02-07-2025
UJ confers celebrated writer Margaret Busby with honorary doctorate
The University of Johannesburg (UJ) has conferred an honorary doctorate on Margaret Busby, recognising her trailblazing role as Africa's first black woman publisher and her decades-long contributions to global literature.
UJ is the first university on the continent to bestow this honour on Busby, whose extraordinary career has shaped the landscape of pan-African letters, elevated marginalised voices and archived a wealth of intellectual heritage across Africa and its diaspora.
After the ceremony, the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), hosted a celebratory lunch in Busby's honour and brought together leading thinkers, creatives, and cultural stewards. Among the guests were JIAS fellow and former South African ambassador to France and the US Barbara Masekela, ambassador Nozipho January-Bardill, writer and activist Elinor Sisulu, Brand Leadership founder Thebe Ikalafeng, acclaimed author Sue Nyathi, poet and short-story writer Makhosazana Xaba, former South African first lady Zanele Dlamini Mbeki, and broadcaster and producer Brenda Sisane and Kgomotso Matsunyane.
Speaking at the event, Prof Victoria Collis-Buthelezi, director of JIAS, reflected on Busby's towering legacy. 'I want to humbly say a few words about Dr Busby and what she means to the world of letters,' Collis-Buthelezi began. 'Had Dr Busby only ever published Daughters of Africa, her 1992 collection of some 200 women from across Africa and its diaspora, she would have done more than enough to be recognised as one of the most significant figures in pan-African letters.'
An unparalleled chorus of voices from different genres, centuries and regions came together in that historic anthology. Daughters of Africa was woven together in a tapestry of survival, art and intellectual resistance, from the traditional poetry of anonymous African girls celebrating the customs of girlhood to the rebellious poetry of enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley and Sojourner Truth's well-known rhetorical question Ain't I a Woman? In addition, Busby's collection featured the lyrical reflections of Ellen Kuzwayo and Noni Jabavu, the proto-Afrofuturist fiction of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, the scathing character-driven stories of Adelaide Casely-Hayford, and the slave narratives of Mary Prince and Harriet Jacobs.
