ZACCHEUS RICHARD MAHABANE

The National Congress was organized by Dr. P. ka Isaka Seme with the deliberate knowledge, consent and sanction of the Bantu Kings, Chiefs and Leaders at Bloemfontein in 1912 for the main object of safe-guarding and protecting the interests of the Bantu. The forsaking or refraining from attendance at the annual gatherings of the Associationon the part of those to whom the people look for leadership and protection amounts to national suicide of the most possible description. We cannot, we dare not sit with folded arms and watch the process going before our view of the gradual extermination of our people as a race of their gradual annihilation as a people or their elimination as a national entity in the political economy of Southern Africa, and their ultimate reduction to the position of a race of mere 'hewers of wood and drawes of water' for another race of people who have no more rights of existence as a people and special privilege and facilities than we. This dark and critical hour in the life history of the Bantu loudly and eloquently calls for unity of thought, unity of feeling, unity of expression, unity of action, unity of movement, unity of front, for the sinking of all petty differences, all tribal jealousies, all mutual suspicions and distrust.

-"The 14th Annual Conference of the African National Congress", Ilanga lase Natal, March 27, 1925.