The role of the public intellectual in higher education in South Africa: the socially engaged research scholarship of Lungisile Ntsebeza

Abstract

This article is based on the author’s reflections on the close research working relationship she was privileged to have with Lungisile Ntsebeza at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town between 2013 and 2022. Ntsebeza’s work shows what socially engaged research could look like at universities in Africa and what this could mean for helping organic revolutionary intellectuals to forge knowledge partnerships with the oppressed and exploited on pertinent issues of justice in post-colonial contexts. How could such methodologically engaged work help us to build more equal and democratic societies through unwavering scholarly rigour, which also involves doing the risky intellectual work in often messy, seemingly contradictory, and difficult everyday contexts? How could we bring marginalised historiographical knowledges to the centre, and why do they matter? Most admirable is Ntsebeza’s profound respect for the knowledge and insights offered by oppressed, unemployed, landless and exploited people of all backgrounds in difficult, conflictual but unavoidable dialogues. Ntsebeza sees all people, in the Gramscian sense, as ‘intellectuals’ who hold important and relevant ideas born out of everyday struggle. These ideas are sacrosanct, ‘organic to everyday life’, and ‘a collective and democratising force’ (Boggs 1979, 15).