It is nearly impossible to overestimate the impact of Pixley ka Isaka Seme on the political, intellectual and cultural history of South Africa in the twentieth-century. His debut essay, "The Regeneration of Africa" (1904), written as an undergraduate student at Columbia University, was the founding manifesto of the New African Movement. It was a declarative statement that the construction of modernity was the most essential task of the New African intellectuals. The essay was also uncompromising in its belief that Egyptian civilization, the historical legacies of the Songhay and Ghana Empires were implicated in the making of modernity in the present context. In appropriating the idea of The Regeneration Of Africa from the African American intellectuals of the nineteeenth-century, such as Martin Delany and Alexander Crummell, Pixley was signalling that the construction of New African modernity must model itself on the New Negro modernity. This extraordinary document has had an electrifying effect on the younger generation of New Africans: from R. V. Selope Thema through Z. K. Matthews to A. P. Mda. Its historical resonances in the present moment have not exhausted themselves. Within three months of his election as the first freely elected President of South of South Africa in May 1994, in his first Address to an OAU Meeting of African Heads of State in Tunis in June, Nelson Mandela made a call for the creation of an African Renaissance: "Where South Africa appears on the agenda again, let it be because we want to discuss what its contribution shall be to the making of the new African Renaissance. Let it be because we want to discuss what materials it will supply for the rebuilding of the African city of Carthage. Africa cries out for a new birth, Carthage awaits the restoration of its glory. . . . Tribute is due to the great thinkers of our continent who have been and are trying to move all of us to understand the intimate inter-connection between the great issues of our day of peace, stability, democracy, human rights, cooperation and development. . . . We know as a matter of fact that we have it in ourselves as Africans to change all of this. We must, in action, assert our will to do so. We must, in action, say that there is no obstacle big enough to stop us from bringing about a new African Renaissance." The level of synchrony between these two manifestos separated by nearly a century is remarkable: if "The Regeneration of Africa" was a call for the making of modernity, the Address by Nelson Mandela was a call for its completion. Pixley's manifesto already had had an effect on the younger Mandela half a century earlier, when with a group of New African intellectuals like Ellen Kuzwayo, Jordan Kush Ngubane, Albertina Sisulu, Anton Lembede, A. P. Mda, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and others founded the ANC Youth League in 1943: it intellectually authorised the making and invention of what Jordan K. Ngubane has characterized as a 'New African Nationalism'. Another historic text by Pixley ka Isaka Seme was "Native Union" (1911) which was published across practically all the New African newspapers, from Solomon T. Plaatje's Tsala ea Batho through Mark Radebe's Ipepa lo Hlango to John Dube's Ilanga lase Natal in the several months preceding the momentous occasion: it was founding document of the ANC which gathered Africans together on January 8, 1912 in Bloemfontein. The document called for the making of an African political modernity. Pixley also wrote one of the first documents commemorating this major event: "The 8th DAY OF JANUARY 1912 shall ever remain memorable in African history because it was on that day that the transcending influence of Letsie II brought us together at Bloemfontein. It was a conference of races and of nations---many of whose ranks had been devastated by the demon of inter-tribal strife and jealousy" ("The South African Native National Congress", P. KA ISAKA SEME, Ilanga lase Natal, March 22, 1912). The ANC was founded as a political instrument of modernity to transform the historical consciousness of the tribal Old Africans into the national New Africans. The third unique contribution of Pixley ka Isaka Seme to South Africa was in his being among the first to sketch the intellectual portraits of New African intellectuals, politicians and writers: "Alfred Mangena Of Lincoln's Inn: Esquire and Barrister-At-Law", Ilanga lase Natal, August 14, 1908; "Biographical Sketch: Rev. W. B. Rubusana, Ph. D., M. P. C.", Tsala ea Batho January 24, 1911; "The New Solicitor: Mr. R. W. Msimang", Tsala ea Batho, July 15, 1913. In this endeavour of creating intellectual portraits of the New Africans, Pixley was following on the example of F. Z. S. Peregrino, who in the 1900s had in his newspaper South African Spectator, sketched ideological and political portraits of New Africans as well as of New Negroes. It must be said that Pixley ka Isaka Seme himself was a subject of a few intellectual portraits, because the senior New African politicians and intellectuals such as Solomon T, Plaatje and John L. Dube saw his potential greatness before it actuality manifested itself. While still at Oxford University, John Dube commissioned an anonymous sketch for his newspaper of Seme which was very laudatory: "I Zulu e Oxford", Ilanga lase Natal, November 23, 1906. John Tengo Jabavu republished from Ilanga lase Natal (the relevant copy of this particular newspaper is lost) the second anonymous portrait of this great New African for his newspaper: "Mr. Seme is the first Zulu who has gone through Oxford University. It is quite true there are few European lawyers who have gone through that great University. His success sends a thrill of happiness through thousands of his people. We cordially widh him all possible success in the field he has entered. He and Mr. Alfred Mangena are in Transvaal practising there" (Mr. Attorney P. ka Isaka Seme, B. A.", Imvo Zabantsundu, January 31, 1911). Solomon T. Plaatje republished in his newspaper an anonymous report which had originally appeared in the Johannesburg Star, reporting a sensation that had been caused in Johannesburg by Pixley ka Isaka Seme defending an African accussed of assaulting a European ("Mr. P. I. Seme, B. A.", Koranta ea Becoana, February 18, 1911). Lastly, Pixley ka Isaka Seme published many essays and articles, in many of the New African newspapers, particularly in Umteteli wa Bantu and Ilanga lase Natal, which unfortunately have not as yet been assembled together. Though a worthy effort, Richard Rive and Tim Couzens' Seme: The Founder Of The ANC (Skotaville Publishers, Johannesburg, 1991), left all of these important intellectual efforts unassembled together, concentrating on letters by Pixley while at Northfield Mount Hermon School (in Massachusetts) to the school officials. The historic achievements of Pixley ka Isaka Seme await a serious biographical or critical study. One of the ironies they would hopefully make sense of concerning the founder of the ANC, is the tragedy that as the President-General of the organization in the 1930s he was arguably its most ineffectual and absolutely disastrous. Seme was a man of many paradoxes. His abundant correspondence with a fellow Oxfordian, Alain Locke, the main orchestrator of the New Negro Harlem Renaissance, reveals the manifold complexities of this great New African.