Prof Issa G. Shivji ou seja quem e o homem ue o IESE convidou para abrir a sua 2a Conferenicia Anual?

Issa Shivji is one of Africa's leading experts on law and development issues. He has a boundless commitment to an Africanist ideal of proper social, political and economic emancipation for its entire people.

His books, The Silent Class Struggle, published in 1972, and then more significantly Class Struggles in Tanzania, were compulsory readings for all students keen to understand the continent from an African perspective.

Shivji has influenced at least three generations of African intellectuals. Even South African scholars, normally cut off by the academic boycott, could not ignore his analyses on a wide variety of topics, from the concept of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, to the role of education and culture, to human rights, to the nature of the post-colonial state, to the land question, law and constitutionalism, democracy, development, nationalism and so on.

He was a scholar when progressive thinkers across the world converged on the University of Dar es Salaam to try to map out a future for a young independent country emerging from many years of colonial rule. The famous Dar debates undoubtedly form a central feature of the historiography of African Studies. Shivji has written very eloquently about this period in his book, Intellectuals at the Hill.

Shivji brings an engaging radicalism to African Scholarship. His work is sophisticated, original, theoretically informed and empirically rich. His arguments carry a deep appreciation of the destructive effects of particular policies on African people. He has published 18 books, many of them of groundbreaking significance to our scholarship.

Amongst his seminal works is the book The Concept of Human Rights in Africa which is an attack on the dominant narrowly focussed rights-based discourse. In his most recent book published last year entitled Pan-Africanism or Pragmatism: Lessons of the Tanganyika Zanzibar Union, Shivji shows that he has lost none of his intellectual powers. A very influential recent book is his Let the People Speak: Tanzania Down the Road to Neo-Liberalism, a collection of 90 short essays by Shivji at his best as a public intellectual.

Shivji is not only a renowned African legal and social science scholar, he has played a crucial institutional role as well. He was a founder member of CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) in 1973. He has held many posts as editor of various journals and newsletters and he has been involved in a wide variety of important consultancies, most notably, he was the chairperson of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters in Tanzania.

Shivji served the University of Dar es Salaam for almost 40 years starting as a tutor in 1970 and developing into a Professor of Constitutional Law. He retired in 2006, but was appointed again last year to the distinguished Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Research Chair in Pan African Studies at the same university. He has also served as an Advocate of the High Court and the Court of Appeal in Tanzania since 1977 and Advocate of the High Court of Zanzibar since 1989.

His work is essentially characterised by a multi-disciplinary approach. He knows the history of our continent, he understands its sociology and its politics and he is a keen interpreter of its economics and law. His work is epitomised by a normative concern that his scholarly contribution is used for the benefit of the masses.

Issued by Rhodes University - Communications and Development Division