Thabo Mbeki: an intellectual biography

Abstract

Generally, this study contributes toward efforts to privilege African thinkers and scholars who have been and continue to be the victim of epistemic closure and silencing by Western (Euro-North American) scholarship and epistemic practice. This is framed through the intellectual biography of Thabo Mbeki in order to bring to the fore the evidence that could be used to advance this argument. The engagement with Mbeki's intellectual thought and ideas is approached from four different entry points and perspectives. Firstly, this study traces and locates the historical and intellectual context of Mbeki within the black intellectual tradition finding its roots in the New Africa Movement (1862-1960) of the nineteenth century, consisting of religious leaders, teachers, writers, and graduates who used the acquisition of modern colonial education to identify themselves as New Africans (specifically New African intellectuals). Secondly, it provides that Mbeki’s intellectual thought is a product of the teachings and examples of the liberation movement’s leaders within the ANC, an organisation steeped in rich intellectual tradition and thought leadership. Third is the travel of the world which exposed Mbeki to the Western education and liberal political tradition in Britain, the communist training and Marxist-Lenin political thought in the Soviet Union, as well as African political thought acquired during the period spent in Africa. Finally, this includes a critical analysis of Mbeki’s thoughts and perspectives on politics, ideas, and power, as the three thematic areas of this study in order to understand the thrust of Mbeki’s intellectual thought. Read together, these aspects not only contextualise and position Mbeki as an intellectual that he is, but they also reflect his intellectual dimensions and contribution to the body of knowledge. It should be noted that the intellectual thought of Mbeki and his political ideas can be convincing and not convincing depending on the position from which the truth is being looked at from. In the main, this study seeks to position, privilege, and defend Mbeki as a political intellectual that he is.