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ISAAC WAUCHOPE |
| In his pathbreaking book of literary history and literary theory, Towards an African Literature: The Emergence of Literary Form in Xhosa (University of California Press, 1973; originally appeared as a series of essays in the South African liberal magazine, Africa South in the late 1950s), A. C. Jordan characterizes the late nineteenth-century, which in his estimation was dominated by the Xhosa poet and prose writer William W. Gqoba, in the following manner: "This period marks the most rapid, most drastic political, economic, and social changes hitherto ever known by the Southern Afdricans" (p.85). Although Jordan does not use the term, this was the period of the construction, creation and forging of the historical experience of modernity. this was a moment of transitions, demarcations, territorializations, transformations. Jordan quotes a poem by Isaac Wauchope (written under the name 'I. W. W. Citashe') which epitomized the changed historical sensibilities and altered political strategies of this unstable historical era: "Your cattle are gone, my countrymen!/ Go rescue them! Go rescue them!/ Leave the breechloader alone/ And turn to the pen./ Take paper and ink,/ For that is your shield./ Your rights are going!/ So pick up your pen,/ Load it, load with ink./ Sit in your chair,/ Repair not to Hoho,/ But fire with your pen." This extraordinary potent poem captured the historical project of African intellectuals from Tiyo Soga through Pixley ka Isaka Seme to R. V. Selope Thema: creation of African modernity through the ideologies African Nationalism and Christianity, and through the historical and cultural constructs of education and civilization. Wauchope was ambivalent towards a movement that strove to transform the hegemony of European modernity into the democratic processes of African modernity: Ethiopianism. In contrast to being a peripheral member of the Native Educational Association, despite close interactions with Elijah Makiwane and John Tengo Jabavu, Wauchope was a founding member of Imbumba Yama Nyama in 1882 in Port Elizabeth, three years after the former organization. This new Association included among others the following members: Simon P Sihlali, S. N. Mvambo, Mesach Pelem, Paul Xiniwe. Perhaps we can measure the historic importance of the founding of Imbumba Yama Nyama and the achievements it iniated, from what Z. K. Matthews had to say about Pelem and and his generation of missionary educated intellectuals in his construction of African intellectual history in Imvo Zabantsundu in 1961. In this unprecedented reconstructive analysis, Matthews observes: "One of the salient characteristics of the pioneers about whom we have written so far is that they were willing to do and dare with far less opportunities than are available to us today. They struck out on new lines, blazed new trails in fields to which they were unaccustomed. They seemed to proceed on the principle that it is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. Of such stuff are the builders of a nation made" ("Mr. Meshach Pelem", August 19, 1961). Clearly, that Matthews characterizes them as having opened "new lines" and investigated "new trails", makes this intellegentsia, the first to be conscious of their belonging to a new historical era, the pathfinders of modernity in South Africa. So, Isaac Wauchope was not only in the avantgarde politically, he was also in the frontline intellectually, as his poem makes abundantly clear. His major essay "The Natives And Their Missionaries" (1903), belongs with Allan Kirkland Soga's "The Hottentots or Khoi-Khoin" (1901) and Henry Selby Msimang's "The Religion And The Civilisation Of The Bantu" (1922), in arguing that the construction of the future of modernity should happen simultaneously with the unending historical appraisal of the immediate past. The importance of Wauchope's essay to a section of New African intellectuals is indicated by its having been excerpted in Ilanga lase Natal ("Natives And Their Missionaries: By A Native Missionary", I. W., January 15, 1909), approximately six years after its initial publication. Its ideological resonance in its ambivalent struggle against Ethiopianism had not diminished. In fact, upon the initial publication of the essay in a pamphlet format, the newspaper praised him together with Walter Rubusana, S. P. Sihlali and D. D. Ttwakidi, as a prominent member of Cape colony's enlightened black priests ("Abafundisi Abamnyama", Ilanga lase Natal, October 23, 1903). Intended for its Zulu-speaking readers, the biographical sketch lauded him that although relatively young, he possessed deep maturity and abundant energy to effect crucial change among black people. A biographical sketch of Charlotte Manye Maxeke, in all probability written by Maxeke herself, indicates that she had been a student of Isaac Wauchope in her younger days in Uitenhage, before she went for further studies in United States in the late nineteenth-century under the guidance of W. E. B. Du Bois at Wilberforce University ("Mrs. C. M. Maxeke", in The African Yearly Register: Being An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary (Who's Who) Of Black Folks In Africa, (editor and compiler) T. D. Mweli Skota, The Orange Press, Johannesburg, 1930, p. 195). Given that Charlotte Manye Maxeke became arguably the greatest apostle of modernity in South Africa, the legacy bequeathed to the country by Isaac Wauchope is very deep indeed. | |