In this episode we speak with udadewethu from back home Luthando Ngema and Charmika Samara-diwakera Wije-sundara. We discuss the concept of Ubuntu, its philosophy, use in our everyday lives and its appropriating into the canon and the implications of this on our journey of being/becoming. In learning to position ourselves, we talked about unlearning our internalised oppressions and how to be politically in motion with Ubuntu.  

Luthando Ngema is an emerging scholar and lecturer based in the Media and Cultural Studies department at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Durban. Her research interests include urban cultures, critical race theory, gender studies and media and communication. Her current PhD research looks at media constructions of Ethekwini’s Inner City as a social urban space.

Charmika Samaradiwakera Wijesundara is a lecturer at the Wits School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg. Her research areas include Jurisprudence, human rights, Critical Race and Gender Theory, African Philosophy, and Decolonisation. Currently she is a PhD candidate on a joint programme with Wits and International Institute of Social Sciences in the Hague.

Music for the podcast is produced and performed by Ntomb'Yelanga, whose work is aimed at the preservation, promotion and creation of indigenous instruments and music in South Africa. Her current project, Songs of our Ancestors, explores how ancient sounds ingoma is a language, a memory and a dream we bring to life through intergenerational connections and sound dialogue, where the body is seen as a living archive of these sounds. Makwande sibamba ngazo zombili.http://www.mmaletsatsipro.co.za/

This episode is brought to you by the Civic Innovation Research Initiative, a group of scholar-activists committed to social justice based at the International Institute of Social Studies, in The Hague, Netherlands. https://www.iss.nl/en/research/research-groups/civic-innovation