Burning brightly, but briefly
BONGANI Ngqulunga’s text is most welcome. In fact, this biography on Pixley ka Isaka Seme is scandalously late – as was Heather Hughes’s biography on John Dube (The First President: A life of John L Dube, founding president of the ANC, Jacana, 2011) and mine on Albert Luthuli (Albert Luthuli: Bound by faith, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2010).
Why I celebrate Ngqulunga’s text more than mine or Hughes’s is that it is written by a black African. This is right and good. Not that white South Africans and North Americans cannot and should not contribute to African historiography. Rather, African historiography is woefully incomplete and thus inaccurate without the invaluable knowledge and perspective of black Africans.
Ngqulunga’s intimate knowledge and use of Zulu, translated into English, enabled his research and writing to bring a depth to African history than cannot often be found with white authors.
His text is timeous for other recent historical accounts have set the scene for a closer examination of Seme’s life. For example, André Odendaal’s The Founders: The origins of the ANC and the Struggle for democracy in South Africa (Jacana, 2012) and Martin Plaut’s Promise and Despair: The first Struggle for non-racial South Africa (Jacana, 2016) both cover Seme, but almost only as a cameo figure.
And one realises why Seme is portrayed almost superficially by Odendaal and Plaut while reading Ngqulunga’s biography of Seme: Seme can be considered a “flash in the pan”, a comet burning brightly, but temporarily, as it concerns the formation of Africa’s oldest liberation movement. “Wasted talent” is one assessment made in the book of Seme’s life.
He was a man of exceptional intelligence and vision; yet, that intelligence and brilliance was as exceptional as it was terse, culminating at the age of 30 with the African Native National Congress’ (later renamed ANC) founding in 1912 and fading miserably thereafter.
Spoiler alert: Some of the conclusions reached are startling. Preceding Pallo Jordan is Seme.
First, Seme did not receive a law degree from Oxford University (Jesus College) as assumed. He failed his final exam and became an accredited lawyer though study at Middle Temple, a “law inn”.
Second, Seme never received a doctorate, research or honorary. Instead, he fraudulently claimed the degree and title. Writing to a friend, Alain Locke, Seme asserted: “I shall put myself out as ‘Dr Seme’ when I get home.” One must wonder: “What is the eThekwini Municipality going to do with all the ‘Dr Pixley ka Isaka Seme’ street signs that populate the CBD”? ‘What are we to do with the Dr Pixley…’ banners that strewn the Woza eNanda
Heritage Route and lead one to the gates of Inanda Seminary in close proximity to the mission and home in which Seme was raised”? Or even: “What to do with Pixley’s tombstone, dedicated by Inkatha Yenkululeko Yesizwe, which includes ‘LLD’ with pride in the inscription?”
Ngqulunga’s biography of Seme contributes immensely to the manner in which ANC history is interpreted. The ghost of history touches the events of today. For example, many who have criticised my biography of Luthuli lament that I failed to understand the “consensus” culture of ANC decision-making, and for this reason, “Luthuli must have agreed to the armed Struggle”.
This mythologisation, idealisation and romantisation of ANC history has arguably rendered much of its history, told by politicians or by historians for politicians, scandalously inaccurate.
Ngqulunga, through the hermeneutical lens of Seme’s life, demonstrates that decisions in the ANC were not always made by consensus – or by the “collective”. This is not to the ANC’s discredit – unless it denies it. In examining the history of the ANC through Seme’s involvement in it, we realise deep fractures between ANC leaders that foreshadow those between Nelson Mandela and Luthuli, between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma and now Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa.
We learn from Ngqulunga that Seme (while ANC treasurer) and John Dube (while president) mutually undermined one another. For example, Seme once wrote: “I found the Dube boy undermining me everywhere here in Johannesburg. I brought him down to Earth. He ran away back to Natal.”
Ngqulunga concludes: “(Seme’s) attack on the ANC signalled the breakdown in his relationship with its leadership, John Dube in particular, whose resignation as president general was the result of constant attacks.”
After almost two decades of absence from active politics, in 1930 Seme returned and inserted himself into the ANC’s dysfunction and virtual “collapse” by leading with others the downfall of Josiah Gumede as ANC president. In January 1930, the entire executive under Gumede resigned en masse leaving the organisation “rudderless”. After voter fraud and a revote, Seme was elected president.
His presidency (1930-1933 and 1933-1937) is problematic and thus embarrassing. Seme’s presidency is generally found to be guilty of “culpable inertia”.
At the conclusion of his first term, the ANC’s national executive “openly rebelled” against Seme, finding him guilty of “killing the ANC”. Ngqulunga narrates that Seme, the autocrat, rigged a fraudulent election to serve another term and expelled “unfaithful leaders”.
Ngqulunga justifiably concludes: “It is indisputable that Pixley Seme was not a great president of the organisation he founded.” That is about as conclusive as a historian can get.
Yet, though showing grace and at times qualifying and cautioning against universal condemnation of Seme, Ngqulunga remains conclusive: “History has justifiably been very harsh on Seme, not only for what he did (wrong), but also for what he failed to do (right) as president. Brilliant as he was, his personality was not suited to leading an organisation as complex as the ANC was then – and indeed continues to be.”
The ANC trend of ousting leaders unceremoniously reaches beyond Dube, Gumede and Seme. It extends to Alfred Xuma who refused the Youth League, to James Moroka who obtained his own legal counsel to escape the consequences of the Defiance Campaign, to Luthuli who could not acquiesce to Mandela and the Communist Party’s armed Struggle, to Mbeki who rendered himself detached and now to Zuma who rendered himself corrupt. Again, that the ANC had outgrown its perceived obsolete leaders is not to its discredit – unless it obstinately denies it.
Weakness in the biography are few and far between. One strength can arguably be a weakness: the introduction and conclusion are so comprehensive and well-written that they may tempt one to just read those and skip everything in-between. Some sections pertaining to Seme’s property woes are pedantic and thus tedious, but that is likely due to my own lack of legal and financial acumen.
Ngqulunga generously claims multiple times that Seme possessed a “successful legal practice” and was a “pioneering lawyer with a reputation for successful litigation on behalf of Black people”. However, I never got the sense from the book that his legal practice was successful. Subject to correction, I recall only failed legal and advocacy cases cited. I do wonder: “Was Seme a good lawyer at all, or was it just ‘reputation’ as the author may hint”? Though an “entrepreneur”, I never got the sense that he was successful in any of his business dealings or real estate ventures.
Though he was a “pioneering politician”, I never got the sense that he had much political vision other than the founding of the ANC when he happened to be the right person at the right time. His politics were often contradictory and accommodationist (hamba kahle and “cap in hand”).
Perhaps the greatest revelations of all is that according to Ngqulunga, Seme was prone to ostentatious displays of wealth which led to gross financial mismanagement which led to improprieties being committed against the very same black people he claimed to represent and empower.
The financial improprieties technically became crimes, which led to Seme being struck off the roll of attorneys, rendering him and his family impoverished and almost destitute.
Despite the “ambiguous and complex” analysis of Seme which is sympathetically spiced with grace, the author is no less blunt than I in articulating this conclusion: “Instead of assisting his fellow sufferers, Seme saw opportunities for enriching himself. All this suggests that, when Seme was faced with an opportunity for self-enrichment, no political principle or cause was sufficiently strong to act as a deterrent. This is the tragedy of his life. It is a major blot on his legacy.”
Like Ngqulunga, I must conclude with grace and sympathy. The racist forces arrayed against Seme were all pervasive: legal, economic and cultural.
While everything cannot be blamed on white supremacy, surely one with any humanity must concede that constant dehumanisation wounds, and it wounds deeply?
One cannot judge too harshly the manner in which, and the degree to which, such deep wounding manifests itself in individuals.
The author eruditely concludes that Seme’s fatal strategic miscalculation was that intelligence, hard work, ambition, vision and solidarity could overcome a racialised hegemonic socio-cultural and economic system.
The universal proclivity for humans to sin and personality flaws don’t help.
Copper on behalf of Xubera Institute for Research and Development