TIYO SOGA, An African Voice in History, Faith and Freedom

302pp., illus., paperback, Best Read, Cape Town, 2026

ISBN: 9781928246756

This edited collection presents fresh scholarship on the pivotal nineteenth-century Xhosa intellectual Reverend Tiyo Soga (1829–1871), reframes how we understand a sophisticated thinker who navigated multiple worlds with remarkable ease and influence, and demonstrates his enduring significance to contemporary debates in South Africa about identity, culture, and intellectual heritage.

Contributors: Tolly Bradford, Stephanie Victor, Zodwa Skeyi-Tutani, Sandiswa Lerato Kobe, Joanne Ruth Davis, Nomathamsanqa Tisani, Axolile Qina, Neil Parsons and Camagu Soga.

"Archive, biography, history, poetry, music, and literary criticism converge in this richly textured testament to Reverend Tiyo Soga, South Africa's first public intellectual - a rare treat!" Xolela Mangcu, Professor of Sociology and History, George Washington University

"This multidisciplinary collection reveals new and complex textures of Tiyo Soga's life and illuminates the memory of his mission sites and traces the familial, colonial and international networks and geopolitical dynamics that he astutely navigated as an active and self-aware historical agent. This is a significant contribution to the rapidly evolving scholarship on Tiyo Soga." Femi Kolapo, Professor of History,  University of Guelph

Literary theorist Joanne Ruth Davis is a Research Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study and a research associate in the Centre for World Christianity, SOAS. Her book Tiyo Soga: A Literary History (2018) won the Hiddingh Currie Award in 2020.