A/Prof Daniela Gachago

I have met with colleagues from UWC and UCT for some years now to talk, think and write together (and drink lots of coffee in between). For a long time this has been a space of respite and comfort - away from the tensions and conflicts at work. Started during student protest time, it has moved us into coffeeshop spaces, re-appropriating coffeeshops across the Southern Suburbs as spaces for reflection and engagement. I appreciated the honesty and vulnerability we committed ourselves to, in our sharing and writing. Writing for pleasure. Writing without a deadline, without a purpose. Writing together. But as academics do, eventually deadlines, products, purposes crept in, conference were attended, papers written. This video, created by my amazing colleague Niki Romano, is one product of our writing, which we will share at HECU this morning. Its bittersweet to watch it. Its a beautiful piece of art, affecting and affected, it takes me back to good times, but it also did something to us. C

It's one week since the Decolonial Transformation Workshop finished at the University of Sussex. It was a beautiful, inspiring, intense, thought provoking, emotional space. First and foremost it was an unapologetically black space. A space for people of colour to share their experiences. As white participants we were welcome but it was clear that in that space we were visitors / observers. And it was absolutely fine. I was grateful to be allowed in, to be given the opportunity to listen and learn. There were two main questions that came up for me from the workshop. The first one is : How do you unlearn something you don't know you have? And the second one is about complicity and culpability. Why is it that the closer racism comes to home the more difficult it is to address? To make it more clear, I need to tell some stories. On one of the workshop days I was introduced to a woman of colour. She had beautiful grey dreadlocks, I thought she looked just like Toni Morri