Product Description
The Man Who Founded the ANC
Author: Bongani Ngqulunga
Format: Paperback
South African Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Awards: BEST NON-FICTION MONOGRAPH 2019
A Biography of Pixley ka Isaka Seme
In 1912, just over a year after returning from his studies at Columbia and Oxford, the thirty-year-old Pixley ka Isaka Seme succeeded where others had failed in forming a political organisation that represented all black South Africans.
Seme also established a national newspaper, became one of the pioneering black lawyers in South Africa, bought land from white farmers for black settlement at the time when opposition to it was gaining momentum, became an adviser and confidant to African royalty, and was considered a leading visionary for black economic empowerment.
And yet, when he became president general of the ANC in the 1930s, he brought it to its knees through sheer ineptitude and an authoritarian style of leadership. On more than one occasion he was found guilty for breaching the law, which partly led to him being struck off the roll of attorneys.
This book discusses in detail Seme’s extraordinary life, tracing it back to his humble beginnings at Inanda Mission to his triumphs and disappointments across the continents, in his public and private life. When Seme died in 1951 he was bankrupt and his political standing had suffered greatly. And yet he was praised as one of the greatest South Africans ever to have lived. For all this, he has largely been forgotten. This biography brings the remarkable life of this extraordinary South Africa back to public consciousness.
About the Author
Bongani Ngqulunga is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). Prior to this, he served as the director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), also based at UJ. He directs the African Biographies Project, which brings together scholars and writers researching and writing biographies of figures from the African continent. Ngqulunga's scholarship focuses on the politics and history of South Africa. He is the author of the multiple-winning book The Man Who Founded the ANC: A Biography of Pixley ka Isaka Seme (Penguin, 2017) and co-editor of Reappraising the Life and Legacy of Jan C. Smuts (UJ Press, 2024). He obtained his doctoral degree from Brown University in the USA.
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