Simukai Chigudu grew up in the newly independent Zimbabwe, ending up at the elite university Oxford, where he regularly had to pass the statue of Cecil Rhodes, the man who colonized his home country. Eventually, he becomes a leading figure in the movement «Rhodes Must Fall Oxford», which aims to tear down the colonial statues and decolonize the university.
Growing up in Zimbabwe, sports were still divided into «black» and «white» sports, and at school, the children were taught the Queen’s English. There was a growing gap between the world at school and the one outside, with an emotionally absent father struggling with the after-effects of fighting in the liberation war, and a president Mugabe portraying a very different Zimbabwe from the one Chigudu met at school.
In his memoir Chasing Freedom, Chigudu describes his journey from childhood in Zimbabwe to adulthood in England, in a story that moves between the personal and the political of Zimbabwe’s young history. Today, Chigudu is an associate professor of African politics at the University of Oxford, where his research includes health policies, racism and activism.
Author and journalist Nazneen Khan-Østrem has also portrayed the after-effects of colonialism in individuals and societies in her book Det britiske imperiet. En familiefortelling fra Mombasa, Nairobi, Lahore og London («The British Empire. A Family Story from Mombasa, Nairobi, Lahore and London»). She will join Chigudu for a conversation about how the violence of the past still shape the families and nations of today.
The conversation will be in English.
The event is a collaboration with the Centre for Global Sustainability at the University of Oslo, and supported by NORAD.
