Jeremiah Congress Mphithizeli Mbata[1] (1919–1989) was a South African educational administrator, political leader and Africana scholar.
Mbata was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, the son of the late John and Martha Mbata, who named him "Congress" to protest the lack of majoritarian rule in South Africa. Mbata was educated in the Bantu United Schools system, then transferred to the St. Peter's Secondary School in Johannesburg. He attended the South African Native College at Fort Hare, and the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1940 he joined the faculty at St. Peter's Secondary School. Mbata was elected Secretary of the Transvaal African Teachers Association, which fought the inadequacies of the Bantu United Schools system. In 1944, Congress Mbata became a founding member of the African National Congress Youth League and later served as its Secretary.
Mbata's career advanced as an educational administrator. He became a Headmaster at Lekoa-Shandu African High School in Vereeniging. Following this job, Mbata became an Officer-Researcher at the South African Institute of Race Relations, which provided impartial research on education under the transition to apartheid.[2]
In 1960, after the Sharpeville Massacre and the State's ban against the African National Congress, Mbata was very active in the 1960 African Leadership Conference, which attempted to be a successor to the ANC in leading the struggle for racial equality. The South African Security Police targeted Mbata, and he sought refugee status in the United States. Mbata left his papers with the University of the Witwatersrand when he went into exile.[1]
In 1968-69, Mbata was both a professor in the African Studies Program at Northwestern University as well as head of African Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois. In 1969, Mbata became a founding faculty member of the Cornell Africana Studies and Research Center.[3] In the early years, the Center practiced racial exclusion in its course enrollment. However, in spring 1973, Mbata was the first Africana professor to allow three white students to enroll in his history class. Mbata designed the Center's M.P.S. Degree Program, and negotiated its acceptance by state authorities. Mbata also served as the first Graduate Field Representative for Africana Studies in the Cornell University Graduate School, a position he held for over ten years.
Among Mbata's publications were: "Race and Resistance in South Africa" in J. Paden and E. Soja (eds.), The African Experience, (1970) and "Profile of Change: The Culmulative Significance of Changes Among Africans" in L. Thompson and J. Butler (eds.), Change in Contemporary South Africa, (1975).