Beyond the Grant: Shaping Sustainable Future Building Our Own Legacy
With this assertion, former president Thabo Mbeki expressed a deeply ontological claim in his I Am An African speech. His appeal was to an ideal of an inclusive national identity, whose culture was expressive of all South Africans.bFor him to say I Am an African was an attempt —on his part, and an invitation to the nation— to contend with a context that sought to erase indigeneity, for nearly 500 years.
The question with which he is grappling concerns how our democracy embraces an inclusive identity that incorporates even the descendants of those who sought to expunge blackness (as indigenousness) from the face of this land. Inqolobane Yolwazi/the Black Archive project is rooted in making sense of precisely this deeply ontological question, whose expression is political. The politics of this assertion were not only witnessed nearly three decades ago but continue to be political in the production and development of knowledge in modern universities in South Africa.