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ELIAJAH MAKIWANE |
| In the still as yet unpublished autobiography of 1935 interestingly entitled Out of Darkness: From Cattle-Herding to the Editor's Chair (note the echo of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery), R. V. Selope Thema (1886-1955) writes of the stirring moment when as a teenage boy in the late nineteenth-century for the first time he laid his eyes on Elijah Makiwane who had been sent by the Free Church of Scotland in Lovedale to survey the spread of Christianity in an area where Thema's village was located in Northern Transvaal: "When we entered the church, the two missionaries were seated in front of the congregation, and there was an impressive silence which made me feel afraid. We sat down in front of the two men who looked so dignified that I thought they were different from the rest of us. Mr. Makiwane was dark, and in hid cleric garb he gave me the impression that [he] was the darkest man in the world. Mr. Stuart looked whiter than all the white skinned people I had seen before, perhaps because he was clean shaven and neatly attired. But I attributed all this to the fact that they were the men of God. For on their faces was an expression of kindness such as I had never seen on the face of any man. I was impressed; I was fascinated. And when Mr. Makiwane prayed in Xhosa and I heard him, through the interpretation of Mokele Raphela, praying for men and women, boys and girls, who were still in darkness, I was thrilled and my imagination was stirred." There can be no doubt that this occasion left a deep and lasting impression on Selope Thema for of all the New African intellectuals within the New African Movement he was the most unrelenting in the belief that traditional African societies which were steeped in backwardness, heathenism, darkness, superstition, and hence must be left behind by the new emergent African who embraces modernity because it is associated with civilization, education, Christianity and enlightenment. The African who identified herself with modernity was known as the New African. This was to be the great theme of R. V. Selope Thema in the 1920s in his remarkable articles in Umteteli wa Bantu newspaper. This theme was pursued unwaveringly in tandem with his other great theme that New African modernity must school itself in New Negro modernity. That Elijah Makiwane stirred Selope Thema in this direction of modernity, however complex or complicated or controversial this may be, can bespeak of the greatness of the Xhosa intellectual. In fact, it could be argued that Elijah Makiwane in his extraordinary essays which appeared in John Tengo Jabavu's Imvo Zabantsundu in the 1880s were an anticipation of what Selope Thema and other New African intellectuals were to write forty years later on. Even in his circle of intellectuals (including Paul Xiniwe, W. Z. Soga, A. H. Maci, J. S. Dlakiya, Jesse Shaw, William Kobe Ntsikana, among many others) around the aforementioned newspaper, Makiwane stood out by virtue and quality of his outstanding leadership: together with Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba, he was the first African minister to graduate from Lovedale; he was the first President of the Native Educational Association who was a major intellectual in his own right; he was the first African editor of Isigidimi Sama Xhosa in 1876, preceding John Tengo Jabavu in this editorial responsibility; he was among the early church ministers to identify with the Mangane Maake Mokone's Ethiopian Movement. A short consideration of his essays is in order because they reveal a first rate intellect. In a Presidential Address after his election to the leadership of the Native Educational Association in July 1884 formulated several theses, some of which South Africa is grappling with at the end of the twentieth-century: against the claim of the young African intellectuals in the Native Educational Association that they were equal to the Europeans, Elijah Makiwane countered with the argument that it is not so because Africans had not as yet produced a Shakespeare or a Milton or a Francis Bacon---the English nation was greater than African nations because it was part of the European nations that had invented Christianity and civilization whereas the Africans had not invented anything; although England had produced these truly outstanding intellectuals, not every English person was worthy of them, and consequently the idea that every Englishman was superior to every African was laughable and nonsensical; he strongly believed that education should reflect the correct needs and wants of Africans; argued for a position the African languages should not be despised, neglected and forsaken for the English language; Makiwane was perturbed by the fact that many Africans were leaving insitutions of learning before they developed the pleasure of reading-----in other words, they never had the opportunity to be initiated into serious intellectual culture; he concluded by arguing that the idea of progress should be instilled in the young people ("Educated Natives", Imvo Zabantsundu, January 26, February 2 and 9, 1885). In these formulations, one can forsee the future preoccupations of a Benedict Vilakazi or of a H. I. E. Dhlomo or of a A. C. Jordan and many others. It would be easy to argue polemically against some of some of the issues raised by Elijah Makiwane, but that would be missing the point. In another Presidential Address to the Association Makiwane was perplexed by the rebellion of the Pandomisi nation using witchcraft and superstitious beliefs against modernity and the Bible ("Five Months in Pondimisiland", Imvo Zabantsundu, January 26, February 3 and 10, 1886). Other fascinating presidential addresses could be mentioned, but the point has been made about Elijah Makiwane's preoccupation about the construction of modernity in South Africa. Perhaps the last word concerning Elijah Makiwane should be left to the authoritative voice of Z. K. Matthews, whose has fashioned the most complex canvas of African intellectual portraits: "Altogether, Elijah Makiwane must have been a remarkable man---a great scholar, an influential pastor, an eloquent preacher of the Gospel, a good parent who passed on to his children his ambition for achievement in the fields in which they laboured. Any people who can produce such worthy beacon lights as Elijah Makiwane need not be fearful as to their future" ("Rev. Elijah Makiwane", Imvo Zabantsundu, October 21, 1961). | |