One street, two men, and hundreds of stories
Finds out more about the two men who lent their names to a Joburg street that’s been part of newspaper heritage for more than a hundred years
THEIR paths might not have crossed, although early Joburg was their home. Perhaps Hans Sauer and Pixley ka Isaka Seme walked down the same Joburg streets, dodging mud sprayed by passing ox wagons, or picked fresh produce from the same stalls in Market Square.
The men living in a young city of gold would have moved in different circles, separated by the practices of inclusion and exclusion associated with race and political power.
The stories of the two men – Hans Sauer and Pixley Seme – have intersected in a strange twist of memorialisation, with their names having been given to the same street.
It is something particularly close to the heart of the Saturday Star as it is the street where The Star building, itself a Joburg landmark, has stood for 129 years.
The street bore Sauer’s name until March three years ago, when it was decided it would be replaced with Seme’s. Most of the signage was not changed until this year.
Behind the names were two men with big personalities, bold ideas and pioneering spirits that made them Joburgers through and through.
Sauer’s claim to fame was that he was Joburg’s first district surgeon.
Born in the Free State in June 1857, he left South Africa in 1876 to study in Britain and returned a qualified physician and surgeon.
Sauer proved to be an excellent physician, successfully identifying a smallpox risk in the Cape. He became a smallpox specialist, advocating vaccinations, although this put him at loggerheads with others who were not only opposed to the campaign, but failed to report new cases.
Sauer’s expertise earned him the position of medical officer for Kimberley, where he would have mixed in the “right” society circles. He was also involved in business, and had dealings with mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes, leading him to Joburg.
But he soon set aside his business interests, selling his stake in some of the ventures he had with Rhodes, to concentrate on medicine.
According to the Southern Africa Association for the Advancement of Science, also known as S2A3, he was admitted to practise medicine in 1883 and became Joburg’s district surgeon in 1887, a year after the city was founded.
It was around this time that the road running south to north towards Hospital Hill was given his name.
He became chairman of the Rand Club and probably lived there for a time too. Many white, moneyed migrant bachelors would have stayed there.
Sauer’s goal was to improve sanitation and control the outbreak of disease in a city mushrooming faster than you could say “gold rush”.
S2A3 writes of Sauer on its website: “Thickset, jovial and adventure-loving, he was a gambler and happiest in dangerous situations.”
Flo Bird, of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation, says: “Sauer was an absolute maverick.”
Bird tells an anecdote about one of Sauer’s first patients, a jail inmate who had to have an amputation. With little in the way of anaesthetic, Sauer operated on the man with other inmates holding him down.
“He didn’t seem to be a person who cared too much for social Ps and Qs, even though he moved in those circles.”
Bird says Sauer was famously imprisoned for being a member of the Reform Committee, an organisation of prominent citizens for med about 1895 and led by mining giant Lionel Phillips. It was the Uitlanders ( Foreigners) pushback again the government under President Paul Kruger.
Some of the members, including Sauer, were linked with Leander Starr Jameson’s famous raid, a botched attempt to overthrow Kruger, over the New Year weekend of 1895-96.
The group landed in jail facing a charge of treason.
Bird says Sauer and other Refor m Committee prisoners negotiated with Kruger to be paroled temporarily so they could rescue the wife of a friend caught up in the Matabele Uprising in what is today Zimbabwe.
“They gave their word that they would return to the republic and to prison, so Kruger let them go. When they returned they duly returned to prison. Their sentences were later commuted to fines, which were probably paid by Rhodes, and they were released after a few months in jail.”
Sauer retired in 1910 and spent much of his time in Europe. He died on August 28, 1939 in Dinant, Belgium.
In 1912, Seme helped to found the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), later renamed the African National Congress. He was the movement’s first treasurer and would serve as president of the ANC between 1930 and 1936.
Seme had been born in Natal in October 1881 and was 24 years younger than Sauer.
According to South African History Online, Seme was a gifted pupil, and an American Congregationalist missionary arranged for him to study in Massachusetts in the US.
He studied law at Columbia where, in 1906, he gave his famous speech, “The Regeneration of Africa”, earning the university’s George William Curtis medal for oratory.
The speech is rousing and tender, but unequivocal, recognising every individual’s po- tential and rights, and resolute in arguing for self-determinism for Africans.
Seme then studied law at Oxford and was called to the Bar in London. He returned in 1910, the year South Africa became a union. He was anxious about how the formation of the union would further exclude Africans.
He was the first black lawyer to practise in South Africa, and was also an author and a journalist, in his time launching a weekly paper, Abantu-Batho, as the mouthpiece of the SANNC.
By 1912, Seme was living in Joburg, carving out a life as lawyer and activist. He also played a vital role as adviser to the British protectorates of Lesotho and Swaziland, helping them to negotiate their concessions and to fight for the return of their land from white settlers and eventually for independence.
He was seen to play a unifying role in bringing together traditional leaders and the ANC.
Seme married Princess Phikisinkosi Zulu, the eldest daughter of King Dinuzulu. The couple had two boys and a girl. Seme also had a second wife, Swazi Princess Lozinja Dlamini, whom he married by traditional rites.
Not much has been recorded about his daily life.
Last month, however, independent heritage consultant Jacques Stoltz stumbled on a rare document that provided textured details of Seme’s life in 1912.
Stoltz, who is working on heritage preservation for the City of Joburg’s Corridors of Freedom project, was looking through archival material when he happened upon a brown folder he says looked out of place.
“You start to know the age of something just by looking at it and this folder looked different. I opened it up and because I had visited Pixley Seme’s grave a few weeks before and had been doing some research on him, I recognised the details were referring to Seme’s house.”
What Stoltz had happened upon were house alteration plans Seme had submitted to the city. The folder had been archived incorrectly.
“I almost couldn’t believe it, I contacted the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation and we decided the document should be in the Museum Africa so it is properly taken care of.”
Clues from the document for the house in Bertha Street in “Sofia Town”, now Sophiatown, suggest Seme might have been doing quite well: he was expanding his house to accommodate a coach and converting stables on the property.
His plans had been drawn up by prominent architect Alan Gordon Monsborough, whose Joburg gems included the Baptist Church in Troyeville, which still stands today, and the Orpheum Theatre, demolished in 1935.
The lawyer’s home in Sophiatown no longer exists.
Seme remained until the end of his days an activist and an ANC member. He was criticised by some who considered him conservative and for the dip in ANC membership while he was president. But he remained a mentor to many and was an important figure in ANC and resistance history.
He died in June 1951 and is buried in the Newclare Cemetery. His grave is a heritage site.