A visiting community critical psychologist with an international reputation will deliver a public lecture at Charles Sturt University (CSU) at Bathurst on Thursday 30 July that examines ‘Why the wretched of the earth kill’. Professor Mohamed Seedat, from the University of South Africa, is a guest of the CSU School of Social Sciences and Liberal Studies. His lecture will critically examine the viability of explanations for violence such as that in South Africa in May 2008 that primarily targeted foreign nationals and resulted in 69 deaths, thousand of displaced people, and untold psycho-social trauma. “Most prominent among these explanations is the idea that xenophobic violence arises from the interplay of various socio-economic issues - poverty, inequality, joblessness and poor delivery of municipal services,” Professor Seedat said. “In particular, I will examine explanations which have their roots in anti-colonial theory and scholarship focused on understanding the reality and the life-worlds of the colonized. I will argue that while such explanations offer a degree of systemic understanding, they do not explain sufficiently why the ‘wretched of the earth’ - the poor, downtrodden and oppressed - kill their own.”