In an undergraduate lecture given earlier this year at the South African university currently known as Rhodes, Dr Naledi Nomalanga Mkhize, a historian, television presenter and educational activist, sparked a social media storm when she switched briefly from the university's lingua franca of English to isiXhosa. Given that South Africa has eleven official languages, and that the topic of discussion concerned a case study that crossed cultures, borders and languages – the alleged discovery, in Inverness of all places, of the skull of King Hintsa by an isiXhosa chief following instructions received from the spirits of his ancestors – Mkhize's code-switching was not just unsurprising but entirely appropriate. And yet, it seems, for many of the non-isiXhosa-speaking students in the lecture theatre, and particularly for those racialized as white, this code-switching was disruptive and alienating: a cause not just for debate but complaint.

Though short-lived, the furore that surrounded this event brought into sharp relief the complex and peculiar ways in which language is charged in present-day South Africa, while offering an important portent of the ongoing campus activism that began some months later, in the form of #RhodesMustFall and associated local and global movements. More specifically, it also highlighted how sparks set off in the university classroom can shed important light on the wider imbrications of language and power in the region. Published in 2013, Carli Coetzee's Accented Futures: language activism and the ending of apartheid deals with exactly these issues, and in doing so offers a valuable and timely framework for understanding both the origins and the implications of these more recent events. Coetzee's study takes shape as a series of careful reflections on specific moments and materials related to the ‘modes of writing, reading, and teaching’ that take place on a daily basis in the country's educational institutions, and particularly its universities (p. ix). Drawing heavily on Coetzee's personal experience as a student and teacher in South Africa and the UK, its ten chapters range in focus from academic papers and conference proceedings to public artworks and open letters, from canonical literary works to archival documents and artefacts. Although at first glance this selection seems somewhat haphazard, and the work's disciplinary profile unclear, it soon becomes apparent that in Accented Futures Coetzee has achieved a rare and impressive feat, producing a study that approaches cutting-edge scholarship with real rigour and coherence.

The book itself, at around 170 pages of prose, is relatively slim for such an ambitious and wide-ranging project. And yet Accented Futures not only does justice to the moments and materials on which it is based, but ultimately offers its readers something more than the sum of its parts. Formally more like a short story collection or essay collection than a monograph proper, Coetzee's vignette-like chapters are far more substantial than at first they appear. Indeed, as the book progresses, this brevity reveals itself to be a strength rather than a shortcoming, with each chapter providing an accessible and provocative springboard for discussion, in both the classroom and the common room. In this vein, Chapters 2 and 3 – on the collaborative project and publication There was this Goat: investigating the Truth Commission testimony of Notrose Nobomvu Konile (2009) and on translation and incomprehension in the work of Njabulo Ndebele respectively – are particularly skilful, managing to convey the specificity of their source materials to readers while also gesturing to their wider resonances in thoughtful and provocative ways.

Without question, the intervention that Coetzee makes in Accented Futures is long overdue and builds on decades, if not centuries, of protest and dissent. That it takes a white academic for these issues to be ‘heard’ is, of course, deeply problematic, as she herself acknowledges. Coetzee's positionality at the interface of the South African higher education establishment and its others is central to Accented Futures, which explicitly addresses both her relative privilege and the professional and personal implications of her critique. While this makes for some repetitive passages, it can also be seen as an important welcoming gesture not only to readers unfamiliar with the South African context, but also to an emerging generation of South African students for whom the events and texts that Coetzee describes do not strike quite the same kinds of historical and political resonance as for previous generations. Further, although for some the work as a whole might seem too forgiving, Coetzee's lightness of touch belies a deeper commitment to reflection and transformation at both personal and institutional levels: a commitment sensitive to the limitations of the kind of intervention that Coetzee herself can and should make, and informed too by current debates on the politics of translation and on what Robin DiAngelo has termed white fragility, among other things.

This is an important eye-opener for some, and a useful tool of contextualization and mobilization for those already familiar with the issues Coetzee interrogates; for this reviewer, Accented Futures is essential reading for teachers and students at all levels of higher education in South Africa, and complements well other recent publications such as Being At Home: race, institutional culture and transformation in South African higher education institutions, edited by Pedro Tabensky and Sally Matthews (2015). It is also a valuable resource for those who research South Africa's literatures and cultures. And yet, to think of Accented Futures as a book for South Africans and South Africanists only would be to underplay its wider resonance, for the insights and provocations that Coetzee offers here are by no means limited in relevance to the South African context. As the drive to decolonize higher education gains ground and momentum, the challenges that Coetzee poses to herself and others in Accented Futures will only become more pertinent to researchers, teachers and learners in universities in Europe, the United States, and beyond, and the template the book offers for reflective and transformative practices more valuable.