Hlonipha Mokoena

Hlonipha Mokoena is a South African historian at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research of the University of the Witwatersrand. She is a specialist in South African intellectual history. She formerly worked in the anthropology department at Columbia University. She received her PhD from the University of Cape Town in 2005.

Quotes

• Can I touch your hair? Where are you from? I cannot do anything with your hair unless I texturise it!
• We don’t have anything to do with it, it’s dramatic, it doesn’t ‘flow
• People don’t know how much money is made in telling black women that they need straight hair
• If black people are not trained to care for their hair, then who?
  • Hlonipha Mokoena at a seminar speaking about black woman hair
• We should want to cultivate our minds and intellect because we think that it makes us better human beings, especially that it enhances our ethical sensibility.
• An education that is devoid of ethics is empty and meaningless and will produce smart but reckless human beings.
• The benefits to society of having an intelligent and articulate citizenry are priceless; they cannot be measured in terms of GDP per capita or literacy rates or productivity
• We need to start the conversation at primary school level. At the core of an academic mind is curiosity, and curiosity cannot be taught - it can only be nurtured.
• Children are naturally curious and I would argue that our education system destroys this curiosity and replaces it with anxiety about performance
• Learning should be a joyous experience.
  • Hlonipha Mokoena speaking about boosting academics in South Africa