The African Renaissance Conference, Twenty-One Years Later: A Critical Reflection

Abstract

On September 28 and 29, 1998, four years after the first democratic elections in South Africa which brought about the Government of National Unity (GNU) headed by Nelson Mandela, then president of the African National Congress (ANC) and the first African president in a post-apartheid South Africa, a conference dedicated to the African Renaissance was held at the Karos Indaba Hotel in Johannesburg. In 2019, twenty-one years after the convening of the African Renaissance conference, the vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa (Unisa), Prof. Mandla Makhanya, invited the author to his institution to reflect on the historic event. This reflection was a contribution to Prof. Makhanya's African Intellectuals Project (AIP), a platform provided by him to African intellectuals to reflect on the challenges that continue to confront Africans on the continent, and to suggest possible solutions. Prof. Makhanya saw fit that as one of convenors of the African Renaissance conference, the other two being Thaninga Shope and Thami Mazwai, I should reflect on the successes and failures of the African Renaissance project. In this article I reflect on the journey of the African Renaissance project, twenty-one years after the historical African Renaissance conference.