DR MUSTAPHA SIDIKI KALOKO was born in 1946 in Sierra Leone. Currently Commissioner for Social Affairs, African Union Commission, he has been involved in many direct medical care, management and leadership roles in many parts of the world, including the United Nations Development Programme and African Union.

SUMMARY OF PROFESSIONAL SKILLS/EXPERTISE

• Professional consultant in Internal Medicine;
• Specialist in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene with skills in investigating and managing tropical diseases;
• Expertise in public health issues including HIV/Aids, maternal and child health and nutrition.
• Skills in hospital / clinic management
• Providing a link between the AU and UNDP programs;
• Served as the Program Manager for UNDP support to the AU Peace & Security Department.
• Coordinating all curative and preventive medical services for AU staff, andaccredited Ambassadors and their dependents at the African Union;
• Directing and coordinating Public Health programs on HIV/AIDS in the work place and pandemic situations like Bird flu and Swine flu at the African Union Commission
• Researching and advising on AU medical policies including nutritional and public health issues;
• Designing health coverage for AU Peace Keeping Missions and AU Organs e.g. the Medical Plan for the AU Mission in Sudan – AMIS (Darfur) and the Medical Plan for the Court for Human and Peoples Right in Arusha, Tanzania.
• Organizing health conferences including the 1991 Conference of African Ministers of Health in Swaziland.
• Representing the African Union in international medical fora organised by WHO, UNAIDS, UNDP and the World Health Assembly.
• Represented AU at the International AIDS conference in Geneva, Switzerland and Berlin, Germany, the International society for infectious Diseases and Malaria in Nairobi, Kenya and Nagasaki, Japan.

Professor James Ogude obtained his B.Ed (Hons) and MA from Nairobi University and his PhD in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand.  Professor Ogude holds a NRF “B3” rating for the quality and impact of his research outputs.

Currently, he is a Professor and Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria – a position he took up at the beginning of May, 2013.

Until his recent appointment he was a Professor of African Literature and Cultures in the School of Literature and Language Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he worked since 1994, serving as the Head of African Literature and also Assistant Dean – Research, in the Faculty of Humanities. His research interests include the African novel and the Postcolonial experience in Africa, especially in relation to issues of memory and reconstruction of African history and identities. More recently, Professor Ogude’s research focus has shifted to popular cultures and literature in Africa. He is also working in the area of Black intellectual traditions. Professor Ogude’s passion is mentoring young scholars. He has supervised a total of 12 doctoral students and more than a dozen MAs.

He is the author of Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation, London: Pluto Press, 1999. He has also co-edited, Urban Legends, Colonial Myths: Popular Culture and Literature in East Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007 and more recently Rethinking Eastern African Literary and Intellectual Landscapes, published in 2012 by Africa World Press, New Jersey.

Professor James Ogude serves on the convening committee of the 40^th Annual Conference of the African Literature Association to be held at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in April 2014.

 Professor Joseph Brian Diescho is Executive Director for the Namibia Institute of Public Administration and Management [NIPAM].Prof Diescho was born at Andara in the Kavango Region. He is a Fulbright scholar and holds three Masters Degrees and two doctorates from Fort Hare University in South Africa and Columbia University in New York City.A prolific author and political analyst, he campaigned at the United Nations for an independent Namibia and a democratic South Africa.Before returning to his home country, Professor Joseph Brian Diescho worked for ten years as the Director and Head of Public and Development and International Relations at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in Pretoria. He was previously a Professor of International Law at the City University of New York Law School in New York and an Extraordinary Professor of Politics at the University of Pretoria.

Sam Moyo is Executive Director of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies (AIAS) in

Harare, Zimbabwe, and serve as Editor-in-Chief of an International Journal on Agrarian Studies. He is the former President of the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Prof S. Moyo holds a Ph.D. in Rural Development and Environmental Management from University of Northumbria, United Kingdom. His major publications include: African land questions, agrarian transitions and the state: contradictions of neoliberal land reforms (2008); Land reform under structural adjustment in Zimbabwe: land use change in the Mashonaland Provinces (2000); The land question in Zimbabwe (1995); [co-edited with Paris Yeros]: Reclaiming the land: the resurgence of rural movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America (2005); [co-edited with Kojo Sebastian Amanor]: Land and sustainable development in Africa (2008); [co-edited with Paris Yeros]: Reclaiming the nation: the return of the national question in Africa, Asia and Africa (2011): Land and Agrarian Reform Zimbabwe : Beyond White-Settler Capitalism (2013); [co-edited with Walter Chambati].

Dr Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane became the first post-apartheid Vice Chancellor at the University of Fort Hare. He is the author of Mzala; Children of Soweto; Children of the Diaspora; and a children’s book, The Race between the Turtles and the Cheetahs. He is editor of Selected Poems: Mongane Wally Serote; Selected Poems: Sipho Sydney Sepamla; Hungry Flames and Other Black South African Stories; and Words Gone Two Soon: Tribute to Phaswane Mpe and K. Sello Duiker. He is co-editor of Global Voices: Contemporary Literature from the Non-Western World. His scholarly publications include Images of the Voiceless: Essays on Popular Culture and the Media (with J. Haynes and A. Bamikunle) and Multicultural Education in Colleges and Universities (with H. Ball and S. Berkowitz).

Presentation: The Land Question: An Analogy of Dispossessed

Mr Nkadimeng currently working for the National Arts Council of South Africa, responsible for literature projects. He completed his BA Degree at the University of the North (University of Limpopo). He has been attached to UNISA for his Honours studies. He completed his MA Degree with Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, currently North-West University. He is at present finalising his Ph.D degree with North-West University.

Mr Nkadimens received two scholarships from United Nations in New York while pursuing his BA studies with the University of the North. AS an author he published novels, short stories, dramas, poetry, folklore and children’s literature. He’s translating and editing for different publishing houses. His MA dissertation was published in Germany by Lambert Academic Publishers. The title of dissertation and the book is: Language As Cultural Protest in African Literature: A Post-Colonial Perspective.

Alienation of Communal Land in South Africa : A New Form of Dispossession?

Jane Thupana is an independent researcher and consultant in land reform, rural and organisational development. Thupana is a geography graduate of the University of the North (South Africa) and holds a Diploma in Development Studies plus a Masters in Business Leadership from University of South Africa. For eight years she served as Chief Director in the Limpopo Province Department of Agriculture, responsible for Farmer Support and Agri-Business Development.

Alienation of Communal Land in South Africa : A New Form of Dispossession?

 Is a Masters graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Letsoalo is the author of Land Reform in South Africa: A Black Perspective. Letsoalo’s research career includes being Director for the Council for Black Education and Research at Funda Centre, Soweto and Researcher at the Wits Rural Facility.

She was the Chief Director responsible for the implementation of land reform in the South Africa government from 1995 and 2010.

Class Movements in the New South Africa: Land Use, Post-Colonial Politics, and Mimicry in Greig Coetzee’s Happy Natives.

J Coplen Rose is a fifth year PhD student researching contemporary South African drama at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Coplen’s PhD dissertation analyses dramatic texts by current South African playwrights such as Zakes Mda, Greig Coetzee, Lara Foot-Newton and Pieter-Dirk Uys.

Focusing largely on the uses of political satire in South Africa, Rose seeks to identify key ways that dramatists are using in foregrounding national crises in the post-apartheid nation-state. In doing so he closely looks at how comedy and humour aid discussions of difficult or tenuous material for theatre audiences. Nationalism, identity politics, and postcolonial strategies to address social, ethnic, and class divisions are central to his project.

“We’re Strangers in this Country”: Politics and Place in Modikwe Dikobe’s Dispossessed”

Andrew Martin Andrew Martin was born in 1964 to South African parents in the United States. In 1972 Andrew’s family moved to Cape Town, where Andrew completed his schooling. In 1988, Martin obtained a Bachelor of Social Science degree from the University of Cape Town (UCT). In 1990 Martin obtained the Post-Graduate Diploma in Librarianship and Information Science, also from UCT.  In 1991-1992 Martin worked as a researcher for the Social History of Christianity project in the Religious Studies Department at UCT and in 1993 worked as part-time librarian at SACHED’s Cape Town office. In 1994 Martin moved to Grahamstown where he was appointed as an assistant librarian at the National English Literary Museum (NELM). In 1995, he was promoted into NELM’s research department, where he began work on a major bibliographic project, namely A Bibliography of Anglophone Creative Writing and Literary Criticism by Black South Africans  1800-1990. Martin’s main task in this project is to find this marginalised literature so that it can be documented, stored and easily retrieved for future use. His other duties at NELM include assisting the public with queries and compiling exhibition texts.

Martin has compiled Poems of Dennis Brutus: A Checklist, 1945-2004. He has also compiled shorter bibliographies for More Than Brothers: Peter Clarke & James Matthews at Seventy [with Hein Willemse] and ‘No Other World’ – Essays on the Life-Work of Don Maclennan.

Martin has delivered conference papers in Grahamstown, East London, Cape Town, Polokwane, Pietermaritzburg and London. He has written extensively on NELM as well as on his research. Articles and reviews by Martin have appeared in The Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, Baobab, English Studies in Africa, African Writing Online, Wordstock and NELM News. He has also contributed chapters to Es’kia: May You Grow as Big as an Elephant and Dwarf the Rhinoceros and Engaging with Literature of Commitment. Volume 1. Africa in the World.

Outside of NELM, Martin enjoys writing poetry. Some of his poems have been published in the journals, Aerial and Carapace as well as in the anthologies The Ground’s Ear and the 2012 Off-the Wall Anthology.

Martin is also a competitive chess player and has been coach of the Rhodes University Chess Club for many years.

“Area of Interest: Impact on Culture, Language and Identity”

Professor Aubrey Mokadi has lectured in the English departments of various universities and published widely in various accredited journals nationally and internationally. Prof Mokadi is the author of various books and is former Vice Chancellor and Rector of Vaal University of Technology. Mokadi is an activist and leader of various community organisations in the 1980’s and 1990’s

The Poetry of African Renaissance: Unpacking Deela Khan’s Engaging the Shades of Robben Island and Tade Ipadeola’s Sahara Testaments.

 Lisa Combrinck is a UCT graduate. Combrinck has worked as a lecturer in an English Department, as a speechwriter for the presidency, as a media liaison officer, as a books editor for Sowetan and as a research director. She is currently Communications Head at the Department of Arts and Culture.

Lisa Combrinck is a poet and an organiser of African women writers’ events.

“The Year Will Not Be Good”: Ogidi Women’s Market Revolt of 1914”                  

 Nwando Achebe is an award-winning author and professor of history at Michigan State University. Achebe is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of West African History. Achebe received her PhD from UCLA in 2000. In 1996 and 1998, she served as a Ford Foundation and Fulbright-Hays Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Her research interests are in the use of oral history in the study of women, gender, and sexuality in Nigeria. Her first book, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, (1900-1960) was published in 2005.

In 2011 Nwando Achebe’s second book, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe was published. The book won The Barbara “Penny” Kanner and Gita Chaudhuri Book Awards.  She has received prestigious grants from Wenner-Gren, Woodrow Wilson, Fulbright-Hays, Ford Foundation, World Health Organization, and NEH.

Liberation Without Land and Its Resources is a Gigantic Colonial Fraud.

 Dr Motsoko Pheko is a historian, political scientist, lawyer, theologian and author of several books and articles that have been published nationally and internationally. During the liberation struggles in Africa, Dr Pheko represented the victims of apartheid and colonialism at the United Nations in New York and at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. While in exile he became one of the founders of DAYSTAR UNIVERSITY in Kenya, East Africa. As a freedom fighter he was arrested and imprisoned by three colonial regimes in South Africa, Portuguese colonial Mozambique and by the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia.

Dr Motsoko Pheko is a former Member of the South African Parliament.

“Looking for Maria, her sisters, daughters and sons”

Susan Nokunyamezela Nkomo holds a Masters in Gender and Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.  Ms Nkomo currently works as an independent consultant and is the founder of the South African Observatory on Women’s Rights which is housed at Statistics South Africa.  She is the author of “Looking for Maria, her sisters, daughters and sons: an analysis of the gendered impact of the 1913 Natives Land Act”.   With Debbie Budlender, Susan Nkomo is author of the upcoming national report on MDG 3: Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.

Ms Nkomo previously headed the Office on the Status of Women at the Presidency and has served on the boards of a number of knowledge generation organisations including the Association of African Women In Research and Development (AAWORD) the Counsel for the Development of Economic and Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the NEPAD Gender Task Force.

Native Press: African Intellectuals’ Instrument of Colonial Subversion

Dr Mcebisi Ndletyana is Head: Political-Economy Faculty at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) in Johannesburg.  Dr Ndletyana holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Witwatersrand.  He was previously with the Human Science Research Council as a Senior Research Specialist. Prior to this, he was a lecturer in African Studies at Marymount Manhattan College, New York (2003 – 2004) as well as at the City University of New York, Hunter College (2002).
Dr Mcebisi Ndletyana is the author of African Intellectuals in 19^th  and Early 20^th Century South Africa.