African intellectuals in 19th and early 20th century South Africa

Abstract

An introduction to the lives and works of five exceptional African intellectuals based in the former Cape Colony in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this unique work aims to recount and preserve a part of African intellectual heritage which is not widely known. Ntsikana, Tiyo Soga, John Tengo Jabavu, Mpilo Walter Benson Rubusana and Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi were pioneers within the African community, contributing their thoughts and intellect to various fields, including literature and poetry, politics, religion and journalism.

Accounts of Cape frontier history tends to be exclusively about wars, and present the modernisation of South African society, with Africans as subjects of the process, and the settlers as the main agents of change. This modest intervention, intended to close this gap, focuses on the pioneering role played by the early African thinkers as co-architects of South African modernity.

The authors, specialists in heritage, history and literature, hope that readers will find inspiration to continue in the tradition of intellectual activity that has always been the hallmark of African communities.