Phone: + 27 (0) 603 8807
Email: m.majavu@ru.ac.za
Qualifications:

BA (Unisa), BA Honours (UCT), MA (UCT), PhD (University of Auckland)

Biography

• Prof Mandisi Majavu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University and a Fellow of the Future Professors Programme (2025–2026). He serves on the editorial board of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

  Prof Majavu is a political theorist of Black being. His scholarship develops a sustained critical dialogue between Afrofuturism and Afropessimism as complementary analytic registers for thinking the ontological status of Blackness within racial modernity. Rather than treating these frameworks as ideological opposites, his work places them in rigorous dialogue to interrogate how anti-Blackness structures Being, political order, and the horizon of the future.

  His research situates these theoretical concerns within the global architecture of racial formation, with comparative attention to South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Across these sites, he examines how colonial violence, racial governance, and settler modernity shape the lived experience of Africanity. In his work, Africanity is approached not as a normative or romantic abstraction, but as lived historical experience shaped by colonial violence, ontological rupture, and ongoing contestation.

  Through the conceptual frame of Afrofutures, Prof Majavu advances what he terms hermeneutic nihilism as a mode of critical inquiry, one that remains attentive to the structuring force of anti-Blackness while probing the possibilities and limits of Black futurity.

•  

  Research Groups

  • AfroFutures Research Lab

   

  The AfroFutures Research Lab, directed by Prof Majavu, is an interdisciplinary research platform dedicated to theorising Black being in the contemporary world. The Lab advances theoretical and empirical work that brings Afrofuturism and Afropessimism into sustained dialogue in order to examine how global anti-Blackness structures institutions, knowledge systems, and imaginaries of the future.

  It supports postgraduate research, international collaboration, and public scholarship, and is committed to cultivating rigorous, globally engaged Black critical thought.

Publications

Journal articles

Majavu, M. (2023). Reinterpreting the Historical Memory of the Black Peril in South Africa
THEORIA, 70 (177). https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/theoria/70/177/theoria.70.issue-177.xml

Majavu, M. (2023): Laundering racial capitalism in post-apartheid South Africa, Politikon, DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2023.2257504: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02589346.2023.2257504?src=

Maziyanhanga, Z. & Majavu, M. (2023). A critical review of the Zimbabwe special temporary residence permits, 2010–2021. Politikon, DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2023.2260630: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02589346.2023.2260630?scroll=top&needAccess=true 

Majavu, M. (2022). Orania: A white homeland in post-apartheid South Africa. Sociology Compass, Vol. 16 (7): https://compass-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/toc/17519020/2022/16/7

Webster, K.; Asquith, A.; Cardow, A.; Rohan, M.; Majavu, M. (2019). Auckland New Zealand - Fair Game for Party Politics. Journal: Local Government Studies.

Majavu, M. (2018). The “African gangs” narrative: Associating Blackness with criminality and other anti-Black racist tropes in Australia. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal. https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2018.1541958

Majavu, M. (2018). The whiteness regimes of multiculturalism: The African Male Experience in Australia. The Journal of Asian and African Studies, 53 (2): 187 - 200.

Book chapters

Majavu, M. (2023). Toppling the Racist Anglo-Saxon Politics of Cecil Rhodes. In B. Carlson & T. Farrelly (eds), Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_5

Majavu, M. (2022). A Historical Account of Caster Semenya's Decade-Long Protest of the IAAF and IOC's Sex Policies and Definition of Femininity. In M.J. Gennaro & B.M. McGowan (Eds.), Sport & Protest in the Black Atlantic. London & New York: Routlege.

Majavu, M. (2021). “Colour-Blind Ideologies: The Whiteness of Liberalism and Socialism.” In S. Hunter & C. van der Westhuizen (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness. London: Routledge.

https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Studies-in-Whiteness/Hunter-Westhuizen/p/book/9780367403799  

Majavu, M. (2021). ‘Kantsaywhere’: Black African women inside the Australian racial crucible. In Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis!, edited by Z. Luna & W. Pirtle. Routledge.

https://www.routledge.com/Black-Feminist-Sociology-Perspectives-and-Praxis/Luna-Pirtle/p/book/9781032057538

Majavu, M. (2020). The White International: ‘The cause of the white man on the Pacific coast’. In Routledge Handbook on Africana Criminology, edited by Biko Agozino, Viviane Saleh-Hanna, Nontyatyambo Dastile and Emmanuel Onyeozili.

https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Africana-Criminologies/Agozino-Onyeozili-Dastile-Saleh-Hanna/p/book/9780367435721

Books

Majavu, M. (2017). Uncommodified Blackness: The African Male Experience in Australia and New Zealand. Palgrave Macmillan UK. http://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319513249

Pissarra, M.,Goniwe, T. & Majavu, M. (Eds.) (2011). Visual Century: South African Visual Art in Context, Book IV. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/visual-century/

Edited and co-edited journal issues

Choudry, A., Wood, L., & Majavu, M. (Issue Editors). (2013). Anticolonial and postcolonial movements. Interface, Vol. 5 (1). http://www.interfacejournal.net/2013/05/interface-volume-5-issue-1-anticolonial-and-postcolonial-movements/

Policy briefs

Nakhid, C., Azanaw, L. Essuman, K., Ghebremichael, N., Kamau, M. M. K., Kayitesi, T., Majavu, M., et al. (2016). African youth: Experiences with the police and The New Zealand Justice System. African Communities Forum. Available: http://www.acofi.org.nz/

Non-scholarly publications

Michael Albert & Mandisi Majavu. (2012). Occupy Theory: Understanding society and future. Boston: Z Publications.

Majavu, M. (2008). Africa: Life After Colonialism. In C. Spannos (ed.), Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21^st Century, (112 – 129). AK Press: Oakland.

Majavu, M. (2006). Debt, Reforms, and Social Services in Africa. In P. S. Rothenberg (ed.), Beyond Borders: Thinking Critically About Global Issues, (507 – 509). Worth Publishers: New York.

Book reviews

Majavu, M. (2017). Playing while white: privilege and power on and off the Field. Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2017.1379189

Majavu, M. (2016). One game at a time: Why sports matter. Sport in Society.  DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2016.1165422

Majavu, M. (2015). Becoming an African diaspora in Australia: language culture, identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies.  DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2015.1011181

Majavu, M. (2014). Bad news for refugees. Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol 27 (2).

Majavu, M. (2014). Refuge New Zealand: A nation's response to refugees and asylum seekers. The Australasian Review of African Studies, Vol. 36 (2).

Last Modified: Sat, 21 Feb 2026 09:23:55 SAST