By Julian Rael Gordon and Annabel Nyongwana
This year marked Stellenbosch University (SU’s) eighth annual Africa Day lecture, which happened on 27 May at the SU Museum. It was organised by the Centre for the Study of Afterlife of Violence and Reparative Quest (AVeRQ) in collaboration with the Centre for the Advancement of Social Impact and Transformation (CASIT). This year, SU welcomed renowned scholar and creative writer, Dr Panashe Chigumadzi who delivered the lecture titled “Zinyane Lemvubu (the Hippo’s Calf): Reclaiming Radical Ubuntu, Pan-African Reparations Jurisprudence and the Struggle for Black Sovereignty”.
Africa Day is celebrated annually on 25 May. This acknowledges the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) with 32 African states in 1963. The effort signifies a shift towards African unity, sovereignty and resistance against colonialism. The OAU later became the African Union (AU) with 55 member states on 9 July 2002.
“Africa Day is quite important in terms of, one, commemorating the AU and moving from the OAU to the AU,” said Chigumadzi in an interview with Die Matie on 26 May. She further added that it is about “understanding the history of Black resistance, Black struggle”. Chigumadzi is an award-winning writer and African historian. She is also the Rapporteur for the AU’s Committee of Experts on Reparations (AUCER) for Racialised Chattel Enslavement, Colonialism and Apartheid.
The title of Chigumadzi’s Africa Day lecture, Zinyane Lemvubu, alluded to the longer phrase “Akukho zinyane lemvubu ladliwa zingwenya kwacweba iziziba”, translating to “It has never happened that a hippo calf was eaten by crocodiles and the water pools remained clear”. According to Chigumadzi, “the water in which the crocodile has hunted, becomes the medium of its own undoing” – and the AU Framework for Reparations is the water here.
Chigumadzi said that “the crocodile ate the calf, and is in fact, still eating the calf”, framing early imperialists as the metaphorical crocodiles who attacked African children.
Her lecture opens with the first blood and the first war cries of ǃUriǁʼaekua (Goringhaiqua Khoe) mothers for the lives of their children when the Portuguese, under the Portuguese Viceroy of India, Francisco de Almeida, attempted to take them during the 1510 Battle of Salt River. It is on the basis of the centuries-long tradition of African resistance and reparations jurisprudence that the AU Framework for Reparations, A Crime Does Not Rot, 1441–Present, which Chigumadzi drafted and conceptualised, grounded the landmark UN resolution. “With 123 nations supporting it, Ghana, the African Union’s champion for its decade of reparatory justice for Africans and people of African descent, has, on the 25th of March of 2026, secured the United Nations General Assembly resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement the gravest crime against humanity,” said Chigumadzi.
1441 marks the beginning of racialised chattel enslavement of Africans for the West. However, some historians only mark these racialised crimes from 1652, with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in the Cape of Good Hope. Chigumadzi noted this in the Africa Day Lecture and critiqued the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) unjust handling of racial crimes between 1960 and 1994.
“What this means is that, one, you have a limited temporal mandate that does not begin in 1652 but it begins with Sharpeville 1960 up until Mandela’s 1994 inauguration. Secondly, you have a limited political mandate of “gross human rights violations”, which means that you’re only looking at the most spectacular forms of bodily violence committed by individual perpetrators against individual victims, leaving undone the structural harm created by settler colonial conquest, genocide, land dispossession and indenture. And so, if this imposition of statute of limitations is done in the name of Ubuntu, that is incorrect because this is directly refuted when we say ityala aliboli, ‘a crime does not rot’, because these are intergenerational crimes which cannot be circumscribed by the 1960 to 1994 timeline, nor individual ‘gross human rights violations’.”
“These are not easy conversations. They require intellectual honesty and moral clarity, and the willingness to confront uncomfortable truths,” said Prof. Deresh Ramjugernath, who delivered the welcoming message at the Africa Day lecture.
The AU framework calls for this historical wounding to be paid back through monetary compensation. A key part of its uniqueness is that it rejects a clear division between the past and present and instead proposes that the debt continues until it is made right.
Then, the AU Framework led back to the notion of the pool – that the pool is dynamic and flowing. “The pool does not say the calf is dead. Let us declare the matter historical,” Chigumadzi said. “The pool moves. The pool does not remain still, because the violation is alive – alive in the absence of the calf, alive in the grief of the mother, alive in the broken structure of the pool.” Therefore, grave intergenerational crimes unto Africans do not rot – they are remembered.
The above acknowledgement and centrality of repayment for harms across time and space may seem incompatible with the concept of Ubuntu. However, this is only true within the frame of the mistranslated version of Ubuntu: “I am because you are”, a translation that, as Chigumadzi stated, mirrors the well-known phrase by philosopher René Descartes: “I think therefore I am”. This translation flattens the interaction among people as an encounter between the highly individualistic “I” and “you”. It also implies a divide between the self and others.
However, the more accurate translation is “a person is a person through other people”, demanding much more and recognising the “social and dynamic conception of being a person”, as Chigumadzi stated. In this way, Ubuntu is about becoming amongst and “through” others. The resolution is not only about having this harm and crime acknowledged, but a means through which the West can begin the process of becoming part of the community of abantu (people).
These discussions on African history and Black struggle are a reminder to acknowledge Africa Day and the continent’s unjust colonialist treatment. “You may wonder why we are celebrating that,” said Dr Zethu Mkhize, CASIT Director. “Because Africa is still enduring anti-colonisation struggles. We still have our struggles as a continent, but we have made some positive strides. We are here to celebrate African diversity. We are a continent that is very rich in diversity.”
However, much like the convening of the OAU in 1963, in which newly independent African nations convened, as many nations on the continent remained in active struggles against colonial rule, it was a bittersweet gathering to celebrate African unity. This is especially in the midst of continuous xenophobic violence and increased Afrophobia across South Africa.
It is within this context of contestation over whom this land belongs that Dr Chigumadzi, through her lecture, asked the audience to rethink what is known about reparations, Ubuntu and how Stellenbosch and South Africa are structured. Most importantly, she encourages individuals to think about blood, old blood in even older waters in which every person living, dead and yet to live is intertwined.
*On 10 July 2026 the following changes were made to this article by Die Matie:
- In paragraph five, ‘took the calf’ was changed to ‘ate the calf, and is in fact, still eating the calf’
- In paragraph six, ‘The African Union has, on the 25th of March of 2026’ was changed to ‘With 123 nations supporting it, Ghana, the African Union’s champion for its decade of reparatory justice for Africans and people of African descent, has, on the 25th of March of 2026’
- In paragraph six, ‘It is based on this first blood and the first cries of African mothers for the lives of their children that the AU Framework for Reparations, A Crime Does Not Rot, 1441–Present, became the structural rationale for the General Assembly Resolution.’ was changed to ‘Her lecture opens with the first blood and the first war cries of ǃUriǁʼaekua (Goringhaiqua Khoe) mothers for the lives of their children when the Portuguese, under the Portuguese Viceroy of India, Francisco de Almeida, attempted to take them during the 1510 Battle of Salt River. It is on the basis of the centuries-long tradition of African resistance and reparations jurisprudence that the AU Framework for Reparations, A Crime Does Not Rot, 1441–Present, which Chigumadzi drafted and conceptualised, grounded the landmark UN resolution.’
- In paragraph eight, ‘You are then only speaking to the fact that, one, you are truncating these crimes from 1652 only from 1960 up until 1994 but, also, you’re only looking at the most spectacular forms of violence leaving undone the structural harm that was done by settler colonialism. And so if this is done in the name of Ubuntu, this is already directly refuted when we say ityala aliboli, ‘a crime does not rot’, because these are intergenerational crimes which cannot be circumscribed by 1960 to 1994.’ was changed to ‘What this means is that, one, you have a limited temporal mandate that does not begin in 1652 but it begins with Sharpeville 1960 up until Mandela’s 1994 inauguration. Secondly, you have a limited political mandate of “gross human rights violations”, which means that you’re only looking at the most spectacular forms of bodily violence committed by individual perpetrators against individual victims, leaving undone the structural harm created by settler colonial conquest, genocide, land dispossession and indenture. And so, if this imposition of statute of limitations is done in the name of Ubuntu, that is incorrect because this is directly refuted when we say ityala aliboli, ‘a crime does not rot’, because these are intergenerational crimes which cannot be circumscribed by the 1960 to 1994 timeline, nor individual ‘gross human rights violations’.’
