Speakers:
Mx Rich Mkhondo:
Founder of The Media and Writers Firm, content development hub. Rich Mkhondo is one of the first black journalism graduates from Rhodes University. During his years at Rhodes, he founded the Black Students Movement. Mkhondo is a former senior journalist having
worked as a correspondent for Independent Newspapers in Washington and Reuters News Agency where he covered southern Africa. He has also worked as Communications Executive Manager and Spokesperson for South African Airways (SAA). An author of a
book titled Reporting South Africa that was published in 1993. In 2010, Rich Mkhondo was the chief communications officer and spokesman for the Fifa World Cup. His previous jobs also include the heading of Corporate Affairs at MTN Group and his current position as Managing director of Ogilvy Public Relations.
Dr Sharlene Khan:
Dr Sharlene Khan is a South African visual artist and writer whose work often incorporates a range of media that generate installations and performances that focus on the socio-political realities of a post-apartheid society and the intersectionality of race-gender-class.
She uses masquerading as a postcolonial strategy to interrogate her South African heritage as well as the constructedness of identity via rote education, art discourses, historical narratives and popular culture. She holds a PhD (Arts) from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research interests include race studies, black-Afrocentric, feminist creative methodologies, postcolonialism, South African art, performativity, blackface, African literature and decolonial aesthesis. Dr Sharlene Khan is currently a senior lecture in Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University Fine Art Department.
Mx Songezile Churchill Madikida:
Songezile Churchill Madikida was born in the Eastern Cape and obtained his BA (FA) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 2001. As a practicing artist, Madikida's art has been exhibited both locally and internationally with his first solo art exhibition, Liminal States, at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2003, and his second, Interminable Limbo, at Michael Stevenson in 2004. In 2006 he showed on Olvida Quien Soy - Erase me from who I am at the Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and
was selected for the 7th edition of Dak'Art, the Dakar Biennale and in 2007 for the prestigious Dokumenta art exhibition in Germany. In 2003 Madikida was the joint winner of the Tollman Art Award for a young artist, and in 2006 was named the Standard Bank Young
Artist of the year. From 2013 to 2016, he taught Art Theory and Printmaking at the Walter Sisulu University. Currently, Madikida teaches Art History and Visual Culture while also pursuing a MA degree in Art History at Rhodes University.
Mx Leroy Maisiri
Leroy Maisiri is a PhD candidate at the Rhodes University Sociology Department, he hails from Zimbabwe. He has written articles for papers like "Khanya", "Zabalaza," and the South African Labour Bulletin. He has researched deindustrialisation in Bulawayo, and the politics of the independent left in South Africa. His current degree focuses on the "people's power" movement in 1980s South Africa.