Pozivamo vas na predavanje (3. lipnja 2025. od 16:15 do 17:45, F-204) prof. Karen Leigh Harris (Department of Historical and heritage Studies, University of Pretoria, SOUTH AFRICA):
FROM FIRST PEOPLES TO LAST PEOPLES
A brief history of South Africa
This paper sets out to present a whirlwind history of South Africa from the very earliest of times to the most recent present. It will take a chronological journey beginning over three million years ago with the first hominids in a region considered to be the cradle of human kind. It will consider the first peoples, the San/Bushman, who rank as the people with the oldest DNA in the world who inhabited the region for 1000s of years living in harmony with a hostile environment. The paper will then trace the immigration of other societies from within Africa and beyond Africa – arriving from the Niger-Congo region as well as from across both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans – to forge a society which would eventually coagulate as a multi-cultural rainbow nation towards the end of the twentieth century. It will deliberate on the cooperation and conflict of centuries of encounter and conquest including the settlers and enslaved society, the African kingdoms, the Great Trek, the mineral revolution, the South African War, apartheid regime and new democratic dispensation and beyond. In the final analysis it will reflect on the last peoples who have taken to the United States of America under the rubric of Trump refugeeism.
Prof Karen Leigh Harris is a full professor at the University of Pretoria where she is the Head of the Department of Historical and Heritage. She holds a DLitt et Phil in History as well as a higher education diploma and is an accredited culture tourist guide. She teaches both history and heritage and cultural tourism at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. She is former president of the Historical Association of South Africa and the Africa representative for the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas and is the coordinator of the ATLAS Africa chapter. Her research focuses primarily on the Chinese within the southern African region throughout the colonial period, apartheid to the new democratic dispensation and was used in two court cases regarding Black Economic Empowerment and hate speech and the South African Chinese community. She is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Teaching and Learning, the Faculty Teaching Excellence Award as well as Faculty Supervisors Award.