Sanele KaNtshingana

About

Sanele KaNtshingana is a lecturer in African Languages (IsiXhosa section) in the School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Cape Town. He is a PhD candidate in Historical Studies in the same university and is affiliated with the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative (APC) and the Andrew Mellon-funded, History Access programme. His research project is titled ‘The conceptual history and the praxis of umbuso through the eyes of amathwasa oncwadi in the southeast African region (c1838-c1918)’ and it maps out how amaXhosa political life and ideas of political authority in the ‘deep’ past were discursively maneuvered and shaped by amaThwasa ooNcwadi ‘African intellectuals’ in the vernacular press and other Black registrars in the early nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Outside of the ivory towers, Sanele is engaged in various kollectives which are dreaming and building a (Black)conscious, confident, bold, self-assertive, and deep-thinking generation of young people. In Makhanda, Sanele leads Makhanda Black Kollective. Among many programs that MBK runs is to re-educate young people of long traditions of African intellectual thought and activism through creative forms that center the agency and the voice of the youth. Sanele considers himself an ‘undisciplined’ young scholar who straddles History, African Languages, and Literatures, inside and outside the university. Sanele is a Mandela-Washington Fellow and completed his Leadership in Civic Engagement Course at the University of Georgia – Fanning Institute for Leadership in 2019.