Authors
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Lindsay Kelland
Rhodes University
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Nolwandle Lembethe
Rhodes University
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Mapula Maponya
Rhodes University
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Pedro Tabensky
Rhodes University
Abstract
In this study, we explore the theoretical underpinnings and the practical implementation of a one-year student-led and student-centred service-learning course called “IiNtetho zoBomi”, translated from isiXhosa – one of South Africa’s twelve official languages – as “conversations about life”. The Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics, Department of Philosophy, at Rhodes University in South Africa, has been developing and implementing this course for the past decade in response to widespread calls for transforming South African universities and producing socially responsible, ethical graduates. “IiNtetho zoBomi” aims to show students how important the life of the mind is for cultivating autonomy and sociality, for bridging the gap between the lives of thought and action; and, by doing this, to show students the intimate relationship between thinking, reading, writing, human freedom, and the ethical life. Relatedly, the course challenges the widespread assumption that education’s aim is capacitation rather than human growth and does so in a genuinely practical way that increases the likelihood of impacting affect and behaviour.
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Author Biographies
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Lindsay Kelland, Rhodes University
Dr Lindsay Kelland is a senior lecturer at the Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics, Department of Philosophy, Rhodes University in South Africa. She is a feminist philosopher increasingly applying her feminist lens to transforming pedagogy. Her research interests include gender, sexualities, and sexual/gender-based violence. She has published numerous articles and book chapters. Most recently, she has published a chapter titled ‘‘Corrective’ Sexual Violence in South Africa: A Crime Against the Deviant Sexualised Other’ in Philosophy of Violence: A Multidisciplinary Perspective.
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Nolwandle Lembethe , Rhodes University
Dr Nolwandle Lembethe recently obtained her PhD in philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand. She is a lecturer at the Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics, Department of Philosophy at Rhodes University (South Africa). Her thesis looked at the role of epistemic intuitions and how we interact with knowledge. Her research interests are in epistemology, African philosophy and Black feminist studies.
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Mapula Maponya , Rhodes University
Mapula Maponya is a service-learning Lecturer at the Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics at Rhodes University in South Africa. She obtained an MA in Sociology, focusing on Development Studies. Her research interests are Community Development, Community Engagement, and Service Learning. She is currently completing her PhD at Rhodes University on Service Learning using IiNtetho zoBomi as a case study.
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Pedro Tabensky, Rhodes University
Professor Pedro Tabensky is the director of the Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics (AGLE), Department of Philosophy, Rhodes University (South Africa). He is the author of Happiness: Personhood, Community, Purpose and of several articles and book chapters. Tabensky is also the editor of and contributor to Judging and Understanding: Essays on Free Will, Narrative, Meaning and the Ethical Limits of Condemnation; The Positive Function of Evil; and, coedited with Sally Matthews (his wife), Being at Home: Race, Institutional Culture and Transformation at South African Higher Education Institutions. He has a book, published in 2023 by Routledge, titled Fanon and Camus on the Algerian Question: An Ethics of Rebellion, and is commencing work on another book provisionally titled Ethics and Education as Practices of Freedom coming out with Lexington, probably in 2026.
