“Memory, the Guardian of all Things”: Ntongela Masilela and the Project of Re- membering

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is a contribution to the commemorative special issue of Critical Arts, which is dedicated to the memory of Ntongela Masilela, who passed away on 6 July 2020. Masilela was a world-renowned South African intellectual, archivist, historian and Marxist scholar. His fame is predicated on the magnificent archival work he undertook in the excavation of the “New Negro” scholarly class and the relationships forged between them and Black South African intellectuals from 1862 to around 1960. Through this sustained study of the black intellectual tributaries, he evolved a bigger river of the “New African Movement” in which he posited the centrality of South African black modernity and its twin aims, freedom and liberation from oppressive and racist rule. In this sense, he proved that the ideas of modernity, freedom and liberation are intertwined with the work done by the Pan-Africanist Movement and its historical mission of colonised African states, with a particular emphasis on South Africa. He has made seminal and lasting contribution to South African scholarship by showing that the ideas of liberation had a long gestation and refinement as the New-African Intellectuals struggled to domesticate them to local conditions.