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PAMBANI JEREMIAH MZIMBA |
| Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba belongs to a group of African
church ministers such as Elijah Makiwane, Edward Tsewu, Isaac Wauchope
and others whose ordination was the same as that of Europeans, in that
it included a mastery of Latin, Hebrew and Greek. Their education was in
effect a classic European education of the late nineteenth century. It
is not surprising that they initiated an extraordinary efflorescence of
Xhosa culture between approximately 1884, the founding date of John Tengo
Jabavu's Imvo Zabantsundu newspaper to, again approximately,
1907, the demise of Allan Kirkland Soga and Walter B. Rubusana's Izwi
Labantu newspaper. This era produced first rate poets such as William
W. Gqoba and S. E. K. Mqhayi, the brilliant essayist Elijah Makiwane, the
writing of the great essay "The Natives And Their Missionaries" (1903)
by Isaac Wauchope, and the great anthology Zemk'Inkomo Magwalandini
(1906; second edition 1911) assembled by Walter B. Rubusana. Other
achievements could be mentioned but the point is made. This was a moment
which is perhaps best summarized by this excerpt from a poem by Isaac Wauchope:
Your rights are going! So pick up your pen Load it, load it with ink. Sit in your chair---- Repair not to Hoho, But fire with your pen. ("Your Cattle Are Gone"; written around 1892) The pen was an instrument of war in this emergent modernity; as the spear or assegai had been in traditional societies. The cultural effervescence initiated by the intellectuals around Imvo Zabantsundu inevitably led to questions about the political direction towards which the African people should be striving in the context of modernity. The proliferation of political, social and cultural organizations in this era was a search for a solution to the defeat of the African people: Native Educational Association, Lovedale Literary Society, The African Literary Association, Imbumba Yama Nyama, South African Native Association, and Thembu Association. Three issues seem to have been at the center of the intellectual and political activities of Mzimba's generation: education, the historical meaning of the English language, Christian civilization, the achievements of New Negro modernity. Concerning the latter issue, Pambani Mzimba broached it in a controversial manner in a major address to the Lovedale Literary Society: "Let the white man rule, and the South African people be [left] out of politics [emphasis in the original]. Why do I say this? It is because we shall get nothing at present from politics. If we go into politics, we shall sooner or later be forced out, whether we like it or not. Besides, let us us take warning from the experience of others. Mr. Williams, a colored gentleman in America, in his History of the Negro Race in America, says 'It was to be regretted that the Negro had been so unceremoniously removed from Southern politics. The Government gave him the statute book when he ought to have had the spelling book; placed him in the Legislature when he ought to have been in the school house. . . . Ignorance, vice, poverty, and superstition, could not rule intelligence, experience, wealth, and organization. . . . ' And if the Negro is industrious, frugal, saving, diligent in labour, and laborious in study, there is another law that will quietly and peaceably, without social or political shock, restore him to his normal relations in politics. He will be able to build up his government on a solid foundation with the tempered mortar of experience and knowledge. This is inevitable. The negro will return to politics in the South when he is qualified to govern, and will return to stay. . . . The remarks made about the negroes in America are very much applicable to the South African natives. Let the experience of Africans in America give warning in time to the Africans in Africa to let politics alone for the present. Let us be content to be ruled by the colonist. Let us only have to do with politics in order to encourage those white men who desire to give us schools and books" ("Education Among The Natives", Imvo Zabantsundu, December 30, 1886). Other members of the Lovedale Literary Society as well as those of the Native Educational Association disagreed with such a historical reading of New Negro modernity. For instance Elijah Makiwane in a nuanced riposte wrote the following: "I wish to remark in the first place, that Mr. Mzimba has been misunderstood by both friends and foes of native rights. I admit that his language was not well chosen, that he was vague or indefinite, and that therefore those who misunderstood him as they did are not to be blamed. But as one who knew and often spoke to Mr. Mzimba before and after he read Mr. Williams' book on the History of the Negro Race in America, I wish to state that I did not understand the lecture as others did. I am not authorised by him to explain his meaning, but I believe I am correct in attaching more importance to the sentence: 'Let us only have to do with politics in order to encourage those white men who desire to give us schoolsand books'. All he meant to say, as I understand this qualifying sentence, is, that the time had not yet come when we ought to think of sending a native to Parliament. . . . I have therefore interpreted his language by his actions; and while I regret that he was not more careful in expressing himself on so important a question, I take the liberty toask those who are rejoicing as well as those who are lamenting to wait" ("The Natives and Politics", Imvo Zabantsundu, January 27, 1887). Those who were rejoicing were Europeans and those who were lamenting were Mzimba's colleagues in the aforementioned organizations. What needs to be noted is that Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba needed to draw political lessons from the New Negro historical experience in order to chart the journey through the newly emergent South African modernity. This historical necessity was to repeat itself nearly a decade later in 1895 when Mongane Maake Mokone, founder of the Ethiopian Movement, wrote a letter to Bishop Henry Turner in United States, a correspondence that led to the union between Ethiopianism and the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. This quest for a sharing of historical experiences across the Atlantic Ocean between United States and South Africa was to be true most of the twentieth-century. Elijah Makiwane was correct in stating that Pambani Mzimba shoudl be judged or interpreted through his actions, for in 1899 Mzimba led a secession from the white-controlled Free Church of Scotland. With this action, Mzimba led over ten thousand adherents into the black-controlled Ethiopianism. As an indication that the lessons of New Negro modernity were real for the newly emergent New African modernity, Mzimba in 1901 brought with him about eight young Africans to study at Lincoln University. By 1903 Mzimba had many young South Africans studying at other historically black institutions, such as the Tuskegee Institute and at Wilberforce University. Without question, Mzimba's entry into Ethiopianism was a construction of radical politics within modernity as a challenge to the politics of white domination. It is not accidental that F. Z. S. Peregrino's newspaper South African Spectator celebrated the court vindication of Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba from the accusation by the Free Church of Scotland that he had absconded into the Ethiopian Movement with 1, 200 pounds of its money when he launched the Presbyterian Church of Africa (A Fingo, "Mr. Mzimba Vindicated", October 11, 1902). Given the authority of his judgments, Z. K. Matthews should be given the last word concerning Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba: "Only a man with an attractive personality, with more than average organising ability and with singleness of purpose could have drawn so many people after him and left behind him the foundations of the Presbyterian Church of Africa so well and truly laid" ("The Late Rev. Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba", Imvo Zabantsundu, July 8, 1961). |
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