In this article, I propose the idea of public applied linguistics: that is, a type of applied linguistics that sees applied linguists doing the work of activism, with language activists, in the public, are (i) invested in the artistic representation of linkages between language reinvention and new relationalities, and (ii) highlighting, documenting and framing interventionist debates around language. Public applied linguists encounter, discourse with 'language technicians', expert-like language activists working with new visions of language on the periphery of post-apartheid South Africa, to think language otherwise and as a critical historical process, continually reinvented through the unique, creative, and dynamic practices of multilingualism to attain linguistic justice.