Besides the sheer abudance of brilliance he possessed, which had few equals in his generation, Duma Nokwe's other singular distinctiveness in him intersected the two strong intellectual currents of South African modernity: the Marxism of Albert Nzula and the African Nationalism of Anton Lembede. It was the synthesis of these two dominant traditions that formed the unique brand of his Marxism. On becoming an advocate, he subscribed to the philosophy and political practice of law that had been founded by Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Alfred Mangena and Richard W. Msimang (while they were students in England between 1905 to 1909) and continued by Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela in the late 1940s and in the early 1950s. In other words, Duma Nokwe's intellectual formation was shaped and determined by the best cultural traditions of New African modernity. Nokwe's spectacular political practice inside the country and in exile reflected this superb blending. His combination of politics and pedagogics was in the best tradition of Solomon T. Plaatje. Nokwe's meteoric political emergence in the 1950s and the dramatic though deliberated shift from Nationalism to Communism were in tempo with the velocity of the era. His epistemological shift also, from the Sciences at Fort Hare to the Humanities at the University of Witwatersrand, seems to have been made in accordance with the demands and needs of the decade. While at Fort Hare, he founded a branch of the ANC Youth League on campus. This founding was to have a pronounced effect on bright students who came after him at the University (then College), as the instance of Joe Matthews exemplifies this. Upon leaving Fort Hare in 1949, Nokwe becomes the chairman of the ANC Youth League in Orlando (Johannesburg) under the direct guidance of Oliver Tambo (he had been his teacher in High School) and Nelson Mandela. Duma Nokwe played a fundamental role in the Defiance Campaign of 1952 in the Johannesburg area. He is invited in 1953 as a Youth Leaguer to the World Youth Conference in Bucharest. By 1954 he is banned under the Suppression of Communism Act. A year later he is elected to the National Executive Committee of the ANC. Within three years, in 1958, at the age of 30 years, Nokwe is elected to the position of the Secretary-General of the national organization. This is a spectacular achievement. If it is remembered that the first Seceretary-General of the organization was Solomon T. Plaatje in 1912, the line of continuity is direct. Similar to Plaatje, who combined political engagement with intellectual activity for decades, Duma Nokwe, before being forced into exile in 1963, did likewise in the long decade of the 1950s (from 1948 to 1961). In the same way that Solomon T. Plaatje engaged himself with intellectual and political matters in Koranta ea Batho (The Bechuana Gazette) in the 1900s, Tsala ea Batho (The People's Friend) in the 1910s, Umteteli wa Bantu (The Mouthpiece of the People) in the 1920s, Duma Nokwe, following his predecessor, did likewise in the Liberation political review of the 1950s. One major political and intellectual battles of the early 1950s was against the institutionalization of an inferior form of education for Africans by the white minority Nationalist Party government that took the reigns of government in 1948. Duma Nokwe in his critique, writes the following: "Bantu education is the 'education' designed for the 'Bantu' by the Nationalist Government; it is a development of 'Native Education,' the education which was designed for the 'Native' of South Africa. Like 'Native Education,' 'Bantu education' is a qualified education which is a product of the political and economic structure of the country. Like its predecessors too, 'Bantu education' was not introduced as a means of raising the cultural level of the Africans, nor of developing the abilities of the African child to the full, but as one of the devices which aim at solving the cheap labour problems of the country. . . . The content of 'Bantu education' is a gross lowering of the already low education facilities of the Africans. Dr. Verwoed shamelessly sets Standard II as 'fundamental' education, after which pupils will be carefully selected for what is called higher primary education. Dr. Verwoed keeps a judicious silence about the fate of those who are not selected for the higher primary course. The curriculum is distorted. Fundamental education consists of reading, writing and arithmetic, Afrikaans and English, religion, education and singing. History and geography have been excluded. The intention is obvious, the African child who is being prepared as an instrument of cheap labour in a society which relies on fallacies must not know either the conditions of his country nor the truth about the world which are apparent even in the distorted South African history books, and are likely to expose the fallacies. . . . 'Bantu education' is a reactionary scheme which very nearly destroys education for the African in South Africa. It is reactionary because it is designed to satisfy the needs of a reactionary and heartless class of exploiters. Whilst the Nationalists disregard the needs and interests of the masses of the people, and subject the people to a more ruthless oppression and exploitation in the interests of solving the contradictions of their society they do not take into account the sharpening conflict they are creating between themselves and the people, which will ultimately break their artificial political and economic structure" (Duma Nokwe, "The Meaning of Bantu Education", Liberation, no. 9, 1954). In this Marxist critique of the Bantu Education Act of 1953, Duma Nokwe was in many ways following on the New African intellectual tradition exemplified by Solomon T. Plaatje and Richard W. Msimang's African Nationalist critique of the Natives' Land Act of 1913. This object of his critique was the subject of Plaatje's classic book, Native Life in South Africa (1916), in which he writes, among other things: "Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth. The 4,500,000 black South Africans are domiciled as follows: one and three-quarter millions in locations and reserves, over half a million within municipalities or in urban areas, and nearly a million as squatters on farms owned by Europeans. The rest are employed either on. . . . But the great revolutionary change [i.e., the diabolical nature] thus wrought by a single stroke of the pen, in the condition of the native, was not realized by him until about the end of June. . . . The complication of this cruel law is made manifest by the fact that. . . . None of the non-European races in the provinces of Natal, Transvaal and the 'Free' State can exercise the franchise. They have no say in the selection of members for the Union Parliament. That right is only limited to white men, so that a large number of the members of Parliament who voted for this measure have no responsibility towards the black races. Before reproducing this tyrannical enactment it would perhaps be well to recapitulate briefly the influences that led up to it. . . . The similarity in the experiences of the suffers would make monotonous reading if given individually, but there are instances here and there which give variety to the painful record, and these should yield the utmost satisfaction to the promoters of the Act, in proving to them the full measure of their achievement." Other New African intellectuals and political leaders were equally appalled by the effects of the Natives' Land Act of 1913. Writing in Solomon T. Plaatje's newspaper Tsala ea Batho an Open Letter appealing to King George V and the English Parliament to repeal the Act, Richard W. Msimang made the following observations: "We object to the summary prohibition of sale or lease of land. The Act infringes upon the natural rights of the free use and acquisition of land. That the principle of the Act is to provide for territorial separation of the two races---the principle which finds favour in the majority of the white opinion; we say that that principle could be carried out without imposing disability on the people without making summary stoppage of buying and leasing land, and without the necessity of imposing restrictions on one class of people (the natives) regarding free occupation of land. . . . As a result of these provisions, many of our people are being driven out from farms by white owners who hope to get freee compulsory labour; many people who refuse to labour for nothing in the farms are wandering about with their live stock and families in search of new places, some of them are emigrating into the territories outside the Union. . . . We demand the actual repeal of the Act, or alternately the suspension of the other parts of the Act until the Delimitation Commission had reported---and further that no new law affecting a change in occupation of land, should be brought forward unless the proposals have been submitted to the Chiefs, Headmen, and leaders of the Native Races within the Union; that is until the natives had been consulted and their opinion obtained through the [then Native, later African] National Congress. . . . The South African Native National Congress is a political organisation of three years experience in united native national movement" ("Native Lands Act, 1913: An Appeal to the People of England", June 13, 1914). Richard W. Msimang was also an advocate or barrister like Duma Nokwe. Nokwe wrote other brilliant historical and brilliant essays challenging and confronting the oppression of the African people. On being removed as the Secretary-General of the ANC following the historic Morogoro Conference of 1969 in Tanzania, participated in many international events and conferences as a spokesperson of the ANC concerning human rights. Today, in a liberated and post-apartheid South Africa, the South African Human Rights Commission has established the Duma Nokwe Human Rights Award. One of the recipients of this major award was given posthumously to Steve Biko a few months ago ("Son receives Biko's Duma Nokwe Award", East London Dispatch, December 12, 2000). That Duma Nokwe has this award named in his honor can only testify to his extraordinary contribution to the making of modernity that was the principle project of the New African Movement from Thomas Mofolo in 1900s to Nadine Gordimer in the 1950s. Duma Nokwe profoundly engaged the dialetical tension between Marxism and African Nationalism within New African modernity. In this sense, he was a brilliant student Govan Mbeki.