The revived interest in public intellectuals over the last year or so reminds us of the great Black radical intellectual tradition based on engagement and solidarity with struggles for justice and liberation, across borders, generations, and race. In different ways, the contributors to this issue of Souls are a part of that tradition. In lieu of a more traditional editor’s note, I offer this remembrance of two men who embodied the best of the Black radical intellectual tradition.
Two large intellectual giants died earlier this year on different continents, but both made an imprint on the Black freedom movement in the United States, in the African Diaspora, and throughout the Global South; Keorapetse (Bra Willie) Kgositsile (1938–2018) and A. Sivanandan, commonly known as Siva (1923–2018). They were two dark-skinned men of small stature and large intellects. They were born in different countries, on different continents under the stifling pall of colonialism. They lived through and participated in pivotal revolutionary moments in world history. One was born in Sri Lanka, the other in colonial South Africa on the eve of Apartheid. They became men of the world, revolutionary thinkers deeply tied to movements for liberation. Between the two of them, they wrote articles and books, poems, novels, short stories, political essays, and calls to action. Neither man ever earned a Ph.D. or enjoyed the security of either a long-term academic career or the perks of celebrity life. Siva was the Director for many years of the Institute for Race Relations in London and founding Editor of the pre-eminent journal Race and Class.
They both modeled a kind of left-intellectual praxis; ever willing to make sacrifices for their principles, they applied a rigor and sharp-edged approach to their analytical work, not because it would fatten their resumes, but because they were employed in the serious business of changing the world. It mattered more deeply than money or celebrity ever could have to them. Their examples of talent in service to something larger than themselves is an inspiration: writing, research, analysis, and art in service of the movement, or simply, “the people,” was the mantra of both Siva and Bra Willie.
To retrace the political and life histories of both Sivanandan and Kgositsile is to be reminded of the robust legacy of Black radical intellectual praxis that we have inherited but too often ignore or remember in skewed fashion. We sometimes need to be reminded that there were Black radical thinkers of the early to mid-20th century other than DuBois and Malcolm, and I would be remiss if I did not add that many of them were women: Claudia Jones, Ella Baker, Eslanda Robeson, Sylvia Wynter, to name a few.
Siva was ethnically Tamil but immersed himself in the anti-racist Black struggle in the United Kingdom after he migrated there in the 1940s, embracing Blackness and the Afro-Asian Black resistance movement in Britain that emerged there. Siva argued that Black was a political color born of slavery and colonialism, and anti-racist organizing had to place Blackness and Africa at its center.
In his compelling essay, “The Liberation of the Black Intellectual,” Siva has much to teach us. In it he writes of the ways in which colonizers cultivated a “comprador class of Black intellectuals,” to defend and justify the logic of colonialism and later neo-colonialism. Some of those colonially trained intellectuals betrayed their mentors and masters, deploying their skills in anti-colonial and liberatory movements.
For Willie’s part, he was a poet and a freedom fighter combining a deep personal commitment to the writing and creative process while also submitting himself to the discipline of a revolutionary campaign that the African National Congress was waging against the Apartheid government in South Africa. To paraphrase Willie, he became a poet in the fire of struggle, and his poetry would always be in service to that struggle. Like Siva, he moved around the world: Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana. Forced into exile, he landed in Harlem, New York, in the 1960s, collaborating with jazz musicians and Black American writers to forge a truly radical and global artistic practice. He later spent time in Chicago. He was honored late in life as the post-Apartheid nation’s Poet Laureate but never stopped criticizing those in power when he saw elitism and corruption.
Neither man ever had much money in the bank. But their influences were large and their legacies are rich. I was richer in spirit and thought for having known them both for many decades.
This issue of Souls is dedicated to the memory and example of Willie Kgositsile and A. Sivanandan. May they continue to provoke and inspire us.