Through a series of unexpected and truly fantastic events, I am settled with the responsibility of composing a narrative of Clement Tsehloane Keto’s life. This narrative is chiefly for the benefit of all who consider celebrating South Africa’s achievements an indispensable aspect of the nation building project currently underway post 1994. More importantly, I have been encouraged by the number of very well informed South Africans who, though they themselves do not know Keto, his contributions and achievements in the area of history and particularly black history, believe this narrative important. Consequently, and like much about our new country, the need to celebrate and repatriate this great South African scholar has become more urgent and significant than I initially imagined.
Though I am not a professionally trained historian, I have for some time privately harboured the belief that Keto’s life is important and therefore feel privileged to embark on this task. Unlike many and more prolific writers who approach such projects, i.e., writing historical biographies, I did not go looking for this subject nor did I stumble on it in search of a similar project. This subject found me. Besides knowing Keto personally, I have learned from Keto and worked with him through our encounters over the years in the United States where I studied and later worked and where he was professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. Keto served on the Board of Directors of the Council for Southern Africa which I helped to create at Rutgers University in New Jersey and which I served as inaugural director until my return to South Africa in 1999.
Due to our relationship with him, Temple University requested me in 1996 to officiate at Keto’s official farewell function held at the African-American Museum in Philadelphia. Our relationship continued in South Africa upon my return from exile in 1999. But more strikingly, he called me the day before he left South Africa in late February 2004 to embark on what turned out to be his very last visit to the US, the country that moulded his intellect, skills and insights. America enjoyed his benefit as a scholar and historian both because of the time he spent there as well as being the area of interest of the greater part of his scholarship.
As fortune would have it, when I last spoke to Keto, he had been invited by the History Department of Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas to deliver a lecture titled “The Long Road to Freedom: A Comparable look at Education in South Africa and the United States” on 26 February 2004 as part of the Black History Month celebrations at that university. Keto called me as he wanted to meet with me upon his return to discuss and enlist my participation in his work on the plight and challenges of black academics in higher education in South Africa. He had great plans for black academics in modern day South Africa and was on a crusade to rally them around a common cause for their well-being and prosperity. Together with other like-minded education leaders, he had been involved in the formation of the Association of Black Empowerment in Higher Education in 1993.
We were never able to have that conversation. He died in March 2004 in a hotel in Atlanta in transit on his way back home, reportedly of a heart attack and was discovered by the janitorial staff at the hotel. To a large extent, assisting his widow repatriate his remains to South Africa and hosting his funeral service on my campus in Mamelodi, Pretoria, planted the seed for this project and commenced my repatriation exercise unbeknownst to me at the time.
Processing the circumstances surrounding his death in a foreign country, alone in a hotel on his way home, I was struck by the sheer coincidence that he died doing what he earned enormous respect for as an academic, namely, deliberating on issues facing blacks in America and South Africa; and that he died in transit home in America, a country that respected and revered him more than was the case, comparatively speaking, in South Africa. Perhaps it was for the best.
By providence, I now have Keto’s complete library of books, a substantial amount of his academic work and private documents his wife offered me. They now are the largest part of my library in my house at the University of Pretoria. My respect and admiration for Keto as an academic, combined with my insatiable fascination with South Africa and all it has offered and still offers humanity, demands I do something about this subject for the benefit of us all and as a personal testament to the achievements of a fellow South African who makes me incredibly proud to be a South African.
Walking through my library and taking out book after book with a view to commence my extraordinary journey of discovery of Keto’s world, it is difficult to know where to begin. There is his scholarship, the books he had published, the papers he had written, the journals he edited, etc., all screaming for me to consider them first. To structure my entry into what I expect to be a fascinating journey, I started with just the mere compilation of the known facts about his life’s story from the books containing his published biographical sketches and his obituary published in the Sunday Times newspaper the week of his burial.
This however presented me with the first challenge and underscored the paramount need for access to primary sources other than what I have available in my library. Though I expected this as part of the normal activities associated with such a project, I was shocked at having to confront this so early in my engagement with the life of my subject. Running through the biographical sketches in books he published or had a hand in writing and or other books which published his biographical information, I encountered a number of confusing facts about him.
For a scholar of great note as it were, I was astounded to discover that he is variously reported as being born in 1937 or in 1941 depending on what book, notable or not, you consult. It is also rather amazing that he reportedly received a BA degree from the University of South Africa in 1963 as well as from the National University of Lesotho at the same time, depending, again, on what source you rely on. Furthermore, he is reported to have gone to America in 1968 but obtained a master’s degree from the American University in 1966 or in 1967 and a PhD in 1972 from Georgetown University, both institutions located in Washington, DC in the US.
Such are the challenges lurking ahead of me, even before I start the journey to learn and unravel the life of my subject. While these are easily resolved and will be corrected in my narrative, they are harbingers of a tremendous challenge in reconstituting even the simplest details for the narrative of the life of one of South Africa’s most illustrious scholars. Consequently, I brace myself for a fantastic and exciting journey.
Averaging contemporary notions of life expectancy across the world, a life that spans 63 years, if you accept his date of birth as 1941 or 67 if you accept 1937 as the year he was born, can be considered a relatively long and full life by most standards, if not by South African standards and particularly for a black South African. It can also be accepted that he has been an active historian from when he earned his masters degree in 1967, stretching his academic life nearly four decades at best.
However, my effort in this narrative is far less a focus and discussion of Keto’s distinguished contribution to historical scholarship as, among other things, his work in the Temple University Circle of Afrocentric Scholars and his contribution to the development of this new paradigm in historiography, which all are important and will enjoy considerable attention. Through my narrative, I chiefly want to repatriate a son of the soil, a child of my people and through him repatriate South Africa’s wealth scattered across the borders of our country in the places we found refuge and enrichment in the coarse of our sojourn from landless children to citizens of a proud nation.
In order to repatriate Keto, it is important to tell the story of a South African’s struggle to achieve against great odds. Furthermore, Keto’s is the story of a generation of South Africans who left our country in the 1960s during the most repressive manifestations of Apartheid and its regard for black South Africa. It is the story of those South Africans who went into exile to variously develop military skills so as to participate in the military struggle against Apartheid and those who left to develop educational skills to fight Apartheid, among other things, on the education front.
The former occupied the imagination of most South Africans through government propaganda as the ‘threat’ hanging over the peace and prosperity of privileged white South Africa, thus justifying the extent of the government’s actions during this period. The latter was far less prominent in the public imagination, perhaps because their efforts were obscure, their threat less visible or probable.
Most of these men and women, however, like President Thabo Mbeki, Keto and others, eventually returned home to take up leading responsibilities in the new South Africa. But Keto, as a historian and academic, died before our country could truly enjoy the fruits of his labour and benefit from his contribution in the nation building project. At the time of his death, he had just completed a manuscript for an Afrocentric history of South Africa.
In another sense, Keto’s story is a story of how we as South Africans, inevitably suffering our ignoble ignorance of ourselves, contribute, wittingly or unwittingly, to the destruction of our precious gems while preoccupied with ‘matters of great consequence’, ‘building a better life for all’. To my mind, this is a lesson we need to learn very quickly if we are to draw on our greatest strength in this arduous task of building the country we all know we deserve; a country we know we can and must build; and a country we will need every capable and able South African to build. Keto’s story attests that our achievements are extraordinary. These achievements are our strength in realizing our historic goal of erecting a beacon of hope for our nation and our continent. This, in no small measure, is Keto’s legacy—a legacy to be celebrated.
Though I am not a professionally trained historian, I have for some time privately harboured the belief that Keto’s life is important and therefore feel privileged to embark on this task. Unlike many and more prolific writers who approach such projects, i.e., writing historical biographies, I did not go looking for this subject nor did I stumble on it in search of a similar project. This subject found me. Besides knowing Keto personally, I have learned from Keto and worked with him through our encounters over the years in the United States where I studied and later worked and where he was professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. Keto served on the Board of Directors of the Council for Southern Africa which I helped to create at Rutgers University in New Jersey and which I served as inaugural director until my return to South Africa in 1999.
Due to our relationship with him, Temple University requested me in 1996 to officiate at Keto’s official farewell function held at the African-American Museum in Philadelphia. Our relationship continued in South Africa upon my return from exile in 1999. But more strikingly, he called me the day before he left South Africa in late February 2004 to embark on what turned out to be his very last visit to the US, the country that moulded his intellect, skills and insights. America enjoyed his benefit as a scholar and historian both because of the time he spent there as well as being the area of interest of the greater part of his scholarship.
As fortune would have it, when I last spoke to Keto, he had been invited by the History Department of Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas to deliver a lecture titled “The Long Road to Freedom: A Comparable look at Education in South Africa and the United States” on 26 February 2004 as part of the Black History Month celebrations at that university. Keto called me as he wanted to meet with me upon his return to discuss and enlist my participation in his work on the plight and challenges of black academics in higher education in South Africa. He had great plans for black academics in modern day South Africa and was on a crusade to rally them around a common cause for their well-being and prosperity. Together with other like-minded education leaders, he had been involved in the formation of the Association of Black Empowerment in Higher Education in 1993.
We were never able to have that conversation. He died in March 2004 in a hotel in Atlanta in transit on his way back home, reportedly of a heart attack and was discovered by the janitorial staff at the hotel. To a large extent, assisting his widow repatriate his remains to South Africa and hosting his funeral service on my campus in Mamelodi, Pretoria, planted the seed for this project and commenced my repatriation exercise unbeknownst to me at the time.
Processing the circumstances surrounding his death in a foreign country, alone in a hotel on his way home, I was struck by the sheer coincidence that he died doing what he earned enormous respect for as an academic, namely, deliberating on issues facing blacks in America and South Africa; and that he died in transit home in America, a country that respected and revered him more than was the case, comparatively speaking, in South Africa. Perhaps it was for the best.
By providence, I now have Keto’s complete library of books, a substantial amount of his academic work and private documents his wife offered me. They now are the largest part of my library in my house at the University of Pretoria. My respect and admiration for Keto as an academic, combined with my insatiable fascination with South Africa and all it has offered and still offers humanity, demands I do something about this subject for the benefit of us all and as a personal testament to the achievements of a fellow South African who makes me incredibly proud to be a South African.
Walking through my library and taking out book after book with a view to commence my extraordinary journey of discovery of Keto’s world, it is difficult to know where to begin. There is his scholarship, the books he had published, the papers he had written, the journals he edited, etc., all screaming for me to consider them first. To structure my entry into what I expect to be a fascinating journey, I started with just the mere compilation of the known facts about his life’s story from the books containing his published biographical sketches and his obituary published in the Sunday Times newspaper the week of his burial.
This however presented me with the first challenge and underscored the paramount need for access to primary sources other than what I have available in my library. Though I expected this as part of the normal activities associated with such a project, I was shocked at having to confront this so early in my engagement with the life of my subject. Running through the biographical sketches in books he published or had a hand in writing and or other books which published his biographical information, I encountered a number of confusing facts about him.
For a scholar of great note as it were, I was astounded to discover that he is variously reported as being born in 1937 or in 1941 depending on what book, notable or not, you consult. It is also rather amazing that he reportedly received a BA degree from the University of South Africa in 1963 as well as from the National University of Lesotho at the same time, depending, again, on what source you rely on. Furthermore, he is reported to have gone to America in 1968 but obtained a master’s degree from the American University in 1966 or in 1967 and a PhD in 1972 from Georgetown University, both institutions located in Washington, DC in the US.
Such are the challenges lurking ahead of me, even before I start the journey to learn and unravel the life of my subject. While these are easily resolved and will be corrected in my narrative, they are harbingers of a tremendous challenge in reconstituting even the simplest details for the narrative of the life of one of South Africa’s most illustrious scholars. Consequently, I brace myself for a fantastic and exciting journey.
Averaging contemporary notions of life expectancy across the world, a life that spans 63 years, if you accept his date of birth as 1941 or 67 if you accept 1937 as the year he was born, can be considered a relatively long and full life by most standards, if not by South African standards and particularly for a black South African. It can also be accepted that he has been an active historian from when he earned his masters degree in 1967, stretching his academic life nearly four decades at best.
However, my effort in this narrative is far less a focus and discussion of Keto’s distinguished contribution to historical scholarship as, among other things, his work in the Temple University Circle of Afrocentric Scholars and his contribution to the development of this new paradigm in historiography, which all are important and will enjoy considerable attention. Through my narrative, I chiefly want to repatriate a son of the soil, a child of my people and through him repatriate South Africa’s wealth scattered across the borders of our country in the places we found refuge and enrichment in the coarse of our sojourn from landless children to citizens of a proud nation.
In order to repatriate Keto, it is important to tell the story of a South African’s struggle to achieve against great odds. Furthermore, Keto’s is the story of a generation of South Africans who left our country in the 1960s during the most repressive manifestations of Apartheid and its regard for black South Africa. It is the story of those South Africans who went into exile to variously develop military skills so as to participate in the military struggle against Apartheid and those who left to develop educational skills to fight Apartheid, among other things, on the education front.
The former occupied the imagination of most South Africans through government propaganda as the ‘threat’ hanging over the peace and prosperity of privileged white South Africa, thus justifying the extent of the government’s actions during this period. The latter was far less prominent in the public imagination, perhaps because their efforts were obscure, their threat less visible or probable.
Most of these men and women, however, like President Thabo Mbeki, Keto and others, eventually returned home to take up leading responsibilities in the new South Africa. But Keto, as a historian and academic, died before our country could truly enjoy the fruits of his labour and benefit from his contribution in the nation building project. At the time of his death, he had just completed a manuscript for an Afrocentric history of South Africa.
In another sense, Keto’s story is a story of how we as South Africans, inevitably suffering our ignoble ignorance of ourselves, contribute, wittingly or unwittingly, to the destruction of our precious gems while preoccupied with ‘matters of great consequence’, ‘building a better life for all’. To my mind, this is a lesson we need to learn very quickly if we are to draw on our greatest strength in this arduous task of building the country we all know we deserve; a country we know we can and must build; and a country we will need every capable and able South African to build. Keto’s story attests that our achievements are extraordinary. These achievements are our strength in realizing our historic goal of erecting a beacon of hope for our nation and our continent. This, in no small measure, is Keto’s legacy—a legacy to be celebrated.
