingrid Sinclair. The film is about a fiercely independent coloured woman, Molly McBride. She is a single-mother who is exiled from South Africa on an exit permit, with her young son Peter, at the height of apartheid in the mid-1980s. Hoping to find peace and a sense of ‘home’ in neighbouring Zimbabwe, Molly settles and finds a job as a primary school teacher in the country side. Before long, however, Molly feels exiled in her new home. Struggling to fit in with the other teachers and with the larger community due to her liberated, ‘city woman’ ways, Molly survives by incessant writing in her journal, and by heavy drinking and smoking. She fights the onset of poverty and mental breakdown by befriending an ostracised old woman from the village. Sinclair’s film draws on Bessie Head’s life and work, and significant parallels can be observed between the film and Head’s autobiographical novel A Question of Power (1974). This article examines Ingrid Sinclair’s short film as an adaptation. It argues that Riches not only draws on Bessie Head’s work, but also creatively re-imagines it.

The strange question about who was oppressed "more" by apartheid flares up in South Africa more o... more The strange question about who was oppressed "more" by apartheid flares up in South Africa more often than it ought to. Some have insultingly called it a "victim Olympics". This is exactly what apartheid intended-to drive a permanent wage amongst the oppressed themselves. That such a question should be asked demonstrates the Population Registration Act (1950) at work, and the success of that work. It also shows that apartheid did not end, but persists in metamorphosed, mutated forms. The Population Registration Act formally divided South Africans into four race groups: whites, Indians, Africans and Coloureds (Coloureds were 'not a white person or a native', further subdivided into 'Cape Malay', 'Other Coloureds', Khoisan, and so on). Such a wedge serves apartheid's purposes elegantly, because it makes oppression arbitrary, and thus channels more of the ambivalent oppressed towards "collaboration" with the system. The groups that collaborate more with the system turn out to have been the ones oppressed more ambivalently. Thus this is not about suffering "more" oppression (whatever this means), but different kinds of oppression (I call them rates of oppression (RoO) in my book, Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto), with each kind/rate of oppression ensuring different outcomes. It is the outcomes that we can (easily) quantify, and any fool can see what the outcomes where for Africans. Today, 1% of whites live in poverty, around 6% of Indians, and an absurd 66% of Black people. Apartheid was thus not an accident. It was a deliberate attempt to rig outcomes. My work in Apartheid Studies answers this conundrum of so-called "victim Olympics" by showing that apartheid "allocated" varying "rates of oppression" to "Bantus", "Coloureds" and "Indians", and even "Europeans." I show that different races and classes were purposely oppressed at differentiated rates. That was the whole purpose of apartheid, anyway. You see the RoO clearly if you study the outcomes. It is absurd to claim that everybody experienced apartheid at the same rate. After all, apartheid was always "adjustable", depending on what rate the perpetrators allocated to you.

This paper seeks to develop a communicatio n-based critique of the growing tendency on social med... more This paper seeks to develop a communicatio n-based critique of the growing tendency on social media platforms to demand "context" when a video they do not like is posted. In principle I see no problem with this demand: all videos require "context" as a default, and more length of video in terms of a "before" and an "after", as well as different angles, if available, should be provided. We cannot have enough of that. But if you think that "context" and angles will result in objectivity, you are mistaken. What if you fail to get the "context" or the recording of before and after? What really constitutes a video's context anyway? What do we really mean by context? Who structures and constructs context? Who says what context is? Where does context start and end? How much context is enough? The complication in all this is that we will never find objectivity in such matters because videos will always be two dimensional, selective recordings of life (and therefore not life itself). It does not matter how long a video is, or which angles are shown: a video, any video, will always be selective and will always be a frame of a monocular perspective. There is no objective video. Videos are not truth. They are just frames per second (normatively 24 frames per second). Thus, it is not really context and more video that is the issue. Videos showing injustice, abuse, violence and oppression are still showing frames per second as much as Tik Tok videos and playful or silly viral memes. But videos are not what they show, and ought not to be taken to be what they show. There is a world outside video, such that the real importance of a video is really to question your knowledge and experience of what is not shown. How much of what is not depicted are you familiar with? Do you care? If you do not care enough to respond emotionally with or without context, you probably will not care anyway even if a before and an after were shown. That is, a video is a fragment of communication that triggers a response. That is all it is. What does your pleasure or displeasure say? What does it point to? What does it mean? So what is more important than the video itself is the way we respond to the social and political issues out of which the video comes. Our response shows where we stand in relation to the material shown if such material were to be right before our eyes rather than in a video. The viewer must be prepared to watch a video with context and without context, with better angles and without, because your initial emotional response is as important as the so-called revised view after the provision of so-called context. My fear is that, by asking for context, people are overemphasizing only one aspect of the viewing condition and of the role of communication in our lives. To my mind we must watch a video with and without context, and be able to react to it with and without context. Both phases of our viewing matter. But it seems that people are emphasizing one over the other. This is not healthy from a communication point of view. Even an edited "faked" video is meaningful. A second of video is enough to trigger trauma, such that an hour of it will either change nothing or only constitute prolonged torture. If you have seen something before, and if you have experienced something before, then there is really no need for more context and more video and different angles. I would have seen and heard all I need to see and hear in that posted video. I would have seen this before. But for people who would not have seen such things before, sure, they can ask for more context, and for a before and after. As if we are in court, or in a police station reporting a mugging. But communication does not work like that. At least, it seems much more complex than that. I think that we are missing the point of the viewing experience and how its relation with power, displeasure and pleasure.

If you have been on Twitter for part of May 2020, you may have encountered there an annoying pinn... more If you have been on Twitter for part of May 2020, you may have encountered there an annoying pinned 10-second video tweet from Old Mutual promoting a so-called "Africa's Biggest Digital Classroom-preparing learners for the new world economy. Or something to that effect. It is OK if you have not seen the Tweet, because I took screenshot and pasted it below. You can also find the offending Tweet under #Africa175. I figure that it is not a scholar's place to comment too knowingly or too diffidently about the new world economy. Such companies sit on so much money that they can talk about such things. Indeed, they can do whatever they want. What I think is really dark about Old Mutual's Tweet is that the company also says that it is celebrating "175 years of Doing Great Things". I do not think that this should be allowed. This seems just plain wrong. Celebrate means "Assign great social importance to." It also means "Behave as expected during holidays or rites." Now, companies that were operating during SLAVERY, COLONIALISM and APARTHEID, subsiding and being subsidised by these evils, should not celebrate years that they were in operating during such periods. What is there to be celebrated? For 150 of those 175 years Old Mutual should be mourning and in shame. This goes for every company worth the name that is over 25 years old in South Africa, or 50 years old elsewhere in Africa. The same problem affects companies that are over 100 years old in America or the UK like JP Morgan Chase or Barclays Bank or Lloyds and so on: all such companies benefitted from slavery and the slave trade. How can you celebrate the middle passage? They must not celebrate anything over 100 years old. They should, rather, say "We are Ashamed". Is it OK for Volkswagen to celebrate operating during the Holocaust/Shoah? This paper problematises heritage and the phenomenon of "corporate amnesia". Is such amnesia deliberate? What lies behind it? How can it be remedied?

Most internet users accept cookies without blinking. Websites store cookies on our laptops and ph... more Most internet users accept cookies without blinking. Websites store cookies on our laptops and phones after we click the message that says "accept cookies". Some cookies remember things for a short time and others for a very long time. One international privacy study revealed that a cookie can be designed to last up to 7,984 years. This paper questions the widespread practice of storing cookies on users' devices. When I "accept cookies" I accept to be tracked, but this does not create an obligation to accept storage of the thing that tracks me. Websites, however, turn the users' consent into an invoice for free storage. We do not question this storage because in our minds there is nowhere else to store the cookies that we accept. But this storage problem should not be for the user to solve. The fact that I love ice cream and often buy ice cream does not justify the ice cream company asking me to consent to have their ice cream cart stored (for free) in my garage, or to have the ice cream vendor live (for free) in my house. It seems odd that the user's consent leads directly to storage. Should not websites store their cookies somewhere else that is not my device? There seems to be a legal and ethical loophole in this storage practice, not least because the owner of the storage device is offering a billion-dollar Silicon Valley company free board and storage. Is this storage legal, ethical and contractually fait? For website owners the logic of using cookies is self-evident, but not so for customers. The explanation that cookies help websites work better is just a part of the story. The important reason is to track the browsing habits of web users. But accepting to be tracked is not the same as accepting responsibility and liability for storage of the tracker. Should the companies not at least be paying users for the storage of cookies on devices-storage that is currently happening for free? It does not seem contractually fair that phone and laptop owners should be providing free storage that has not been asked for, that they frankly did not consent to, and that they benefit nothing from.

On 11 March 2020 the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Covid19 a pandemic. But they did so... more On 11 March 2020 the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Covid19 a pandemic. But they did so under false pretense. They lied.

The uncritical acceptance and normalisation of apartheid under the cover of so-called coronavirus... more The uncritical acceptance and normalisation of apartheid under the cover of so-called coronavirus social distancing is shameful and disgraceful, and needs to stop.

Let us try to understand Apartheid Denialism in South Africa.

Apartheid Studies, 2020

This excerpt from Chapter 2 of my forthcoming book, Apartheid Studies, deals with the idea of int... more This excerpt from Chapter 2 of my forthcoming book, Apartheid Studies, deals with the idea of interoperability and a mobile pharmacy.

This article argues that the South African Constitution must be amended, so that it mentions the ... more This article argues that the South African Constitution must be amended, so that it mentions the word "apartheid'.

In this paper, I introduce the Threshold Model of Apartheid Studies for the first time.

Glimpse, 2019

This Keynote Address is about what Donald Trump would categorise as the shitholes of the world. U... more This Keynote Address is about what Donald Trump would categorise as the shitholes of the world. Underlying our modern times is a large, unsolved problem about what is really going on in the world. I use the novel theoretical lens of Apartheid Studies to appreciate how we have neglected to read, recognise and call out the persistent “circuits of apartheid” that are at the heart of global capitalist modernity. Our contemporary age, built on interoperable digital networks, tends to reinforce global forms of apartheid rather than resist them. Apartheid Studies is a new field of studies that makes it possible to expose these circuits. Whereas human beings are human because we all possess a kind of strongly encrypted password which we reserve to give or not to give – so that we feel relatively protected and free to be what we want – this password protection has been eroded by institutions and powerful elites. Modernity itself, by its very nature, emerges when we start to share our passwords with strangers. Passing on the control of the passwords of our being to strangers causes global apartheid. Global capitalist modernity, expressed in invasive technology, generally undermines human beings’ sense of self, of immunity, inviolability, indivisibility, and replaces it with interoperable networks, social media and an internet of things predicated on sharing our privacy with strangers. I propose new emphases on restorative “forensics” and literacies that, I argue, are appropriate in the task of generating a scholarship of the future that is ethical, is opposed to systemic injustice, exposes global exploitation, racism, deception, lying and corruption, and promotes just worlds.

This Concept Paper proposes the establishment of a new, systematic and global forensic field of s... more This Concept Paper proposes the establishment of a new, systematic and global forensic field of studies from the global south known as Apartheid Studies, and outlines the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of such a field.

The reason the notion of state capture is illogical is that there has, in South Africa, never exi... more The reason the notion of state capture is illogical is that there has, in South Africa, never existed a state to capture to begin with. If we agree that colonialism and apartheid are the highest forms of state capture possible, we have to look at the negotiated settlements of 1910 and 1994 and ask: was the state ever restored? Were these settlements about the

Christianity hinges on the doctrine of the Resurrection. It is such a central tenet that if you t... more Christianity hinges on the doctrine of the Resurrection. It is such a central tenet that if you take it away, there is no Christianity. In the Resurrection lies the whole salvific value of the Jesus story. But could Jesus die? Did Jesus really die? The question is: can a thing be where it is not, and not be where it is?

Is not the term anti-Semitic, as it is used today to refer to bigotry against Jews, used loosely ... more Is not the term anti-Semitic, as it is used today to refer to bigotry against Jews, used loosely and erroneously? “Anti-Semitic” literally and technically means being opposed to someone who speaks a Semitic language (e.g. Arabic and Hebrew). My question is: why then was the term “anti-Semitic” coined in 19th century Germany to refer – rather confusingly – to a phenomenon of hatred of Jews in Europe who, however, did not speak a Semitic language at the time? Do we know with any certainty and rigour how much knowledge of philology and linguistics Wilhelm Marr, the German writer who coined the term “anti-Semitic” in 1879, had?

Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto, 2023

This long-awaited, groundbreaking work is a book unlike any other. Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto... more This long-awaited, groundbreaking work is a book unlike any other. Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto is a monumental and authoritative study of the phenomenon of apartheid and its prevalence in the world. It proposes the establishment of an interdisciplinary new field of study from the global south known as apartheid studies (AS). The Manifesto is truly a landmark. It is the founding document and constitutive invitation to the first-of-its-kind, formal study of apartheid. We are shown, with amazing depth and clarity, that apartheid takes forms that are very different to what we have been told or what we ordinarily assume. For the first time, apartheid is systematically defined, and its full range of meanings, tendencies, and applications examined. How does oppression persist? The answer is found in the exposition, construct, theoretical framework, and paradigm of apartheid. In Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto, Nyasha Mboti has developed the world's first general theory of apartheidan original theory and methodology of how oppression, harm, injustice, poverty, loss, and inequality persist. Mboti demonstrates that apartheid is the highest stage of oppression. It functions by allocating differential rates of oppression to human beings such that no two people in the world can experience oppression the same way or at the same rate. These differences constitute what Mboti calls the rate of oppression (ROp), the careful analysis of which is fundamental in understanding the persistence of oppression and how to undo apartheid. By the Manifesto's end, we have a fully-fledged, careful, and complete theoretical framework composed of more than one hundred tenets and constructs that invite new ways of thinking clearly about our modern times and our role and place in the world. This daring book and the exciting field of study it maps and pioneers have been long overdue. Apartheid studies as a field and as a practice will fundamentally alter our understanding of why things are the way they are in the world, and what to do about it.

1st Foundational Digital Capabilities Research Seminar, 2023

There is ongoing debate whether Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) signifies revolutionary tec... more There is ongoing debate whether Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) signifies revolutionary technological change or is mere hype. Questions about AI’s purported sentience and how far it will replace humans have the most salience. This paper presents an email exchange between two University of the Free State professors who occupy contrasting positions regarding purported sentience and the replaceability of humans. The exchange is framed by literature that assesses the limits and possibilities of AI and machine learning. The paper is a theoretical contribution to ongoing and emerging debates about the present and future of AI, with a focus on its limits and possibilities. The contribution explores if and how positions from the humanities and social sciences are relevant to programmers and if and how they can shape the debate around artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithms. One of the interlocutors, who has previously worked for IBM, is based in the Physics department, and can be judged an expert on the subject. He has built computers, published on computer engineering and machine learning, and built an AI system in his home. This scholar’s work is surveyed in the paper to frame his views regarding sentience and replaceability. The other interlocutor is based in Communication Science, the field that, through Claude Shannon’s ground-breaking 1948 paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”, pioneered Information Science. The communication scholar contends that AI is too important to leave to programmers, particularly now that Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown a propensity for telling lies, hallucination, and cannibalism. In the exchange, the computer engineer makes a case for the importance of AGI in design facilitation, arguing that it will revolutionise the way humans live and work. People better get used to this new, unalterable reality. The communication scientist, meanwhile, draws on his own theoretical work in the emerging field of Apartheid Studies to argue that the Turing Test is untenable and that machines can neither be sentient nor replace humans or outdo humans in intelligence, speed, and efficiency. This paper presents this exchange, framed by literature on the debate regarding the salience and limits of AI.