The Journey of the African as Missionary: <i>The Journal and Selected Writings of the Reverend Tiyo Soga</i>

Abstract

The African Renaissance has been one of the post-apartheid South African state’s most resonant political ideas, and was so particularly during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. It is predicated on the need to go back to the past and recover what was lost, muted or distorted under colonial rule. Such an archaeological exercise is then meant to serve as an inspirational guide and catalyst in the journey towards a redemptive future. Thabo Mbeki explained that “an African Renaissance is a call to rebellion” against the distortions produced by colonial historiography (1998, 298). Such calls for historical retrieval and reconstruction are of course not new. Previous generations of African writers were from the outset equally concerned with and involved in the act of recovering and memorialising African history, heroes and literature in their writing.