This assignment by the Africa Institute of South Africa to write a launching memorial lecture of the Archie Mafeje memorial lecture series is of significance inasmuch as it is aimed at not only commemorating Archie's academic and intellectual contributions to scholarship and Pan-African struggles, but also as an occasion on which we can reflect on the African people's journey for emancipation in the search for African self-understanding and transformation. Therefore, in recognising the academic and intellectual contribution of Archie Mafeje and his political role in trying to change that perception of 'the other', we are also celebrating the contribution of African people in their struggle for identity, self-knowledge, self-control and self-emancipation. This struggle in the field of knowledge still continues, until Africa and humanity as a whole are fully emancipated from the remnants of Eurocentricism and western intellectual dominance, against which Archie Mafeje fought so much. In so doing, this inaugural lecture will identify key issues affecting the theoretical and practical state of the social sciences and the humanities, inasmuch as Mafeje tried to see them both at the level of academia as well as the level of political activism in his search for a political power base that would bring about African self-determination.