South African Association of Canadian Studies

Beyond Reconciliation: Dealing with the Aftermath of Mass Trauma and Political Violence conference, December 2009

Three visiting Canadian academics gave papers at the December 2009 University of Cape Town conference: “Beyond Reconciliation: Dealing with the Aftermath of Mass Trauma and Political Violence.”

Dr Susan Spearey from Brock University, Ontario, and a member of SAACS, spoke on “‘The challenge of living with the legacy’ of Rwanda’s Genocide: ‘Post’-conflict Literatures and the Ethics of Reception.”

Dr Margot Francis, also from Brock University, spoke on “Gender, Satire and ‘Reconciliation’ in the Aftermath of Anishinaabec-Settler Conflict: case study of theatre in re-membering indigenous claims to land in Canada.”

Dr Brenda Carr Vellino from Carleton University is spoke about “Checkpoints, Countercheckpoints, Encounter Points in Poetic and Cultural Responses to the Israel-Palestine Conflict.”

www.beyondreconciliation.co.za

John Ralston Saul elected as International President of the International PEN Assembly of Delegates

On October 21st, the International PEN Assembly of Delegates elected as International President, John Ralston Saul, to succeed Jirí Grušá who has held the post for six years. Jirí Grušá was one of the most important dissident Czech writers. Earlier presidents have included Alberto Moravia, Heinrich Böll, Arthur Miller, Pierre Emmanuel, Mario Vargas Llosa and György Konrád.

John Ralston Saul is a celebrated Canadian novelist and essayist and former President of Canadian PEN. He has been awarded, among others, Chile’s Pablo Neruda medal, Italy’s Premio Letterario Internazionale and the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres de France.

International PEN is the world’s most important and oldest freedom of speech and literary organisation. Almost 1000 writers in prison or in danger around the world look to us for help. We have to invent new ways of turning back the rise of authoritarian controls.

Threats to freedom of speech are expanding in new directions, especially with the rise of populism in the post 9/11 world.

In addition, hundreds of minority and indigenous languages and cultures are in danger of extinction. This is the ultimate denial of freedom of speech.’ says Saul.

2009 AGM

The Annual General meeting of SAACS was held on Thursday 26 November 2009.

The AGM was followed by a screening of Glenn Gould: On and Off the Record, two 1959 DVD portraits of the celebrated pianist, National Film Board of Canada, courtesy of the Canadian High Commission, Pretoria.

SAACS COMMUNITY HERITAGE PROGRAMME

SAACS offered a community heritage training programme from Monday 19 to Saturday 24 October 2009. The programme took place in Cape Town and at the Living Landscape Project in Clanwilliam, ending with a visit to !Kwa Ttu, the San culture and educational centre. The programme was for participants new to community based heritage work and projects. The programme drew on Canadian capacity and good practice in the area of community heritage practice, and was presented by Professor Martin Segger from the University of Victoria in Canada. Participants were from Cape Town and surrounds as well as from the west Coast.

Visit of former Canadian Prime Minister, the Honourable Mr Joe Clark

On Tuesday 6 October 2009, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, President and Founder of African Monitor, chaired the Canada as a Middle Power: What Lessons for South Africa? seminar at which the Honourable Mr Joe Clark, spoke on the parallels between the internal nature, and the international capacities, of South Africa and Canada. Visit http://www.ccr.uct.ac.za/index.php?id=552 to view an audio file of this seminar.

Visit of Dr Daiva Stasiulis

Dr Daiva Stasiulis, Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, visited South Africa from 20 September to 2 October 2009 and gave talks and seminars at the University of Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town.

Visit of author Malcolm Gladwell in July 2009

Canadian-raised communicator Malcolm Gladwell, the author of bestselling books such as Outliers, Blink and The Tipping Point is visited South Africa in July 2009. He spoke at The Discovery Invest Leadership Summit at the Sandton Convention Centre. See www.theleadershipsummit.co.za

Visit of Professor Emeritus John Saul in Cape Town

SAACS hosted Professor Emeritus John Saul in Cape Town and Johannesburg in May 2009. A pre-eminent Canadian scholar on the politics of southern Africa, particularly in relation to the liberation struggles in that region during the past decades, he studied at the Universities of Toronto, Princeton and London. He taught for many years in the School of Social Sciences and the Graduate Program in Political Science at York University in Canada and has also taught in Africa: in Tanzania, Mozambique and in South Africa, where in 2000 he was a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology at Wits University. He also worked for years as a liberation support and anti-apartheid activist, notably with the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa (TCLSAC) and with Southern Africa Report magazine. His scholarly output is prodigious: 18 academic books, more than 70 refereed journal articles and more than 180 conference publications, and an autobiographical volume currently in press. His work addresses major development problems in the southern African region, and Canadian knowledge of politics and development in Africa owes much to the quality of his scholarship and his persuasive public commentaries. He was on the steering committee of the Canadian Research Consortium on Southern Africa and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2004. His publication list can be accessed here.

Professor John Saul’s Programme in South Africa

CAPE TOWN

• Lecture title: Two Fronts of Anti-apartheid Struggle: South Africa and Canada
  Chair: Professor David Kaplan, School of Economics, UCT
  Date: Tuesday 12 May
  Venue: Lecture Theatre 3B, Leslie Social Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT
• UCT Political Studies Seminar: Race, Class, Gender, Voice: Four Terrains of Liberation
  Convened by Dr Andrew Nash, Department of Political Studies, UCT
  Date: Wednesday 13 May
  Venue: Graduate School of Humanities Common Room, Upper Campus, UCT
• The Book Lounge in association with the South African Association of Canadian Studies and Wits University Press. John Saul will discuss his book “Decolonization and Empire: Contesting the Rhetoric and Reality of Resubordination in Southern Africa and Beyond”, with Andrew Nash, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies at UCT
  Date: Thursday 14 May
  Venue: The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street, Cape Town

JOHANNESBURG

• Wits University Press and Constitution Hill, in association with the South African Association of Canadian Studies, are pleased to invite you to a panel discussion with Canadian activist academic John Saul: Recolonization and the Limits of Liberation in South Africa. The panel will be chaired by Denis Beckett and the panelists will include Constitutional Court Judge, Justice Albie Sachs; Devan Pillay, associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand; and researcher and writer Hein Marais
  Date: Saturday 16 May
  Venue: Women’s Jail, Constitutional Hill, 1 Kotze Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg

• Seminar at the University of Johannesburg: The Transition in South Africa: Rethinking the Beginnings of Recolonization. Convened by the Centre for Sociological Research with the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies
  Date: Monday 18 May
  Venue: Anthropology Seminar Room (D-Ring 506), on the Kingsway Campus (former RAU)