2021/10/02 by Mohamed Seedat, Shahnaaz Suffla, Sabelo J. Ndlovu‐Gatsheni · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #African cultural and philosophical studies #Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies #South African History and Culture
paper · doi:10.1080/00020184.2021.2012754
openalex publication_date 2021/10/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
We offer a critical reading of Thabo Mbeki’s ‘I am an African’ speech to illustrate how he foregrounded humaning, namely onto-epistemological recovery, as a key dimension of psycho-political reconstruction. Mbeki’s speech, delivered on the occasion of the adoption of South Africa’s democratic Constitution, was inherent to the larger quest to (re)imagine South Africa and (South)Africanness and assert independent Black intellectual thought. Positioning himself as an epistemic agent, Mbeki historicised that moment of adopting the Constitution and attempted to raise critical consciousness about the protracted struggle for democracy. He mobilised marginalised knowledge about the anti-colonial struggle to challenge forgetfulness and limited interpretations of South Africa’s negotiated settlement. Mbeki also invoked the idea of a relational ontology and hermeneutic love to effect an inclusive Africanity constituted of multiple histories and ‘races’. Mbeki, resisting Afro-pessimism, referenced the making of an inclusive Africanity against Africa as a generative place despite the colonial encounter, African humanism and South Africa’s aspirations for reconciliation as articulated by the ANC and the Constitution. Notwithstanding the psycho-political import of Mbeki’s speech, the process of humaning remains incomplete.