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Siphamandla Zondi

Acting Director: Institute for Pan-African Thought & Conversation, University of Johannesburg

I am a director of the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation at University of Johannesburg (UJ) and a co-director of the Institute for Global African Affairs, a joint entity of the UJ and the University of the West Indies.
I joined the University of Johannesburg in 2020 as professor in politics and international relations, from the University of Pretoria where I served as a professor and head of Department of Political Sciences and director of the Institute for Strategic Political Affairs for four years. My research career started in 2000 when I coordinated research and analysis of socio-political dynamics of regional integration in Southern Africa and the role of liberation movements for the Africa Institute of South Africa. I later joined the Institute for Global Dialogue, which I ended up heading between 2010 and 2016, working on dialogues at national, regional and global levels as a means to reimagine power, development and being. We facilitated peace dialogues in DRC, Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Zimbabwe and Lesotho.
I was in the founding faculty of the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute in 2010, an entity dedicated to enhancing African thought leadership as one crucial route to African renaissance. I serve in the National Planning Commission of South Africa. My research interests are on the decolonisation of being, power and knowledge, drawing from the huge archive of transformational thinking in Africa, the south and the margins of the north.

Experience

  • 2020–present
    Professor, University of Johannesburg
  • 2017–2020
    Professor and Head of Department, University of Pretoria
  • 2011–2016
    Director, Institute for Global Dialogue
  • 2007–2011
    Programme Coordinator, Institute for Global Dialogue
  • 2000–2003
    Researcher, Africa Institute

Education

  • 2000 
    DPhil, Cambridge University
  • 1997 
    Mphil, Cambridge University
  • 1996 
    Postgrad Diploma in Education, University of Durban-Westville
  • 1995 
    BA Honours, University of Durban-Westville

Professional Memberships

  • South African Association of Political Studies
  • South African Sociological Association
  • South African Association of Public Administration
  • African Association of Political Science
  • International Political Science Association
  • African Studies Association