Amidst all the programmes and projects linked to the Mandela name across the world, the uniqueness of the Nelson Mandela University name change is the imperative for the University to become the pre-eminent academic expression of Mandela. Far from being about Mandela, the scholarly formulation of Mandela is the endless, relentless pursuit to bring an intellectual angle to this figure of justice, to generate new praxes for engaging social injustices. Preliminary research indicates that such a formulation ‘around’ Mandela does either not yet exist or is scant; a point confirmed by Prof Harris’ analyses. That is, the social figure of Mandela as the dense location of scholarly work where history and subjectivity make social life to advance engaged scholarship and impactful programmatic work, has not yet taken shape, neither here nor elsewhere. To engage with Mandela the social figure is not just to understand the history of the person, but to consider some of the most profound questions of our time; an age in which social, political, economic and environmental challenges are accompanied by a general (local and global) mistrust in democratic institutions, the neoliberal attrition of human rights, and the way these are knitted together with the status, quality and agency of citizenship, civic service and public leadership. These challenges include the systemic anchoring of socio-economic inequalities; the escalation and deepening of war and organised political violence; the intensified mooring of discrimination and the spread and amplification of global racism, sexism, fundamentalisms, every-day fascism, and so on; environmental degradation and climate change; poverty and unemployment; the growth of the precariat; and the wanton expansion in human vulnerability and psycho-social, cultural and economic disaffiliation.