UCT urged to embed the legacy of black intellectual pioneers beyond symbolic recognition

The University of Cape Town (UCT) must move beyond commemorating black intellectual pioneers through named buildings and institutional tributes and engage seriously with their scholarship if it is to transform its intellectual culture, Emeritus Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza has argued. 

Delivering the annual AC Jordan Public Lecture, Emeritus Professor Ntsebeza called for closer examination of the courses Jordan taught while at UCT between the 40s and 60s; and how he negotiated the curriculum he encountered at UCT. Drawing on his own experience of joining the university’s Sociology department in 2004, he questioned whether black academics were expected simply to teach within existing academic structures or whether they could reshape what was taught. 

Black scholars associated with UCT, including Jordan, Archie Mafeje and Neville Alexander, should go beyond symbolic recognition through buildings, rooms and exhibitions, he argued. “They are intellectuals in their own right,” he said, arguing that studying them as engaged scholars could offer lessons for transforming education. 

Ntsebeza also challenged the university to reflect on what it means for an institution on African soil to belong to the people of Africa. Drawing on the life and work of Jordan – the pioneering isiXhosa scholar and novelist – he examined the political circumstances that shaped Jordan’s arrival at UCT, his eventual departure and the university’s troubled history with black academics. 

Focusing on the latter part of Jordan’s famous declaration – that he was going to UCT “to open that door and keep it ajar, so that our people too can come in” and that “UCT on African soil belongs to us too” – Ntsebeza asked what Jordan meant by “our people”, what it means for the university to belong to them, and what happens when black people enter an institution historically shaped by their exclusion. 

Opening the event, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Professor Shose Kessi, said Jordan’s pioneering contribution continued to inform debates about blackness and belonging at UCT. She drew parallels between the questions Jordan raised in the 1940s and those brought to the fore by the student movements of 2015 and 2016. 

Professor Kessi also highlighted progress in implementing the UCT Language Policy, curriculum change and the renaming of buildings, including the Arts Block as the AC Jordan Building. However, she cautioned that being situated on African soil was not in itself enough to make UCT an African university. 
 

Understanding Jordan’s political convictions 

Ntsebeza recalled that Jordan joined UCT in 1946 after years of teaching at primary and secondary schools, taking up a lectureship in what was then called Bantu Languages. His move from the University of Fort Hare, a predominantly black institution, to a white-dominated university needed to be understood in the context of his political convictions. 

Ntsebeza traced Jordan’s involvement in organised teacher politics, including his leadership in the Orange Free State African Teachers’ Association and later the Cape African Teachers’ Association. The latter was affiliated with the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), established in 1943. 

“Another area of research which should be done about black scholars in particular and UCT is how they are treated once they are incorporated in UCT.”  

The movement’s Ten-Point Programme called for democratic rights and equal access to education. It advocated compulsory, free and uniform state-supported education for all children, as well as equal educational rights for black children. 

For Ntsebeza, Jordan’s decision to join UCT could be understood as putting these political principles into practice: challenging the racial exclusion that denied black people access to educational opportunities available to white people. 

He said NEUM’s politics were also significant because of its opposition to tribalism, segregation and Eurocentrism, and its commitment to a non-racial society. He argued that understanding Jordan’s political affiliations offered a fuller picture of the intellectual and political traditions that informed his work. 

Why Jordan left UCT 

Jordan worked at UCT for about 16 years, completed his PhD in 1956, and served briefly as acting head of his department. He was also part of the School of African Studies, which brought together several departments. 

But his departure in 1962 raised questions about how the university treated and supported black academics at the time. 

Ntsebeza referred to Jordan’s resignation letter, dated 22 March 1962, in which he said that, given the circumstances surrounding his departure, it would not be advisable for him to return to South Africa after his study leave abroad. 

Researching UCT’s archival records, Ntsebeza found that Jordan had been arrested and assaulted while travelling to the university in 1960, in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre. He said Jordan’s correspondence suggested that he was deeply unhappy with the university’s response and felt that he had been left to face the situation on his own. 

Emeritus Prof Lungisile Ntsebeza’s talk sparked a debate about transformation at previously white institutions like UCT.  

“He [Jordan] was not happy by the way UCT was supporting him. He felt that he was left on his own,” he said. 

Ntsebeza said this aspect of Jordan’s experience deserved further research, particularly regarding how black scholars were treated within historically white institutions. 

“Another area of research which should be done about black scholars in particular and UCT is how they are treated once they are incorporated in UCT,” he said. 

Jordan’s political commitments, Ntsebeza suggested, offered a useful starting point for understanding how he might have approached these questions. 

The Mafeje affair and the history of African Studies 

Ntsebeza placed Jordan’s experience alongside the university’s treatment of other black intellectuals, particularly Professor Archie Mafeje. 

He recalled that UCT’s Council at the time rescinded the selection committee’s recommendation to appoint Mafeje in 1968, citing the risk of conflict with the apartheid government. Ntsebeza argued that the Extension of University Education Act of 1959, which introduced apartheid structures into higher education, did not legally prevent UCT from appointing a black academic. 

“Do we become part of an existing system, with adjustments such as renaming buildings and promoting blacks in senior positions, or do we question the nature of UCT as a university?”  

The university’s decision, he said, remains an important episode in understanding its relationship with black scholars. 

He also traced the institutional history of African Studies at UCT. The School of African Studies closed in 1974, and the Centre for African Studies was established the following year with funding from mining magnate and then UCT Chancellor Harry Oppenheimer. 

Ntsebeza said the centre later faced attempts by university management to disestablish it, a move that students and some academics resisted.  

From commemoration to intellectual engagement 

Ntsebeza acknowledged that UCT had changed considerably since his own time as a student, when he was often the only black student in his class. Black people now had a much stronger presence across the university. 

But he questioned whether greater representation and symbolic changes, such as renaming buildings and appointing black people to senior positions, were enough. 

“Do we become part of an existing system, with adjustments such as renaming buildings and promoting blacks in senior positions, or do we question the nature of UCT as a university?” he asked. 

“Universities must confront the extractive relationship between knowledge systems, where embracing Western education can mean losing connection with African knowledge.” 

Ntsebeza pointed to Mafeje’s work on land tenure as one example. Mafeje questioned private freehold title deeds, which he viewed as products of capitalism, and examined pre-colonial African land tenure systems. Ntsebeza said this scholarship could help inform debates about alternatives to the privatisation of land. 

He also highlighted Mafeje’s conviction that current social struggles should place social scientific questions on the agenda. Engaging with such scholarship, he suggested, could help people think through alternatives at a time when many were questioning the direction of the state and society. 

In her response, Professor Nomusa Makhubu reinforced the importance of African Studies as an intellectual infrastructure that enables knowledge to circulate across borders and social classes. She questioned how UCT could position itself as a leading university on the continent without making African Studies central to collaborative intellectual work. 

Drawing on Jordan’s writing, Professor Makhubu argued that universities must confront the extractive relationship between knowledge systems, where embracing Western education can mean losing connection with African knowledge. She called for African intellectual presence to extend beyond university structures and for more equitable relationships between knowledge institutions across the continent.