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JAMES DWANE |
| James Dwane is remembered if at all today in South African political and intellectual history by a way of a very historic and symbolic photograph taken in Atlanta (United States) in 1896 where he is welcomed as a representative of the Ethiopian Church by Bishop Henry Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church: the photograph has become a symbolic representation of the encounter between New Negro modernity and New African modernity. The photograph has been reproduced countless since the historic democratic elections of 1994 when Nelson Mandela elected as president of South Africa. It is invariably reproduced as an indication that the relationship between African Americans and Africans in South Africa is of a long duration and should thus remain permanent. Although James Dwane is today criticised for opportunism, lack of serious commitment and emotional excitability, there can be no doubt that in his time he felt profoundly the needs of the African people that would enable them to enter fully into modernity, as can be attested to by his letter of February 22, 1897 to Bishop Turner: "On my arrival from America, hard and cruel things were said and done with a view of damaging me and our work in this country. Efforts were made and severe articles written in the leading papers of the colony to stir up governments against me, but things have all been quieted in Cape Colony, in the Free State and Transvaal Republic. Everywhere the Lord is adding daily to the church. New converts from heathenism, and applications for reception into our church come from all over South Africa. Ever since my arrival from America I have been going up and down the country preaching, organizing and receiving people and congregations into our church. Our great need in this country is a first-class institution of learning. I shall write you more fully on this subject. But people in this country are very anxious about higher education. I hope the A. M. E. church will soon take up this question in earnest. You have not the least idea, my lord, how much depends on this question. The failure of the white churches to do so is a source of much discontent and our church must take the matter up; for you can run a college here for one-third, if not one-fourth, cheaper than in America. . . . We are all looking forward to your visit, and it is earnestly expected that you will bring Sister Turner with you, who was so kind and did so much for my comfort during my stay in the United States. We have about a dozen young fellows to send to your schools of higher education in a few months. As soon as we get all necessary information we shall write an application in their behalf. I think I shall send my son at the same time. . . . South Africa offers the greatest field for usefulness to the young men and women of America, especially those who have been blessed to obtain higher education, of any place in the world. we are in the south temperate zone and the climate is very much like you have in the United States, and no need fear sickness or any fatal results. . . . Our climate is among the finest on earth" ("Rev. Jas. M. Dwane", Voice of Missions, May 1, 1897). This letter is an extraordinary document by any measure. Bishop Turner did visit South Africa in 1898. Leaving aside the controversies involved, it is striking how this letter written as the South African Superintendent of the AME Church is similar to the lecture given a decade earlier by Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba to the Lovedale Literary Society ("Education Among the Natives", Imvo Zabantsundu, December 30, 1886) in emphasizing that education is the fundamental key to modernity and in articulating the viewpoint that New Negro modernity had invaluable historical lessons for New African modernity. In fact, this was the view of all New African intellectuals and political leaders. James Dwane never succeded in realizing many of his objectives and aims because of the personal limitations already indicated. Dwane was passionate about founding a college or a training institution for Africans. In 1894 he travelled to England to raise funds for the college. Upon his return the church leaders of his denomination, the Wesleyan Church, forced him to donate the raised funds to the church's general fund. On returning the money, he promptly resigned from the Wesleyan Church andf joined the Ethiopian Church. Dwane's trip to United States in 1896 was undertaken individually when in fact it should have been jointly undertaken with Mangane Maake Mokone and other leaders of the Ethiopian Movement. Although the blame should not be placed squarely on Dwane, since the other leaders failed to raise the necessaty funds on time, he was unwilling to delay the departure until all of them had raised the necessary funds. As it turned out, only Dwane went and the others did not. This accelerated the resentment against James Dwane by some congregation members of the Ethiopian Church, since he had only a few months joined the Church. Upon failing to raise funds for the intended college on his second trip to United States, James Dwane in 1899 resigned from the AME Church to form his own church, the Order of Ethiopia, which was autonomous from the Ethiopian Church. Mokone for a short time joined Dwane in severing relations with the AME Church, but later reconsidered and re-joined and re-established with the African American Church. It was with the intent of healing this rapture among other things that the AME Church in 1901 sent African American Bishop Levi J. Coppin to South Africa. Coppin's stay had positive and lasting repercussions in unifying the historical visions of African Americans and Africans in South Africa. In an essay revealingly entitled "The Negro's Part in the Redemption of Africa", written within a year of his arrival in South Africa, Levi Coppin had this to say: "The land once lying in darkness, but now fast coming to the light, is claiming the best thought and the best energies of the civilized world. . . . Nations have reached their highest and best development, not by isolation, but by taking advantage of whatever of good they found among others. . . . When as a Christian Church we speak of the redemption of Africa, we do not refer to her material resources chiefly, though these are a means to an end.The one supreme thought with us is, how the millions of her inhabitants may be reached by the light of the gospel and saved. . . . What has been done for the uplift of the colored man in America, by schools and colleges and by the contact with a superior civilization, means, not only that he should be a helpful agency in the body politic, but also that he should bear his part of the religious burden of uplifting the world. . . . The religious field, and especially the great Continent of Africa, seems to offer the greatest opportunity for the man of color to do his best work" (The A. M. E. Church Review, vol. 19 no. 2, 1902). In his book Observations of Persons and Things In South Africa 1900-1904, Levi Jenkins Coppin expressed a deep faith that Africans in South Africa will not be overwhelmed by the historical experience of modernity: "The Native man, in the first place, is a philosopher. . . . The Native people are coming into a new life. . . . If he but possesses his soul in patience, is loyal to his Government, takes advantage of the ever increasing opportunities to enlighten his mind, learns to appreciate and place a proper value upon the three-fold power of cultivating the head, the heart and the hand, the time will soon come in our rapidly advancing civilization, that no one will be found to confess that he ever placed a stumbling block in the way of the progress of the aboriginal sons of the soil. . . . They are in fact a deep thinking, long headed people" (Philadelphia, 1905, p. 59-60). The achievements and attainments of John L. Dube (1871-1946) in founding the Ohlange Institute in 1901 (modelled on Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute) and in launching the newspaper Ilanga lase Natal in 1903 is only one exemplary proof that Coppin's faith concerning modernity was indeed well-founded. | |