The October Forum 2026 – The 70s and Us
On the 28th and 29th of October 2026, SWOP will host the inaugural October Forum.
2026 marks the 50th Anniversary of the June 16, 1976, uprising with many events centering this pivotal moment in the struggle against apartheid. While the 2026 October Forum seeks to re-member this moment – which in retrospect can be read as the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime – it will work to place this mobilisation within the broader political productivity of the 1970s, both in South Africa and globally. Constituting under the theme of ‘The 70’s and Us’, the 2-day forum endeavours to mark out the relations that bind us to but also separate us from the 70s as we endeavour to build projects in pursuit of emancipatory futures.
In 2025 the Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP) hosted a colloquium, Re-membering Movements, to mark the 10th anniversary of the FMF uprising. At the gathering – which also reflected the intellectual and activist contributions of SWOPs late director, Prishani Naidoo – it was decided that an October event should become an annual one with the name ‘The October Forum’. Reflecting a key concern of Naidoo’s intellectual work, the forum seeks to open a space for forging new lines of inquiry and action for a ‘politics of memory, inheritance and generation’ (a formulation found in Naidoo’s reflections on Derrida’s Specters of Marx and marking an important thread in her writing).
In addition to the productivity of the 70s generation and the untimely disposition Naidoo offered as an intellectual example, there are several points of reference for the questions that will be tackled in this forum. A set of texts will be circulated that participants can access before the October Forum. Access to the folder will be made available after RSVP’ing for the event
Date: 28 – 29 October
Venue: Humanities Graduate Centre, East Campus, Wits University.
Registration in person please go here
Registration online 28 October here. For 29 October here
28 October (5:30pm for 6pm until 8pm)
Keynote conversation: David Scott (University of Columbia) and Michael Hardt (Duke University), facilitated by Noor Nieftagodien (History Workshop, Wits).
29 October (9am – 5pm)
Roundtable 1: The 70s and Us in a global frame
Roundtable 2: The 70s and Us in South Africa
