Researching the human experience

Examining how diverse experiences, cultures and histories have shaped society, these South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) chairs, hosted at the University of Cape Town (UCT), have gained and shared important insights “On being human”. This is one of the five research focal areas devised under UCT’s Vision 2030.

These SARChI chairs have been funded for 15 years each by the national Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and National Research Foundation (NRF) with a view to drive excellence in research and innovation across South African universities.

Drawing on South Africa’s many languages and religions, and examining how we govern and document knowledge, they have made researching the human experience their life’s work.

Language and society

Exploring how language has served and been shaped by people was the focus of sociolinguistics research by Professor Rajend Mesthrie from the Department of African Studies & Linguistics. While holding the SARChI Chair in Migration, Language and Social Change, his work used sociolinguistic approaches in understanding heritage, culture and social change in South Africa’s multilingual society.

One of his activities as SARChi chair has implications for understanding cross-border or trans-national migration. In tracking the extent to which migrants from the rest of the continent have been able to adapt to multilingual South African society, the research shows that English plays an important role in their economic and psychological survival, but – importantly – alongside their home languages.

The role of accents in reflecting and sustaining new identities has also been explored during Professor Mesthrie’s time as SARChI chair. For example, research examining how English accents have evolved in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly among young people, revealed a kind of de-racialisation of language, with the prestige of the accent no longer attributed to one group alone.

“Many people on our continent are highly multilingual, and recognising their humanity, daily realities and aspirations means paying attention to their full repertoire of languages and styles of speaking.”

The flip side of the search for prestige is the continued use of Tsotsitaal by young South African men, which Mesthrie’s work has identified as an antidote to formal middle-class language, showing immense local innovation but also sharing similarities with other varieties, including English surfer slang.

“Our SARChI research emphasised that language has a social life way beyond the somewhat stifling atmosphere of classroom language and formal norms,” said Mesthrie.

“Many people on our continent are highly multilingual, and recognising their humanity, daily realities and aspirations means paying attention to their full repertoire of languages and styles of speaking.” 

Complexities of religion

A multilingual and multicultural country, South Africa also has vibrant followers of several religions. As SARChI Chair in Islam, African Publics and Religious Values, Professor Abdulkader Tayob, from the Department for the Study of Religions, has spent 15 years examining the complexities of religion in society.

“The chair was set up to understand the role of religion in public life in Africa since the 1980s. During this time, religion was subject to great misunderstanding as it emerged in politics and the public sphere,” said Professor Tayob.

“Our research showed the complexity of religion in public life and highlighted the value of religion for social life, personal identity and sometimes solidarity in the face of poverty, oppression and state failure.”

“Our research showed the complexity of religion in public life and highlighted the value of religion for social life, personal identity and sometimes solidarity in the face of poverty, oppression and state failure.”

Tayob has contributed significantly to the development of various fields within the general study of religion. His unique focus, however, is on the textual study of Islam, Islam in Africa, and contemporary Islamic intellectual history.

In these areas, his work has contributed to a theoretical approach to religion as critical discourse that weaves different traditions of knowledge, which in turn reflect the postcolonial condition of the Global South.

Specifically, he challenges researchers to reflect critically on the assumptions, practices, and values of Western scholarship. With the SARChI chair position, Tayob has nurtured networks of scholarly engagement. He has also developed a new generation of scholars who, through this lens, carry out studies of religion in general and in Islam in particular. 

Democracy and human rights

The rich diversity in societies inspires important questions about democracy and human rights. This has been a central theme to research done by the SARChI Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa, Emeritus Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza, a senior research scholar at the Centre for African Studies.

“As SARChI chair, the most significant contribution I’ve made is in understanding the meaning of democracy. This, in particular, for a representative democracy like that of South Africa where leaders are elected,” Emeritus Professor Ntsebeza said.

His notable work looked at how this type of democracy plays out in rural communities. In these areas, governance falls to traditional authorities, or headmen, who are appointed and not elected. This is a contradiction, Ntsebeza said, where citizens are not given a choice in deciding who their leaders should be.

“We should be in a situation where everyone has human rights, and those human rights are respected.”

His research provided the foundation for a landmark court case in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. Residents there elected a leader following the resignation of their headman, but their choice was rejected by the local traditional council because he was not a member of the royal family.

Ntsebeza's work was critical to shaping the court’s ultimate decision, which upheld the rights of the residents to elect a leader. Consequently, other communities in the Eastern Cape are now also afforded the same rights.

With similar practices seen elsewhere in the country and on the continent, Ntsebeza’s work has implications beyond South Africa. His research also touches on other important lines of societal engagement, including the struggle against poverty and social movements in the land sector.

“We should be in a situation where everyone has human rights, and those human rights are respected,” he said.

Archives of knowledge

Examining the role of archives in academic and public life, Professor Carolyn Hamilton is based in the Department of Historical Studies and holds the SARChI Chair in Archive and Public Culture  (APC). She looks beyond documentary repositories like the National Archives to ask important and complex questions about the historical making of knowledge.

“One important aspect concerns the way in which the southern African past before European colonialism was stitched up in colonial knowledge categories,” Professor Hamilton explained.

“The online archive is a game-changer in developing research infrastructure for a digital future.”

Highlighting how this happened through a series of interdisciplinary collaborations that unpick the stitching of this concept, her seminal work lies in her developing novel methodologies for engaging historical materials in multiple – and sometimes unusual – mediums. These include oral accounts and early hymns, landscapes and botanical specimens.

According to Hamilton, historical African thought is one of the big exclusions from the archive. Addressing this has required a project devoted to the location of the materials expressive of African thought and the negotiating of access to these materials.

As chair, she led the convening of these materials with the APC’s Five Hundred Year Archive (FHYA) onto the digital platform EMANDULO. Here the materials are carefully re-curated on principles very different from those put in place under colonialism.

“The FHYA is enabling the dismantling of many constraints in the production of knowledge about the remote past that were entrenched in the colonial era and reproduced in apartheid times,” she said. “The online archive is a game-changer in developing research infrastructure for a digital future.”

Read about the other research focal areas.