Image: Supplied

The Jaap Durand Chair at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) has published Indigeneity, Slavery, and Nation, a compelling new collection of essays that addresses some of the most urgent and contested questions facing South Africa today: Who belongs? How do we reckon with historical injustice? What histories have been forgotten or suppressed? What forms of recognition, memory and justice are necessary to build a more inclusive future?

The volume emerges from the inaugural seminar of the Jaap Durand Chair in December 2025 and brings together leading scholars, public intellectuals, theologians, historians, philosophers, linguists and cultural commentators in a wide-ranging multidisciplinary conversation on identity, memory, slavery, indigeneity, language, citizenship and nationhood. Together, the contributors examine how centuries of colonial conquest, dispossession, enslavement, migration, resistance and cultural exchange continue to shape South African society and the ways in which its people understand themselves.

Named in honour of Professor Jaap Durand, who served as Professor of Systematic Theology and Vice-Rector of UWC between 1973 and 1994, the Chair seeks to promote critical public engagement on questions of democracy, justice, belonging and social transformation. This publication reflects that mission by creating a space for rigorous debate about the historical foundations of contemporary South Africa.

A central theme running throughout the collection is the concept of restorative memory. Several contributors argue that meaningful social justice requires more than policy reform; it demands a deeper engagement with historical truth and with the experiences of communities whose contributions have been marginalised or erased. Patric Tariq Mellet, the author of the best-selling The Lie of 1652: A Decolonised History of Land and The Truth of Cape Slavery, contributes a wide-ranging paper on “restorative memory and restorative justice”.

The essays also interrogate the construction of racial and ethnic identities, revisit debates about non-racialism, and explore the tensions between particular claims to indigeneity and broader, more inclusive understandings of belonging. Prof Ciraj Rassool writes on race, ethnicity and the politics of nonracialism; Dr Willa Boezak writes on Khoi-San indigeneity; and, Dr Ndumiso Dladla writes on the “Azanian Philosophical Tradition”. Canon Rev. Michael Weeder explores the place of slavery in national identity, while Ms Tessa Dooms writes on Coloured identity and reclaiming the power to name oneself.

Besides such revisits of the histories of indigenous peoples and enslaved communities, the volume also explores the continuing significance of these histories in contemporary debates about identity and land, and examines the ways in which memory functions as a political and ethical practice. Ds Riaan de Villiers gives an insightful perspective on the Groote Kerk as a site of memory and restoration, while Dr Theuns Eloff offers “a balanced perspective of the past, the present and the future”.

Professor Hein Willemse the  Jaap Durand Chair, University of the Western Cape and  Professor Emeritus, University of Pretoria. Image: Supplied

Other contributions focus on language and culture, including the recovery of Kaaps as a historically rich linguistic tradition and the significance of African-language poetic traditions as forms of public knowledge and democratic expression. Mogamat Kamedien and Prof Quentin Williams write in separate chapters on aspects of Afrikaans language movements and on the Kaaps dictionary project. In “Critical Poetic Traditions in African Languages”, Prof Siseko H. Kumalo writes on ukuhaya inkondlo, public performance poetry.

While writing from different disciplinary and political perspectives, these writers share a concern with the unfinished consequences of colonialism, slavery and apartheid, and with the need to recover histories and voices that have often been excluded from dominant narratives.

According to Prof Hein Willemse, inaugural holder of the Jaap Durand Chair, the collection seeks to stimulate informed public conversation about South Africa’s past, present and future. “The book invites readers to think critically about how our histories shape contemporary realities and how a more just, democratic and inclusive society might be imagined and realised,” he said.

Indigeneity, Slavery, and Nation is an important contribution to ongoing national conversations about memory, identity, justice and belonging. By bringing together diverse voices and perspectives, the volume offers fresh insights into the complex processes that have shaped South Africa and opens new avenues for dialogue, scholarship and public engagement.

Indigeneity, Slavery, and Nation
Edited by Hein Willemse
ISBN: 978-1-0492-9145-1
Publisher: The Jaap Durand Chair
University of the Western Cape
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