The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study invites you to a seminar titled ‘Ezekiel Mphahlele: An Incomparable Figure for all Horizons’, presented by Prof. Ntongela Masilela.

Event details

Date: Tuesday 26 March 2019
Time: 17:00 for 17:30
Venue: JIAS, 1 Tolip Street, Westdene, Johannesburg
RSVP: emeliak@uj.ac.za by 22 March 2019
Event webpage

Press release:

​Having argued and hopefully established in the 60-page chapter entitled ‘Ezekiel Mphahlele: The Last Intellectual of the New African Movement’ in his 2014 book The Historical Figures of the New African Movement that Ezekiel (Es’kia) Mphahlele was one of the foremost New African figures of the New African Movement, in the presentation at hand ‘Ezekiel Mphahlele: An Incomparable Figure for all Horizons’ Ntongela Masilela seeks to indicate and establish that no other New African figure engaged the modern black world with comparable consequential effect as that exemplified by Mphahlele: be it in Africa (Nigeria and Kenya), Caribbean (Jamaica and Barbados) or the United States.

The presentation traces some of the controversies that ensued from these engagements as well as his decision to return home in 1977. The presentation is partly autobiographical because as a nine-year-old boy this author was ‘aware’ of the ‘importance’ of Mphahlele, since they both lived on Maseko Street in Orlando West, separated by nine houses, before his departure in 1957 to Nigeria. Three streets down was the Mandela residence.

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Categories Africa Fiction South Africa

Tags Book events Es'kia Mphahlele JIAS Johannesburg Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study Ntongela Masilela University of Johannesburg