Zandile Dywati

Introverted, Studious, Curious she/her

Zandile Joy Dywati, is a PhD Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest at Stellenbosch University. Her work is embodied through critical engagement with the question of race/racialization/ and racism and its intersection to gendered subjectivities, particularly masculinities studies in Africa. She aspires to contribute to the Study of African Masculinities beyond the essentialist “gendered power fight,” but through possibilities of humanizing black African masculinities. Zandile is also interested in the existential question of blackness in township, which her PhD is centered on. In her side ‘quests’ she is implicated in the work of decolonizing childhood studies and particularly the Euro-Western narrativization on black and African childhoods. She is also a firm believer in the power of education in correcting some of the ontoepistemic challenges that plague blackness and Africanness. Aside from the thinking human she is, Zandile delights in and treasures her pursuit of ‘Truth’ through Jesus Christ.

Favorite quote: "I was here.” It helps posture my presence and existence as not absent but in the moment.