John Langalibalele Dube Remembered: 80 Years On

John Langalibalele Dube Remembered: 80 Years On

Today marks the 80th year of John Langalibalele Dube death, who passed on 11 February 1946 at Umhlanga in Natal. John Langalibalele Dube, fondly known as uMafukuzela, had a father, who was one of the first ordained pastors of the American Zulu Mission. Dube’s uncle, Mqhawe, was a Zulu Chief of the Ngcobo clan, and Dube was supposed to be Chief of the Qadi tribe. Dube spent his early years at Adams Mission School where his father served as a Congregational Minister.

Dube became an essayist, philosopher, educator, political activist, publisher, editor, novelist and poet. He was also an outstanding pan-African, as the founding President of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), which became the African National Congress (ANC) in 1923. Dube served as the President of SANNC between 1912 and 1917.

Dube was brought to America by returning missionaries and attended Oberlin Preparatory Academy. He returned to South Africa, where in 1901 he and his first wife, Nokutela Mdima Dube (whom he married in 1894), founded the Zulu Christian Industrial School which is now the Ohlange High School at Ohlange, near Phoenix and EkuPhakameni. This was the first educational institution in South Africa to be founded by black people. Dube had been inspired by Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. He gave lectures by invitation and was awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy as a result. Dube had identified the need to combine Western education with local customs and traditions, all grounded in broad African communal behaviour.

There are many contradictory views and judgements on Dube’s life. Amongst these are B.W. Vilakazi, who was a poet and author, who wrote in 1946 that Dube was “a great, if not the greatest, black man of the missionary epoch in South Africa”. Earlier on A.S. Vil-Nkomo wrote in the same vein that Dube was “one who comes once in many centuries. No one else in his education generation has accomplished so much with such meagre economic means. He was scholar, gentlemen, leader, farmer, teacher, politician, patriot and philanthropist.”

There were other judgments. For instance, to the Governor of Natal in 1906, Colonel Henry Edward McCallum, Dube was “a pronounced Ethiopian who ought to be watched”. John X. Merriman, who was regarded as a Cape “liberal” described Dube in 1912 as a “typical Zulu, with a powerful cruel face. Very moderate and civilised, spoke extra-ordinary good English … Dube in conversation gave a glimpse of national feeling which reminded me of Gokhale (an Indian political leader and a social reformer during the Indian independence movement, and political mentor of Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi). How they must hate us – not without cause.”

Another “liberal”, Howard Pim, found Dube frankly “puzzling”. According to Pim, “I should say he was strong-willed and a great egotist; but his effect on me is curiously neutral. I am neither attracted nor repelled by him. Apparently, the people who get on with him do so with the aid of a little flattery.” A similar but more vociferous critic of Dube was I.B. Tabata, who in his characteristic style and fashion referred to Dube (in his 1948 letter to Nelson Mandela) as a “principal of some secondary school in Natal” who was simply “a willing stooge in the hands of the Herrenvolk” and has “led the Zulu back to tribalism, where they stagnate today.”

The author of the Sechaba historical article on John Langalibalele Dube emphasised that he was bound to agree “with Shula Marks who comments that some of these remarks reveal more about the commentators rather than about Dube”. Besides all these comments, Nelson Mandela, who decided to vote at Ohlange High School in Inanda during the first non-racial democratic elections in South Africa in April 1994, referred to John Dube as an “African patriot”. Dube had “helped found the organization (the ANC) in 1912, and casting my vote near his graveside”, Mandela averred, “brought history full circle, for the mission he began eighty-two years before was about to be achieved”.

Vuyisile Msila argued that “Few ANC leaders did not have critics. A.B. Xuma, James Moroka, Selope Thema and Chief Albert Luthuli all had critics who opposed how they led the African National Congress. Of these leaders, Luthuli, who was also Dube’s protégé, was usually criticised for his non-violent approach and being constrained by spirituality. Sympathetic reading would unmask Dube’s acumen as a leader despite the ambiguities that some may highlight. Scholars reading Dube’s work need to be aware of the various nuances as they try to understand the history behind Dube the intellectual, the African Christian and leader.”

For Msila, “Dube’s role as philosopher need to be broadened as debates need to reveal his thoughts. Firstly, he was among the first missionary educated blacks in South Africa to underscore the need for African unity, probably something he learnt from the fathers of Pan-Africanism in the United States. Later, scholars on the African continent such as Nkrumah (1963), Nyerere (1968) and Diop (1996) would be part of this call for a unified Africa. Dube strongly believed in the idea of Africa for the Africans.” …

“Secondly”, Msila maintains that “Dube was among the first in the SANNC to preach non-racialism, which was to be the cornerstone of the Freedom Charter drafted by the Congress of the People in 1956 (actually 1955). His philosophy highlighted the need to combine Western education and indigenous knowledges. Again, decades later, the argument by decolonial scholars would be similar, and that is the importance of ecology of knowledges.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South Africa History Online (SAHO).
Pages from History, “John Langalibalele Dube”, Sechaba, January Issue 1982.
Shula Marks, “The Ambiguities of Dependence in South Africa: Class, Nationalism and the State in Twentieth Century Natal”, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom”, Abacus, 1994.
Vuyisile Msila, “John L. Dube’s Legacy: The Harbinger, Intellectual and his Philosophy”, Alternation Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Arts and Humanities in Southern Africa, December 2021.

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!