LARC hosted launch for Dr. uMbuso weNkosi's "These potatoes look like humans."

On Wednesday the 28th of August 2024 LARC hosted a book launch for Dr. uMbuso weNkosi's work entitled "These potatoes look like humans" at the Centre for African Studies Gallery. Sthandiwe Yeni, an independent researcher and PhD candidate at the Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), was in conversation with uMbuso regarding the book and other land-related issues faced by South Africa. The book critiques the narrow materialist and legalistic arguments about the land question to recognise that, for most Black South Africans, the meanings of land and dispossession are linked with spirituality and being. It offers a unique understanding of the intersection between land, labour, dispossession, and violence experienced by Black South Africans from the apartheid period to the present. In this ground-breaking book, uMbuso weNkosi criticises the historical framing of this debate within narrow materialist and legalistic arguments. He asserts that, for most Black South Africans, the meaning of land cannot be separated from one’s spiritual and ancestral connection to it, which causes him to view land dispossession in South Africa from a perspective that hasn't been thoroughly examined. The event drew more than 80 students across faculties from UCT and other Western Cape universities, including journalists, rural activists, and prominent figures such the first appointed Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs, who attended the event.