The Centennial ZK Matthews Lecture, University of Fort Hare, 09th May 2024.

The Centennial ZK Matthews Lecture, University of Fort Hare, 09^th May 2024.

 

Prof Malegapuru William Makgoba

MB., ChB., (Natal); DPhil., (Oxon); FRCP (Lond); MAS(SAfr); FRS (SAfr); FCP (SA) ad eundem; Member of the National Academy of Medicine (USA); OMS.

Title: ‘Achieving the impossible through seeing the invisible’

Honourable Vice-Chancellor, the Faculty of Education, the Matthews and Bokwe families, the Registrar, Deputy Vice-Chancellors, the Executive Management Committee, the Senate, academics, Members of Council, Convocation, students, community members, distinguished guests, ladies, and gentlemen, and those that are joining us from live streaming, I am truly grateful for this opportunity to share my thoughts with the UFH community and the Matthews and Bokwe families.  I notice Minister Pandor in the audience! We are honoured by your presence and thank you. It is a great honour which I do not take lightly to be given this opportunity to deliver the Prof ZK Matthews Centennial Lecture, which I have titled ‘Achieving the impossible through seeing the invisible….’

I wish to make the following general remarks: Today marks Victory Day, which signified the end of World War II in 1945. Its marked with parade in Red Square, Russia; ZK was born on 20^th October 1901; the first ZK Matthews Memorial Lecture was delivered by former President Thabo Mbeki to mark 100 years of his birth in 2001; several people who delivered the Memorial lecture were politicians and people who knew ZK well, I do not share these experiences. I am particularly grateful to follow in their footsteps and share this journey with them in paying tribute to a ‘world acclaimed intellectual scholar and a pathfinder of our time’. This Memorial Lecture today marks 100 years since ZK graduated from UFH.  In preparation for this lecture, in addition to reading as much as I could find about ZK, I relied on my research and investigative skills, the generosity of his family- youngest daughter Pulane, son in law Zola Ngcakani, Minister Naledi Pandor, Mr. Kgosi Matthews, Ambassador Kitty Matthews in Kazakhstan, and others who knew him in Mr. Ronnie Kasrils and Prof Barney Pityana. I also relied on the works of two postgraduate research students at UWC, Nombila AW and Rasool C and on Remembrances by FB Matthews 1995. I am grateful to all the insights they provided on this ‘intellectual giant’. As you are all aware, we are 20 days from the 7^th national elections, and it only seemed smart for UFH to choose a non-political person to deliver this important lecture but equally to avoid and eliminate the possibility of election campaigning during this period. Coincidentally, like ZK Matthews I was also born in October. Tomorrow, the 10^th marks 30 years of President Mandela’s inauguration characterized by the words ‘Never, Never, Never….,’ on the 11^th May will be the 56^th Anniversary of ZK Matthews’s passing away

1. ‘Achieving the impossible through seeing the invisible’: the foresight, the legacy, and lessons of the life of a distinguished ‘African to the core’ acclaimed academic social anthropologist, a renowned educationist, an extra-ordinary intellectual, a liberator, an ecumenist and a transformation pathfinder that Professor ZK Matthews was.  Through the sheer force of his intellect, foresight, his political activism, ‘his humility, his lack of pompousness and his distaste for boastfulness’,  he saw the invisible-the future of a non-racial democratic South Africa. Around 1953, with his family at lunch, Professor ZK Matthews shared his vision, first with his family at lunch 1953,  of the country we (South Africa) were to become in 1994. He was man of Isithunzi and ahead of his time.

Zachariah Keodirelang “ZK” Matthews – was the University of Fort Hare’s’s first graduate (1924) and the acknowledged architect of the Freedom Charter which gave way to South Africa’s constitution (UFH 2023 ZK Matthews Lecture). He was a humble embodiment of excellence, of  non-racialism, of equality, and leadership during an important period of our struggle for freedom.

‘Prof ZK Matthews loved knowledge and nature (animals and plants), had great respect for intellectual rigour, merit, excellence and paid attention to minutiae and details.  He was a mathematician of note. His academic interests in Social Anthropology and Native Law had a direct bearing on political issues and his political activism.  ZK Matthews lived his life in the realms of ideas. He was keen on how society organised itself, the importance of identity, history and cultures in society. Language became an important asset in his intellectual academic life. He loved languages, he was proficient in Greek, German, French and Latin, history and music. He could do simultaneous translation of Latin and Greek. He played the violin competently. He was a close friend of Paul Robeson-the American bass-baritone and political activist- and had exchanges with WEB du Bois-the American Sociologist. He was a great listener, a believer and was content with himself despite constant harassments, arrests and banishments of oppressive colonial-apartheid governments. These never broke his spirit and vision. The combination of Social Anthropology and Native Law academic interests naturally led Prof Matthews into political activism said, HE Ms. Kitty Matthews. His heart, life and public life was that of an intellectual academic with a ‘social conscience’.

ZK Matthews undertook his seminal work as an academic Social Anthropologist, an educationist, political activist, a product of Christian missionary liberal education, and lawyer of the African people at his political home, the African National Congress (ANC 1940), of which he was an NEC (1943) member and ANC President of the Cape.  

I shall focus on three intertwined and tightly linked transformative foresights of ZK Matthews and how these influenced his seminal contributions on education transformation (Africanisation), the politics of liberation (African identity, non-racialism, and the Freedom Charter) and the church (how missionaries, African identity and Traditional African religions struggled with each other in his generation and how these contradictions influenced his persona).  All three were grounded on deep intellectual and scholarly rigour, analysis, debates, and writings.

In this lecture, through timeline analysis, I argue and provide evidence and conclude only ZK Matthews, the academic intellectual scholar, transformed African education through Africanisation and conceived the idea of the Congress of the People and the fundamentals of the Freedom Charter that laid the blueprint for South Africa’s non-racial democratic constitution and transformation long before it gained currency.  He was the originator of these ideas and no one else but him (Matthews BF, Kasrils R, Sampson A, Goldberg D, Mandela NR). In many respects, ZK Matthews was intellectually ahead of his time.  ZK Matthews should unashamedly be given full credit for these and be memorialized more than it is currently the case. This gross failure or omission to memorialise Prof ZK Matthews as a national hero/icon is reminiscent of two other intellectual giants of our struggle; a Fort Hare Alumnus and founding President of the PAC, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe and the founder of Black Consciousness, Stephen Bantu Biko. All these leaders  (ZK, RMS, SBB and du Bois) sought to assert black identity and confident self-consciousness without hatred of others. It’s about time we become sensitive in the manner we documented and wrote our history truthfully and gave credit and recognition where it is due. As we rightly continue to correct our history as written by our colonial-apartheid masters, let’s write our history as it closely resembles the truth and the reality of our struggle and time and without selective memory or amnesia. Perhaps more than ever in our history and development, we need leaders and the leadership quality of the likes of Prof ZK Matthews than ever.

Like all of us, Prof ZK Matthews was created in the image of God, like all of us he was biological unique with a permutation of unique phenotypical characteristics of intellect, foresight, humility, mathematical, clarity of thought and strength of character with unshakeable focus and absolute belief in his vision.  He loved music and nature. This permutation, and not combination, unlike no other is what distinguished and set him apart. Prof ZK Matthews was an intellectual scholar extraordinaire.

 I recommend that Prof ZK Matthews as a national treasure be given his due recognition and true stature in our history, memorialisations and celebrated nationally, proudly, and publicly, lest as a people we become ‘like a tree without roots’ Marcus Garvey

2. On one particular 13^th day in May 1968, at our school’s assembly at Hwiti High, Ms. Winnie Motlalepula Kgware (our Afrikaans teacher, who established the SRC at Hwiti High under the leadership of Peter Mokaba as President, an anti-Apartheid activist with the Black Consciousness Movement, and later to become the First President of the Black  People’s Convention) announced that Prof ZK Matthews, the Republic of Botswana first Ambassador to the USA and UN Envoy had died in Washington DC. She requested for a ‘minute silence’ to be observed, to which we acceded.

She further said she, her husband, Prof WM Kgware, Prof HWE Ntsanwisi, his wife Nina Beatrice (our Latin teacher) would depart for Gaborone in Botswana to attend the funeral. This was the first time I would hear the name Prof ZK Matthews. Indeed, the Kgwares and the Ntsanwisis traveled to Gaborone on a Friday, Botswana for ZK Matthews’s funeral.

On the 19^th of October 1995, I returned from a Diversity Conference in Higher Education in the USA. I was the Minister of Education’s Vice-Chancellor nominee, Prof Sibusiso Bengu, the first African Vice-Chancellor of the University of Fort Hare, on behalf of the National Commission on Higher Education. On this visit I met Dr Naledi Pandor, an ANC MP, a government nominee and we spent the time together attending and learning from this Diversity conference. Dr Naledi Pandor, now Minister of International Relations and Cooperation is of-course the grand-daughter of Prof ZK Matthews. The National Commission on Higher Education was first structure to draft the blueprint for the transformation of Higher Education in South Africa post-1994. A highly acclaimed educationist and revered the world over, Prof Matthews had begot another future educationist in Dr. Pandor. Little did I realise that it’s her grandfather at the time. ZK Matthews together with Prof Kerr (1936-1937) were members of the Royal Commission to investigate and report on Higher Education for Africans in the territories of Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan as it was then known.

ZK Matthews had a ‘wonderful gift for drafting memoranda, drawing up resolutions and writing speeches for his colleagues’ Frieda Matthews wrote in Remembrances. He was an excellent report writer and drafter of resolutions. Later, I had the opportunity to serve under Minister Pandor, (then Minister of Education) in Higher Education as Vice-Chancellor and later as her Special Advisor in Science and Technology. I also wrote about her leadership qualities (as an effective coordinator team role) in my latest book ‘Leadership for Transformation since the Dawn of South Africa’s Democracy: An Insider’s View (2023) p120-121. Skotaville Academic Publishers).

What one has seen and experienced working with Minister Pandor is clearly a family trait. She is retracing her grandfather’s footsteps-today as minister of South Africa’s diplomacy and former minister of Higher Education.  When Minister Pandor addressed the UN Assembly on 28^th September 2019, very few in the world recognised this poignant moment on the platform and chamber where her grandfather stood and debated several international issues. This was my second encounter with Prof ZK Matthews name and now the family.

Prof ZK Matthews died in Washington DC, United States, 11^th May 1968 and was buried in Gaborone, Botswana. The USA President Lyndon Johnson gave up his Air Force 1 Presidential plane to transport Prof ZK Matthews’s remains back to Botswana as a mark of honour, respect, and tribute to ZK for his outstanding international contributions to humanity.

3. Question 1. Why are ZK Matthews remains still buried in Gaborone?

Professor ZK Matthews was a very close friend of Tsekedi Khama. He was always conscious and proud of his ‘Motswana wa Bagwato’ ancestry in the village of Serowe. ‘He always wanted to return to his ancestral home in Botswana. When he left UFH, he wanted to return to Botswana to set up a legal practice there.  Even before taking up the position at the World Council of Churches as Secretary, he wanted to return to Botswana. Pulane, ZK Matthews’s youngest daughter said how her ‘dad always prioritized his wife and children in any decision’. He always wanted to be with his wife wherever he was to share the experience together. Her father ‘did not like or seek accolades.’  His son-law, Zola Ngcakani, spoke of ZK’s ‘humility and that he always went out of his way, to make one feel comfortable in his presence’. He had ‘presence’ or ‘dignity’ (Isithunzi), and he (Zola) was ‘always fearful’ while ‘caughting/dating’ his daughter, Pulane.

Both independently agree ‘the freedom charter was his idea’. ‘It was fortunate for us to have a person of his intellect and stature at the time’ they said. He proposed the idea because he ‘was concerned about the future of South Africa’. ZK always believed ‘South Africa belonged to all who lived in it’. He believed both Blacks and Whites were complementary to each other in developing and building the country.  Prof ZK Matthews drafted the Africans’ Claims in South Africa, a document which was adopted by the ANC in 1943. He chaired the committee that drafted the report. Dubow claimed that ZK’s “intellectual imprint is clear in the document’s espousal of the democratic rights, citizenship, human dignity and anti-colonial national self-determination”.  The one person who knew ZK well, was Joe Bakwe Matthews, his eldest son. The family was ‘sad’ he did not live to write the biography of their father. The history of our liberation struggle does not start with Mandela, Sisulu, Mbeki or Tambo. There were stalwarts like Reverend Calata, Gawe, Bokwe and Pitje who worked tirelessly to ground and keep the Movement alive. It was ‘his wish that he be laid to rest at his ancestral home.’ Pulane said. As Africans we do not defy the wishes of the deceased.

4. Question 2. BUT WHO WAS ZK MATTHEWS?

In Remembrances, Frieda Bokwe Matthews p. 89, described her husband as follows: ‘My husband’s personality was complex, a combination of humility and pride, of kindliness and sternness, of one ever ready to accept and appreciate another’s point of view but who nevertheless stood four square on his own viewpoint, unshaken and unafraid. African to the core of his being, yet he was completely Western in many aspects of his life. Living with him was stimulating and exciting as his encyclopaedic mind was ever reaching out, making daily concourse, even with the most illiterate, a joy to listen to. It could never be easy to portray a man of his character and calibre. The short picture I have given of him here, I dedicate to his grandchildren.’

In an interview with Ronnie Kasrils, 26 April 2024, the following emerged.

‘I was introduced to Prof Z.K. Matthews by Oliver Tambo in the ANC office in Dar Es Salaam sometime in 1964-65. I had heard of him from SACP veterans in Durban in the early 1960s. They had high regard for this fine man and were not disparaging of him, but joked about the embarrassment of his son Joe, when during the Treason Trial (1956-61), the prosecution presented either a letter or a statement he made about his father (ZK) being a “bourgeois nationalist“. I had learnt from them that ZK had initiated the idea of the ANC needing a document such as the Freedom Charter.

I can’t say I wasn’t a trifle nervous when Tambo introduced me, I think with an element of pride, that MK had a young white lad in its midst. ZK was very impressive, an absolute leader of the movement and the originator of the Congress of the People and The Freedom Charter (MWM notes). I remember ZK as a person of grace, quiet spoken, and considerate. He enquired of me, and other MK comrades, about our well-being and commitment to liberating South Africa. He emphasised the justice of our cause and that whatever the obstacles, freedom would be won sooner or later.

Minister Pandor reflected as follows: ‘The character of Prof ZK Matthews while effective and with strong ideas tended to prefer the background.  Also, he was one of the leaders often in detention or under house arrest.  Thus, many took credit for what he contributed and did not acknowledge him.  I recall an amusing story my father told of walking into a public meeting where a leader was attributing ZK Matthews’s words to himself.  The leader almost collapsed when my father walked in.  ZK Matthews merely sought to contribute, not to be recognised – a failing perhaps, but very much the character of the man’.

Professor Matthews had that unusual characteristic of scholars or academics i.e. of independent detached reflection based on principle, integrity, the truth, and ethics, passionate rational and without emotions, objectivity in analysis of ideas or facts and shining light on the dark corners of complex matters and enjoying his contribution to ‘extending the boundaries of knowledge and understanding’, without expecting rewards. This is what defines and characterizes excellent scholars. He was allegedly even complimented by the judge at the end of the Treason Trial on how ‘objectively he handled his evidence’. That is the measure of this intellectual giant.

Zachariah Keodirelang Matthews was born in Windrush near Kimberley , the son of Peter Motsielwa and Martha Mooketsi Matthews, a Bangwato Tswana mineworker who later opened a café. Though exposed to politics at a young age – his father was a Cape voter and his cousin, Sol Plaatje, a founder member of the ANC – Matthews devoted the first part of his life exclusively to education. He received the Andrew Smith Bursary after sitting for its examination (having being urged by teacher Mr. Griffiths Motsieloa) which enabled  him to proceed to Lovedale, where Tshekedi Khama was his fellow student, he entered Fort Hare College as a student and in 1923 became the first African to obtain a B A at a South African institution. He graduated in humanities at Fort Hare, a College of the University of South Africa, in 1924, majoring in English and History. In 1925 he was appointed first African head of Adams College in Natal, where Albert Luthuli was his colleague on the staff and his students included Anton Lembede and Jordan Ngubane. With Luthuli he attended meetings of the Durban Joint Council and held office in the Natal teacher’s association, of which he eventually became president in 1930. In 1928 he married Frieda Bokwe, daughter of John Knox Bokwe. After private study, Matthews became the first African to earn an LLB degree in South Africa in 1930 and was admitted as an attorney to the Johannesburg Bar and the Transvaal division of the Supreme Court. However, he did not join the bar in order to continue his studies abroad. In 1933 he was invited to study Race Relations and Culture Contact with C. Loram at Yale University in the United States, and the following year he completed an MA there. He then went on to spend a year at the London School of Economics to study anthropology under Bronislaw Malinowski, one of the greatest anthropologist of the 20^th century.

He was active in the Council of Europeans and Africans for Interracial Harmony in Durban and with the Native Bantu Teachers’ Union 1945. In 1936, when the Native Representation Bill removed Africans from the common voter’s roll, he served  together with other ANC leaders on the Native Representative Council and was active in the African National Congress (ANC) from 1940.

From 1936 to 1939 he was a research fellow of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, and during his long career in public life he served in the following bodies, among others: the Ciskeian Missionary Council in 1945, the Federation of African Teachers’ Associations in 1941-1942, the Union Advisory Board on Native education in 1945, the executive committee of the South African Institute of Race Relations, and from 1942 to 1950, the Natives’ Representative Council (NRC) in 1942-1950, a purely ineffective advisory structure to government but at times condemned as the ‘toy telephone’ show by the younger radical members of the ANC. The ANC Youth League of the time urged ZK Matthews to resign, some even calling him a ‘stooge’. The radical Africans called ZK ‘a stooge’, the Whites called him a ‘extremist and a communist’, the communists although they respected him (Ronnie Kasrils 2024), they resented and disliked him for not resigning from the NCR.  When a leader receives such titles from every stakeholder, it’s a mark of a special outstanding leader or a downright failed leader

He returned to South Africa in 1935, and in 1936 was appointed lecturer at Fort Hare University in Social Anthropology and Native Law and Administration. It was during this year together with Professor Kerr, that he became member of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education for Blacks in British East African and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1936-1937).  The purpose of the Royal inquiry was to investigate and report upon higher education for Africans. After DDT Jabavu’s retirement in 1944, Matthews became head of Fort Hare’s department of African Studies and was promoted to the post of professor. For 24 years ZK Matthews was lecturer in social anthropology and native law at Fort Hare.  He taught Social Anthropology and Law to several young and upcoming African Anthropologists, like Livingstone Mqotsi, Godfrey Pitje and Nimand Mkele.  Other notable students Mangosutho Buthelezi, Seretse Khama, Nelson Mandela, Ntsu Mokhehle,  Charles Njonjo and Oliver Tambo. Needless to say all these became leaders of our struggle.

Prof ZK Matthews was first and foremost an academic educationist in the broad sense of having a passion for education, its theories, its relationship with history and culture of African people and as an instrument for transformation at an individual level but most importantly at a national level. He was devoted to quality African education and not politics.  He was a brilliant student who won bursaries, he became an academic, a scholar  and an eminent public intellectual of his generation and time, through his teachings, his writings of politics, education, culture and history; the various causes for justice, equality and human rights he elected to pursue on behalf of the African people and the many scholarly publications he wrote to disseminate and put his thoughts and arguments out there for debate and refinement. In his calmness, ZK was intellectually fearless and radical his ideas (Matthews FB., (1995) Remembrances, https://en.m.wikipedia.org>wiki)

5. PROF ZK MATTHEWS: THE ACADEMIC SCHOLAR AND EDUCATIONIST-THE PATHFINDER FOR AFRICANISATION.

‘One of the burning issues for African scholars and leaders since independence, has been the question of the African University. African scholars and intellectuals such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Yesufu, Nelson Mandela, Prof ZK Matthews and others recognised the value of education in empowering and developing their nations. However, long before Africa’s independence, ZK Matthews had pronounced that “education should be the master key to collective empowerment” (UFH 05^th December 2023). Professor Matthews saw the problems of South Africa as a problem of education (Saayman WA 1996). Professor Matthews was amongst first to appreciate early on the importance of Africanisation in higher education transformation, a concept he pioneered and championed while an academic social anthropologist teaching at Fort Hare, aspiring to bring curriculum innovations (Burchell, DE, (1988).  He researched and wrote several scholarly articles with regards this subject (Matthews ZK, 24-30). Today, the debates around African languages, the decolonisation and the transformation of the curriculum in a country of predominantly Africans are a fierce contestation. No one ever questions the costs of learning, teaching and studying in English or other foreign languages in predominantly African countries but the reverse is equally true i.e. no one teaches African languages in the West, Oceania or Asia. How do we as Africans truly impact on and transform global knowledge and enrich global culture when our languages and cultures are silenced or ignored? In South Africa in particular  we have to recognise that approximately 80% of the population acquire knowledge, communicate, speak, think, dream, sing, create, innovate, interpret the world, interact daily and exist for the majority of their lives in one of the recognised African languages. So language is essential for identity, education, culture, its transmission and history. Prof ZK Matthews recognised this power of language early on as an academic social anthropology scholar and a educationist. Prof ZK was himself proficient in almost all South African languages. He was equally proficient in Latin, French, Greek, and German. Language was one of his important academic strength.

On 05^th October 2006, Minister Pandor, Professor Matthews’s granddaughter, organised a conference on Language Policy Implementation in Higher Education Institutions at  UNISA, as an important factor and contribution to the transformation in progress in higher education (https://www.gov.za/n-pandor-language-policy-implementation-higher-education-institutions-05-oct-2006).  Sounds quite familiar!

‘They recognised that education is the first step in the ladder of individual sovereignty—to be master of one’s destiny. Hence education should be for all, by all and for life. Through education one learned to be (Identity), to know, to do, and to live and to influence. Education allowed nations of the world to compete, interact, interconnect and to internationalise knowledge and culture. Higher education in particular was critical for all the above. Through higher education nations of the world achieved the impossible through seeing and investing in the invisible -education. The power and strength of education lay in its invisibility and its silence. Like ‘whispering death’ its power lay in its silence and invisibility.  It drives revolutionary changes, brings meanings and interpretations of the world around us invisibly. This simple message was the preoccupation of most African intellectual and liberators, of which ZK Matthews was prominent. It must be recognised that universities as institutions at the pinnacle of every society are this invisible powerful force that shape the destinies of present-day nations, global culture, and global competitiveness. Their influence is pervasive.

It is equally fair to state for the record that with all their faults, no other institutions save the university, and the church/mosque have shaped the development of humankind and the world more over the centuries! Africanisation was a major debate in the African continent post-independence, was often characterised by a litany of conferences to incorporate curriculum changes into national post-independence education policies.

Universities have transformed the world through the generation (creation of new knowledge and innovations), the dissemination, and the storage of knowledge, whilst the church/mosque has done this though teaching morality, ethics, and values. The late President Mandela said: ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change (transform) the world’ said late President Mandela (Mindset Network July 16^th, 2003).

Most African scholars and some colonialists (Lord Ashby and General Smuts), notably ZK Matthews, long before Africa’s independence also recognised immediately that the present university systems in Africa did not serve the needs of Africa and the aspirations of the African people (Matthews ZK, Makgoba MW, Nkrumah K, Yesufu TM, Nolutshungu SC, Lord Ashby, Jan Smuts and Harvard University President). The university system was not adapted and integrated for African conditions i.e.  the university education system was disconcordant with African society in many ways, for example culturally and historically. It was designed to further support colonialism, oppression, and subjugation in a sophisticated but subtle manner. One of its purposes was to ‘evangelise Africans’. The university served the colonial motherland, a colonial civilization of distant society in a rather imitative and replicative fashion’. (Makgoba MW, 1997. In Mokoko, pages 172-173). In South Africa, this disconcordant between higher education curriculum and the living reality of the African majority and the African condition, has led to the Makgoba Affair at Wits (1995), the Mamdani affair at UCT (1996-1998), the Mafeje affair UCT (1968) (Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi, @022), the FeesMustFall or RhodesMust Fall movement’s protests of 2015.

Prof ZK Matthews argued through his scholarly publications that ‘a system of education for the African must rely on Africanisation; that is the system must be based on the African conceptual and cognitive ideological issues, such as history and culture’. People’s cultures and histories are essential for their education and cultures.

He  believed that these Western and Eastern  systems  of education were not sufficiently constructed in terms of their curriculum to meet the ‘needs’ of the African people. ‘Gone are the days when Africans were satisfied to learn all about the capitals, the capes, the peninsulas of Europe and America, while they remained ignorant of the river flowing through their village or the mountain from the village was situated. Knowledge of history must now have equal place with ancient or modern European and American history. The African child must be taught to pride in his own background, as well as in the rich traditions of the world. All this is what is described as the Africanising of the curriculum in the African school, which must not be understood to imply any lowering of the standard of education’ he was quoted (Nombila, AW 2013).

But ZK Matthews the scholar, the intellectual, the teacher, the practical man, who was concerned with the needs of the African, recognized that this was not complete. ‘But Africanisation is applied not only to the context of education, but also to those who teach in African schools. For many years to come African nations will not be able to provide all teachers in their schools and colleges and they will therefore have to rely on expatriate personnel, but as rapidly as is consistent with the maintenance of commonly accepted standards, African States will want to replace expatriate personnel with their own nationals, so as to give their schools the African imagine in keeping with the self-determination they have achieved.’ Matthews said.

Prof ZK Matthews also recognised that Africanisation, therefore, included a variety of facets, such as national culture, heritage and history in the transformation of the curriculum within post-independence African states. ‘While we should do all we can to interest the native child in the culture of his own people and in the heritage which has come down to him from the past, we should not forget that today the white man and all that he stands for forms a vital factor in the heritage of the Native child of today and tomorrow’.  Thus, ZK’s Africanisation was transformative, broad, forward-looking, inclusive and of quality and not to be confused with the narrow interpretation of Marcus Garvey’s or sections of the Tanzania political elite or the PAC’s interpretations of Africanisation as exclusive, narrow and the ‘Africa is for Africans’ notions.

Minister Pandor said this of ZK: ‘Yes, he strongly believed in an African imprint on higher education and on all levels of education.  His essential thesis was of excellence in higher education and a firm belief that Africans could create and lead institutions that would offer the best of students and eventually service to the community of South Africa.  These ideas were somewhat similar to WEB du Bois arguments in his excellent essay, ‘the talented tenth’.

We need to restore intellectual rigour, love of knowledge, attention to detail and respect for all people, values ZK Matthews cherished.

Like any scholars he continued to study further at the universities of Yale and London. He did many months of  anthropological field-work research among the Sotho communities in South Africa, filling 16 field notebooks and publishing a significant article in Africa in 1940, the leading anthropological journal of the time.

Furthermore she said: ‘Professor Matthews was in almost every committee on policy of the ANC. He was the foremost African intellectual of his time, acclaimed worldwide (Pandor 2024 and Saayman 1996).  His contribution in education is renowned: especially his role at Adams College, then as Professor and Principal at Fort Hare, member of e la Warr Royal Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education 1936-1937’.and other education-related committees.

Prof  ZK Matthews,  pioneered of Africanisation, in the transformation of education.

6. THE POLITICAL ZK MATTHEWS: THE ORIGINATOR/INITIATOR OF THE IDEA OF THE CONGRESS OF THE PEOPLE AND THE FREEDOM CHARTER.
7. Prof ZK Matthews was forced to return to South Africa from the USA as his passport was not extended. He returned home in May 1953 (Sampson A., 1989).
8. The idea of the Congress of the People arose in ZK’s mind during 1952-1953 while teaching at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, wrote Saayman WA, 1996.

• Matthews remembers vividly when Prof Matthews and family ‘first mooted’ the idea of the Congress of all the People of South Africa. ‘It was lunchtime, -at the Matthews House (Phuting) and probably between June and August 1953– when the whole family listened as father and sons casually and later seriously expounded the possibilities of such a step. The year is possibly 1953 as Dr. James Moroka was still the ANC President-General from 1949-1952.  The family was all excited about the idea and thought the ideal venue for such a congress would be at Dr. James Moroka’s farm in Thaba Nchu. The idea was ‘a Congress of all the people of South Africa, irrespective of race, or colour, or party politics, coming together to discuss the possibilities of a non-racial constitution, one which recognize that South Africa is multi-racial, that all its people have contributed equally to its development…’Remembrances by Frieda Bokwe Matthews page 55. It was at this family lunch, possibly in 1953 that Prof ZK Matthews discussed his vision or aspiration of the country we became in 1994. Obviously, he would have had this idea much earlier but clearly, he had, and he pursued this throughout his life.

1953. Believing that a dramatic new initiative was needed from Africans, Matthews proposed this basic idea of the Congress of the People in his presidential address to the Cape annual conference, in Cradock in August 1953.
1954. He said ‘I wonder whether the time has not come for the ANC to consider the question of convening a National Convention, A Congress of the People, representing all the people of the country irrespective of race or colour to draw up the Freedom Charter for the Democratic South Africa of the future’ (Karis T & Carter GM).  The purpose of this national convention would be ‘to draw up a blueprint for a free South Africa of the future.’
1955. Matthews later said ‘little did I realise when I uttered those words that I was laying the foundation of a charge of treason’. Because of his position and international reputation, he was spared from the bans and restrictions that hindered so many of his political colleagues, including his own son Joe Matthews fondly known as He was not spared, however, in the arrests of December 1956, when he went from being acting principal of Fort Hare to being an accused in the Treason Trial. Somehow and wrongfully the authorities believed he was the mastermind, as he would later write to his wife.

• In February 9^th 1957, Professor Matthews wrote to his wife, that when their house was raided in 1955, his Cradock Presidential address (August 1953) of which they have several copies including my original draft in my own handwriting; the memorandum of the Congress of the People and my Presidential address in 1955, were ceased (Remembrance p118).
• In January 14^th 1958, when the Defence lawyers were analysing the Government’s case against ZK Matthews, which they thought will be the main case because ‘of the origin of the Congress of the People paper’ (Remembrances p149)

1989. Anthony Sampson then writes ‘the originator of the Freedom Charter was neither a Communist nor a militant, but the conservative elder statesman of the ANC, ZK Matthews, Mandela’s mentor at Fort Hare’ (Sampson A, 1989. Mandela: The Authorised Biography).
1990. Mandela later commented that Matthews who had been criticised as a’ fence-sitter’, should have conceived the dynamic idea which became the ’vortex of our inspiration’ similar to the founding of the ANC in 1912 (Sampson A, 1989. Mandela: The Authorised Biography).
1991. His draft of the Freedom Charter was adopted in part by the 1955 Congress of the People. In these activities he collaborated with African political leaders such as Albert Luthuli and Alphaeus Zulu. For these activities he was charged with high treason in 1956 but acquitted in 1958. From 1966 to 1968 he was Botswana’s ambassador in the USA and its permanent envoy at the United Nations.

• Denis Goldberg in his book credits ZK Matthews for being ‘one of the driving forces behind the proposal for the gathering and documenting the wishes of the people for the Freedom Charter’. This view is further corroborated by Ronnie Kasrils from leaders of the SACP.
• The ‘Freedom Demands’ collected from South Africans and were synthesised into the final document by leaders including ZK Matthews, Lionel Rusty Bernstein, Ethel Drus, Ruth First and Alan Lipman (who wife Beata Lipman, handwrote the original Charter). These were the drafters and not the originators or the creators of the ideas of the Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter.
• ‘The memorandum of the idea of the Congress of the People, which subsequently led to the adoption of the Freedom Charter, was spearheaded by Matthews and it was written in his house. Prof ZK would have shared the idea with Dr.James Moroka. Prof ZK Matthews was sanctioned by the leadership of Albert Luthuli, then President General of the ANC.

1956. The document today is foundational of our democracy.’ It was part of its socialist and popular perspective that led to the arrest of ZK Matthews in 1956.  The house was also a home for educational and political debates’, wrote Matthews BF, Matthews ZK, 1995 in Remembrances and Nombila AW, 2013 independently.

Matthews, who in June 1949 had succeeded James Calata as ANC provincial president for the Cape, declined the Mandela’s league’s invitation to be a candidate for the ANC President General, however. In June 1952 he left South Africa on the eve of the Defiance Campaign, which he had planned with ANC President-General James Moroka and took up a position as visiting professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. He returned home in May 1953, after the collapse of the campaign and because his visit was not extended.

Though he joined Jabavu in launching the All African Convention in 1935 to 1936, Matthews found his true political home in the ANC in 1940. Once the threat of the Hertzog Bills had aroused his sense of duty, he became increasingly immersed in political activities, and his talent and prestige elevated him immediately to the role of major spokesman for African interests.

While considered cautious and conservative and an ‘accommodationist’ by some of his more radically inclined students, he never succumbed to the temptation to become a government-supported ‘leader’ on the Booker T Washington model, broad as the scope for this type of leader might have been at the time Matthews entered politics. Instead he used his position on the NRC to argue the African cause with consistency and force, chaired the committee that drew up African Claims in 1943, and lent his active support to the writing of the ANC’s 1949 Programme of Action. Though criticized by the Youth League for waiting too long to resign from the NRC, Matthews – unlike some leaders – never got the reputation of being a political position-seeker: He had in fact the opposite inclination. In spite of his ambivalence on the boycott issue, the Mandela Youth League “king-makers” were nearly unanimous in considering him the best candidate for ANC president-general in 1949.

Bridging the gap between the old guard and the more militant younger members of the African National Congress in the late 1940s and 1950s, Zachariah Keodirelang Matthews exercised a major guiding and moderating influence on African political history in its most crucial period. He was at the same time, South Africa’s, and perhaps the continent and world’s, most distinguished and revered African intellectual.

Considering all of the above it is important to quote from the Albert Luthuli Museum that summarises ZK Matthews the person and in the course of this work. The quote went “To conserve, uphold, promote and propagate the life, values, philosophies and legacy of (ZK Matthews) in the struggle against apartheid oppression, respect for human rights as well as life devotion to non-violent resolution to world problems”. Thus the legacy of ZK Matthews, his philosophical ideas, values and social practices could be preserved through the change of his house (Phuting) into a museum in Alice.

ZK Matthews proposed the concept of  an African modern subject (Nombila AW, 2013). This idea can only be established if we work through the written ideas of ZK. Only if we give these ideas the meaning they seek to produce, the epistemological questions they pose, the historical and political questions he formulated to give answers to the problem.

The only logical conclusion one can arrive at from the evidence outlined above, is that ZK Matthews should receive the due and full recognition for conceptualising the idea of the Congress of the People, for drafting the memorandum for the Freedom Charter and for collecting and synthesising the Freedom Demands of the People and for being ‘the driving force behind’ (Goldberg) the creation of the Freedom Charter. The idea of the Congress of the People and the Freedom Charter were first discussed with family at lunch ( Matthews BF., Remembrances 1995 p55), later shared at his August Cape Presidential address and ZK Matthews had been ‘sanctioned’ by Chief Albert Luthuli, ANC President-General for this project.

It is unethical and intellectually dishonest that his intellectual input in these issues are often conflated with drafters and other collaborators; downplayed to the point where his singular outstanding visionary contributions are diluted and even vanish in the memories of present South Africans and future generations.

In academic and scholarly traditions or circles, those that conceive, create or originate ideas, concepts or theories receive the full credit and recognition for these. It is almost unheard of that drafters or collaborators (important as they are) should ever take precedence over the originator of an innovative idea. Clearly, these drafters of the Freedom Charter took advantage of Prof ZK Matthews’s character. This unethical omission must be rectified publicly and through a proper process.

7. THE ‘African-Liberal-Christian’ or the ECUMENIST and the ‘ACCOMMODATIONIST’ ZK MATTHEWS

ZK Matthews was a product of his Tswana traditions (humility), his missionary and liberal education at Lovedale (accommodationist), his strong non-racialism, his principled belief in human equality and social justice and his aspirations for a better South Africa of equality, harmony and mutual respect. The church in its many facets was an important component of ZK Matthews’s public life and service.

Speaking to Professor Barney Pityana, former Unisa Vice-Chancellor and founder member of SASO, he remembered ZK coming to Lovedale College in 1960 on the invitation of the Student Christian Movement. ‘ZK was a man of dignity (Isithunzi), revered and highly respected. He had resigned from Fort Hare College when the apartheid government turned a prestigious university into a Xhosa Bantustan university. As young students they relished hanging around ZK. He spoke to the students on the importance of joining public life as a Christian. He emphasised that one could not enter public life as a Christian and behave like Tom, Dick and Harry. One had to respect and carry the Christian values into public life.’ This has stayed with me, said Prof Pityana.

Professor Willem Saayman, the author of ‘The Man with a Shadow: The Times and Life of ZK Matthews’-aptly described Prof ZK Matthews as ‘an  outstanding  African academic and politician of 20^th century South Africa. A product of the liberal humanitarian mission education of Lovedale, he was also implacably opposed to the injustices of colonialism and apartheid. His ambiguous  to South African Christianity can be characterised as ‘subversive subservience…’

In 1952-1953 he was the Henry W. Luce Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York.

‘On his release from the trial in late 1958, ZK Matthews  returned to Fort Hare, but subsequently resigned his post, forfeiting his academic post and lifetime career and  a large sum in pension benefits, in protest against the government takeover of the college, making Fort Hare a Bantustan University. After being released from six months’ detention during the 1960 emergency, Matthews joined Luthuli in calling for consultations among African leaders and a national convention representing all South Africans. These efforts eventually led to the All-In African Conference of March 1961. The same year Matthews moved to Geneva to become Secretary of the Africa division of the World Council of Churches.

After involvement in the Cottesloe Consultation in  7-14^th December 1960, Matthews served as Africa Secretary of the Division of Inter-Church Aid, Refugee and World Service of the World Council of Churches. In that capacity his report, the Africa Survey, addressed the refugee situation created by Christian-Muslim conflict in the Sudan and the Congo crisis of 1962-1963 (https://www.bu.edu-missiology). His efforts sensitized the United Nations to the extent of the refugee situation. In his ecumenical career he served on the planning committee of the WCC Evanston Assembly in 1954. He was also active in the All Africa Conference of Churches. At its first assembly in Kampala in 1963, he chaired the constitutional committee’ (John S Pobee, School of Theology, Boston University).

8. ZK MATTHEWS: THE FORGOTTEN, LOCALISED OR REGIONALISED INTELLECTUAL LEADER OF OUR STRUGGLE. Why?

If one looked at the history of our struggle, one is struck by the following: i) it seems our struggle only started post 1994 or 1960; characterised by the absence or minimal mention of other liberation movements in the struggle and the selective memory or forgetfulness of who to credit or memorialise in the struggle. Out of this comes a distorted version of history of where we came from. The current generation has hardly heard of Reverends Calata or Gawe in the history of the struggle. The contributions of people like Godfrey Pitje and Prof ZK Matthews hardly exists. Their contributions are difficult to find. There no biographies, museums or symbols about them and seem only to feature in archives. Prof ZK Matthews contributions are recognised through this Annual lecture at University of Fort Hare, the Matthews House (Phuting) in Alice  and the university’s Exhibitions in the Administration Building or at the ZK Matthews Documentation Centre at Unisa. In general, ZK Matthews contribution are regionalised to the Alice or the Eastern Cape for a national figure of Prof Matthews stature. His  seminal intellectual contributions that impacted the globe and generations and defined the so called new world order and transformed culture, policies, values and perspectives remain downplayed in his own country. His so-called biography,’ Freedom for My People’, is deemed by several peers to be incomplete and does not do justice to his contributions. In fact one  scholar says Matthews says ‘very little about what he did’ (Nombila AW 2013). The biography was incomplete and lacked details but was completed by Monica Wilson, a family friend of the Matthews and a colleague anthropologist. She added a few chapters and approached the biography from a liberal -Christian perspective in similar vein as Prof Willem Saayman long essay, which were their strength. Ms Monica Wilson portrayed Prof Matthews in religious terms in terms of  being a ‘Christian reconciler’. Its major weakness was its failure to address the enormous political activism and contributions of Prof ZK Matthews. Many scholars concluded that ‘Freedom for My People’, ZK Matthews autobiography was not the real biography but a proper and true biography is still awaited to be written.

As ‘Ciraj Rassool and others have argued that there has been a proliferation in the production of political biographies, popular and scholarly, in the years after apartheid. Political biographies have tended to focus on prominent figures in the struggle for the liberation of black South Africans from segregation and apartheid. If one considers the broader historiography of memorialization in the post-apartheid period, one finds that the names of certain heroes appear again and again: Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu. Most recently you find biographies of contemporary leaders of the ANC, including Thabo Mbeki (Gumede, WM & Gevisser, M.,), Kgalema Motlanthe (Harvey, E.,) Jacob Zuma (Gordin, J), Cyril Ramaphosa (Butler, A.,), and many others including Patrice Motsepe (Smith, J.,).  ZK does not appear at all on this list. His full biography is yet to be written (Rasool , C. 2004). In more popular publications he is usually forgotten.

So for example in a recent 319 pages, 14 Chapters book co-edited by Renier Schoeman and Daryl Swanepoel  published by the ANC marking its centenary celebrations, ZK did not appear but is not mentioned at all! The book is titled Unity in Diversity: 100 Years of ANC Leadership (1912-2012, features the ANC National Presidents and so-called ‘other leaders’ over the century.  It provides a leadership timeline of the African National Congress. It shows its presidential leadership from John Langalibalele Dube (1912-1917) to the current leadership of Jacob Zuma. These ‘other leaders’ include Ms. Winnie Mandela, Chris Hani, Joe Slovo, Lilian Ngoyi, Alfred Nzo, Solomon Mahlangu, Rev. James Calata, Trevor Huddleston, Helen Joseph and many others who played leadership roles within the ANC. Wits and not UFH as an institution features prominently.  I can confirm, having perused the book at UP library that ZK Matthews does not feature in the book. Such an important historical book, it is very difficult to find i.e. it not accessible.  It is therefore quite surprising that a leader of the ANC such as ZK Matthews, who played so many leadership roles, has been omitted from this important history book. ZK Matthews was President of ANC Cape Province. He sometimes deputised for Chief Albert Luthuli.  He planned the Defiance Campaign with President James Moroka. How do we explain this neglect for a person of such Isithunzi?  What has been the politics of memory in the ANC? Which lives have become important and why? Which not? Is this symptomatic of the tendency for nationalist movements to omit memory for certain ends?’ commented and asked Nombila AW 2013.

‘My Father (Joe Matthews) often expressed concern at this gap (political) in the history of our grandfather who he believed made an immense contribution to the ANC and South Africa.  This was because apart from political work, Prof ZK Matthews also made submissions to the white Parliament on policies directed at further oppression of black people.  He was an active petitioner and writer,’ said Minister Pandor and corroborated by Ms. Pulane Ngcakani.  Prof ZK Matthews contributions to the national struggle were not local or regional or only national but also continental and global. Why should young generations of South Africans know more about  Gucci and Louis Vuitton, than about ZK Matthews, our own hero!

The ignored or down-played contributions of ZK Matthews in post-apartheid South Africa can be explained by looking at ways in which history is made appropriate and relevant  by the ANC as a nationalist movement-the ANC-ification of South African History. In the Road to Democracy in South Africa by SADET, it would seem the prevailing dominant narrative of the history of the liberation struggle only begins in 1960, when the armed wing of the ANC was established; when the ANC Youth League dominated  and radicalised the mother body. At this time ZK Matthews was in exile in Zambia working for the World Council of Churches but his fingerprints were there in the records and archives. It is this jaundiced view of our history that we must confront and eschew. The true history of our struggle has many facets by other personalities and organisations. The history of the struggle is not synonymous with the ANC only and the preferred or dominant narrative should correspond with reality on the ground. At the present this correlation is very weak. In our country we have Marxists who conduct and live like capitalists and even have Marxists who are alleged to steal, something inimical with Marxism. We are also breeding a culture of anti-intellectualism, where intelligent or ‘clever’ people must walk with tails between their legs and in shame.

In 1965 ZK Matthews notified President Sir Seretse Khama, from the Bangwato Tswana clan, that he would retire to Botswana, which had just attained self-government status. In 1966, Botswana gained independence and Matthews ‘had such stature that the people of Botswana sought him out as a man with roots in Botswana to serve as the First Permanent Representative and ambassador of Botswana to the United Nations’, which he accepted. Matthews died in 1968.

That a remarkable person of the intellect, stature and contributions of ZK Matthews does not feature in or is absent from memorialising our struggle history; a person who dedicated his intellectual, educational and political life to the advancement, empowerment and freedom of the African people, someone (Minister Pandor 2024) who was alleged by the powers that be to be mastermind behind the 1956 Treason Trial, is indeed astounding. We should all be ashamed of this act of omission or selective memory. We continue to memorialise or write our history applying the principle of factionality, exclusion, selectiveness and romanticism (Nombila AW (Student No. 2745054) 2013). As Ndlovu—Gatsheni also noted similar patterns in Zimbabwe, where a “selective deployment of history, memory and commemoration is used to establish hegemony and claim uncontested political legitimacy”, resulting in the “repression of alternative memories and imaginations of the nation.

‘Africans generally, know very little about the greatness of its Continent and the giants who formed it’ Frantz Fanon.

9. It is quite clear that ZK through the combination of social anthropology and Native Law as his academic disciplines and through his intellect, his writings, his mathematical thinking, his political activism, his Christian-liberal and ‘accommodationist and conciliatory’ approach was able to see a vision that which his contemporaries did not see. He stuck and pursued this vision despite obstacles, criticism, harassments, banishments, arrests from many sides over prolonged periods. He was ahead of his time. It was his principled stubbornness and humility that he could guide and manage contrasts, conflicts and contradictions so easily within a critical period in the history of the movement that laid the foundations for the transformation of education through Africanisation and our non-racial political transformation that is contained in the 1955 Freedom Charter, the 1996 Constitution of the Republic and in the 2012 National Development Plan. He stood between three extremes, the Colonial-apartheid exclusive oppressive regimes, the White approach; the radical exclusive Africanist approach; and the young, kingmakers, the angry, the impatient ANCYL He could map an ‘accommodationist or reconciliatory’ vision that has become the cornerstone of the democratic South Africa of today-inclusive, tolerant, non-racial, human-rights-based., that has stood the test of time. As his wife puts it in Remembrances, ‘ZK was African to the core of his being  but very Westernised as can be in his everyday life’. It was this unique permutation at the time  that perhaps explained his ahead-of-time invisible vision and unique perspective on many issues.

My request is that the University of Fort Hare finds a process to memorialise Prof ZK Matthews globally properly. Let us celebrate this African intellectual pioneer and brag about him. Let us create a national moment or a day or a monument or statue to remember and reflect upon what this unique and exceptional African has contributed to the advancement of humankind globally; the polymath ZK was.

I recommend that Prof ZK Matthews as a national treasure be given his due recognition and true stature in our history and celebrated nationally, proudly, and publicly. Let us all accept and recognize that only he (Prof ZK Matthews), the academic, was the originator or initiator of the Congress of the People, the Freedom Charter, and the total transformation of education through Africanisation.

Like all of us, Prof ZK Matthews was created in the image of God, like all of us he was biological unique with a permutation of unique phenotypical characteristics of intellect, foresight, humility, mathematical bent, clarity of thought and strength of character with unshakeable focus and belief in his vision, his love of languages, music, and nature. This permutation, and not combination, unlike no other is what distinguished him. Lord Caradon described ZK as a person ‘blessed with fine and rare personal qualities’, at his memorial.

THANK YOU.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:  I thank Dr Mothobi Motluatse for lending me his copy of the book Remembrances authored by FB Matthews, the Librarian at UP, Rene Caesar for giving me temporary access to the library, to go through the book Unity in Diversity:100-years of ANC Leadership (1912-2012) and Ms. M Mabasa the Libraraian at Unisa for giving me temporary access to the Unisa Library to read the book :The Man with a Shadow: The Life and Times of ZK Matthews.

REFERENCES.

1. Makgoba, MW., (1997). Mokoko: The Makgoba Affair: A reflections on Transformation. Vivlia Publishers and Booksellers (PTY) Ltd.
2. Ramoupi Neo Lekgotla laga., (2022). Paradise lost: A Book on Race and Racism in Post-Apartheid South Africa Cape Town HSRC Press. p123-145.
3. Burchell, DE., (1988). The pursuit of relevance within a conservative context: the university College of Fort Hare to 1960. Con-text 1:45-67.
4. Makgoba, MW. (2004). Installation Address, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
5. Nkrumah, K.,( 1956). Opening Address, University College, Accra •
6. Nolutshungu, Sam C. (1996).“Beyond the Gold Standard. The idea of a post-apartheid University. •
7. Yesufu TM. (1970). Creating the African University: Emerging Issues of the 1970s Ibadan, Oxford University Press 1973. •
8. Ashby, E. (1964). African Universities and the Western Tradition. 14 Cambridge: Harvard University Press. •
9. Kerr, Alexander. (1968). Fort Hare 1915-48:The evolution of an African College. London: C. Hurst and Company, pp 217-8.
10. Makgoba, M., (2023). Leadership for transformation since the Dawn of South Africa’s Democracy: An Insider’s View. Skotaville Academic Publishing (PTY) Ltd.
11. Matthews, FB., (1995). Remembrances. Mayibuye Books, UWC.
12. Sampson, M., (1989). Mandela: The Authorised Biography. Chapter 8: The Meaning of Freedom 1953-1956, p88-89.
13. Karis, T., & Carter, GM. From Protest to Challenge, Vol 3: Challenge and Violence 1953-1964 p105.
14. Karis, T., Carter, GM. From Protest to Challenge: A documentary history of African politics in South Africa 1882-1964. Titled ZK Matthews Papers (ACC101) contains1453 items.
15. Nombila, AW., (2013). In Christianity, Education and African Nationalism: An Intellectual Biography of Z.K. Matthews (1901-1968). , University of the Western Cape, (Student No. 2745054).
16. Rassool C., “The Individual, Auto/ Biography and History in South Africa”, (PhD diss., University of the Western Cape, 2004).
17. John S. Pobee, “Matthews, Z(achariah) K(eodirelang),” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 442.
18. Saayman, WA., (Dec. !997). Subversive subservience: ZK Matthews and missionary education in South Africa. Missionalia 24:4 p523-536.
19. Ndlovu-Gatsheni S. S, 2011, “The Construction and Decline of Chimurenga Monologue in Zimbabwe: A Study in Resistance of Ideology and Limits of Alternatives”, (paper presented in conference at the Nordic African Institute, Uppsala, June 14-18, 2011).
20. Wikipedia, ZK Matthews: https:/en.m.wikipedia.org’wiki
21. Boston University. https://www.bu.edu › missiology › missionary-biography

• . Zachariah Keodirelang Matthews. South African History Online
  1. https://www.sahistory.org.za › people › zachariah-keodi…

23. A sample of ZK Matthews’s writings/publications:
    1. Wikipedia https:/en.m.wikipedia.org’wiki
24. “A New Native Teachers’ Course”, Ilanga lase Natal , November 4, 11, 1927
25. “Bantu Law and Western Civilisation in South Africa: A Study in the Clash of Cultures , Yale University, 1934. Master of Arts thesis.”
26. “A Short History of the Tshidi Barolong”, Fort Hare Papers , vol. 1 no. 1, June 1945.
27. “Foreword”, in Responsible Government in a Revolutionary Age, [ed.] Z. K. Matthews, Association Press, New York, 1966.
28. “Freedom For My People”, Cape Town: Collings, 1981. (Published posthumously in 1981).
29. “Africa holds her own”. An appreciation of Bantu tribal and national culture in the Imperial Protectorates and in the Union of South Africa. By W. Bryant Mumford. in co-operation with Hugh Ashton . [and] Z.K. Matthews.
30. “African awakening and the universities”, [Cape Town] University of Cape Town, 1961.

 

Image taken from https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/the-leadership-our-institutions-need-pandor-lauds-ufhs-corruption-fight-at-lecture-20240510