For Dr Daluxolo Mbebe, history isn’t distant or abstract. His work as a minister at Christ Church Tshwane together with his PhD, an exploration how religious communities responded to apartheid through their submissions to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has taught him that history is dynamic, complex and continues to shape the present.

As a pastor, Dr Mbebe is no stranger to work that demands empathy and clarity. But balancing pastoral responsibilities with doctoral research – which he completed in two years – required more than just discipline. It required a shift in mindset. He tackled his academic work as you would a job, attending to it from 8am to 4pm. In the evenings, he tried to put work aside in favour of family time.

“It helped that I was writing about a subject that I’m passionate about,” says Dr Mbebe, who holds a PhD in History from the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies at the University of Pretoria . “As a minister, I’m personally involved in trying to address issues of the past, so it was easier for me to connect with my academic work.”

As a result, Dr Mbebe says his research energised him. 

“I found the writing very enjoyable and not stressful at all. I would walk away from it without feeling like I had exhausted myself. I looked forward to it.” 

Completing a PhD in two years took more than discipline and a solid routine. It also required, as Dr Mbebe says, “a little bit of bravery”.

“One of the difficulties with students who take their time is that they don’t really trust their own minds, thinking and work,” he explains. “I’ve seen this with friends who are paralysed by the amount of information from their research and don’t trust their own voices or capacity to make a substantial contribution to the field. So I decided to be brave and to just write.”  

Dr Mbebe says guidance from his supervisor, Prof Ian Macqueen, who highlighted what he’d done well and what needed more work, allowed him to move quickly through some sections and allocate time to that which needed correcting.

“My thinking was that to be done is better than to be perfect,” he says. “You cannot second-guess yourself into success; you just have to push forward and hope that what you find interesting, other people will find interesting, too.”

Being unafraid to take risks has not only afforded Dr Mbebe success in his academic work, but has also brought added dimension to his work as a pastor. 

“The more I researched, the more my view of humanity deepened,” he says. “I became more empathetic to people as I looked at the moral ambiguity of individuals navigating oppressive systems. Sometimes situations are not simply black and white, and you can’t conclude that this person is doing this and therefore is racist. Under an oppressive system, people were doing things for economic reasons; they were thinking about their own safety and trying to protect not just themselves, but their legacies and their children.”

It’s this complexity that Dr Mbebe believes is missing from many current public conversations. One of the main lessons he’s learnt from his PhD journey is that it’s the small, often overlooked, acts of courage that shape history.

“I realised that perhaps, if all of us were just a little bit brave – when we see that something wrong is happening and we speak up, stand up for ourselves and for others – then we wouldn’t live in a society where everything falls on one hero. Part of the reason people like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela had to carry so much was because so few of us were willing to carry just a little bit.”

His next academic pursuit will continue this exploration. He’s considering postdoctoral options that examine how black identity and community shape memory and historical interpretation. He’d like to look at what makes people feel ashamed about the past, and how it shapes how they think and write about the past.