Yunus Momoniat

Mcebisi Ndletyana’s book <i>African Intellectuals in 19th and Early 20th Century South Africa</i> is an attempt to present a history of the accumulation of knowledge capital among black South Africans. Yunus Momoniat looks at figures who were builders of an intellectual, moral and political infrastructure in South Africa.

The most prolific thinkers are those who provide us with new concepts to think new realities, and Achille Mbembe is one of these. A professor of history and politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, he is more a philosopher than a political scientist or historian, but his works are the profound revelations they are because he synthesises all three of these with other disciplines.

JM Coetzee’s latest protagonist is none other than JM Coetzee, in a disguise constructed to fool no one. But Coetzee is far too clever to become his own hero — the simulation serves complex functions, not all of which are yet apparent. He uses an artifice that serves his purpose better than if he simply delivered his opinions about the world as it was and as it has become, writes Yunus Momoniat.