4 – 13 November 2022
SWOP and Madeyoulook will host a series of talks, workshops, screenings and listening sessions about land.
For more information go please click here

The Forgotten Rural?
Join us for a panel discussion and performances.
4 November 2022, 17h30 @ The Forge
Please RSVP to info.swop@wits.ac.za or join the livestream of the panel discussion via YouTube: https://youtu.be/12oXSF6NbUs
What might South African relations to land tell us about the broader state of South African relations and its future? In what ways are the politics of the ‘forgotten rural’ a vector of dispossession by which we might read not only the challenges South Africa faces, but also potentially the site of how we might begin our solutions? Taking these questions as a point of departure, we bring into discussion thinkers and activists to discuss matters of the land, repair, and possible restorative futures.
Followed by a Metatextual Performance by Mawetu Nkosana with Athi Ngcaba ( Trombone) and Solethu Madasa (Keys)
About the speakers
Constance Mogale is the coordinator of the Alliance for Rural Democracy (ARD). Her work with the ARD has involved leading a national campaign to proposed laws dubbed the ‘Bantustan Bills’ which would affect the tenure, governance, and rights of nearly 20 million people living in South Africa’s communal areas. She is currently an MA Phil candidate at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies.
Mbuso Nkosi is a versatile researcher- he has focused on labour studies, industrial policy, economic development, agrarian studies, archives, and social theory. He served as the editor of the Global Labour Column (GLC) and the South African Labour Bulletin (SALB). He currently lectures in the department of sociology at the University of Pretoria.
Dineo Skosana is a senior researcher at Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP). She works on mining-induced dispossession in coal affected areas. She has published on the continued salience of traditional leadership in post-apartheid South Africa. She has an interest in indigenous politics, rural struggles, as well as the politics over land, sacred sites, heritage and belonging.
Facilitated by Yvonne Phyllis Yvonne Phillis works as the Co-Director of Operations at The Forge , a progressive pan-African, radical space in Johannesburg, Braamfontein. Prior to joining The Forge, Yvonne worked as a Lecturer at The University Currently Known as Rhodes. She taught Comparative Politics and International Relations at the Department of Political and International Studies. Born to farm workers in one of the most impoverished towns in the Eastern Cape, Nyarha (Bedford), Yvonne’s research interests include farm workers/dwellers’ lived experiences and struggles, the struggles of black first-generation graduates, equality, land reform and redistribution in South Africa. She is the author of the dossier titled “This Land Is the Land of Our Ancestors“. She is also the co-producer and director of The Forge’s “Nyarha Farmworkers Documentary”.
Mawethu Nkosana Queer Creed “Failing forward is a queer spiritual /finally there is a church we have made/ In the wilderness/ In anomie/ here we are /here I am /failing /forward”