Long Live the spirit of....Pixley ka Isaka Seme was a Lawyer, journalist, author member of the SANNC, launched the SANNC newspaper, Abantu Batho, President-General of the ANC. He obtained his primary school education at the local mission school where the American Congregationalist missionary, Reverend S. C. Pixley, took an interest in him and arranged for him to go the Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts in the USA. Seme did his BA degree at Columbia and then went to Oxford University where he completed a degree in Law. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in London before returning to South Africa on the eve of the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. His memorable speech at Columbia University in 1906 on “The Regeneration of Africa” won him the University’s highest oratorical honour, the George William Curtis medal. The speech was circulated widely in South Africa and revealed Seme’s remarkable way with words. While in London in 1909, Seme followed deliberations about the Union of South Africa Bill (1909) that proposed a framework for the establishment of the Union of South Africa. His reaction to this development is articulated in another authoritative view on the future of South Africa. “The Native Union” is a document that mapped out a strategy for African people in reaction to developments designed to exclude them from participating in mainstream political institutions and which sought to regulate their access to land and certain categories of employment, particularly in the mines. The document also reflects Seme’s insight into forms of resistance to the impending political dispensation. Though not stated explicitly in the document, Seme seems to have been of the opinion that the Bambatha Rebellion type of response to the emerging Union was atavistic. This implied a need for the creation of a Union-wide political movement that would counter the emerging segregationist system of government. More than any of the leading personalities of the time, Seme is considered the founder of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), the precursor of the ANC. Not only did he conceptualise the form and structure of the movement but he also facilitated the founding of the SANNC in Bloemfontein in 1912. At the founding Congress Seme delivered the keynote address, an appeal for symbolic and material support for the new formation. And when voting began for the position of president, Seme proposed that John Langalibalele Dube be elected...Long Live!!! Aluta Continua!!!
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 08:30:36 +0000
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