South Africa’s population is 86% black. Yet between 2010-2014, the Department of Politics at the University of Cape Town has graduated only two black MA students. In 2015, 97% of black applicants were denied admission to the Masters programme. To-date there is not a single black South African enrolled in the programme. Has this exclusion become a way of carving out the task of thinking and intellectual production as an exclusive white preserve?

The first African People´s Tribunal on Transnational Corporations, that recently took place on 16^th and 17^th August in Manzini, Swaziland, was perhaps the most counter-hegemonic and brave event to bring some hope to mining affected communities in Southern Africa.

During this recent workshop on decolonizing publications and creating writing cultures, particular dilemmas and nuanced opportunities for the decolonization of knowledge were revealed and they are expounded at length in this reflection. It is our hope that this detailed reflection can serve as a rubric of important lessons for critical and Pan-African scholars who are immersed in decolonizing projects in their respective spaces and institutions.

Prof Ali Mazrui was known for making penetrating comparisons of seemingly unrelated individuals, things and groups. It is fair to say that he was also a great classifier in general; nothing was unclassifiable for Mazrui whether it was racism, sexism, Africanity or slavery.