Summary
of Major Activities:
The Institute convened a conference
on "The Future of the Horn of Africa: Human Rights, Social
Justice, and Refugees" in August . The Keynote Speaker was
The Hon Philip Ruddock, Minister of Immigration. The Conference
was featured on SBS-TV news. (See
details of the conference, below)
During 1996, Professor Chanock carried forward work on legal
transition in South Africa. He visited South Africa maintaining
continuing contacts with officials and lawyers in the Department
of Land Affairs.
Dr Nicola Stern continued here archaeological
research at the 'Blue tuff' site in Kenya. See
details of "Blue tuff' project, below.
The Institute staff continued to provide briefings on African
affairs and information to various officials and agencies, including:
The Joint Services Staff College, Canberra,
as part of a regular twice-yearly briefing for senior officers,
Army, Navy and Air Force, from Australia, New Zealand, various
nations of the Pacific, Southeast Asia and South Asia, as well
as officers from Britain and the United States.
Refugee Review Tribunal and Legal Advisory Services
and various Non-Government Agencies, including the Overseas Service
Bureau, Community Aid Abroad, World Vision and the Australian
Council for Overseas Aid.
The Institute worked with Mr Moses Adepoju
of the Graduate School of Social Work in his successful submission
for research fund from the Bureau of immigration, Multicultural
and Population Research on "The Settlement Experiences and
needs of Black African Settlers in Australia". Dr Dorward
was appointed a member of the project steering committee.
The Institute continues to serve as the Secretariat for the African
Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific (AFSAAP),
the principal regional professional association concerned with
African studies.
Horn of Africa Conference
A conference on "The Future of
the Horn of Africa: Human Rights, Social Justice, and Refugees"
was held in August . The Keynote Speaker was The Hon Philip Ruddock,
Minister of Immigration. Other speakers included:
Dr David Dorward- The Future of the
Horn of Africa: Political Economy and International Relations
Ahmed Nuur- Somalia : Human Rights
Abuse, Social Justice and Refugee Problems
Mohammed Ismail-Ogaden in the context
of the Future
Kath McKay, Vice-President, Amnesty
International (Victoria)- On-going Human Rights Abuse in the
Horn
Ali Shangali- The Plight of the Oromo
Ms Harmine Partamian (Co-ordinator Refugee
& Migrant Service, National Council of Churches)-Social
Justice, Human Rights and Women of the Horn
Documentation
of African Artefacts in the Antipodes
Dorward was involved in identification,
selection and preparation of a major report a large and valuable
collection of African artefacts from the Christensen Fund subsequently
deposited on loan with the Museum of Victoria.
He also commewnced research on the London Collection of African
artefacts belonging to the Faculty of Humanities of the Australian
National University. Arthur London was chief agent of Swanzy's
& Co., one of the leading cocoa buyers in the Gold Coast.
He opened the Company's Kumasi office shortly after the final
Asante uprising and died in Kumasi in 1920. As part of his on-going
research, Dr Dorward visited the African Studies Centre at the
University of Cambridge to consult the papers of Arthur London.
As a result of negotiations in Cambridge, the London papers are
to be loaned to the African Research Institute, and eventually
reunited with the artefact collection at ANU.
Dr Dorward continues to serve as Consultant on African art for
the Museum of Victoria, and as a valuer of African art and artefacts
under the Tax Incentive Scheme for the Arts.
The 'Blue Tuff' archaeological project,
Kenya
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Nicola Stern continued her research
at the 'Blue tuff' site in kenya. 'Blue tuff' is the informal
name given to a sedementary horizon in the Koobi Fora Formation
in northern Kenya that contains traces of activities of early
African Home erectus.
Home erectus
was the first human ancestor to move out of Africa. This site
dates from about 1.47 +/- 0.01 million years ago, immediately
pre-dating the expansion of its biogeographic range. The chipped
stone tools and broken upanimal bones, and the sediments in which
they are found, are being studied in an attempt to ascertain
shifts in behaviour and ecology that allowed this tropical primate
to colonise the temperate Eurasia.
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The 'Blue tuff' locality in unusual
for a site of this age, preserving as it does, a continuous strip
of outcrops over more than half a kilometre that provide a window
into a well-defined ancient landscape. The 'blue' tuff helps
us to identify the features of that ancient landscape that has
been preserved: a westerly flowing sandy stream, a mid-channel
sand-bar, the southern bank of the channel, its leeve and parts
of the adjacent floorplain.
A variable density scatter of archaeological
material is scattered along the levee bank adjacent tp the southern
bank of this sandy channel. Excavations completed have focused
on a dense cluster of stones and bonesin one part of the levee.
Future excavations will sample archaeological materials from
other landscape settings.
Media
Members of the Institute continued to
provide expertise to the media a range of subjects relating to
African affairs, including commentary during 1996 on Nigerian
human rights, the civil war in Liberia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania,
Burundi, South Africa and the Zaire to various ABC stations,
including Phillip Adams on late Night Live, Radio Australia,
Radio New Zealand, various other commercial and community stations,
as well as on ABC-TV "Foreign Correspondent" with George
Negus.
Distinguished
Visitors
H.E., John Trotter, Australian High
Commissioner (Designate) to Kenya, non-resident accreditation
to Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania, and Uganda, and responsible for
Burundi, Djibouti, Rwanda, Somalia and Southern Sudan.
H.E., Mr Isaya Bakari Chialo, High Commissioner for Tanzania
Mam Lydia Kompe-Ngwenya, head of the Women's Caucus, South African
Parliament.
H.E., Naudé Steyn, South African High Commissioner to
Australia
H.E., Mr Addis Alem Balema, Ethiopian Ambassador to Australia,
resident in Beijing
Mr Charles Musekura, Honorary Consul for Uganda.
Prof Johann Kinghorn, Director of Policy Studies, University
of Stellenbosch
Prof Tony Hawkins, Director of Business Studies, University of
Zimbabwe
Greg LaChapelle, a noted American specialist in African art
Associate Membership
Professor Philip Darby of the Politics
Department at the University of Melbourne was granted Associate
Membership of the Institute during 1996, while on sabbatical.
Dr Darby has been actively engaged in post-colonial studies with
relationship to Africa for a number of years.
Dr Elizabeth Dimock, who received her doctorate from La Trobe
University in 1995, continued her association with the Institute,
both through her African research and as an officer of the African
Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific.
Affiliate Member:
Kivubiru Tabawebbula, an Australian
citizen, was in Uganda during most of the year engaged in research
on Baganda material culture. Kivubiru has worked for many years
in the South Australia Museum, is a postgraduate student at Flinders
University, and is currently joint supervised by Dr Dorward.
Donations
to the Institute
The Institute wishes to express its
gratitude to the Christensen Fund for its generous donation of
publications on African art and to Dr David Lucas for donations
of publications on African development.
The Christensen Fund has also placed a number of Cameroonean
and Congolese artefacts on long term loan to the University,
as well as donating a major piece of Shona contemporary stone
sculpture, Young Girl by Bernard Matemera.
Young Girl by Bernard Matemera
Born in Zimbabwe in 1949, Matemera joined
the Tengenenge art community in 1966. His highly original work
is charged with the pleasures of the flesh. The huge naked figure
of Young Girl , with its rounded buttocks and bulging
form, is characteristic of Matemera's preoccupation with sexuality
as a spiritual force. As Celia Winter-Irving noted in her Contemporary
Stone Sculpture in Zimbabwe, "Matemera deals in pleasures
of the flesh. To him sexuality means a healthy appetite, to be
nourished with opportunity and spiced with variety. His sculpture
speak in a highly suggestive body language... We are asked to
reshape our notions of beauty... to enter a world of... games
of the flesh and ... lust".
Young Girl
is currently on display in the main entry of the University's
administration wing in the David Myer Building.
Outside
Lectures, Seminar and Conference papers presented by Members
of the Institute outside La Trobe University:
M. Chanock, 'Contract and coercion:
master and servant law in South Africa', Conference on Law
of Master and Servant in the British Empire, York University,
Toronto.
D. Dorward, "Material Culture and the Construction of `the
Other'; Museums in late nineteenth century Australia and New
Zealand" , Australasia Victorian Studies Association
Conference in Adelaide in February, subsequently published
in Australasian Victorian Studies Journal
D. Dorward, "Major Tunbridge's Boer War Album: Glimpses
of Empire and Erotica" , Annual Conference of the African
Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific, Adelaide
in September. The latter paper has been accepted for publication.
D. Dorward, "Africa and development in the 21st century"(keynote
address) New Zealand African Relations: Mapping the Road Ahead",
August, sponsored by the African Information Centre and the New
Zealand Department of Foreign Affairs
D. Dorward, "Australian aid to Africa" at the Aid
Forum: Reviewing Australian Aid: What future?", sponsored
by the National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National
University
D. Dorward, "The Legacy of Apartheid South Africa"
, Australian Institute of International Affairs (Victoria) ,
co-sponsored by the the Australia-Southern Africa Business Council
D. Dorward, "Keep it simple, Keep it short': Images of Africa
in the Australian media", No Longer Black and White:
The Media, Ethnic and Racial Conflict, organised by the International
Centre for Conflict Resolution and the Victorian Multicultural
Commission.
E. Dimock,"The silence of African Women? A 1931 Protest
of Christian Women in Uganda" , Annual Conference of
the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific,
at Adelaide
Publications:
M. Chanock, 'Reconstructing South African
Law: legal culture and legal formalism in a new state', in P.Rich
ed, Reconstucting South Africa London: Macmillan, 1996.
M. Chanock, 'Making and unmaking a segregated
land regime', in S.Arnfred ed, Legal Change in North South
Perspective, Sweden:Roskilde,1996.
D. Dorward, "Material Culture and
the Construction of `the Other'; Museums in late nineteenth century
Australia and New Zealand", Australasian Victorian Studies
Journal, II (1996), 100- 114.
D. Dorward, , African entries, SBS World Guide, 5th Edition
(Melbourne: Reed Reference, 1996)
D. Dorward, , "Africa and development in the 21st century',
Development Bulletin 37 (April 1996), 4-7.
D. Dorward, , ` Helping the Poor. What about Africa ?', Reviewing
Australian Aid: Perspectives on development assistance in a changing
world (Canberra: Australian Development Studies Network,
1996).
S. Thomas, "Reading African Women", Australian Women's
Book Review VIII 2 (June 1996), 11-13.
Other
Related Activities by Members of the Institute:
Dr Sue Thomas is Vice-President of the
African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific. Dr
Dimock served as Secretary-Treasurer of the African Studies Association
of Australasia and the Pacific.
Dr. Nicola Stern was engaged in analysis of data from her 1995
field research in Kenya on the behaviour of early African homo-erectus.
Kivubiru Tabawebbula was in Uganda during most of the year engaged
in research on Baganda material culture.
Dr Dorward was invited onto the board of advisers of a documentary
film on the international anti-apartheid solidarity movement
to be produced Clarity Films in San Francisco, USA. He also serves
as a Consultant to the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA),
as consultant on African art to the Museum of Victoria and as
valuer of African art and artefacts under the Commonwealth taxation
incentive scheme for the arts.
In November and December, Dr Dorward visited Eritrea and Ethiopia
to explore possible links between La Trobe University and the
University of Asmara and other tertiary institutions.
