Sebabatso C. Manoeli-Lesame

South Africa

Sebabatso is Moya's editor-in-chief. At AFRE, Sebabatso provides strategic and institutional oversight of AFRE to achieve its vision, mission and goals and supports the team to build a powerful and effective programme. Sebabatso is drawn to Moya's vision of offering snapshots of the global Black experience, and its potential to expand and complicate how we talk about being Black. She is inspired by Moya's aim to be a space for dreaming about and shaping the future, of re-examining the past, and surfacing the multiple realities Black people inhabit in the present. Prior to AFRE, Sebabatso worked in the History and African Studies departments at the University of Oxford; at DGMT, a private philanthropic foundation in Cape Town; and as a consultant for the Department of Political Affairs at the African Union. In her spare time, she enjoys writing, baking, and spending time with family.

Contributions

Feature

Cosmopolitan Africans, Before ColonialismCosmopolitan Africans, Before Colonialism

Have African relations with the wider (often whiter) world always been marked by subordination? Sebabatso C. Manoeli-Lesame and Christopher L. Brown uncover unexpected episodes in Africa’s past, prior to colonialism, in which African elites related with the world as cosmopolitans. They argue that histories of un-colonial power relations have the potential to unlock new decolonial ways of imagining the future.

By Christopher L. Brown and Sebabatso C. Manoeli-Lesame

Race Beyond Borders

Proximal Blackness: Race Beyond Borders Season 2 FinaleProximal Blackness: Race Beyond Borders Season 2 Finale

In the Season 2 finale of Race Beyond Borders, outgoing host Sebabatso Manoeli-Lesame and incoming host Nigel Richard reflect on some of the critical questions raised this season. This lively conversation, which at times feels like a dance, invites listeners to look back on the season’s sonic safari that was launched in Italy, where Black Italians grapple with what to call themselves, and landed in Oceania, where liberation struggles actively engaged with Black internationalism in their battles against European colonial rule.

Feature

Towards Planetary BlacknessTowards Planetary Blackness

Moya is rooted in the belief that we cannot inhabit realties we have not first encountered in our minds, Expanding imaginations is therefore central to the work of liberation, writes editor-in-chief Sebabatso C. Manoeli.

By Sebabatso C. Manoeli-Lesame

South Africa