On the 28 February 2017 Dr Philden Ndlela, a lecturer in English Literature on the Mahikeng Campus of the North-West University (NWU), will be presenting a public lecture in commemoration of Black History Month at the Claflin University in South Carolina in the United States.

Black History Month, also known as African-American History Month in America, is an annual observance in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom for remembrance of important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. It is celebrated annually in the United States and Canada in February, and the United Kingdom in October.

Dr Ndlela is an Andrew Mellon visiting professor of Humanities at Claflin University where he is currently teaching African and African-American Heritage and Post-Colonial Theory and Cultural Studies.

His lecture topic is “He Brightened the Corner: Decolonial AC Jordan and the Quest for an Equitable Education System in Apartheid South Africa”.

AC Jordan became the first black academic to teach at what was then an exclusively white University of Cape Town. He was an activist and intellectual who was loud-spoken in the struggle against apartheid and their controversial Bantu Education policy. As a result of political pressure, he was forced to leave South Africa on an exit permit. He settled in America where he was appointed professor in African Languages and Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles and later moved, in similar capacity, to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He died in 1968 in Madison after a long illness.

Dr Ndlela joined the NWU in 2014 as senior lecturer in the Department of English. He teaches African American Literature and South African Literature with a focus on black writers.

He has previously worked at the University of Fort Hare, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, and the University of Zululand.

In 1992, while teaching at a high school in Ndantsane in the Eastern Cape, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship towards a Master’s degree in English Literature in New York.

He has presented his research internationally and has done a lot of postgraduate supervision.