Presentation by Sanele Ntshingana, Mandela Fellow of the Hutchins Center, at the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Weekly Colloquium Series.

Ntshingana’s project traces how isiXhosa-speaking intellectuals, thinkers, and activists from 1838 to 1938 conceptualized political authority using vernacular concepts such as umbuso and umthetho during a period of intense social and political transformation in South Africa. It brings renewed attention to figures often dismissed as mere “informants” or “colonial collaborators,” such as Gciniswa Noyi and William Kekale Kaye, and reinterprets more widely recognized thinkers like Tiyo Soga, William Wellington Gqoba, and John Tengo Jabavu—not just as Christian leaders but as significant political theorists. Ntshingana analyzes both their ideas and the ontological frameworks shaping their discourse, while also examining how these notions of authority have been reframed by later historians, translators, and scholars. This multilayered inquiry contributes to African political theory and epistemic decolonization by foregrounding African intellectual traditions in their own terms.

Sponsored by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.