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This article is a rejoinder to the special issue that celebrates and honours my life as a scholar-activist. Rather than directly responding to the articles, the rejoinder traces my intellectual and political development from growing up in Cala, a small village town where I was born in the Eastern Cape, to how I ended up being the engaged and insurgent scholar that all the contributors proclaim me to be. The key point is that my entry into the academic world and where I am now can be traced to my involvement in organic, community-based reading and study groups in Cala and beyond, thus underscoring an almost seamless continuity in my intellectual and political work. Related to this is a reminder that rigorous intellectual activity does not happen only in the academy. None of the activists in our study groups was an academic. The flow of knowledge is not one-directional, where knowledge generated from the academic is transmitted to the wider world. Academics should accept that there is a lot they can learn from intellectual activities taking place outside the academy. Hence the importance of greater collaboration between university-based academics and intellectuals who are doing serious work outside the academy. Finally, this rejoinder is a clarion call to academics for engaged and insurgent scholarship: making a connection between their scholarly pursuits and the struggle for social and economic justice. The call is not about academics and intellectuals acting for and on behalf of the downtrodden, but rather for academics to conduct rigorous research using the abundant resources in academic institutions and feed its outcomes back in intelligible forms to the wider society as a way of developing the agency of the downtrodden to lead struggles for emancipating not only themselves, but society at large.

Across the world, universities are grappling with the colonial legacies that have shaped them. That struggle is especially vital in South Africa where the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements have catalysed decolonial activism and discourse against the legacy of apartheid in higher education. This collection asks what epistemic justice might look like in teaching, learning and research across multiple academic disciplines. Each author writes from first-hand experience of teaching at the University of Cape Town, an institution that was and remains a key site of complicity with and resistance against settler colonialism, apartheid, and their ongoing oppressions. The contributors trace power relations that are embedded in various teaching and learning spaces at UCT, asking critical questions about the kinds of subjects and objects of knowledge that are produced by their disciplines. Further, they explore new ideas, texts, and intellectual and pedagogical practices that can help academics interrogate, challenge and transform the dominant power relations in the South African academy. Collectively, these chapters work to imagine new subjects of knowledge in the postcolonial university through an ethic of epistemic justice. At a time when debates on decolonisation have gained urgency in academic, civic and public spaces, this interdisciplinary collection serves as a valuable archive documenting and reflecting on a turbulent period in South African higher education. It is an important resource for academics looking to grasp debates on decoloniality both in South Africa, and in university and teaching spaces further afield. Calling for concerted and collaborative work towards greater epistemic justice across diverse disciplines, the book puts forward a new vision of the postcolonial university as one that enables excellent teaching and learning, undertaken in a spirit of critical consciousness and reciprocity. At a time when debates on decolonisation have gained urgency in academic, civic and public spaces, this interdisciplinary collection by authors based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, serves as a valuable archive documenting and reflecting on a turbulent period in South African higher education. It is an important resource for academics looking to grasp debates on decoloniality both in South Africa, and in university and teaching spaces further afield. Calling for concerted and collaborative work towards greater epistemic justice across diverse disciplines, the book puts forward a new vision of the postcolonial university as one that enables excellent teaching and learning, undertaken in a spirit of critical consciousness and reciprocity.

Drawing on scholarship from multiple disciplines, this volume presents a fresh understanding of the Mpondo uprising in South Africa; focusing on its meanings and significance in relation to land, rural governance, politics and the agency of the marginalized.

Originally planned as a fact-based book on the pre-colonial history of the Eastern Cape in the true tradition of history, this ground-breaking book focuses on epistemological and foundational questions about the writing of history and whose history counts. Whose History Counts challenges the very concept of “pre-colonial\" and explores methodologies on researching and writing history.

'Democracy Compromised' addresses two related questions: firstly, how, despite their role in the apartheid state, traditional authorities have not only survived but gained unprecedented powers in rural governance in South Africa's democracy; and secondly, how they derive their authority.

The gradual conversion of a large number of the indigenous people of presentday South Africa into wage laborers, particularly after the discovery of minerals in the latter part of the nineteenth century (see Bundy 1988; Mafeje 1988), has led to a peculiar situation in which the land question in South Africa has been marginalized. Yet, compared with the situation in other countries on the African continent, the extent of land plunder in South Africa was extraordinary. The Natives Land Act of 1913 was the first major legislative attempt on the part of colonialists to grab a substantial amount of the

Lungisile Ntsebeza is one of South Africa’s foremost scholars on land reform and democracy. He holds two research chairs at the University of Cape Town (UCT), the A. C. Jordan chair in African Studies, and the National Research Foundation Research Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa. As a political activist and scholar, Ntsebeza’s relationship with UCT began with an Honours degree in 1987. Twenty years later, he was appointed as professor in sociology, and later as director of the Centre for African Studies, where he continues to work as professor emeritus. Besides developing an exceptional body of

This book is the third volume published under the “Rethinking Africa” series of the Centre for African Studies (CAS), University of Cape Town (UCT). Its focus is the catalytic project on the precolonial historiography of southern Africa, an initiative of the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS).² The NIHSS defines catalytic projects as “primarily researchbased” programmes which aim “to catalyse and open up new avenues” for Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) scholarship, “and to assist in and promote the development of research in the HSS”³. Established in 2012, the overarching aim of the precolonial historiography project was to

An examination of rural local government in postapartheid South Africa focuses on emergent policies & how they relate to actual practice. Although the Constitution recognizes both traditional authorities & democratically elected representatives, the Constitution & the amended Local Government Transition Act indicate traditional authorities do not play a significant role in local government. An urban bias has been evident in policy making, & there has been overall neglect of the conflict that exists in many areas between municipal councils & traditional leaders. The national Rural Administration Infrastructure Development Program established in 1995 has been fraught with breakdowns in communication, information gaps, & a lack of coordination. Unavailability of financial resources required to make local government effective, coupled with massive rural unemployment & poverty that negates the possibility of an adequate tax base, have led to extensive migration to cities. Paradoxically, this rapid urbanization further motivates government officials seeking votes to allocate even more resources to urban areas. J. Lindroth