WiSER Appoints a New Director | Professor Hlonipha Mokoena

The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER) is delighted to announce the appointment of a new Director, Associate Professor Hlonipha Mokoena. Before returning to South Africa in 2015, Mokoena taught in the Anthropology Department at Columbia University in the City of New York. Besides being an intellectual historian and the biographer of Magema Magwaza Fuze (the first Zulu speaker to publish a book in the language in 1922), Mokoena has made major contributions to debates on South African art and the future of the South African academy. Her versatility is evident in the fact that even though she majored in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Cape Town, her PhD was a discursive biography of Fuze who was a member of the black literati of the nineteenth century. Her journal articles have been published in: Journal of Natal and Zulu History; Journal of Religion in Africa; Journal of Southern African Studies; Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies; Journal of African History; Kronos: Southern African Histories;Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies; Image & Text and Critical Arts. She has also written catalogue essays for Zanele Muholi, Mohau Modisakeng, Sabelo Mlangeni, Sam Nhlengethwa and Andrew Tshabangu.

She is currently completing a book manuscript titled The Nightwatchman: Portraiture and the Black Male Figure in Colonial South Africa which will be published by Wits Press. This monograph will mark yet another departure in which Mokoena explores the role played by black and brown men in the making of South Africa’s military and police services. 

Photo Credit:  Reiner Leist