Pixley ka Isaka Seme

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Pixley ka Isaka Seme (1881?-June 1951) was a founder and President of the African National Congress.

He was born in Natal, South Africa at the Inanda mission station of the American Zulu Mission of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Although he once advertised for summer employment as a manservant in the United States by claiming to be of "Royal Zulu blood," his patrilineal clan name (""isibongo""), Seme, is unrelated to the Zulu royal family (Bryant, [1929] 1965). His mother was a sister of John Langalibalele Dube, and descended from a local chief (Smith 1952). At 17 years of age Seme left to study in the U.S., first at the Mount Hermon School and then Columbia University. In 1906, his senior year at University, he was awarded the Curtis Medal, Columbia's highest oratorical honor. He subsequently decided to become an attorney. In October 1906 he was admittted to Oxford University to read for the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law; while at Oxford he was a member of Jesus College.

Seme returned to South Africa in 1911. In response to the formation of the Union of South Africa, he worked with several other young African leaders recently returned from university studies in England, Richard Msimang, George Montsioa and Alfred Mangena, and with established leaders of the South African Native Convention in Johannesburg to promote the formation of a national organization that would unify various African groups from the former separate colonies, now provinces. In January 1912 these efforts bore fruit with the founding meeting of the South African Native National Congress, later renamed the African National Congress (Walshe 1970, Odendaal 1984).

Seme's nationalist organizing among Africans paralleled the contemporaneous efforts of Mohandas Gandhi with South African Indians.

The birthdate listed is not certain—it was Seme's personal estimate at the time of his application to Mount Hermon.

[edit] External links

Seme. ANC Biography.
"Native Union". Article by Seme, in Imvo Zabantsundu, October 24, 1911.
"Formation of the African National Congress, 1912". Compiled by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress.

[edit] References

Bryant, A. T. ([1929] 1965). Olden Times in Zululand and Natal. Cape Town: C. Struik
Odendaal, Andre (1984). Black Protest Politics in South Africa to 1912. Totowa NJ: Barnes & Noble Books.
Smith, Edwin W. (1952). The Life and Times of Daniel Lindley, Missionary to the Zulus, Pastor of the Voortrekkers, Ubebe Omhlope. New York: Library Publishers.
Walshe, Peter (1970). The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa. The African National Congress, 1912-1952. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.