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South Africa history
Rediscovering John Dube, ANC founder and educationalist
by Thierry Perret
Article published on the 2009-08-13 Latest update 2009-08-13 11:10 TU
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In a new film an African academic unearths the legacy of the first Chairman of South Africa's African National Congress, who was first and foremost an educator.
Cherif Keita is an academic with plenty of initiative. A few years ago, this Malian professor who teaches literature in the United States could be seen in Bamako leading a group of students from Carleton College (Minnesota) in the footsteps of Amadou Hampaté Bâ, both in Mali and Burkina Faso. Herein a fascinating journey into history, narrated by a man with an infectious enthusiasm and who is the author, among other things, of a biography of Salif Keita.
A legacy almost forgotten, even by South Africans
In 1999, during another off-campus study trip to South Africa, Cherif Keita discovered the name of John Dube, the first President of the African National Congress (ANC) which led the struggle against apartheid.
He began to take interest in Inanda, a township located 20 kilometres north of Durban, in the province of Natal. In 1900 John Dube founded a model school there to help black people in a country that was not yet officially under Aapartheid.
The figure of John Dube is a captivating one. A humanist before becoming a committed politician, John Dube worked for an ideal of peaceful coexistence between all the ethnic groups through the Ohlange Institute, essentially an industrial education school.
But Cherif Keita realised that Dube's legacy was unknown to most people, including South Africans. He decided to go back into the past to rediscover a hero whose journey began ... in the United States.
John Dube was born in 1871 in Zulu country. His parents were members of the American Zulu Mission and his father was a pastor of that mission. A couple of radical American missionaries, the Wilcoxes, worked there. They helped him go to the United States for education in 1887.
These were enriching years for him, as he arrived in the wake of the abolition of slavery on 18 December 1865 by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution.
Dube attended Oberlin College, the first US College to admit women and blacks. He discovered also the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an industrial education school for blacks, founded by Booker T Washington, an emblematic but controversial figure.
Adapting the Ohlange Institute to the South African context
His return to South Africa he founded the Ohlange Institute by adapting the US model to the context of South Africa. One of the achievements that Cherif Keita stresses is the prowess of taking the curriculum of his school beyond manual education.
“He provided a real haven in Natal for intellectual pursuits by blacks of all origins in the Union of South Africa and the neighbouring colonies," he says. "For that reason he was soon viewed as a champion of native unity.”
In 1903 Dube launched the first secular English-Zulu newspaper, Ilanga Lase Natal (The Natal Sun).
Literature, music, journalism and entrepreneurship were among the subjects taught in a school that trained many future members of the South African elite. In recognition of his role as a builder, an educator (and unifier), John Dube was elected as the first president of the South African National Native Congress, the future ANC, which was founded with his encouragement.
The Ohlange Institute went through some tough years under apartheid and the very legacy of John Dube, who died in 1946, was later criticised or judged anachronistically. Although challenged in its daily existence, his school remains above all a testament to his ideal of peaceful coexistence between all the components of the Rainbow Nation.
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- The film: Oberlin-Inanda: The Life and Times of John L Dube, directed by Cherif Keita, 55 min, 2005, distributed by Villon Films(Canada). Contact: peter@villonfilms.com
- See also Cemetery Stories: A Rebel Missionary in South Africa, his second film, devoted this time to the Wilcoxes, an exemplary couple of missionaries who mentored John Dube. Villon Films, 2009.
- Note also: the biography of Salif Keita by Cherif Keita, first published by Le Figuier (Bamako), soon to be published in France by Editions Grandvaux.
