RICHARD VICTOR SELOPE THEMA

Richard Victor Selope Thema

by

Jordan Ngubane

The subject of this article, the last in this series, is the most unique in the history of African Journalism. Unlike the two others already discussed [John Langalibalele Dube and Ngazana Luthuli] and unlike very many others who wielded the pen on our side in the old days. Richard Victor Selope Thema came of unchristian parents; was not a Christian until he went to school and worked his way from the bottom to the top by sheer forcefulness of character; had a brilliant career in the journalism of the old days and stands out as the only leader from the old school who survived all the storms and strife of the last thirty years and today still plays a leading role in the political life of his people.

Born on a farm near Pietersburg in 1886, young Victor had his education at the local school and from there went to Bochahela. By 1904 he was already a teacher, but did not receive his salary for this year and the whole of 1905 when he received the princely sum of L21. With this amount in his pocket, he went to Lovedale covering the long distance partly on foot, carrying his luggage on his head and partly by train—the cattle trucks providing the best type of accommodation for people of our race then.

He had a very distinguished career at Lovedale. Bursaries were awarded him and he stayed here for longer than he had anticipated, until he passed the Matriculation examination of the college. Besides, he studies Bookkeeping, Shorthand, Business, Methods, Typewriting, and Photography.

By 1911, he was out in the field teaching. But teaching did not provide enough scope for the brilliant young Richard. In 1915, riding on a his pole he had purchased, he traveled all the way from Pietersburg to Johannesburg, where he took employment with Mr. R.W. Msimang, one of our first lawyers. By then, Mr. Msimang was a man of some consequence in the political life of these times. Young Thema had seen the ruin brought on his people by the 1913 Land Act, while he could clearly gather from his own childhood experiences the beastly way in which men of his colour were treated on the Dutch farms in the North, insulted and humiliated by both English and the Dutch in Johannesburg and exploited by all in the rest of the country. He needed no persuasion to take an active part in the political organization of his people. He did his work efficiently during the day in the offices of his employer and during the evenings went to type letters, prepare memoranda, and generally do all the correspondence of Congress in those days, for nothing. His industry, devotion to duty, and loyalty to the cause of our people attracted the eye of Mr. S.M. Makgatho, then one of the most brilliant constellations in the political firmament of those days. Mr. Makgatho gave the young clerk all possible encouragement.

So well did young Thema do his work that he had been elected one of the first Secretaries of the African National Congress. So brilliantly did he acquit himself in this capacity that though very much on the young side, the African people elected him to be one of their delegates to protest against their oppression in 1919. Mr. Thema was not the man to allow the opportunity given him to pass unused. While in London he took a course in journalism with the London School of Journalism, thus preparing himself for a career for which he does not have to apologize.

On his return to South Africa , he was appointed sub-editor of the once famous Abantu-Batho , an African journal which played a very important part in our politics during the twenties of this century and it is from his association with the journal that his career of previous journalism starts.

Though he was a good Mopedi, Richard Victor Selope Thema was a good African nationalist. He saw the problems of race adjustment and the fact that the African was oppressed racially through the historical perspective. The religious upheavals in Europe during the Reformation and the economic and industrial awakening in the seventeenth-century, together with the Napoleonic wars had led to the coming o f the whiteman in this country. Better organized and educated than the African national groups whom he had found in this country, he had enmeshed each group in isolation and had skillfully prevented every move towards a united African front against white penetration into the African interior. Cetshawyo yo Khama, Moshoeshoe, Sebhuhuni and Lobengula had been tackled in isolation and in the final reckoning had yielded either to direct military action or to diplomatic pressure and lost their independence. Young Thema insisted and taught that we should learn from those failure and meet the whiteman's organization of its minority with our organization of our majority. In the united action of the entire African community, he saw the only hope for his race.

He preached this doctrine extensively from the time when he entered politics, clung to it through the bitterest times when Africans were divided racially in the latter twenties of this century and to this day preaches it with unsagging zeal.

His best writings which have come down to us are drawn from the first ten years of Hertzog's rule, when African intellectuals took a leading part of their people. Certainly, they groused, complained and threatened a lot—but Mr. Thema spent quite a good deal of his time replying white charges against the African. In the host of intellectuals who influenced our thinking in those times, Mr. Thema was the only one who was practical as he was realistic in his approach. The haughty whiteman who, when he set his foot on South African soil, thought of Africans only as servants and forgot that they were proud people with glorious traditions, made Thema's blood boil. But at the same time he constantly reminded himself and his people that the African's ability to use military force against oppression had been destroyed at Ulundi. Now, it was to be the case of sitting at a round table with our enemies and persuading them to see the reason and justice of our cause. On the practical side, he organized the Joint Council movement, the Bantu Social Centre in a variety of ways, went quote out of his way to show that it was possible to cooperate with the whiteman with a view to advancing our own cause.

In his writings, he wrote lucidly, clearly and to the point. He took part in nearly all the stirring political controversies which shook the African community between the years 1924 and 1939. One which readily comes to mind is the famous incident when Hertzog hurled violent tirades against overseas people who were critical of his treatment of our race. In fact, the old General was at one time so annoyed with British criticism of his oppressive Native Policy that he openly threatened the accession of a large part of the British Empire ”unless the irritating practice of attempting to interfere with the Union's Native Problems was dropped.” Mr. Pirow, echoing his master's voice, warned people “in Church and out of Church who, in their endeavor to espouse the cause of the Natives made the latter lose respect for the Europeans in South Africa and tended to make them less law abiding.”

To this, Thema retorted in Umteseli wa Bantu for which he now regularly wrote, “General Hertzog's threat is regarded as a mere bluff by a certain section of the Native people and if carried into effect, would be welcomed.” Thema was right: Hertzog himself accepted the Statute of Westminister.

The best part of Mr. Thema's writing comes from the fifteen years that Hertzog was Union Prime Minister; when it was the fashion for Cabinet Ministers to compete with one another in acting in a provocative manner towards Africans or saying and doing things which hurt the feelings of our people. Nothing angered Mr. Thema more than when Cabinet Ministers discovered strange motives in the unrest resulting from Hertzog's policy of smothering out of existence the African people. Mr. Pirow, then a very important person in the Hertzog Government, was very fond of missing no opportunity to insist on demanding that the African should be “kept in his place.” And on several occasions, Mr. Pirow found himself the object of attention from the African journalists.

On one occasion, Mr. Pirow shouted that the African had lost the respect eh had had for the whiteman because of the fact that African soldiers had met and come into contact with European men and women in France during World War I. Thema snatched this opportunity to give him this straight-from-the-heart telling: “This serves to show how ignorant Mr. Pirow is of Native Affairs. If the Natives today are losing respect for the whiteman, it is because they never had any respect for him in the past. They feared him, no doubt….. but that was not respect.”

Mr. Thema differed from his contemporaries in another way. Though he was frequently included in deputations to England , he did not forget that in the final reckoning, it was the South African voter who decided our fate. Thus, in 1928, when Passes were very much in the news, he wrote: “…there is a public opinion to be educated. It is necessary, therefore, before anything is done, to issue a memorandum stating our case against the Pass Laws. In this case, it will be necessary that we should have as much evidence of hardship as possible.” Here he clearly broke away from the popular practice of his times sending deputations and harping on grievances. He unmistakably advocated the scientific approach to our problems; wanted the scientific method employed in presenting our case.

When the Abantu Batho collapsed, Mr. Thema had written for the Umteteli wa Bantu —from whose files may be seen some of his best writings. But in 1932, he joined two whitemen, B.G. Paver and Isaak le Grange in founding The Bantu World , which he has edited since then.

Many people today find it very hard to understand Mr. Thema. There are many reasons for this. The man himself is by nature not very communicative. He is not very fluent in his way of talking either. He has a halting jerk in his speech which may easily pass for stammering and together with this is a shyness of which he often seems proud in an age which characteristically belongs to the younger generation, he retains a mixture of mental habits drawn from the times of Dube and Mapikele as well as from the present. While this enables him to see our problems against the broad historical background, it does not make it very easy for his younger colleagues to understand him.

But above everything else, he is essentially a writer, a journalist first and everything else second. I have come in contact with some of the greatest journalists within the British Commonwealth; others from America and a few from other lands and have always been struck by the fact most of them who had actually dethroned kings, provoked revolutions or set up new governments, appeared as dull, uncommunicative, shy hermits with tongues glued to their palate and having hardly enough honey in their speech to persuade a woman to follow them to the altar. But those were men at whose word Kings, Prime Ministers and State Presidents trembled; the real makers of history. To me, Mr. Thema belongs to the great tribe.

To those who know him closely, he is a jovial man of the world. But only a very small section know this side of his life. To most people, he is—and rightly so—a retiring intellectual giant, who spans the gap between our immediate past and our present. There is no doubt that Mr. Thema possesses one of the finest and most brilliant intellects in our political life today.

His writings today certainly reveal very little of the brilliant journalist who made and pulled down Congress Presidents for a quarter of a century. They have lost their virility, nationalistic force and are not, one might add, very convincing. No longer does Mr. Thema write to give a lead, to stir his readers into thinking. He writes merely not to be behind the main [?], he among others, set in motion over thirty years ago.

There is neither disintegration nor decadence behind this: but a grieving national tragedy. Men of Mr. Thema's intellectual strength do not just crumble down into nothing, nor do their thoughts and philosophies fade into the limbo of forgotten things. These men built nations and shape history and live throughout time. I write this to emphasize the depth of the tragedy behind Mr. Thema's watered-down writings. We do not as yet have a National Press of our own breathing the spirit of our people and inspired by one single purpose to see the African a full and free citizen in the land of his birth, no matter who else says what.

Some of our younger hot-bloods miss no opportunity to assail Mr. Thema for his having gone over to what they call the “enemy camp.” But to me there is neither sense, truth nor an appreciation of the realities of our situation in these attacks. In the first place, a people which cannot provide scope for the full oppression of its own genius within its own ranks should be very slow to complain when others make use of its talent.

Secondly, Mr. Thema has not swallowed any of his major principles. He started a Nationalist and a good Congressman; today he is an astute Nationalist and a resolute Congressman. Wider experience, seasoned knowledge of the world and a recognition of the fact that in the final area vote of all national and racial groups are members of one family, living in this one world, which shrinks with every new scientific invention, making it imperative for those who live on it to learn to live together or perish—regardless of race or political faith—have made him realize that he can serve better when he makes those in the population reason with him than when he wages an unequal physical fight against them.

To me. Mr. Thema is one of the greatest sons we, the African people, have produced. His name has its proud place in history by those of Dube, Shaka, Cetshwayo, Meshoeshoe, Dingane, Hinton, Sekhukhuai, Khama and Lobengela. While on the offensive, he fought a valiantly as Dingane's warriors at the battle of Naeme. When the fortunes of political war changes, he did not lose faith in the cause he had given his life to advance; he laid down the old weapons, gist on new armour, even if some people did not like it, employed new tactics to hold the fort, while history brought up new forces to reinforce him. He alone, among our old leaders, did this without changing his political coat. He has been consistent in fighting for the attainment by his people of what he believes is their rightful destiny and in this, more than in anything else, lies his greatness.

I worked for a while under this old man in that time learnt not only to report and admire him, but to be prouder still of our race which had produced him. A man of very wide learning and culture, a hard bitten patriot with no streak of bitterness in his life, ready to let the youth of his race benefit from his experiences. I found it always a pleasure and an education to discuss things with him or listen while he recounted his experiences in the service of our people. He is one of those great gentle men from the old school of whom we proudly say, “We are what we are because of their sacrifice.” It is not because white men were unduly gracious or benevolent towards us that we are what we are today. It is because men like Mr. Richard Victor Selope Thema worked themselves to the bone to lay foundations for a great future for us, their children. I have always been struck by the fact that in all his career, Mr. Thema was prepared to serve his race in any capacity. Certainly, he did not get the limelight as much as his colleagues, but that did not weaken his determination to fight for a free Africa .

Congress recognized his service to the nation by elevating him to the position of Speaker of the Congress as others which had been held by some of the finest sons of our race. Congress would be honouring itself if it asked this grand old fighter either to hold this office for life, or conferred on him the Honorary Vice-President of Congress—just as it did in the case of the late Dr. John L. Dube.

While in Johannesburg , I learnt from him that he had already begun to put his experiences in book form. Actually, he was kind enough to show me some of the manuscripts he had already written out. I found them the most valuable document we could have as he took a leading part in all our fights against oppression and was often at the inner councils where his advice was eagerly sought. If his writings could see the light of day—and I think both the Bantu Welfare Tenet and the other people who have set aside money to help us should see that it is also needed to publish each work Mr. Thema is preparing—they would shed very valuable light on many aspects of our struggle which are enshrouded in mist for us, the younger generation! We look forward with eager interest to seeing his book in printed form.