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7176 results in Media, mass communication

Page 185 of 359

  • Chapter 11 - An African Newspaper in Central Johannesburg: The Journalistic and Associational Context of Abantu-Batho

  • from THEMES AND CONNECTIONS
    • By Peter Limb, an adjunct associate professor and Africana bibliographer at Michigan State University.
  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Book:
    The People’s Paper
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012, pp 298-317

  • Summary

    In the preceding chapters we examined the content of Abantu-Batho. This chapter situates the paper in its journalistic and associational context: what was it like to be an African newspaper literally on the sidewalks of central Johannesburg; how did it gather and interpret news; how did it survive socially and financially; and what socio-intellectual matrix did it inhabit or even help create?

    THE MAKING OF A NEW RADICAL JOURNALISM

    The steady growth of the black-owned and edited press from the 1880s (see the Introduction in this volume) laid an important foundation for Abantu-Batho and supplied useful journalistic connections for advice or providing copy, and even models of layout and design to emulate. But the new paper also found its own niche as both a national and Johannesburg forum. It challenged the hegemony of the Establishment press that controlled public knowledge. There had been earlier flashes of radicalism, as in Izwi Labantu, but these faded as fast as the paper. Abantu-Batho sought to be a journal of national politics and quality, as opposed to a tabloid, but with a hybrid character and inclusive of human-interest stories and advertisements (see below). Above all, it was a political newspaper.

    In other chapters we investigate themes of political campaigns and policies, resistance, and the initial construction of nationhood in its pages. Here I suggest that Abantu-Batho both reflected and helped create African politics. It was a new media for Africans with a wider national and linguistic reach than before and a strident new assertiveness – the Facebook of the 1910s. Over time, under fire from the Right and with declining resources and a worn-out press, it failed to keep up with technological change. Yet those writers who stayed with Abantu-Batho refused to kowtow to the white-sponsored ‘yellow’ press epitomised by Umteteli wa Bantu, and retained their assertiveness and autonomy – to the extent that a largely pro-Congress editorial team could ever be fully ‘independent’ of politics. In this regard, it was the start of a new radical journalism later consummated in The Guardian and Inkundla ya Bantu.

  • Appendix - Abantu-Batho Editors and Editorial Staff

  • from PART II - Anthology
  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Book:
    The People’s Paper
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012, pp 511-512

  • Summary

    OWNERS/MANAGING EDITORS

    Pixley ka Isaka Seme (1882–1951), board of directors chair, managing editor, 1912–16?; acting editor, 1916 and 1917/18?

    Levi Thomas Mvabaza (1870s–1947?), managing director, 1916–31?

    J. T. Gumede (1867–1947), owner, 1929–31

    EDITORS, SUB-EDITORS AND WRITERS

    Cleopas Kunene (1866–1917), editor, English/isiZulu, 1912–late 1915; mid-1916–April? 1917

    Daniel Simon Letanka (1874–1932), Sesotho/SeTswana editor, 1912–31; a director

    Saul Msane (1856–1919), editor, February 1914–July 1916

    Robert Grendon (1867?–1949), editor, 1915–July 1916

    Levi Thomas Mvabaza (1870s?–1947?), isiXhosa editor, 1916–31

    Jeremiah Dunjwa (d. 1935), joined staff, 1913, isiXhosa editor, 1916?

    Henry Selby Msimang (1886–1982), sub-editor or ‘Special Commissioner’, 1913–?; isiZulu English editor, May/June 1917?–February 1918?

    Herbert Nuttall Vuma Msane, editor or sub-editor, 1917–?

    Horatio L. Bud-M'belle, sub-editor, 1917?–19?

    Richard Victor Selope Thema (1886–1955), sub-editor? a.1914?–1920; acting isiZulu/English editor, February 1918–?

    Nontsizi Elizabeth Mgqwetho, poet and possibly staff, 1919.

    Epafras Mogagabise Ramaila (1897–1962), possible contributor, 1917?–29?

    Trevor Dan Mweli Skota (1893–1976), organiser/sub-editor, 1912; editor,1927?–31?

    A. W. G. Champion (1893–1975), editor or sub-editor, 1930–1

    STAFF

    C. S. Mabaso (d. 1935), secretary of Abantu-Batho Ltd., General Agent, 1912–29?

    Serasengoe Philip Merafe, “foreman machineminder”, 1912–14

    Moffat Caluza (outsourced printer)

    ENDNOTES

  • Data from Grant Christison, from death notice in NASA, Pretoria, TAB, MHG 31992.

  • Over the years, argues Chris Lowe (e-mail to editor 29 July 2011), some writers have conflated the names of Horatio L. Bud-M'belle and Isaiah Bud-M'belle to: ‘Horatio Isaiah Budlwana (Bud) Mbelle’ (E. J. Verwey (ed.), New Dictionary of South African Biography, vol. 1 (Pretoria: HSRC, 1999): 170) and ‘Horatio Isaiah Bud-Mbelle’ (T. Karis and G. M. Carter (eds), From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882–1964, vol. 4 (Stanford: Hoover University Press, 1977): 12), with later errors perhaps originating in the latter source. Horatio was a nephew of Isaiah. Sometimes it is also spelt M'belle or Mbelle.

  • Data from Chris Lowe; T. D. M. Skota (ed.), The African Yearly Register, Being an Illustrated National Biographical Dictionary (Who's Who) of Black Folks in Africa (Johannesburg: Esson, 1931): 53 lists Selope Thema only as a ‘correspondent’.

  • Donald Herdeck, African Authors (Washington, DC: Black Orpheus Press, 1973): 359.

  • PART II - Anthology

  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Book:
    The People’s Paper
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012, pp 331-490

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    Part II comprises texts from Abantu-Batho in the form of articles, editorials and letters drawn from extant issues, fragments, translations in archives, or reprints in other newspapers or books. The narrow Abantu-Batho archive restricted scope, but for those years where more issues are available, our selection criteria seek a thematic balance across political, intellectual, economic, social and cultural history, biography, gender, class, and region. Despite the very limited and scattered archive we have been able to include at least one piece from each year of publication.

    The sources are chiefly library or archival holdings, notably the extensive run between 1930 and 1931 in the National Library of South Africa (also microfilmed), the 1920 special issue in Durban and SOAS, 1928–29 issues in Atlanta and the Carter-Karis Collection, a range of issues and translations in the National Archives, Pretoria (especially Department of Justice and Director of Native Labour files), and the Swaziland National Archives, plus Rhodes House Library at the University of Oxford. We have given priority to unpublished items, but in the Bibliography readers can locate short extracts in contemporary newspapers and books, and selected reprints in compilations such as the Karis-Carter volumes, Outlook on a Century, and the Garvey Papers.

    We keep notes to a minimum, as many persons and events are explained in Part I, but where necessary more obscure persons or events are annotated. Generally, we follow the language usage and spelling of the time. We have silently corrected some spelling or grammar, but kept this to a minimum to let readers appreciate the flavour of contemporary writing.

    CONTENTS

    1912

  • 1. ‘The Municipalities and Natives’, Abantu-Batho, 23? October 1912

  • 2. ‘Oppression of the Native & Coloured Races’, Abantu-Batho, December? 1912

  • 3. ‘The Affairs of Swaziland’, Abantu-Batho, 25 December–12 February 1913

    • 1913

  • 4. ‘Native Women's Brave Stand’, Abantu-Batho, July? 1913

  • 5. ‘The New Solicitor: Mr. R. W. Msimang’, Abantu-Batho, 5 July 1913

  • 6. ‘An Ancient Couple: Suffering under the Lands Act’, Abantu-Batho, September 1913

The People’s Paper
  • A centenary history and anthology of Abantu-Batho
  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012
  • This much-awaited volume uncovers the long-lost pages of the major African multilingual newspaper, Abantu-Batho. Founded in 1912 by African National Congress (ANC) convenor Pixley Seme, with assistance from the Swazi Queen, it was published up until 1931, attracting the cream of African politicians, journalists and poets Mqhayi, Nontsisi Mgqweth, and Grendon. In its pages burning issues of the day were articulated alongside cultural by-ways. The People’s Paper – comprising both essays and an anthology – explores the complex movements and individuals that emerged in the almost twenty years of its publication. The essays contribute rich, new material to provide clearer insights into South African politics and intellectual life. The anthology unveils a judicious selection of never-before published columns from the paper spanning every year of its life and drawn from repositories on three continents. Abantu-Batho had a regional and international focus, and by examining all these dynamics across boundaries and disciplines, The People’s Paper transcends established historiographical frontiers to fill a lacuna that scholars have long lamented.

  • Chapter 4 - Queen Labotsibeni and Abantu-Batho

  • from FOUNDERS AND EDITORS
    • By Sarah Mkhonza, African writer-in-residence at Cornell University.
  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Book:
    The People’s Paper
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012, pp 128-150

  • Summary

    A book on Abantu-Batho needs to treat Queen Labotsibeni Gwamile Mdluli of Swaziland (c.1858–1925) fully so that the discourse can bring out the stories behind this major contributor who helped found and sustain it. While her supporting role has not been excluded from history, her voice is missing, as is her appearance in the paper itself. Moreover, very little has been written on her political activities that can inform how she came to be one of the important shareholders in this seminal newspaper. As one of the main players in the establishment of the paper, Labotsibeni has to be included.

    While many writers touch briefly on Abantu-Batho's political role, very few comment on how it reported or represented women, or the extent to which women were involved in its operations, beyond stating that Labotsibeni was an important initial funder. In order to balance the telling of the story of Abantu-Batho, it is important to revisit the narrative of Queen Labotsibeni in ways that include women's actions in a patriarchal discourse that has always excluded them. In this chapter I retrace her activities and follow the actions and articulations excluded in previous works so that we can better explore her leadership role and understand how she became part of as important a venture as Abantu-Batho.

    Literature on women's voices in Southern Africa has exploded in recent decades and scholars have been rewriting history to include omitted women's voices. Patriarchy leads to women's ‘veiled voices’ and the relative silence on women in history leaves a gaping knowledge gap across the region, but the oral text is a major source to help us recreate this lacuna. We can help make history ‘inclusive’ by including women through acts of ‘recovering’ stories by women and ‘restoring’ their story in history. Recently, the role of African queens and queen mothers has received greater attention, but has not been related to the black press.

    A gendered history of the African press is long over due, and this chapter, while not a detailed analysis of all aspects of gender (female and male) in Abantu-Batho, does address some major issues to do with women and the broadsheet, and is thus a contribution towards this end.

  • Chapter 8 - African Royalty, Popular History and Abantu-Batho

  • from THEMES AND CONNECTIONS
    • By Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, executive director of SADET. He has a PhD in History from the University of the Witwatersrand and is author of The Soweto Uprisings: Counter-memories of June 1976 (Ravan Press, 1998), and several chapters in the SADET series, as well as school history textbooks., Peter Limb, an adjunct associate professor and Africana bibliographer at Michigan State University.
  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Book:
    The People’s Paper
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012, pp 226-254

  • Summary

    The African press in the twentieth century played a crucial role in enunciating positive images of African royalty after the destruction of indigenous kingdoms across South Africa by British imperialism and settler colonialism in the previous century. In doing so, newspapers such as Abantu-Batho connected with African oral tradition to help recreate anew an indigenous popular history. The disempowerment of kings and their replacement in some cases by state-appointed ‘chiefs’ made the representation of royalty more complex, but Abantu-Batho in particular sought to maintain the dignity of legitimate kings, while reserving the right to criticise those whom it saw as lacking legitimacy.

    There was an almost-organic relationship between African royalties and Abantu- Batho and its key editors active in the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) and/or Transvaal Native Congress (TNC). The founding of the weekly was due in no small part to the support, financial and otherwise, of Queen Regent Labotsibeni of Swaziland, and the ongoing support of her and Prince Malunge was important to its early survival. Such support was reciprocated. A series of articles over its first few years of publication sympathetically explored the predicament faced by Swaziland's indigenous rulers and opposed the country's incorporation into the Union of South Africa. In 1915 the paper called for ‘just recognition [of] Native Kings, Princes and Chiefs under the Supreme Sovereignty of his Majesty the King’. There were articles on connections between rulers and indigenous knowledge. Early in 1916, editor Robert Grendon, announcing in Abantu-Batho that the future King Sobhuza was proceeding to Lovedale, mentions a royal indaba to invoke ‘the blessing and the protection of the Ancestral Spirits (emadhlozi)’. Above all, the paper asserted African dignity. The following month, Grendon reported, in very respectful style, the arrival of Prince Bhuza (the future Sobhuza II) in Johannesburg, where he was feted (at great expense) by another Abantu- Batho editor, Cleopas Kunene. The fact that ‘all the white [British] chiefs from Swaziland accompanied their chief’ was a salutary lesson that Swaziland must not ‘fall under the Union’ for then ‘his royalty will be taken away’.

  • Chapter 5 - ‘We of Abantu Batho’: Robert Grendon's Brief and Controversial Editorship

  • from FOUNDERS AND EDITORS
    • By Grant Christison, University of KwaZulu-Natal PhD was on Robert Grendon, an Abantu-Batho editor, on whom he has also published a chapter in Grappling with the Beast: Indigenous Southern African Responses to Colonialism 1840–1930 (Brill, 2010).
  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Book:
    The People’s Paper
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012, pp 151-172

  • Summary

    Late in 1912 Pixley ka Isaka Seme travelled to Swaziland to acquire a printing press for his projected newspaper, Abantu-Batho. This may have been the equipment rendered redundant by the demise of The Times of Swaziland a few years earlier. According to Selby Msimang, this ‘printing plant [was] a gift from the Queen-Regent of Swaziland’, Labotsibeni.

    While the British appropriated the greater part of her income shortly after they usurped Swaziland's government in 1904, the queen remained in 1912 one of the wealthiest black women in Southern Africa. She deployed vestiges of her pre-colonial power and wealth – grudgingly conceded by the interlopers – with consummate adroitness. If illiterate, she was acutely conscious of the value of printed texts and book learning and, according to Hilda Kuper, alive to the necessity of fighting

    the Europeans with their own weapons. ‘In what does the white man's power lie?’ the Queen Regent, Gwamile [Labotsibeni], once asked Robert Grendon, a Coloured man she brought from Natal as tutor for her grandson [i.e. the future King Sobhuza II]. Before he could answer, she continued: ‘It lies in money and in books. We too will learn; we too will be rich.’

    In October 1906 Grendon (c.1867–1949) found himself at the royal village, Zombodze, summoned by the queen to serve her as schoolmaster to the children of highborn Swazis and distinguished commoners. The fledgling white administration in Mbabane launched inquiries and learnt of his earlier anti-government activities in Natal. As a result, he was not allowed to teach at Zombodze school.

    Instead, in late December he was appointed schoolmaster at Mahamba mission on Swaziland's south-western border, a school, it would seem, sponsored in part by the queen. It was reported that Grendon administered the school without recourse to Swazi national funds. It was here that her youngest son, Prince Lomvazi, received some of his schooling.

    Later Grendon did teach at Zombodze and in 1911 was mentoring Prince Lomvazi. For his services the queen paid him £10 per month. In December 1911 he escorted Lomvazi to the New Comet and Cason goldmines on the Witwatersrand to check on the well-being of his people living in the compounds.

  • Chapter 10 - Garveyism, Abantu-Batho and the Radicalisation of the African National Congress during the 1920s

  • from THEMES AND CONNECTIONS
    • By Robert Vinson, university associate professor for Teaching Excellence in History at the College of William and Mary.
  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Book:
    The People’s Paper
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012, pp 282-297

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    Founded in Johannesburg in 1912, Abantu-Batho (The People) was the first newspaper of the African National Congress (ANC), the oldest and current governing political party in South Africa. The first African newspaper with a truly national circulation, Abantu-Batho reflected the ANC's national orientation, a break from the provincial protest groups that existed before the 1910 Union of South Africa. Until its demise in 1931 Abantu-Batho shaped and reflected the rich political, social and intellectual life of Africans. It articulated forcefully African demands for full citizenship in South Africa, including the franchise, property rights – particularly in fighting against the 1913 Natives’ Land Act – equality in educational and economic opportunities, and the abolition of all racially discriminatory laws. Publishing in English, isiZulu, isXhosa and Sesotho/Setswana, Abantu-Batho editors and contributors included some of the leading African political figures of the day. These included ANC leaders Pixley Seme, Saul Msane, Richard Selope Thema, T. D. Mweli Skota, D. D. T. Jabavu and Zaccheus Mahabane, making the paper an important window into the political evolution of the ANC in its formative years.

    MARCUS GARVEY

    Abantu-Batho is also a vehicle to examine the fascinating transnational relationship between black South Africans, and ‘American Negroes’, a contemporary broad category of overseas blacks, particularly African Americans and black West Indians. Since the 1890s, even though African Americans were subordinated in Jim Crow America, they were viewed by black South Africans as role models and potential liberators in their own battles against South African segregation. Africans were particularly attracted to optimistic narratives of African American progress from slavery to freedom in the post-Civil War American South, tales first spread in South Africa by the Virginia Jubilee Singers, a troupe of African American singers that toured for five years in the 1890s. Booker T. Washington was most closely associated with this ‘Up From Slavery’ narrative: he had risen from a slave birth to become the founding principal of the famed Tuskegee Institute and a respected political figure who preached inter-racial cooperation in economics and education, but separation in social spheres as a panacea to the conflict-ridden race relations of the American South.

  • Chapter 7 - Abantu-Batho and the Xhosa Poets

  • from THEMES AND CONNECTIONS
    • By Jeff Opland, visiting professor of African Language Literatures in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Book:
    The People’s Paper
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012, pp 201-225

  • Summary

    Bitter rivalries and factionalism run through the history of African language newspapers in South Africa. In the case of Xhosa journalism, there was considerable tension between the mission paper Isigidimi sama-Xosa of Lovedale and the independent secular paper Imvo Zabantsundu in King William's Town after John Tengo Jabavu left Isigidimi to found Imvo in 1884, a rivalry that ultimately led to the demise of Isigidimi by the end of 1888. The air crackled between Jabavu's Imvo and Izwi Labantu, published in East London between 1897 and 1909, which supported the South African Native Congress (SANC), the largely Capebased predecessor of the South African Native National Congress (later African National Congress, or ANC). No rivalry, however, was quite as vituperative as that between the two multilingual Johannesburg newspapers Abantu-Batho and Umteteli wa Bantu. Despite their mutual antipathy, however, both of these newspapers made significant contributions to the literary careers of two of the greatest Xhosa poets of the 1920s, although the poets themselves differed in their responses to the rivalry.

    In the wake of the radicalisation of the Transvaal Native Congress (TNC) after the end of World War I and the disagreement over Congress strategy, a party of moderates approached the Chamber of Mines with a request for support to start a newspaper in opposition to Abantu-Batho. The Chamber proceeded to establish such a newspaper with policies and practices designed to counter and undermine Abantu-Batho. According to Mary Benson's notes of an interview with T. D. Mweli Skota,

    Dube, Masane [Msane], Mbela [M'belle], Maxelele [Maxeke]. They went to man in charge Chamber of Mines and told him these young people very extreme and they wanted to start a paper in opposition to A.B., and he said all right come again, so when next they went Chamber had decided to start paper for them. Wouldn't give them money but started paper for them and this was not what they wanted. Maxelele employed and Dube as editors and about £60 per month one salary. Plaatje had gone to Canada after Versailles deputation and wrote to Skota that he knew nothing about this and was not a party to it. This new set-up could pay and took all the A.B. compositors so had to train new ones. New paper given out to people in mines and not sold for about six months.

  • Chapter 9 - ‘Johannesburg in Flames’: The 1918 Shilling Campaign, Abantu-Batho and Early African Nationalism in South Africa

  • from THEMES AND CONNECTIONS
    • By Paul Landau, an associate professor of History at the University of Maryland and a research fellow at the University of Johannesburg.
  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Book:
    The People’s Paper
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012, pp 255-281

  • Summary

    In the 1910s, the period approaching a century ago, many urban working-class sectors across the world looked ready to explode. Johannesburg's post-World War I, early twentieth-century experience fits this pattern, although of course South Africa exhibited its own characteristic features. The commercialisation of agriculture propelled the old state–capitalist alliance to dispossess thousands of African peasants who had up to then clung to productive lands. They poured into South Africa's cities especially from Orange Free State ‘white farms’, alongside a smaller number of Afrikaner second and third sons, all looking for work. The government tried to manage the provision of their labour and cycled profits from gold mining back to white farm owners; and it legislated to keep Africans from leaving those farms too quickly. A cabinet secretary ruled collectively over Africans with a Native Affairs Department staffed by paternalist liberal administrators that dealt with chiefs and other purported representatives of Africans.

    In and near South Africa's unreformed urban spaces, numbers of recently rural African youth pressed upon one another, kin and semi-kin. The African National Congress (ANC), officially called the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) until 1923, was then still a young organisation. It advocated for these men and their rural kin from the moment of its formation in 1912 as a protest against the exclusion of Africans from the franchise. The SANNC or ‘Congress’, as it was called, with its provincial affiliate the Transvaal Native Congress (TNC), raised great crowds toward the end of the 1910s under a capable leadership. These meetings on the Rand considered forming an alliance with white socialists in Johannesburg and drew Congress president S. M. Makgatho's direct intervention. Even more, for a few days in the winter of 1918 Congress appeared to verge on a new status, a possible vehicle for mass militant action. And yet this did not quite happen; or, certainly not with the ferocity of popular actions familiar to news watchers at the start of the twenty-first century.

  • Introduction: A Centenary History of Abantu-Batho, the People's Paper

  • from Overview
    • By Peter Limb, an adjunct associate professor and Africana bibliographer at Michigan State University.
  • Grant Christison, Paul Landau, Peter Limb, Christopher Lowe, Sarah Mkhonza, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, Jeff Opland, Chris Saunders, Robert Trent Vinson
  • Book:
    The People’s Paper
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2012, pp 2-48

  • Summary

    ABANTU-BATHO: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION

    The 2012 centenary of the African National Congress (ANC) is also that of the closely allied newspaper, Abantu-Batho (The People). This little-studied weekly was established in October 1912 by the convener of the ANC, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, with financial assistance from the Queen Regent of Swaziland, Labotsibeni. It attracted as editors and journalists some of the best of a rising company of African intellectuals, political figures and literati such as Cleopas Kunene, Saul Msane, Richard Victor Selope Thema, T. D. Mweli Skota, Robert Grendon, S. E. K. Mqhayi and Nontsizi Mgqwetho. In its pages important themes of the day, from the pass laws, Land Act and the World War to strikes and socialism, the founding of Fort Hare, the rights of black women and Garveyism were articulated, just as mundane events such as football matches, marriages and church gatherings were reported. It was also a forum for letters and literary contributions, some of the highest calibre, others of a plebeian bluntness.

    A dynamic black press had already been established in some cities and towns by 1912. The ability to spread news in a printed format had once been a virtual monopoly of the colonial state or the missions, but the rise of a black-owned and -edited press challenged this, just as the spread of new communications and news agencies opened up space to share ideas more freely. In the latter-half of the nineteenth century, a nascent African intelligentsia developed letter-writing networks and then, having few publication outlets, created their own regional newspapers such as Imvo Zabantsundu (Native Opinion, 1884–) of J. T. Jabavu, Izwi Labantu (Voice of the People, 1897–1909) of A. K. Soga, Koranta ea Becoana (Bechuana Gazette, 1901–08) and Tsala ea Batho (The People's Friend, 1910–15) of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, and Ilanga lase Natal (Natal Sun, 1903–) of John Langalibalele Dube, plus several weeklies printed across the border in Basutoland (now Lesotho). The editorial politics of these weeklies was always strictly within constitutional limits, but in favour of extending black rights. Like Abantu-Batho, their circulation and readership (see below) were modest, but their impact on emergent political bodies was large.

Page 185 of 359