News & Alerts

A major theme in some of the work done by various scholars associated with the APS is the theoretical assessment and critique of current uses and abuses of the sciences (broadly construed) to defend historical injustice and continued oppression. In this discussion in Africa is a Country, APS Secretary Phila Msimang discusses his recent work on revealing some of the strategies used by a prominent South African think tank (i.e.: the South African Institute of Race Relations) to mislead the public and policy makers on social issues, particularly racism, through the use of strategically misleading social surveys.  

Click the link to read the article in Africa is a Country on the South African Institute of Race Relations.

The Convenor of the APS, Ndumiso Dladla, put together a special issue on the Azanian philosophical tradition from a historical perspective. In his introduction to the issue, he says: "The Azanian Philosophical Tradition is part of the discourses on post-colonial African philosophy.5 This approach to philosophy is one that originates in the experience of the struggle against colonial (and then neo-colonial) domination in Africa. Historically, many of its central theoreticians were gifted African intellectuals, educated in various fields, sometimes in Western academic philosophy itself, for example, Kwame Nkrumah and Lembede. Few of them were, however, simply academics. They were soldiers, activists, organisers, lawyers, and freedom fighters who distilled their thought in the process of the engagement of struggle. With a few exceptions, such as Nkrumah, many of their works are not written as extended treatises in the fashion of academic philosophy. Instead, they survive as pamphlets, speeches, letters, and notes that are nevertheless rich sources of social, legal, economic, and political philosophies as well as epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Sobukwe's writing on Africanism, Léopold Senghor's on Negritude, Julius Nyerere's on Ujamaa, Kenneth Kaunda's on African ‘humanism’, and Bantubonke Biko's writings on Black Consciousness philosophy come to mind as examples in this regard, not forgetting the poetry and writings of physician-presidents Agostinho Neto and Félix Houphouët-Boigny. "

The special issue is open access and available online from the publishers website. Click here or click the thumbnail image to access the special issue.  

Two office-bearing members of the APS, Professor Joel Modiri and Phila Msimang, participated in the roundtable discussion held by the Department of Science & Innovation in conjunction with Science Forum South Africa called "Research excellence, peer review, and epistemic justice". See more information about the event here and see the roundtable discussion in the YouTube video on the right.  

The Convenor of the APS, Ndumiso Dladla, was invited to present on a panel at an event organised by the University of Pretoria's philosophical society, Footnotes. The panel presentations composed of a reading of a paper by Leonhard Praeg, a presentation by Ndumiso Dladla, and a presentation by Mpho Tshivhase.

The APS attended and presented their work at the Third Biennial African Philosophy World Conference held at the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. This was an opportunity to reconnect with colleagues across the continent and share recent advances in work and research in African philosophical traditions. 

The APS held its constitutive conference in the Department of Political Studies' Centre for Leadership Ethics in Africa (CLEA) at the University of Fort Hare (UFH). It was here that the programme of the APS was decided and its leadership formally elected. 

The APS was officially launched during the Black August Cultural Festival hosted by the College of Human Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA). The launch of the society was accompanied by a philosophical conference on the state of philosophy in the South Africa in which views on the way forward in the academy and broader society were presented. See this article for a report on the launch held at and hosted by UNISA.