The notion that societies mediate issues through certain kinds of engagement is at the heart of the democratic project and often centres on an imagined public sphere where this takes place. But this imagined foundation of how we live collectively appears to have suffered a dramatic collapse across the world in the digital age, with many democracies apparently unable to solve problems through talk - or even to agree on who speaks, in what ways and where. In this timely and erudite collection, writers from southern Africa combine theoretical analysis with the examination of historical cases and contemporary events to demonstrate that forms of publicness are multiple, mobile and varied.

Drawing primarily on insights and materials from Africa for their capacity to speak to global developments, the authors in this volume propose new concepts and methodologies to analyse how public engagements work in society. The contributions examine charged examples from the Global South, such as the centuries old Timbuktu archive, Nelson Mandela's powerful absent presence in 1960s public life, and the contemporary debates around the 2015/2016 student activism of #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall. These cases show how issues of public discussion circulate in unpredictable ways.

Babel Unbound will be of interest to anyone looking to find alternative ways of thinking about publicness in contemporary society in order to make better sense of the cacophony of conversations in circulation.

Edward Said described a public intellectual as someone who uses accessible language to address a designated public on matters of social and political significance. The essays in Public Intellectuals in South Africa apply this interpretive prism and activist principle to a South African context and tell the stories of well-known figures as well as some that have been mostly forgotten. They include Magema Fuze, John Dube, Aggrey Klaaste, Mewa Ramgobin and Koos Roets, alongside marginalised figures such as Elijah Makiwane, Mandisi Sindo, William Pretorius and Dr Thomas Duncan Greenlees. The essays capture the thoughts and opinions of these historical figures, who the contributors argue are public intellectuals who spoke out against the corruption of power, promoted a progressive politics that challenged the colonial project and its legacies, and encouraged a sustained dissent of the political status quo. Offering fascinating accounts of the life and work of these writers, critics and activists across a range of historical contexts and disciplines, from journalism and arts criticism to history and politics, it enriches the historical record of South African public intellectual life. This volume makes a significant contribution to ongoing debates about the value of research in the arts and humanities, and what constitutes public intellectualism in South Africa.

Coming fifteen years after South Africa's achievement of majority rule, this book takes a critical and searching look at the country's past. It presents South Africa's past in an objective, clear, and refreshing manner. With chapters contributed by ten of the best historians of the country, the book elaborately weaves together new data, interpretations, and perspectives on the South African past, from the Early Iron Age to the eve of the mineral revolution on the Rand. Its findings incorporate new sources, methods, and concepts, for example providing new data on the relations between Africans and colonial invaders and rethinking crucial issues of identity and consciousness. This book represents an important reassessment of all the major historical events, developments, and records of South Africa - written, oral, and archaeological - and will be an important new tool for students and professors of African history worldwide.

Refiguring the Archive at once expresses cutting-edge debates on `the archive' in South Africa and internationally, and pushes the boundaries of those debates. It brings together prominent thinkers from a range of disciplines, mainly South Africans but a number from other countries. Traditionally archives have been seen as preserving memory and as holding the past. The contributors to this book question this orthodoxy, unfolding the ways in which archives construct, sanctify, and bury pasts. In his contribution, Jacques Derrida (an instantly recognisable name in intellectual discourse worldwide) shows how remembering can never be separated from forgetting, and argues that the archive is about the future rather than the past. Collectively the contributors demonstrate the degree to which thinking about archives is embracing new realities and new possibilities. The book expresses a confidence in claiming for archival discourse previously unentered terrains. It serves as an early manual for a time that has already begun.

Refiguring the Archive at once expresses cutting-edge debates on the archive' in South Africa and internationally, and pushes the boundaries of those debates. It brings together prominent thinkers from a range of disciplines, mainly South Africans but a number from other countries. Traditionally archives have been seen as preserving memory and as holding the past. The contributors to this book question this orthodoxy, unfolding the ways in which archives construct, sanctify, and bury pasts. In his contribution, Jacques Derrida (an instantly recognisable name in intellectual discourse worldwide) shows how remembering can never be separated from forgetting, and argues that the archive is about the future rather than the past. Collectively the contributors demonstrate the degree to which thinking about archives is embracing new realities and new possibilities. The book expresses a confidence in claiming for archival discourse previously unentered terrains. It serves as an early manual for a time that has already begun.

Why does it matter that nations should care for their archives, and that they should develop a sense of shared identity? And why should these processes take place in the public domain? How can nations possibly speak about a shared sense of identity in pluralistic societies where individuals and groups have multiple identities? And how can such conversations be given relevance in public discussions of reconciliation and development in South Africa? These are the issues that the Public Conversations lecture series - an initiative of the Constitution of Public Intellectual Life Project at Wits University - proceeded from in 2006. Five years later, cross currents in contemporary South Africa have made the resumption of a public debate to clarify the meanings of identity and citizenship even more imperative, and an understanding of 'archive' even more urgent. The 2006 lectures were subsequently collected, resulting in this volume which takes its title from Weber's point, elaborated on in the chapter by Benedict Anderson, that the future asks us to be worthy ancestors to the yet unborn. The book, as did the lecture series, aims to reach a broad and informed reading public because the topic is still of pressing interest in contemporary public discourse. In a changed (and, some might say, degraded) environment of public dialogue, the editor hopes to inspire a re-thinking of the very essence of what it means to be a citizen of South Africa. Becoming Worthy Ancestors aims to make accessible the theoretically informed, sometimes highly academic work of its various contributors. With chapters from high profile international and local contributors, it will be of interest to South African and international audiences. Editing for publication has further enhanced the accessibility of each speaker's thinking without forfeiting any of its complexity, and the addition of an introductory chapter by the editor contributes to the coherence of the volume. While the target audience is the broad public, the book is based on a core of academic thinking and research.

The idea that the period of social turbulence in the nineteenth century was a consequence of the emergence of the powerful Zulu kingdom under Shaka has been written about extensively as a central episode of southern African history. Considerable dynamic debate has focused on the idea that this period – the ‘mfecane’- left much of the interior depopulated, thereby justifying white occupation. One view is that ‘the time of troubles’ owed more to the Delagoa Bay Slave trade and the demands of the labour-hungry Cape colonists than to Shaka’s empire building. But is there sufficient evidence to support the argument? The Mfecane Aftermath investigates the very nature of historical debate and examines the uncertain foundations of much of the previous historiography.

Coming fifteen years after South Africa's achievement of majority rule, this book takes a critical and searching look at the country's past. It presents South Africa's past in an objective, clear, and refreshing manner. With chapters contributed by ten of the best historians of the country, the book elaborately weaves together new data, interpretations, and perspectives on the South African past, from the Early Iron Age to the eve of the mineral revolution on the Rand. Its findings incorporate new sources, methods, and concepts, for example providing new data on the relations between Africans and colonial invaders and rethinking crucial issues of identity and consciousness. This book represents an important reassessment of all the major historical events, developments, and records of South Africa - written, oral, and archaeological - and will be an important new tool for students and professors of African history worldwide.

Since his assassination in 1828, King Shaka Zulu--founder of the powerful Zulu kingdom and leader of the army that nearly toppled British colonial rule in South Africa--has made his empire in popular imaginations throughout Africa and the West. Shaka is today the hero of Zulu nationalism, the centerpiece of Inkatha ideology, a demon of apartheid, the namesake of a South African theme park, even the subject of a major TV film.

"Terrific Majesty"explores the reasons for the potency of Shaka's image, examining the ways it has changed over time--from colonial legend, through Africanist idealization, to modern cultural icon. This study suggests that "tradition" cannot be freely invented, either by European observers who recorded it or by subsequent African ideologues. There are particular historical limits and constraints that operate on the activities of invention and imagination and give the various images of Shaka their power. These insights are illustrated with subtlety and authority in a series of highly original analyses.

"Terrific Majesty" is an exceptional work whose special contribution lies in the methodological lessons it delivers; above all its sophisticated rehabilitation of colonial sources for the precolonial period, through the demonstration that colonial texts were critically shaped by indigenous African discourse. With its sensitivity to recent critical studies, the book will also have a wider resonance in the fields of history, anthropology, cultural studies, and post-colonial literature.