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TIYO SOGA |
| Although Tiyo is generally considered the first major modern African intellectual, the historical position he occupies in South African political and intellectual history is somewhat ambiguous. The reason for this ambivalence is that he has been considered by some of his compatriots to have been a modernizer, through his alignment with Christianity to which his father had converted earlier, and others characterize him to have been a betrayer of traditional societies. One index of this ambiguity is that he is not choosen as one of the outstanding African leaders or intellectuals by Z. K. Matthews in his comprehensive remapping of this leadership constellation which he wrote in twenty-six installments in Imvo Zabantsundu newspaper from June 3rd to November 21st, 1961. These masterful portraits of Africans at the beginning moment of their entrance into modernity and inside it, stretches from Elijah Makiwane (1850-1928) and John Knox Bokwe (1855-1922) through Charlotte Manye Maxeke (1874-1939) and S. E. K. Mqhayi (1875-1945) to R. V. Selope Thema (1886-1955) and John L. Dube (1871-1946). Matthews' massive restructuring of African intellectual is the most comprehensive attempted in the twentieth-century: in effect, covering the stretch of a century from 1850 to 1955. The second index indicating the possible earlier marginalization of Tiyo Soga, in so far as the historical appreciation of his worthiness, is that the intellectual generation that followed after him, which founded Imvo Zabantsundu in 1884, lauched the Lovedale Literary Society in 1879, and established the Native Educational Association also in 1879, hardly mentioned him in the existant archival materials available to us. This is a paradox because Elijah Makiwane, John Tengo Jabavu (1851-1921), Walter Rubusana (1858-1936), Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba (1850-1911), Isaac Wauchope (1845-1930) and others were intellectual descendants of the great man. What is surprising is that also the great Xhosa poet, S. E. K. Mqhayi, does not consider Tiyo Soga in his book of poetry I-Nzuzo (1942), a book that amply considers Charlotte Manye Maxeke, John Tengo Jabavu, John Knox Bokwe and John L. Dube. So, in a certain sense, in excluding Tiyo Soga from his intellectual and political appraisal, Z. K. Matthews was following on a certain intellectual pattern. But today in the late twentieth-century, Tiyo Soga is viewed as a major figure who in effect made a certain intellectual tradition possible. There are several indications of this. First, was the publication of Donovan Williams' Umfundisi: A Biography of Tiyo Soga 1829-1871 (1978). Although Williams makes extravagant and unfounded claims on behalf of his subject, that he was the founder of African Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, Black Consciousness, Negrutidism and a multitude of other black isms, Williams is nonetheless correct in viewing Tiyo Soga as the beginning of something monumental in African intellectual and political history. Second, following immediately upon the appearance of his biography, Williams assembled the writings of Tiyo Soga together: The Journal and Selected Writings of the Reverend Tiyo Soga (1983). This, in theory, made all the known writings of Tiyo Soga available to all South Africans. In all probability, this exemplary work by Donovan Williams was initiated in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Tiyo Soga in 1971. Third, in the 500-page third and expanded edition of Reader's Digest Illustrated History of South Africa: The Real Story, which appeared in the same year of 1994 as the victory of African Nationalism over White Nationalism (symbolized by the election of Nelson Mandela as the first black President of South Africa), Tiyo Soga is designated as the first African 'nationalist'. Indeed, a very large claim. Arguably, either Solomon T. Plaatje (1879-1932) or Pixley ka Isaka Seme (1880-1951), has a more legitimate claim to this designation than Tiyo Soga. Fourth, in a very prestigious American journal of world reputation, Critical Inquiry (Spring 1997), David Attwell wrote an essay "Intimate Enmity in the Journal of Tiyo Soga", in which the first modern African intellectual is examined in relation to his first literary biographer, John Aitken Chalmers. The troublesome argument made here by implication is that Tiyo Soga was much closer in intellectual affinity to his white biographer than to the African intellectual tradition that subsequently emerged after his death in 1871. This argument could be made through failure in giving cognisance to Tiyo Soga as a great African modernizer. The first singular contribution of Tiyo Soga to the African people was to argue of the necessity of their entrance into modernity, however problematical that historical experience may turn out to be: "What should be the signs of civilization? Can a nation---sunk in Barbarism & heathenism---elevate itself---can it of itself---see the advantages of a civilised & of a Xnised State--- Is not civilization, like Xy---in the first instance---to be introduced to such a people---& has it not to take time---generations---before it influences a whole people--- To the doomed Kaffirs, has civilization been itroduced?---by whom---on what scale---?---how long---? What missionaries have done in this way I Know---it has been exceedingly little---good men, they would have done vastly more---had the silver and the gold of this world been theirs--- . . . . There is a destructive civilization---that civilization wh when it comes into contact with Barbarians---seeking to profit by their ignorance, wh, in fact---seeks its own good---not their good---this civilization must come into collision with the natives & of course the nativesmust fair worse--- It has been thus in Kaffirland--- The gospel has been interfered with---its good has been neutralized---the vices of Civilization, have been introduced" (p.39, emphasis in the original). This extraordinary passage develops profound themes whose deep implications there is no available space to deal with. This passage clearly contradicts the charge that Tiyo Soga has been hobbled with for nearly a century, especially from the perspective of African nationalism, that he was a sycophant of Christianity and a mindless modernizer. His belief in progress did not blind him to the regressive nature of civilization and modernity: but for him this could hardly be a justifiable reason for rejecting modernity. This was a theme that preoccupied many New African intellectuals within the the New African Movement from 1905 to 1960. Secondly, being absolutely original, astonishing, and in effect revolutionary, Tiyo Soga asks whether African societies themselves, without external impositions and influences, could have developed and constructed modernity out of their own internal development! Without having read this passage, since he does betray any awareness of him, Solomon T. Plaatje affirms positively in his novel Mhudi (written around 1920 but only published in 1940) that some African societies could perhaps have invented and created modernity purely from internal developments. There is another central theme which haunted Tiyo Soga: the historical meaning to each other across the Atlantic between Africans in Africa and Africans (ex-slaves) in the diaspora: "Here is another view. Africa was of God given to the race of Ham. I find the Negro from the days of the old Assyrians downwards, keeping his 'individuality' and 'distinctiveness', amid the wreck of empires, and the revolution of ages. I find him keeping his place among the nations, and keeping his home and country. I find him opposed by nation after nation and driven from his home. I find him enslaved---exposed to the vices and the brandy of the white man. I find him in this condition for many a day---in the West Indies, in Northern and Southern America, and in the South American Colonies of Spain and Portugal. I find him exposed to all these disasters, and yet living---multiplying 'and never extinct.' . . . . I find the negro in the present struggle in America looking forward---though still with chains in his hands and with chains on his feet---yet looking forward to the dawn of a better day for himself and all his sable brethren in Africa. Until the Negro is doomed against all history and experience---until his God-given inheritance of Africa be taken finally from him, I shall never believe in the total extinction of his brethren along the southern limits of the land of Ham" (p.180-1, written in May 1865). This relationship is known today in post-colonial studies as the Black Atlantic. But specifically concerning South Africa within modernity, it has been the matter of the influence of New Negro modernity on New African modernity. To indicate how profoundly this theme has preoccupied the New African Movement, two quotations from among its major intellectuals is more than sufficient. Writing in the newspaper Umteteli wa Bantu, R. V. Selope Thema had this to say: "But however marvellous this may be, the wonder of wonders to my mind is the progress which the American Negro has made during the fifty years of his emancipation from slavery. There is no race in all the world which can show such a record. . . What is the message of this progress to us in Africa? This is the question which I wish every reader to ponder as he peruses this article. The message is: What the American Negro has done and is doing we can also do in this sunny land of ours. In spite of the difficulties placed in our way we can forge our way through . . . . " ('Negro Progress in America', December 22, 1923). Approximately thirty years later, H. I. E. Dhlomo was to write the following in Ilanga lase Natal: "Africans are fond of the American Negroes and often look upon the rapid progress and achievements of this group as an indication, an example, of what the black man here can and must do. One of the chief points in Negro technique in their battle for liberation and progress, is to support and boost as loudly and widely as possible their individual men and women of talent and achievement. Their patriotism and enthusiasm in this direction are remarkable---some critics may even say pathetic and naive" (Personal And Cultural Achievement", Anonymous [H. I. E. Dhlomo], August 14, 1948). Going much further than seeing the historical interconnections between New Negro modernity and New African modernity, Dhlomo argues that just as African Americans created the instrumentarium of the New Negro Talented Tenth for the articulation of their modernistic experience, Africans must do likewise by inventing the New African Talented Tenth. The very fact that Tiyo Soga had the intellect to pose profound philosophical problems identity that were to resonate deeply with H. I. E. Dhlomo nearly a century later on, can only bespeak of the intuitive genius of the first African modern intellectual. | |