Bengi Rwabuhemba

Bengi Rwabuhemba is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests concern the politics of liberation in “postcolonial” Africa. She situates her work in the post-independence era and analyses how liberation has been conceived and enacted across African nation-states and the consequences this has had for indigenous peoples and their lifeways. Her prizewinning undergraduate thesis, “Indigenous Postcoloniality: Asserting Being in the Wake of Historical Disavowal”, examined how indigenous communities in Cape Town are resisting state-endorsed economic development schemes that endanger their lifeways by foregrounding their ontologies that are systematically silenced in postcolonial South Africa. At Oxford, she intends to continue interrogating the extant tension between postcoloniality and indigeneity by conducting a critical review of these theoretical frameworks and how they have been operationalized in African liberation struggles. A creative writer, community gatherer, and experienced facilitator, Bengi is passionate about decolonizing education, the visual arts, and can be found sitting under a tree with a book in hand.