(Re)Centering Africa: Theorising Through Local and African Concepts I, Gcobani, still remember when I first encountered Thulani. Thulani was in my ‘Anthropological Theories’ third-year class at UJ in 2018. While always present and attentive in class, he mostly communicated through facial gestures. Sitting in the second front row of the class, I would often look out for his facial gestures to see if my ideas were landing with the class. Sometimes, he would smile, and I would ask: “you disagree?” he would either affirm the observation or share that his smile agreed with whatever I was saying or teaching at that moment. Later in the course, Thulani wrote a beautiful essay, inspired by the course, on the need for localised theories of masculinities in the African continent. Anthropologists greatly inspired Thulani’s essay that we were studying for the course such as Sakhumzi Mfecane (2018), who calls for the decolonisation of theories of masculinities from the “Global North” through the (re)centring of theories and local African concepts in theories of masculinities. Since starting at UJ in 2018, I, Gcobani, have produced the most postgraduate students (Honours and Master’s students) in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies (ADS) with a 100% retention and completion rate. Thulani is one of these Masters’s students whom I supervised and, at the time of writing, is a prospective PhD candidate in our department. He is also a colleague who now lectures in Anthropology at North-West University. Thulani has since produced a groundbreaking MA dissertation that, as his earlier thirdyear paper, contributed much new knowledge to African masculinities and the use of concepts from the “Global South” to make sense of contemporary African realities (Siziba, 2024). In his MA research, Thulani looked into the issues of care and biological reproduction. He did this through contextualisation and using Southern African theories and indigenous knowledge. Drawing from the Nguni notion of Imvelaphi (heritage and background of origin), Siziba (2024) developed this understudied and scholarly concept to understand contemporary phenomena of fatherhood relating to paternal nondisclosure and misattribution. Since Imvelaphi is conventionally understood as one’s sense of belonging along ancestral paternal lineage, Thulani’s research questions the meaning of this concept during these fatherhood mysteries – where paternal identity is not known and/or misattributed. This is a particularly urgent study given the prevalence of these paternal dilemmas around his study, the peri-urban and underserved township communities of White City-Jabavu, in Soweto (Johannesburg). Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching Innovation Projects 2024 95
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