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There has been an unbroken tradition of writing in Afrikan languages that does go all the way back to Timbuktu in the 12th century as well as Kemet and Ethiopia and continues to the present day. Mazisi Kunene, who even in exile continued to write in Zulu, can trace his literary ancestry in a strong unbroken line back to the “imbongi” (oral poets) of the Shaka court in the 19th century. Even when the European languages had begun to seduce minds of Afrikan graduates of colonial and missionary schools, there were some among them who argued against complete surrender to cave in.

Such was the case of S.E.K Mqhayi (1875 – 1945), who at the dawn of the 20th century argued for Afrikan languages against those South Afrikan intellectuals who thought that English was the best means of experiencing the modern. Professor and writer Ntongela Masilela’s work on the intellectual history of South Afrika places Mqhayi’s work at the centre of the early phases of the genesis of Afro-modernity.

“His unyielding stand on historic question of whether the English language or the Afrikan languages should be the instrument of representation in modernity defined in many ways the literary issue of South Afrikan modernity in the twentieth century,” writes Masilela. Practicing what he argued out in theory, Mqhayi wrote in IsiXhosa, generating what some intellectuals even then gave the name of “renaissance”. Indeed they praised him for standing up “for our language and by pen and word of mouth created a Renaissance in our literature.”