.. 

" 
' ' 

• 

One must be absolutely modern. 
-Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell (1873). 

At the time it was thought that the black people were 
incapable of adapting themselves to the changes of 
thought, of environment, of social life, and of outlook 

brought about by modern civilization ... Today, more than 
ever before, Europeans [whites] realise the absurdity and 
impossibility of attempting to check Bantu [African] growth 
and development. It cannot be done. It runs counter to the 

order of modern society, and is opposed to principles of 
natural evolution ... This process of fermentation amongst 

Natives [Africans] is the prelude to emancipation, 
achievement, success and progress ... A new era in outlook 

has come. 
-H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Past and Future" (1930). 

What is modernity? It is, first of all, an ambiguous term: 
there are as many types of modernity as there are societies. 
Each society has its own ... Modernity is a word in search of 
its meaning. Is it an idea, a mirage or a moment of history? 
Are we the children of modernity or are we its creators? 
Nobody knows for sure ... Modernity has been a universal 
passion ... Modernity is the spearhead of historical 

movement, the incarnation of evolution or revolution, 
two faces of progress. 

-Octavio Paz, In Search of the Present, The Nobel Lecture / 
in Literature, 1990. 

Modernity is a reality they cannot wish away, but engaging 
it creatively requires a critical appraisal of indigenous 
culture, and the retention of the good as well as the 

jettisoning of the bad. 
-Mamphela Ramphele, A Life (1995). 

White supremacy is an integral component of European 
progress, with the evil of African slavery a precondition of 
progressive breakthroughs in the modern world. The great 
paradox of Western modernity is that democracy flourished 
for Europeans, especially men of property, alongside the 
flowering of the transatlantic slave trade and New World 

slavery. 
-Cornel West, "The Ignoble Paradox of Western 

Moder~ity" (1997). 
• 

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The present essay is purposely and deliberately entitled "The Cultural 
Modernity of H . I.E. Dhlomo" as a homage to Roberto Fernandez Retamar's 
"The Modernity of Marti".1 This homage is a way of acknowledging that 
Frantz Fanon was correct when he called on Africa to examine and look at 
Latin America for certain fundamental historical lessons of our time. 
Although the specific intent of Fanon was as a negative illustration, in that 
he wanted Africa to avoid the mishaps into which Latin American countries 
had been forced to by imperialism, one could also see the other side of the 
positive illustration in that Fanon saw the Cuban Revolution as the best 
exemplification of the greatness that continent was capable of achieving.2 It 
was this positive self-remaking of Latin America which Fanon felt held deep 
lessons for Africa. The central point of Fanon's argument was that Latin 
America had much more serious lessons for Africa than Europe could 
possibly have or impart. It is extremely unfortunate that this profound 
prescience of Fanon has never been taken seriously, if one can judge by the 
absence in Africa of intellectually theorized political and cultural interlinks 
between the two continents. In a certain sense Fanon was prophetic in that 
African Revolution from 1974 to 1994 (the social revolutions in Angola and 
Mozambique, and the recent political revolution in South Africa) has been 
carried on the shoulders of the Cuban Revolution. 

In a fascinating way, Fanon's solidarity with the Cuban Revolution was so 
profound and influential that when Retamar constructed the political and 
intellectual profile of Latin American culture(s), "Caliban: Notes Toward a 
Discussion of Culture in Our America", arguably his most renowned essay, he 
paid homage to Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon by highlighting the 
Africanness of Latin American culture.3 In contrast to Jorge Luis Borges who 
saw Latin America culture as a historical product of Europeanism, Retamar 
postulated it as a mestizo culture combining the unity of the Indigenous, the 
European and the African.4 And in contrast with Octavio Paz who largely 
articulated Latin American literature as a linguistic formation emanating 

1 Roberto Fernandez Retamar, "The Modernity of Marti", in Jose Marti: Revolutionary 
Democrat, (eds.) Christopher Abel and Nissa Torrents, Duke University Press, Durham, 1986, 
pp.1-15. See also: "Jose Marti: A Cuban for All Seasons", The Washington Post (Book World), 
May 14, 1995, pp.8-9. 
2 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington, Grove Weidenfeld, 
New York 1968 [1961], p .97. 
3 I should point out that Abdias do Nascimento rejects the designation Latin America since he 
believes it excludes the Africanness or Africanity of the South American continent: "The 
African Experience in Brazil", in African Presence in the Americas, (eds.) Tanya R. Sanders and 
Shawna Moore, Africa World Press, Trenton, 1995. 
4 Roberto Fernandez Retamar, "Caliban: Notes Toward a Discussion of Culture in Our America" 
(1971), in Caliban and Other Essays, trans. Edward Baker, foreword Fredric Jameson, 
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1989, pp.3-45; Jorge Luis Borges, "The Argentine 
Writer and Tradition", in Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, (eds.) Donald A 
Yates and James E. Irby, A New Directions Book, New York, 1964, pp.177-185. 

7 

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from adapted European languages, for Retamar it was predicated on the 
historical synthesis of the lived experiences of Latin American people.5 I 
mention these few contrastive viewpoints (I leave unmentioned for example 
Angel Rama and Antonio Candido) on the genealogy of Latin American 
literature as rich interpretative forms that could enrich our already dense 
African historical perspectives on literature. It is because of these positionings 
that Roberto Fernandez Retamar can be affilitiated with the political and 
intellectual vision of Frantz Fanon.6 

Retamar on Jose Marti and Octavio Paz on modernity as a worldly experience 
(unfortunately a shade too Eurocentric) are reflections which inspire my 
present preoccupations with Dhlomo and modernity: lessons of theoretical 
approach for Africa from Latin America as Fanon had hoped and wished. 
There will be no direct applications of these experiences from one continent 
to another; my concern is partly to foster a certain spiritual ambience. Roberto 
Fernandez Retamar defines the modernity of Marti as consisting of five 
vectors: the interrogation of the practicality and realizability of the present; an 
unwavering commitment to the liberation of his people; a constant 
preoccupation with the historical meaning of the past, in the concrete 
instance of Marti of how to continue the tradition of Simon Bolivar, and with 
H. I. E. Dhlomo of how to make meaningful the monumentality of Shaka to 
South African history; the importance of defining the spiritual world of the 
people; and lastly, a deeply felt aspiration to continental unity.7 Concerning 
Paz on modernity I would like to quote two passages defining it in his 
remarkable, probably I should say very astonishing book, Children of the 
Mire, which as the subtitle states it is a study of modern poetry from 
Romanticism to the Avant-Garde. On the very first page of the book Octavio 
Paz jolts one with this definition: "Modernity is a polemical tradition which 
displaces the tradition of the moment, whatever it happens to be, but an 
instant later yields its place to still another tradition which in turn is a 
momentary manifestation of modernity. Modernity is never itself; it is always 
the other. The modern is characterized not only by novelty but by otherness." 
Two pages later he elaborates and specifies his understanding of this historical 
construct: "What distinguishes our modernity from that of other ages is not 

5 Octavio Paz, "A Literature of Foundations" (1961), The Siren and the Seashell, trans. 
Lysander Kemp, University of Texas Press, 1976, pp.171-179; Roberto Fernandez Retamar, 
"Some Theoretical Problems of Spanish American Literature", Caliban and Other Essays, op. 
cit., pp.74-99. 
6 As one of the ideologues of the Cuban Revolution and as editor of Casada las Americas for the 
last quarter of a century, Retamar has been at the center of Latin American exchanges and duels 
between its great writers: for instance the exchange between Julio Cortazar and Jose Maria 
Arguedas on the social responsibility and self-identification of the Latin American writer: 
Julio Cortazar, "Letter to Roberto Fernandez Retamar", in Lives on the Line: The Testimony of 
Contemporary Latin American Writers, (ed.) Doris Meyer, University of California Press, 1988, 
pp. 74-83; Mario Vargas Llosa, "Social Commitment and the Latin American writer", op . cit., 
~p.128-136. 

Roberto Fernandez Retamar, "The Cultural Modernity of Marti", op. cit., p .2-3. 

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our cult of the new and surprising, important though it is, but the fact that it 
is a rejection, a criticism of the immediate past, an interruption of continuity. 
Modern art is not only the offspring of the age of criticism, it is also its own 
critic. The new is not exactly the modern, unless it carries a double explosive 
charge: the negation of the past and the affirmation of something different."8 
It is such passages that have compelled me to re-read the book so many times 
over the last twenty years. Again I quote the following from this 
incomparable book on modernity: "Opposition of the modern age works 
within the age. To criticize it is one of the functions of the modern spirit; and 
even more, one way of fulfilling it. The modern age is the age of schism and 
of self-negation, the age of criticism. It has identified itself with change, 
change with criticism, and both with progress. Modern art is modern because 
it is critical. Its criticism unfolded in two contradictory directions; it rejected 
the linear time of the modern age and it rejected itself. By the first it denied 
modernity; by the second affirmed it. Faced with history and its changes, it 
postulated the timeless time of the origins, the moment, or the cycle; faced 
with its own tradition, it postulated change and criticism."9 I donot intend 
here to place Dhlomo's modernity under Paz's conceptualization of European 
modernity, but rather, to make Paz's poetics of modernity serve the historical 
project of Dhlomo, even if obliquely, in the same way that Cesaire said that 
Marxism should be made to serve African people, and not the African people 
forced marched to Marxism. 

Dhlomo and modernity: the historical and cultural geography of this 
encounter mapped out in his writings scattered in largely two newspapers 
Umteteli wa Bantu and Ilanga lase Natal, is wide, deep and vast. Although R. 
V. Selope Thema was perhaps the first and most persistent among the New 
African intellectuals to indicate the challenge of modernity, H. I. E. Dhlomo 
was arguably the most successful in constructing the theoretical, political and 
epistemological instrumentarium for meeting this challenge: while Selope 
Thema drew attention to the historical significance and historical lessons of 
African American modernity for African modernity in South Africa, Dhlomo 
actually constructed the theoretical edifice of South African modernity.IO 
Having a stronger sense of the geography of various modernities in the world 
and the cultural textures of many modernism(s) as wordly experience, 
Dhlomo saw European modernities as having central importance to any 
comparable undertaking in South Africa. It is not accidental that, although 
Du Bois concept of "The Talented Tenth" had a most profound impact on 
him, indicated by many allusions to it in many of his essays, Dhlomo saw 

8 Octavio Paz, The Children of the Mire, trans. Rachel Phillips, Harvard University Press, 
1974, p.1-3. 
9 ibid., p.148-9. 
10 cf., "The Trans-Atlantic Connection of the New African Movement", in United States and 
South Africa: The Historical Field of Social and Cultural Interaction, (ed.) N tongela Masilela, 
Verso, London, 1997. 

Q 

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himself as having closer cultural affinities with Countee Cullen because of 
their passion for the English Romantic poets, the American absorbed with 
Keats and the African focused on Shelley.11 Comparing Cullen's "Thoughts 
in a Zoo" to his own poem (in the essay Dhlomo does not reveal that it is 
actual his poem involved in the comparison), Dhlomo argues that both 
poems are preoccupied with similar issues: the problems of Nature and Man 
[!]; the relation of the Soul of black people to intellectual freedom, their 
similar preoccupation with beauty and expression, and the nature of the 
social systems under which their respective people live. Reading the poems 
politically in relation to the poetic form derived from Romanticism, Dhlomo 
writes: "The problem that these poets raise is no small one. It concerns the 
freedom of the mind and the Soul of the people. Enslave the mind and the 
Soul of a people, and you have destroyed them. Now, the most tragic thing 
about the process of enslaving the Mind and Soul of a people is that you 
cannot do it by assailing them or their liberties straight and openly".12 For 

11 The original essay of 1903 by W. E. B. Du Bois is reprinted as an appendix in a recent book by 
Henry Louis Gates and Come! West: The Future of the Race, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1996, 
pp.133-157. The rest of the book consists of two major essays by Gates and West on the 
contemporary significance of "The Talented Tenth". H. I.E. Dhlomo alludes to Du Bois' essay in 
many of his own: Weekly Review and Commentary (a column), Ilanga lase Natal, February 17, 
1945; "Freaks, Potatoes, Mice, Swan Song", Ilanga lase Natal, October 7, 1950; "Native Policy 
in South Africa, Part III", Umteteli wa Bantu, April 5, 1930; "Education", Umteteli wa Bantu, 
June 7, 1930; "Revolution", Umteteli wa Bantu, August 27, 1932; "Bantu Culture and Expression", 
Ilanga lase Natal, July 24, 1948. Dhlomo more than anyone among the New African 
intelligentsia, with the possible exception of Allan Kirkland Soga, was influenced by the 
African American experience in his articulation of race: in his writings one encouters many 
references to the Race Man, Race Problem, Race Civilization, etc. Soga writing under the by-
line of The Cult of Race Leadership and R. V. Selope Thema under Along the Colour Line in the 
1920s in Umteteli wa Bantu precede Dhlomo in incorporating African American intellectual 
culture into South Africa. Allan Kirkland Soga may have been the firs t African in South Africa 
to make a series of contributions to an African American publication beginning with a 
contribution of 1903 protesting the exclusion of Africans in the Treaty of Vereneeging: 
"Ethiopians of the Twentieth Century", The Colored American Magazine, May / June, 
July/ August, 1903. 

12 H. I. E, Dhlomo, "Apartheid, Flora And Fauna", Ilanga lase Natal, October 23, 1950. 
Simultaneously with establish connections across the Atlantic, Dhlomo, aligning himself with 
Pan-Africanism, exhorted South Africans to always think in terms of Africa (see: "Africans and 
Bantu", X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], Ilanga lase Natal, October 23, 1943). He saw Africa as representing 
a new horizon of thought for South Africans, that would make possible the rediscovery of the 
beauty, immensity, possibilities and challenges of the continent. Emphasizing salvation in 
cultural activity, Dhlomo called on African writers, scholars, creative artists to organize an 
All-African Cultural Movement. Ezekiel Mphahlele was to partly realize this approximately 
twenty years later in 1962 when he organized the Kampala Conference in which 30 African 
writers who express themselves in English participated (see: Ezekiel Mphahlele, ''The 
Makerere Writers' Conference", Africa Report, vol.7 no.7, July 1962). Dhlomo had already seen 
the intellectual importance of Mphahlele by selecting his first published book, a collection of 
short stories called Man Must Live and Other Stories (1946), as a significant text published in 
the English language by an African, to be placed alongside Silas Modiri Molema's The Bantu 
(1920), Solomon Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa (1916) and Mhudi (1930), D. D. T. 

1 () 

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' 
Dhlomo then, a trans-Atlantic connection to African American literary 
culture had to be made unavoidably or inescapably through a European poetic 
cultural movement. 

There are several instances in which Dhlomo specifies his understanding of 
modernity. In one contextual definition modernity is articulated as the 
struggle between the New and the Old within the ambience of the conflictual 
nature of South African history: white vs black and Afrikaneer vs Briton. He 
postulates: "There is a struggle between old ideas, orthodox thought, and 
tradition on the one hand; and the new scientific outlook, evolutionary 
thought, and rapid progress on the other. Some looking backwards and seeing 
the old order changing and giving birth to the new feel ill at ease, and are 
striving to stay the passing of the life of yesterday; while other[s] with clearer 
vision and more courage see better days ahead, and are endeavoring to hasten 
the pace ... There is a frantic struggle to keep apart and distinct the races of the 
country, while the inexorable hand of Fate points to a common destiny. Nor 
can it be otherwise with people who live under the same conditions of life 
and are acted upon by like influences. A situation midway between bedlam 
and chaos has been created."13 Denouncing in this essay the segregationist 
policies that were emanating from white Parliament in 1930, which were 
aimed at denying Africans full citizenship, autonomy and self-organization, 
Dhlomo believed that modernity was in the process of bringing prosperity, 
progress and civilization to Africans. 

Elsewhere undertaking a simultaneous task of criticizing some leisurely ways 
of African life as well as castigating the deleterious effects of European 
colonialism in Africa, Dhlomo expresses his profound faith in the 
possibilities of modernity enabling Africans overcome their intractable 
problems stemming from traditional life and from imperial domination: 
"Most important of all Africa calls for a new spirit of tolerance, conciliation, 
service and understanding; for a vision of the stupendous task awaiting us; of 
the future potentialities of this our country; of the spiritual material and 
psychological needs of the Bantu .. . The rapid march of science and medicine, 
the marvels of invention, transformation of the world by beautiful cities and 
farmsteads, outlawry [sic] of war, cultivation of deserts, and above and beyond 
and before all else the growth of the spirit of international patriotism, lead me 
to refuse to believe in the ultimate catastrophical destruction of this lovely 
world .. . lmperciptibly we are marching nearer the Golden Age; we are 
drawing closer and closer to the realisation of the Call of Africa." Calling on 
the New African Upper Tenth to fight ignorance with enlightenment, 

Jabavu's The Black Problem ( 192 ), and a few others (see: Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], 
Weekly Review and Commentary "Books in English by Africans", llanga lase Natal, March 25, 
1950). In these short reflections Dhlomo was sketching the primary texts of the then emerging 
African intellectual tradition. 
13 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Down To The Roots: Cure v Prevention", Umteteli wa Bantu, May 17, 1930. 

1 1 

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' 
superstition with Christianity and civilization, arguing that reason should 
replace sentimentality, merit replacing exclusion, substituting consciencious 
responsibilty for unreasoning obedience, Dhlomo states that it is merely folly 
on the part of the Talented Tenth to think they could succeed in solving the 
problems facing Africa with the mass of unsophisticated, indifferent and 
backward people merely tagging behind them.14 With these expositions, 
following on the intellectual tradition founded by Xhosa intellectuals like 
Elijah Makiwane, Walter Rubusana, John Tengo Jabavu and others in the late 
nineteenth-century through the Native Education Association and 
consolidated by R. V. Selope Thema and H. Selby Msimang in the 1920s in 
Umteteli wa Bantu, Dhlomo also theorizes modernity as a historical 
challenge. 

In the construction of the general principles of modernity, Dhlomo was 
guided by a dialectics of history which he had occassion to formulate in 
several instances. In one major exposition on his conception of history and 
the lessons which could be drawn from it, Dhlomo argues that emotions, 
thoughts, customs, hopes and fears which are ruled by ideas are more central 
to the drama of life than action or praxis. Crucial to what makes history is not 
so much the conglomeration of facts, which can be given various 
interpretations, as the ideas which govern the interpretative (ideological) 
system of the historian or reader. It is ideas which are more vital and 
mightier than laws or force, because they are concerned with inner life, rather 
than the superficial external forms of life. For him consequently history 
teaches that social life is inseperable from ethical life: hence ethical and moral 
issues are unavoidable. Dhlomo states that although society depends on 
commerce, it is ethical principles which are the governing force of life. From 
this conception of history as ruled by ideas, Dhlomo draws two dramatic 
conclusions: that politics depends on and is part of ethics; and that one of the 
fundamental lessons of history is that individuals are more important than 
the masses in its making.15 For him the great changes, originality, and the 
social movements in history are the products of individuals. 

14 H . I. E. Dhlomo, "Africa's Call", Umteteli wa Bantu, November 16, 1929.This call to Africa 
on the issue of modernity reflects his commitment to the continent: "My creative writing is the 
greatest thing I can give to my people, to Africa. I am determined to die writing and writing and 
writing. And no one ... can stop, fight or destroy that. It is the soul, the heart, the spirit. It will 
endure and speak truth even if I perish ... I have chosen the path to serve my people by means 
of literature, and nothing will deflect me from this course" (cited by Nick Visser, "H. I. E. 
Dhlomo [1903-1956]: the re-emergence of an African writer", English in Africa, vol.1 no.2, 
September 1974, p.10). 
15 Perhaps one of the reasons explaining Dhlomo's unwavering belief that ideas determine 
history and not material conditions is that his examination of South African history in the 
nineteenth century convinced him that it was not so much the military of Africans by Europeans 
which profoundly incapacitated the former as much as the Europeans succeding in getting 
African intelligentsia's consent to the superiority of European ideas: "The history of South 
Africa is the story of battles between Boer and Briton, between Black and White and between 
the forces of Light and Progress and those of Darkness and Destruction ... It was the subtler 

1 ') 

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L ., 

Damning racial oppression and segregation, Dhlomo believed that Europeans 
(whites) oppressed Africans (blacks) because they judged them by means of 
the African masses rather than by the achievements of outstanding 
individuals.16 Dhlomo strongly asserted that nations should be judged 
through the the achievements and products of its most gifted. With this 
theorizing of history, it is clear why Dhlomo would find Du Bois' idea of the 
Talented Ten so persuasive since it confirmed his own reading of history as 
made and driven by individuals rather than by social and material forces.17 

Secondly, this explains why Dhlomo looked at the conflict between 
modernity and tradition through Benidict Vilakazi and Shaka as symbolic 
representations of these great historical forces, respectively one a great scholar 
and poet and the other a great warrior and statesman. At the moment of the 
onset of apartheid politics in South Africa, Dhlomo designated Albert Luthuli 
as a great hero who would lead Africans to eventually prevail against white 
domination. Dhlomo had no doubt that it was the action stemming from the 
praxis of great individuals that make and constititute the greatness of a 
nation, as well as the greatness of a nation calls forth for great heroic action.18 

Thirdly, for Dhlomo the great achievements of world literature and culture 
were repesented by Shakespeare, The Greek dramatists (Sophocles, Euripides 
and Aristophanes) and the Bible, because in each of these representations the 
great strivings and achievements of historical and fictional individuals were 
pitted against fate and destiny; ideas were central in their overcoming their 

agencies that really conquered the Bantu--the missionaries (religion, medicine, education) .. . 
These were victories over the mind and spirit and upon ways of living ... The conquest of the 
Bantu by these subtler agencies was his salvation. He changed, learnt and multiplied , and 
South Africa remained a Blackman's country" ("Bantu, Boer and Briton", Ilanga lase Natal, 
March 20, 1954). In a way, and with profound ambivalence, Dhlomo exemplifies the 
melancholic celebration of the entrance of European modernity into African history. 
16 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "History and Human Behaviour" Umteteli wa Bantu, September 24, 1932. 
17 Dhlomo was so captivated by Du Bois' essay of the "The Talented Tenth" that forty-five 
years after it was written he wrote his own essay synthesizing the central points of Du Bois' 
thesis that a nation is saved or best ably represented or served by its few talented individuals: 
"Personal and Cultural Achievement", Ilanga lase Natal, August 14, 1948. In this essay 
Dhlomo formulates an idea to which practically all the New African modernizers subscribed: 
"Africans are fond of the American Negroes and often look upon the rapid progress and 
achievements of this group as an indication, an example, of what the black man here can and 
must do." Praising Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois for having established The Council of 
African Affairsas which was a continuation of the Pan-Africanist project of struggling for the 
decolonization of Africa, Dhlomo arguing for the essential unity of Africans and African 
Americans writes: "There is no doubt that in this post war era there will be many direct and 
useful cultural, economical [sic], and political links between Negroes and Africans. Let it be so" 
(Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "U.S. A. Support", Ilanga lase 
Natal, March 9, 1946). 
lS X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Greatness", llanga lase Natal, May 29, 1943. It seems that whenever 
Dhlomo articulated his Carlylean theory of great individuals, it neccessitated an expression of 
his hostility toward Marxism: "Some socialist modernists or modernists socialists are amused if 
not impatient with our theories of Great Men". 

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particular situations.19 To these three highest literary and cultural 
attainments, Dhlomo added the Romantic poets for they represented the 
incomparable achievement of the individual imagination.2° Fourthly, this 
also explains Dhlomo's deep fascination with Thomas Carlyle's theory of the 
role of heroes in history.21 Fully agreeing with Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero 
Worship" that the conception of hero as a god and prophet in modern times 
is untenable given the progress of science and culture, Dhlomo also assents to 
the view of Carlyle that a hero in the era of modernity is an individual 
possessing innate genius or innate greatness which do not require divine 
inspiration; such an individual would be great in any domain he or she had 

19 Since Dhlomo was creatively first and foremost a dramatist, these choices were presumably 
critical in the formation of his dramatic imagination. There are many instances in which 
Dhlomo repeatedly states that Shakespeare, the Bible and the Greek dramatists were the 
greatest artistic achievements of human civilization: "Words", Umteteli wa Bantu, September 
21, 1929: "Give to Karl Marx 26 letters to form into words, and he sets people at one another's 
throats, ruins countries, and overthrows governments and dynasties. But give the same letters to 
Shakespeare---and the world looks as gorgeous as the hues of heavens, as odorous as all 
Arabia, and as merry as Fairyland"; "Inconsistencies", Umteteli wa Bantu, August 16, 1930: 
praising the wisdom of Shakespeare, Socrates and Paul, Dhlomo speaks of the Bible as 'the 
Book of books'; '"Hamlet' Without the Prince", Ilanga lase Natal, November 27, 1954; 
"African drama and Poetry", South African Outlook, vol. 69, April 1939; "Why Study Tribal 
Dramatic Forms?", Transvaal Native Education Quarterly, March 1939; "Zulu Folk Poetry", 
Native Teachers' Journal, April 1948 [the last three essays appear in a special issue of English 
in Africa, Literary Theory and Criticism of H. I. E. Dhlomo. (ed.) N. W. Visser, vol.4 no.2, 
September 1977; "Woman", X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], Ilanga lase Natal, August 26, 1944; "The Peace 
of the Soul", X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], Ilanga lase Natal, October 18, 1947. To this canon, Dhlomo 
also included the Homeric epics. Dhlomo would have wholeheartedly assented to the canon of 
Western civilization that Harold Bloom has attempted to construct and justify in The Western 
Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1994). 

20 Reflecting on a poem by John Keats, Dhlomo writes an essay on the nature of remembrance: 
"Remembering", X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], Ilanga lase Natal, August 16, 1947; "Freaks, Potatoes, 
Mice, Swan Song", op. cit. There is a general consensus in South African scholarship that 
Dhlomo's poems were marred by his striving for Romantic sensibility and poetic form. 
21 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "The Individual and the Group", Umteteli wa Bantu, November 5, 1932. 
Reflecting on a Jan van Riebeek Festival of 1951, Dhlomo laments that its representation of 
South African history is false since it reflects only a European perspective in exclusion of other 
South African viewpoints; arguing that partiality in the writing of history is unavoidable 
given the political situation in the country at the time, he urges Africans to write this history 
from their particular vantage point: "What Africans should do is to write their version of the 
story of South Africa and of its great men [and great women]. And African great men may not be 
what is now accepted as great men. In order to do this, we must learn to appreciate, even dig out 
and be proud of the greatness of our men, past and present. We must not allow Europeans to 
create, choose, and build for us our heroes and great men" (Weekly Review and Commentary. 
"Riebeek Festival and History", Ilanga lase Natal, September 29, 1951). The two d ecades 
separating these two pieces clearly show that Dhlomo never changed or deviated from his 
Carlylian conception of the poetics of history. 

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chosen other than the field in which that greatness was exemplified. 
Continuing on these reflections, Dhlomo writes: "These and many other 
points suggest that some one should continue where Carlyle left and write 
about heroes and hero-worship today, giving us the religious and the 
psychological background."22 And fifthly, this explains why from his 
Carlylean perspective of history, as essentially being made by great 
individuals in a heroic mode, he was unrelentingly hostile to the Marxist 
theory of history, which he understood as an irrational revolutionary 
philosophy of the masses, intent on replacing rational social orders through 
violence and fear. 

In several passages in numerous essays, Dhlomo criticizes Marxism for 
postulating that it is the masses who make history, rather than heroic 
individual figures.23 Given his deep affinity for Mathew Arnold, Dhlomo 
had reservations about revolutions and the spontaneity of the masses; a 
complex attitude as will be apparent later in the essay. Despite these fears, the 
great merit of Dhlomo is that although pradoxically he thought historical 
materialism incompatible with the essential philosophical principles 
regulating the lived experience of modernity, he had a deep awareness, 
though not directly articulated, that Marxism was inseperable from 
modernity itself. Because of his wrenching ambivalence to this philosophy of 
the Enlightenment of modern times, and because he amplified his views on 

22 Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review and Commentary "Tyrone Power and Hero­
Worship", Ilanga lase Natal, October 4, 1947. In the subsequent issues of the newspaper 
Dhlomo was to write Weekly Letters to outstanding individuals such as H. Selby Msimang, 
Albert Luthuli, Rueben C. Caluza, Albert Luthuli, E. H. A. Made and others, commending them 
for their contributions to the progress of African people, which Dhlomo invariably 
characterized as the "Race", as a way of paying homage to W. E. B. Du Bois. In other instances 
Dhlomo attempted to synthesize the ideas of Thomas Carlyle with those of Mathew Arnold as 
can be seen from the following sentence: "Western thinkers who believe in the theory of the 
Great Man have always held that although the masses play their significant role, progess is 
largely the result of individual effort of the best and most gifted spirits in the community" 
(Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review and Commentary "Sacrificing our Best?", Ilanga 
lase Natal, June 18, 1949). Now and then Dhlomo wouldlament in his columns that Africans 
never fully appreciated the significance of great individuals and gifted minds among their own 
people: "Negroes and Indians on the other hand are loud in praising and building the 
reputations of their men of talent" (Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review and 
Commentary "Is It Not Strange?", Ilanga lase Natal, July 17, 1948). 
23 ibid., "Conferences"; it is necessary to caution here that Dhlomo never wholly couterposed 
the individual heroic figure against the masses, for elsewhere he argued that the Industrial 
Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the national struggle for the 
independence of India had been successful because higly intelligent heroic individuals had led 
and worked together with the masses (Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review and 
Commentary "Higher Education", Ilanga lase Natal, May 21, 1949). Dhlomo held Pandit 
Nehru in high esteem as exemplifying one of the great heroic figures in the twentieth century 
(Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review and Commentary "Nehru's U.S. A. Visit", llanga 
lase Natal, November 26, 1949). He saw India as holding many lessons for Africa. 

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Marxism, socialism and revolution on numerous occasions, it is perhaps 
necessary to pause for an extended consideration of these matters. 

Dhlomo gives exposition of his philosophy of history by arguing that ideas 
(human thought) were the causes of, and invariably preceded, historic 
upheavals be they in the nature of social and religious reformations or 
political resolutions and social revolutions. In other words, these 
transformations were external manifestations of, and necessitated by, deeper 
psychological changes in human beings. For Dhlomo social, political and 
industrial changes were not possible without first of all ideas and thoughts of 
transforming the conciousness of the masses.24 Dhlomo was very conscious 
that his philosophy of history was projected against the Marxist interpretation 
of history which postulates that social being determines social consciousness. 
He inverted this Marxian historical perspective. Even though Dhlomo never 
fully engaged Marxism in its total complexity and the nature of its 
continuation of the legacy of the Enlightenment, it is evident that of all the 
New African intellectuals he was more conscious of the fact that intellectually 
and politically historical materialism and modernity were not so easily 
separable as many of the Talented Tenth of New Africanism had thought. 
Whereas R. V. Selope Thema, H. Selby Msimang, Solomon T. Plaatje, Walter 
Rubusana, Jordan K. Ngubane and others were content to dismiss or ignore 
Marxism because of its adversarial stance in relation to Christianity, Dhlomo 
as a great intellectual felt the need to conceptualize his opposition to 
historical materialism.25 

In the main Dhlomo understood Marxism as a destructive force (process) 
because of its revolutionary political perspective, as we saw earlier when he 
compared the supposed violent anarchism of Marx to the great creative 
genius of Shakespeare. We will not dwell on the merits of such a comparison. 
What is essential is to register the philosophical reasons for his aversion to 
Marxism. Although like the other members of the New African Movement, 
the real reason for his antagonism to Marxism was because of his Christian 
religious beliefs (i. e. antagonism to the atheism of historical materialism), 
Dhlomo was profoundly immersed into modernity as a world experience to 

24 H. I. E. Dhlomo, " . . . Be They Still Carry Passes", Umteteli wa Bantu, August 22, 1931. 
25 Dhlomo was dismayed that practically none of these New African Talented Tenth members 
as well as others kept adequate records of their work and life, thereby hindering and disabling 
themselves in writing their autobiographies as well as making it difficult for later scholars to 
evaluate their individual roles in South African history ("Weekly Letter: To H. Selby 
Msimang", Ilanga lase Natal, April 29, 1950). Given these reflections and judgements, it is 
perplexing why Dhlomo never his autobiography. But one could argue that his three columns 
in Ilanga lase Natal, sometimes appearing simultaneously within a particular week, constitute 
his spiritual autobiography. 

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know that such a reason was insufficient for a serious intellectual in the 
twentieth-century .26 

Dhlomo understood history as a creative process characterized by 
evolutionary movement, not by revolutionary upheavals which now and 
then expressed its most profound manifestations.27 Part of the explanation for 
this perspective is that he wanted to believe in history as an artistic process 
which emitted unending controllable creative energies. This view of history 
as an evolutionary process was determined by his philosophy of life, which 
he characterizes as Humanitarianism. Dhlomo defines this philosophy as a 
synthesis of Christian idealism and Platonic philosophy: "A human being, 
merely by virtue of being human, had fundamental rights. Plato and Christ 
believed in a plastic and creative society of virtue and vice, good and evil, 
greed and co-operation, truth and error. They did not believe in and teach 

26 For Dhlomo, like the other New African intellectuals engaged with the historical meaning 
of modernity, the achievements of Christianity and missionaries were real enough given their 
Manichaean perspective of the struggle between civilization and heathenism (barbarism): 
Christianity brought a new glorious Africa into being from the old dark continent; missionaries 
brought with them light among the 'primitive' peoples; the Church brought knowledge, 
science, civilization to bear on ignorance, superstition and barbarism; Christianity has 
maintained civilization against ignorance and superstition; Christian ethics have brought a 
higher code of morality into Africa, making possible love and life to triumph over fear and 
force ("Bantu and the Church", Umteteli wa Bantu, August 23, 1930). Concluding in uncertain 
terms, Dhlomo writes: "To deny the Church this position would be gross stupidity and base 
ingratitude." It is necessary to counterpose the observation of Neville Alexander to the 
combative certainties of Dhlomo: "From the point of view of the process of world history, most 
scholars are agreed today that the main task of the missionaries was that of colonising the 
mind of 'their' native wards" (Language Policy and National Unity in South Africa/Azania: 
An Essay, Buchu Books, Cape Town, 1989, p.17). For Dhlomo the fundamental role of the 
Church was to control the primeval instincts of mankind through Christian ethics. R. V. Selope 
Thema, the leading thinker among the intellectuals working in the Umteteli wa Bantu weekly 
in the 1920s, would have assented to all of these views; for he intended to entitle his 
unpublished autobiography "Up From Barbarism" in homage to Booker T. Washington's Up 
From Slavery. Given his great intelligence, Dhlomo will unintentionally and unsconsciously 
modify some of these views when he celebrates the uniqueness and originality of traditional 
cultures of yesteryear, as we will observe in a moment. 
27 Dhlomo's disbelief in a revolutionary perspective may be associated with his observation 
that the new is not necesarily better than the old: "Many people regard each and every change 
that takes place as something better just because it is new. Changes may or may not be 
improvements. Consequently care should be taken before change is accepted" ("Inferiority 
Complex", Umteteli wa Bantu, November 23, 1929). Even the issues he was passionate about 
had to be subjected to the evolutionary process: "One thing is certain; that the solution of the 
Race Problem must be a slow gradual; methodic process" ("Aspects of the Race Problem", 
Umteteli wa Bantu, March 14, 1931). Even though Dhlomo disowned the concept of revolution 
in social life and social history, hence his rejection of Marxism because it exemplified this 
understanding of history, he was fascinated by the nature of revolutionary breakthroughs in 
epistemology, history of ideas and in the arts: hence his constant preoccupation with how 
geniuses such as, for example, Shakespeare, Newton, Michealangelo, Jesus, Buddha, Hume, 
Darwin and others transformed human thought (X [H. I.E. Dhlomo], "Smuts On The Colour 
Problem, II", Ilanga lase Natal, January 18, 1947). 

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about an atomistic and deterministic society of permanently and inherently 
superior beings and groups on the one hand and inferior ones on the other. 
Men could and should live and work together in peace and happiness, co­
operate, cherish and love one another. And men must distinguish between 
things that endure and those that happen; eternal and occurring things; end 
and means or process. Strife is but a path towards the Harmony of harmonies 
when human immaturity will be perfected."28 Believing in this dramatist 
perspective of history which is based on the philosophy of humanism, 
Dhlomo felt compelled to articulate the rational reasons for the philosophical 
implausibility of the Marxian historical viewpoint.29 

Dhlomo opens his case against Marxism by arguing the impossibility of 
achieving a classless society30 or a non-race conscious society,31 let alone a 
non-racist society in which Africans (blacks) and Europeans (whites) form a 
nation. He also criticizes dialectical materialism for what he supposes to be its 
extremism in linking politics and economics, which has the merit in his eyes 
for being the exact opposite of apartheid predicated on the extreme denial of 
this possible unity.32 To him it was evident that nationalism was the political 
philosophy of modernity, and not Marxism, however much the latter was 
imbricated into modernity.33 From a relatively early period in his intellecual 

28 X [H. I.E. Dhlomo], "Smuts On The Colour Problem, I", llanga lase Natal, January 11, 1947. 
29 In Dhlomo's estimation, the soundness, the durability and correctness of humanism, which is 
predicated on the primacy of ethics, had been proven by history itself: whereas the Roman 
Empire based on the politics of realism had perished, the Christian Empire contingent on an 
ethical philosophy had survived into the present (Weekly Review And Commentary '"Frisco 
and Victory", Ilanga lase Natal, May 12, 1945). 
30 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Essays In Tribal Culture, Part III: Inkomo in Zulu Life", Ilanga lase Natal, 
December 6, 1947. 
31 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "An Outstanding Trade 
Unionist", Ilanga lase Natal, December 16, 1944. 
32 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Economics and Politics", 
Ilanga lase Natal, March 7, 1953. 
33 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Re-Alignment of Political 
Forces?", Ilanga lase Natal, March 28, 1953. Dhlomo argued in this fundamental essay that 
African nationalism(s) would eventually triumph over European colonialism(s). He felt it 
imperative that African nationalism should always align itself with Pan Africanism. This 
essay was part of the historical shift Dhlomo had made beginning with the founding of the 
African National Congress Youth League in 1943/ 44 from a predominant preoccupation with 
literary and cultural matters to an emphasis on the politics of change and political philosophy 
generally; with the beginning of official apartheid in 1948 Dhlomo becomes the most 
authoritative intellectual voice of the African National Congress. This serious entrance into 
active politics is signaled by his support of Luthuli against Champion for the Presidency of the 
Natal African National Congress, and by his unrelenting attacks on apartheid in his llanga 
lase Natal columns. In the early 1950s when some of the intellectual giants of New Africanism 
and founding members of the African National Congress had become disillusioned and left, such 
as H. Selby Msimang and R. V. Selope Thema, Dhlomo became arguably the intellectual pillar 
of the organization founded by Pixley ka Isaka Seme. It is at this time that he defends the 
political philosophy of the African National Congress from attacks by I. B. Tabata and 
Mahabane, leaders of the Non-European Unity Movement, and those by D. D. T. Jabavu, 

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career addressed himself to the presence of socialism in the history of the 
twentieth century. The context of his reflections in the late 1920s was the 
controversy over the presence of Communists in Clement Kadalie's 
Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union in Africa (I. C. U.). At this time 
the ICU was the most powerful organization among Africans, by far 
surpassing the ANC which had been founded a decade earlier than the ICU. 
The struggle over its ideological direction or orientation was of fundamental 
importance. Dhlomo begins his essay, "Socialism", by making a distinction 
between socialism and communism. The differentiation is made not show 
that socialism will eventually lead to communism, but that communism 
uses socialism as cover for its impracticable aims. Since communism can only 
be achieved through revolution, the very method or process of its realization 
is catastrophic, taking the French Revolution as an example, Dhlomo argues 
that revolutions by their very nature destructive because although they strive 
to bring about greater democracy, they invariably lead to oligarchy, 
accompanied by massacres, tortures and abductions. Arguing against 
communism as a social order, Dhlomo makes several points: taking Russia as 
a concrete instance, he indicates that wherever communism has triumphed, 
pandemonium in social life has reigned supreme; distribution according to 
need rather than ability, Dhlomo sees as unjust and impracticable; there can 
be no such as "natural equality", for individuals are endowed with different 
qualities and capabilities; the abolition of social classes is an impossibilities, 
for even after the revolution has leveled them, they would again 
spontaneously re-emerge.34 Not content with a theoretical critique of 
communism, Dhlomo, three years later, examines its possible actualization, 
in an essay with an ideologically charged title: "Russia: Redeemer or 
Renegade". Writing the essay after having read many books about the 
Russian experiment, Dhlomo observes that although the books are written 
from different angles and based on diverse principles, most of the authors 
seemed to have gone to Russia with preconceived ideas about the goodness 
and evilness of the experiment. Stating his reasons for investigating the 
nature of Soviet society as more concerned with ideas behind the movement, 
rather than predictions about the future, he makes three criticism of the 
literature on the Russian socialist project: they neglect the bare conditions and 
facts, particularly the explanation of facts; the authors are more concerned 
with theories and systems rather than with human experience (how the 
people are, what they do, and how they actually appear; discoursing on 

president of the All-African Convention. All this will be apparent in moment. When the young 
Lewis Nkosi in his poem " H. I. E., H. I. E.", published in Ilanga lase Natal in 1955, pleaded 
with Dhlomo while the great man was laying in his death-bed to exercise his literary pen 
again, the interlocutor of the to be Sophiatown Renaissance was unaware that the great 
essayist had largely forsaken literary matters a decade earlier. It would be wrong to conclude 
from all this that Dhlomo was an uncritical supporter of the African National Congress: he 
criticized the incempetence of some of its leaders as well as his perception some of the cadres of 
being enamored with Marxism. 
34 Herbert I. E. Dhlomo, "Socialism", Umteteli wa Bantu, January 19, 1929. 

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actions and plans of officials, they do not say much about the qualitative 
nature of the actual lived experience of the Russian people. Dhlomo 
concludes his reflections on this literature by stating that it does convince 
him that a classless is actually achievable, let alone that it is being instituted 
in the Soviet Union. Revealing his profoundly conservative nature he 
writes: "We believe in evolution, not revolution."35 It is clear from these 
observations that Dhlomo feared that the attempt to create a classless society 
is a levelling process which would encourage mediocrity, for he closes his 
argument saying that the conditions post the Russian Revolution have not 
been condicive to the making of great thinkers. For Dhlomo the question of 
understanding history is posed in very unambiguous theoretical framework: 
Carlyle or Marx? It is clear to Dhlomo who was a redeemer and who was a 
renegade. 

Indicating a profoundness awareness of the interconnection between 
modernity and Marxism, Dhlomo reflected on the concept of the revolution. 
While hostile to the revolutionary process bringing about socialism and 
communism, he was very positive of its possibilities of ushering in 
modernity. This is the reason that posits the revolution as taking five forms: 
active military operations; religious reformations; economic upheavals; 
industrial changes; and spiritual and mental awakening of the masses. It is 
the role of revolution in the transformation of ideas, rather than in the 
transformation of the material conditions of existence. Rehearsing his 
phobias of a spontaneous revolution that it would lead to "absolutism", 
"terror", "despotism", "mass psychology", Dhlomo articulates the kind of 
revolution which he sees as feasible and based on right and not on might: 
"Revolutions have the further advantage of pushing through a scheme that 
it would physically and morally be impossible for the gifted few to [have] 
executed ... Revolutions are profitable when they crop up at this juncture and 
help the schemes of the talented . .. The Bantu [African] need an industrial, 
social and intellectual revolution with no shedding of blood ... We need two 
kinds of leaders. First the leaders of thought who will prepare and educate the 
people; then leaders of action to carry on their work."36 Dhlomo was positing 

35 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Russia: Redeemer or Renegade", Umteteli wa Bantu, July 23, 1932. 
36 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Revolution", Umteteli wa Bantu, August 27, 1932. In another essay of this 
year Dhlomo opposes communism because he believes it subsumes individual initiative to 
collective effort: "If by cummunism we mean enforced uniformity amongst all and sundry, then it 
is nothing but a recrudescence of primitive despotism or of mediaeval religious intolerance." He 
believed that it destroyed the spark of genius. Emphasizing again and again his constant 
theme, progress depends of the effort and action of gifted individuals ("The Individual and the 
Group", Umteteli wa Bantu, November 5, 1932). Dlomo's belief in elitism was so extreme that 
sometimes it was blatantly anti-democratic: "If the vote is given to all and sundry, irrespective 
of qualifications, democracy has little hope; and we may be excused if we agree with Plato 
that the intellectual aristocracy should alone vote and rule. In this country the age of deeds, as 
Carlyle said of England once, has been succeeded by the age of words" ("The Poor White 
Problem", Umteteli wa Bantu, November 19, 1932). Later in life, responding to the events 
Czechoslovakia in 1948, Dhlomo continued expressing his deep hostility towards Communism. 

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(., .. 
a unity between the "Talented Tenth" and the masses. His preoccupations 
with Marxism and modernity, wedded to the notions of the gifted individual 
and heroic figure in the process of change, respectively W. E. B. Du Bois and 
Thomas Carlyle, lead him to the idea of evolutionary revolution. It is with 
this idea that Dhlomo theorized the dialectic between modernity and 
tradition in South Africa. 

One of the major statements by H. I. E. Dhlomo at the early phase of his 
intellectual project was an essay in Umteteli wa Bantu: "Evolution of the 
Bantu". This document was part of the expositions by intellectuals working 
for the newspaper, such as R. V. Selope Thema, H. Selby Msimang, Mark S. 
Radebe, Allan Kirkland Soga, in their construction of South African 
modernity. Beginning with this essay, and others which concerned 
themselves with tradition, Dhlomo was engaged with what Roberto 
Fernandez Retamar saw as having been constant in Jose Marti's practice in 
the construction of modernity, a preoccupation with the historical meaning 
of the past. In this engagement Dhlomo was exemplifying an awareness of 
what Octavio Paz theorized as essential to an understanding of modernity, a 
consciousness of the nature of the dialectic between tradition and modernity. 
In the four-part essay, Dhlomo examines the nature of misrepresentation of 
Africans by white South African historiography in its attempt to make sense 
of the encounter and contact between blacks and whites. 37 Criticizing this 
historiography for its racialism and political bias of white nationalism, and its 
failure to incorporate a humanistic and inter-racial perspective, he argues it 
has failed to register the complex stages in the evolution of the African 
people. Worse for Dhlomo was its failure to recognize that African societies 
had been thrown out of joint within from outside pressures by the 
incompatible historical forces of tradition and modernity. He was later in the 
1940s and the 1950s to give unconditional support, backed by brilliant 
analyses, to the African National Congress, because he felt it was aware of the 
profound consequences of this diachotomous unity with African societies. 
Continuing his criticism of white South African historiography as 

In one instance he is enthused that, because of their firm belief in nationalism, Africans have no 
sympathy for Communism at all, except for lost intellectuals leading the Non-European Unity 
Movement (Weekly Review And Commentary. "Communism", Ilanga lase Natal, April 3, 
1948). Just six years before his death in 1956, appraising the achievements and problems of the 
annual meeting of the ANC in 1950, Dhlomo was gratified that the organization was free of 
what he perceived to be major Communist influences: "Communism does not motivate African 
thinking, action and political movements. There is a growing tide of African nationalism" 
(Weekly Review And Commentary "Bloemfontein in Retrospect", Ilanga lase Natal, January 
14, 1950). Later still, Dhlomo is enthusiastic that the political leaders he greatly admires, 
Kwame Nkrumah, Mnandi Azikiwe, Pundit Nehru, are free of Communist inflence (Weekly 
Review And Commentary "Communism and Africans", Ilanga lase Natal, February 21, 1953). 
The hostility to Communism never abated. 
37 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Evolution of the Bantu, I", Umteteli wa Bantu, November 14, 1931; 
"Evolution of the Bantu, II", November 21, 1931; "Evolution of the Bantu, III", November 28, 
1931; "Evolution of the Bantu, IV", December 5, 1931. 

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characterized by the failure of nerve, because of the absence of self criticism, 
he argued that South African historiography would always be incomplete 
and one-sided until Africans are given the opportunity to write it positioning 
the African perspective at its center. Dhlomo lamented that segregation had 
verboten Africans from having access to libraries, archives and state 
institutions with records; a theme that was to fuel him with tremendous 
anger and resentment throughout his career.38 Despite these problems 
Dhlomo urged Africans to construct historiography through oral history, a 
construction informed by anthropology, thereby enabling Africans to achieve 
three things39 : redemption of the past in order to construct the structure of 
African historical evolution with a clear aim of showing that African cultures 
were necer primitive and barbaric as white South African historiography 
supposed; reveal how the present is in the process of preparing the future; 
indicate that while South Africa was entering modernity through progress, 
white nationalism which was hegemonic among the white ruling classes and 
elites, was hindering that progress because of warped race relations it had 
forged. These propositions inspire Dhlomo to reflect on the deflections that 
have hindered the construction of proper history through the ages: in the 
Middle Ages history had been distorted and tainted by theology and religion; 

38 Dhlomo's writings are replete with utter contempt for so-called European experts on African 
affairs. For a representative sample see: "What we want to refer to are the problems of the 
trend and nature of African development. We shall confine ourselves to things cultural and 
spiritual. This is a point that worries many African observers today. It is that even in art, 
literature, music and thought, the European is trying to direct and dictate African 
development. In this country, for instance, European experts are not only trying to dominate in 
these fields, but are dictating to the African what and what not to do" (Weekly Review And 
Commentary "Problems of African Development", Ilanga lase Natal, August 18, 1951); "Indeed, 
the common opinion among Africans is that the linguists, anthropologists and 'experts' are the 
worst enemies of African progress and emancipation ... " (Weekly Review And Commentary 
"The Third Language", Ilanga lase Natal, August 25, 1951). 
39 In his voluminous writings, Dhlomo seems not to have been aware of the efforts of African 
historians contemporaneous with him: John Henderson Soga, The South-Eastern Bantu, 
Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, 1930; The Ama-Xosa: Life and Customs, 
Lovedale Press, Lovedale, 1931. Slightly earlier there were two historical works: Magema M. 
Fuze, The Black People: And Whence They Came, trans. H. C. Lugg, University of Natal Press, 
Pietermaritzburg, 1979---originally published privately in 1922 as: Abantu Abamnyama: Lapa 
Bavela Ngakhona; John Knox Bokwe, Ntsikana: The Story of an African Convert, Lovedale, 
1914. Both the latter books were ostensibly the products of the conflict between modernity and 
tradition in the actual lived experiences of the authors. Probably the book that would have 
Appealed to Dhlomo because of its supposed scholarly rigour is Walter Rubusana's History of 
South Africa From a Native Standpoint, a book which does not seem to be traceable. Dhlomo's 
insistence on the necessity of the construction of African historiography parallel and in 
opposition to European historiography in South Africa was based on his observation that a 
history of a people is in a better position of being realized if it is written from many sides and 
perspectives. Given that within the context of segregation and white political dominance, the 
gulf between Africans and Europeans was real and unbridgeable, because of the clash in 
interpretations, customs and meanings, African historiography should struggle to challenge 
white historiography which through administrative fiat had in effect become South African 
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during the Renaissance history was depended upon, and compromised by the 
passion for literature, with the consequence that history was appreciated the 
more it proximated literary aesthetics; Rousseau wanted history to be 
subsumed by natural history; and Isaac Newton was enthused by the 
possibility that the construction of history would be influenced by the physical 
laws he had discovered. Reverting to his familar credo, Dhlomo concludes by 
saying that history is the record of the evolution of human thought. For 
Dhlomo white South African historiography had failed to see that human 
history is one process. In his estimation African history must concern itself 
with the idea of progress and the quest for modernity. He was disturbed that 
the evolution of the African people toward modernity had been slow, yet the 
Europeans thought it had been too fast, and hence instituted forms of 
hindering it. 

To Dhlomo it was self-evidently absurd that whites could ever succeed in 
halting Africans' entrance into modern civilization or modernity by means of 
racism, discrimination, segregation and oppression. He observed that he was 
witnessing on a practically daily basis the transformation of the social life and 
outlook of Africans, as well as the changes in their patterns of thought. 
Africans were with relatively remarkable speed adapting themselves to 
Western culture, which Dhlomo supported wholeheartedly without 
reservations. He thought it absurd, insane and sacriligious that Europeans 
thought it possible they could and would be able to stop African growth and 
development. Were they to succeed in halting Africans' march into 
modernity, it would be counter the historical order of modern societies and 
attempting to contradict the principles of natural evolution. Dhlomo was 
uncompromising in his support of Africans confronting the challenge of 
modernity, for he believed it was a prelude to their attaining political 
emancipation, cultural achievement, economic success and historical 
progress.4° For him a new era of outlook had come. Eighteen years later after 
his reflections on the unstoppability of Africans' entrance into modernity, 
Dhlomo enumerated the factors accounting for the velocity of change which 
was transforming South Africa. Taking as a point of demarcation the 
Constitution of 1910 which although political disenfranchised Africans, he 
nevertheless saw as ushering in a New South Africa. From this point 
onwards, first and foremost, there had been the growing emergence of the 
African middle class which was adopting the Western ways of living and 
thought. Secondly, thousands and thousands of Africans were becoming 
urban dwellers, with cities being their only place of abode. Thirdly, there was 
an accelerated intake of Africans into many professions. Fourthly, trade 
unionism had awakened and unified the masses. And lastly, there had been a 
growing movement of trade unionism which awakened and unified the 

40 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Past and Present", Umteteli wa Bantu, February 15, 1930. 

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masses.4 1 Critiquing the Constitution which he considered feudalistic because 
of discriminatory provisions against Africans, Dhlomo demanded their 
removal. 

Although Dhlomo in many ways saw himself as an apostle of modernity, he 
did not wholly subscribe to the position of R. V. Selope Thema, arguably the 
principal ideologue of New Africanism after its founding by Pixley ka Isaka 
Seme, that tradition should be unrelentingly negated in order for modernity 
to triumph, for he believed that Africans can only possess a sense of 
coherence about modernity if the two are held in equipoise in relation to each 
other. This is the reason he pleaded with those Talented Tenth Africans who 
agreed with the view of Selope Thema, by making a riposte that it is essential 
to distinguish between a useful and a useless usage of custom and tradition 
within modernity.42 He undertook a modernistic critique of custom. Dhlomo 
makes it clear that modernity will not be achievable without heavy social 
costs if the New African intelligentsia does not lead the masses from from the 
reactinary and unsavory aspects of custom into the freedom of intellectual life 
by interpreting the new by means of the new. That is, old ideas must be given 
a new interpretation. Dhlomo was profoundly conscious that without any 
unity between the New African intelligentsia and the New African masses 
modernity would not be easily and completely realizable.43 Fearful that a 
concerted effort to destroy old customs and beliefs would destabilize social 
heritage and consequently lead to chaos and anarchy (again echoes of Mathew 
Arnold, though not even once in all of his writings does he refer to him), 
Dhlomo believed that the masses should be encouraged to outgrow them. 
The dangers of allowing the 'tyranny of custom' to have a stronghold on the 
imagination of African people were obvious to him. Within its mode, 
Africans: are led by the senses rather than thought and abstract philosophical 
reasoning; do not think seriously about the art thinking; become the captives 
of routenization; their minds are captured by religious mysticism; make 
everything sacrosanct; are less preoccupied with thought than with feeling; 
they accept the old with credulity and the new with sceptism; and they should 
be disabused of the uncritical respect for authority and unendung tolerance of 
custom. The New African intelligentsia should politically and culturally 
struggle together with the African masses to realize and appreciate the 
benefits of modernity: that people are the measure, the cause and the 
explanation of all things; the art of criticism should be respected and 
embraced; independence, autonomy and disobedience are essential values; 
that a sin is social rather than a matter of personal ethics.44 Since Dhlomo was 

4l Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review and Commentary "The Constitution", Ilanga 
lase Natal, January 3, 1948. 
42 Busy-Bee [H. I. E, Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Tradition and Custom vs 
Progress", Ilanga lase Natal, September 13, 1947. 
43 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], 
44 H. I. E, Dhlomo, "Modes of Bantu Thinking", Umteteli wa Bantu, July 9, 1932. 

') ,:1 

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a man of the letters, he explored tradition much deeper through artistic 
practice, literary form and literary theory. 

With the essay "Developments and Achievements in the Field of Culture 
[And] Literature", taking Zulu literature as a literary system having many 
similarities with other African literary culture(s), H. I. E. Dhlomo maps the 
position of literary figurations within tradition.45 Oral Literature---which 
Dhlomo theorizes as constituted by folk tales invariably about history, animal 
tales about nature and sagas, narrative epics about heroes, kings, battles and 
tribes-- was the central literary cultural expression of tradition. Poetic epic 
narrations known as "Izibongo", arguably the highest form of literary 
expression within tradition, made and forged the richness of African 
languages into such into such a rich medium, with a range, depth, and 
variety so expansive that when missionaries translated the Bible (for Dhlomo 
the central book of Western civilization) into African languages, they found 
them eminently capable of rendering the complex linguistic and 
philosophical structure of The Book. Dhlomo attributes the richness of Oral 
Literature, inspired by African Mythology, Nature, Superstition, Knowledge, 
Customs, Laws and Social System, to its preoccupation with the African Past. 
Dhlomo believes that although modern African writers are mainly concerned 
with problems of transition into nationhood and modernity, creating new 
literary forms thematizing the clash and struggle between the new and the 
old, light and darkness, tragedy and comedy, they have much to gain from a 
serious acquaintence with orature, if for reason that literary originality stems 
from a confrontation with a clash between the Old and the New, the 
traditional and the modern. Dhlomo was convinced that a deep knowledge of 
Oral Literature would teach modern writers and New African intelligentsia 
that a construction of modernity without awareness of tradition is 
unrealizable. That Dhlomo's search for the patterns of African of history was 
not a romanticizing of tradition, as will be evident in moment when we 
encounter his understanding of the role of the African National Congress in 
the project of modernity. His enthusiasm for the ANC and the Zulu Cultural 
Society46 was because he viewed them as forums for discussing the dialectic 
between tradition and ·modernity. This question of the old informing the 
new, the traditional being inseperable from the modern, was also a historical 
perspective of cultural production that one of his other important later essays, 
on the historical development of African music.47 

45 Anonymous [H. I.E. Dhlomo], "Developments and Achievements in the Field of Culture 
[And] Literature", Ilanga lase Natal, June 13, 1953. 
46 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Zulu Society", Ilanga lase Natal, October 16, 1943. The reason for his 
support in the formation of Zulu Cultural Society is made clear in this document: "If our 
literature is to hold its own among the literatures of the world, offer something distinct and 
unique and reflect the soul of Africa, it must spring from indigenous tribal culture ... The pr 
47imitive is the embodiment of the fundamental." Perhaps constant emphasis on the 
indigenous and the so-called primitive is because of what they enabled: "In fact, it has been 
said that what is truly original in South Africa has come or has been inspired by African life 

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In another of his late essays he emphasizes again that the new (modernity) 
cannot be created or constructed on the basis of discarding of the old 
(tradition): "These tribal art forms are very irnportant."48 This principle of 
theorizing the construction of modernity as a process of synthesizing and 
transcendence was already evident in what was probably his first published 
essay marking the beginnings of his great career, a quarter of a century earlier: 
"Towards Our Own Literature". Despite his celebration of the progress being 
made by Africans in the field of musical studies which has the possibility of 
garning prestige for black culture abroad, Dhlorno cautions against music 
dominating the creativity of the African imagination. He suggests that visual 
culture and literature should also be cultivated. Concentrating on literature, 
Dhlorno argues that what Shakespeare has done for English national culture, 
likewise what Whitman has achieved through poetic form in the formation 
of American national spirit, and the ushering in of the Irish renaissance by its 
great writers, can be done through emulation in South Africa by African 
writers: Africans should cultivate and foster a national literature informed by 
an inclusive and expansive national and racial spirit. Although such a 
national literature would be created from individual experience(s), Dhlorno 
felt strongly that it should forge common aspirations as well as foster the 
brotherhood [and sisterhood] of the heart. Corning to his most crucial 
suggestion, he suggested that this national literature cannot be created 
spontaneously, but rather, it must be cultivated by means of "two splendid 
languages, ... the precision of Zulu and the elasticity of English." Putting his 
reflections to a close he writes: "I know we have the heart to hew our 
literature out of the solid rock of experience. So, remembering the value of 
some self-consciousness and of the right sort of local colour, let us set to 
work."49 There can be little doubt that with the words 'local color' Dhlorno 

and culture" ("African Contribution To South African Life And Culture", Ilanga lase Natal, 
January 31, 1953). Anonymous, "Development of African Music", Ilanga lase Natal, June 20, 
1953. See also: "Evolution of Bantu Entertainments", Ilanga lase Natal, June 20, 1953. Although 
both essays were written anonymously on the 50th anniversary celebration of the publication of 
the newspaper, it is clear from internal evidwncwthat they were written by Dhlomo. If nothing 
else, the concept of evolution is a clear indicator. 
48 Editorial, "The Bantu in South Africa", Ilanga lase Natal, May 29, 1948. At this time, 
Dhlomo alternated with his brother, the Editor, R. R. R. Dhlomo, in writing editorials for the 
newspaper. The Editorial's mention of the concept of the New African and its emphasis on the 
necessity of establishing African Research Academies, preoccupations in many of his other 
essays at this time, clearly proof that they could only have been written by H. I. E. Dhlomo. 
49 From A Special Correspondence, "Towards Our Own Literature", Ilanga lase Natal, 
December 21, 1923. Three factors make one believe with certainty that it was written by H. I. E. 
Dhlomo: his fascination for, and estimation of, Shakespeare has previously been indicated; 
Dhlomo's reference to Walt Whitman was a recognition of what R. V. Selope Thema had 
formulated earlier in Umteteli wa Bantu, that the creation of South African modernity should 
be modelled on American modernity, particularly African American modernity. Above we 
should the nature of Dhlomo's homage to Du Bois concerning the concept of the Talented Tenth 
and his appreciation of Countee Cullen's passion for the Romantic poets, which reflected his 
own mesmerization; and lastly, his mentioning of the Irish writers who had created a 

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was alluding to tradition, and with 'self-consciousness' he was aligning 
himself with the great expressive forms of literary tradition: Izibongo (heroic 
praise poems) and Izibongelo (tribal dramatic forms). Both of these forms, 
poetry and theater, were the essential forms in expressing his creative 
imagination. From his observation in 1923 that both Zulu and English would 
be crucial in the making of a national literature, it was not that historically 
distant from his 1947-8 reflections that a synthesizing of modernity and 
tradition was essential in the making of the new. Dhlomo set himself to work 
in the great essays of the 1930s and 1940s to theorize and construct the 
historical space of South African cultural modernity in the twentieth century. 

A week later Dhlomo followed this remarkable debut with an editorial 
revealingly etitled "Native Literature", in which he calls to attention his wish 
that Africans should preserve folklore and historical records of the African 
people. He was vociferous that folklore and other traditional forms should 
not be allowed to die. He complained that African languages were being 
damaged and corrupted by importation of unnecessary and foreign words. 
Dhlomo praised John Knox Bokwe and Rueben T. Caluza for having created 
pure African songs. He urged that these songs should be compiled and 
published in a book form. But his central message was the following: "Our 
folklore and historical records must be preserved from dying out, anything of 
racial pride, by means of a literature, otherwise these will be lost forever and 
our connection with the past forgotten."50 The past history of tradition 
should inform the creation of modernity. In order not to seem that his call for 
the appreciation of tradition has anything to do with his possible 
romanticizing of it, rather than the lessons that can be derived from its 
understanding, Dhlomo wrote a three-part essay, "Three Essays In Tribal 
Culture", in which he shows how beads, the shield, and the cow are part of, 
and define the aesthetic and historical world of tradition.51 The analysis of 
the aesthetics of beads enables Dhlomo to situate the role of decorative arts in 
Zulu society. Dhlomo shows how an understanding of the design structure of 
beads enables one to appreciate the history and poetry of decoration in Zulu 
culture. For him bead making is more than a decorative art, since it is 
fundamentally an expression of the aesthetic, poetic and spiritual life of the 
people. The patterns of bead work, their color and rhythm design, and color 
sequence configure a bead language that is in many ways universal among 
tribal people. The construction of the patterns is influenced by birds and 

renaissance, must be a reference to Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, who both influenced 
his plkaywright style. In subsequent decades, Dhlomo was to make many allusions to Shaw. 
Moreover, Dhlomo's play, Nonqgause was profoundly influenced by Shaw's St. Joan. In the last 
decade of his life , Dhlomo wrote brief essays on Richard III, Hamlet and St. Joan. 
50 Editorial, "Native Literature", Ilanga lase Natal, December 28, 1923. 
51 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Three Essays In Tribal Culture: The Zulu and His Beads, Part I", llanga 
lase Natal, October 4, 1947; "Three Essays In Tribal Culture: The Shield In Tribal Life, Part II", 
October 11, 1947; "Three Essays In Tribal Culture: lnkomo In Zulu Life, Part III", December 6, 13, 
1947. 

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flowers, i. e. flora and fauna. Dhlomo sees the design patterns of bead work as 
indicating a deep appreciation of beauty among the Zulus. Since some of the 
designs of beads are reflective of Zulu folk-tales and fables, Dhlomo believes 
the beads symbolize the spiritual and mystical world of Zulu culture. Socially 
the beads define social rank and were used as amulets and charms. In effect 
the bead culture is a symbolic representation of the unity of the Spiritual, the 
Social and Natural in Zulu culture. Given this apparent central importance of 
bead culture in Zulu cosmological world, Dhlomo is concerned that a 
disintegration of the traditional order under the pressure of emerging 
modernity would have the consequence of depreciating the sense of beauty 
and aesthetics so essential to the making of important cultural products. 

Dhlomo writes that in Zulu culture a shield was a coat of arms through 
which honour, patriotism, ideals of a society could be measured and 
represented. Although the shield was a defensive weapon more than an 
offensive one, paradoxically, in Zulu society the defensive strategy was of 
secondary importance to the offensive one. Shields were thought to possess 
medicinal efficacy since they were sprinkled with herbals in preparation for 
battle. Tribal veterinary surgeons used them to drive diseases out of cattle. To 
Dhlomo states that in this society shields were emblems of power, martial 
authority, law and justice. Given this valorization, shields were seen as 
symbolic, ritualistic and utilitarian. There were various forms of shields: 
some for hunting expeditions, courting shields, battle shields, etc. Although 
women were generally not allowed to carry shields, they now and then did on 
occasion of dancing and ritual ceremonies. Since shields are made of cow 
skin, Dhlomo in the third essay reflects on the importance of the cow in Zulu 
society. The essay gives Dhlomo an opportunity to reflect on the 
contradictions of constructing modernity: "It is one of the tragedies and the 
ironies of South African policy that today, in spite of the systematic 
undermining and crumbling away of tribal life by the impact of Christianity, 
indistrialization and Western culture, and the consequent decline of the 
power and the authority of chiefs as well as the tie and meaning of tribal, 
social and moral sanctions, the economic value of inkomo [cow] in what still 
remains of tribal life today, has actually been enhanced. The reason for this is 
the abortive attempt to keep a civilization within a civilization, a system 
within a system. Modern society is based on.a money economy and tribal life 
on a cattle economy. South African policy is attempting the impossible task of 
reconcciling these two conflicting systems. I refuses fully to bring the African 
within the maelstorm of our industrial and commercial life as this involves 
the question of political and economic status. At the same time, it wants 
African labour for its farms, mines, its industrial, commercial and domestic 
needs. T gain both ends, that is, to eat its cake and have it, it attempts to 
preserve intact the tribal state as a reservoir of labor while undermining the 
foundation, the soul and the meaning of that state." (DOES THIS 
OUATATION CONTRADICT THE THESIS I'M DEVELOPING IN THE 
ESSAY?) In other words, the politics of race, discrimination, segregation and 

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apartheid were preventing the historical development of modernity to take 
its logical and natural course in South Africa. 

***Within this mapping of the labyrinthine form of tradition, Dhlomo 
constructed and situated Shaka as its the greatest heroic figure. With doubt, 
for him Shaka was the exemplification of the grandeur of the Carlylean hero. 
His choice was not based solely on Shaka's military prowess, though 
absolutely great that was, but rather, on Dhlomo's belief that the Zulu 
chieftain's prodigious formation of the Zulu nation through blood and steel 
had the effect of triggering immense cultural renovations as well as the 
consolidation and purification of the Zulu language. This may explain why 
Shaka had such a mesmerizing hold on the imagination of the New African 
intellectuals, artists and writers from Mofolo's Chaka and John Dube's U-Jeqe: 
Insila ka Tshaka to Mazisi Kunene's Emperor Shaka The Great. Since these 
are fictional works, they will not be of immediate concern to us here (they 
will be considered elsewhere), because what is crucial is the intellectuals 
understanding of Shaka's position in South African history rather than his 
subsequent mythification as a historical legend in fictional generic forms, this 
having more to do with political struggles of the present. Before considering 
Dhlomo's reflections on Shaka, it is illuminating to consider the essays of R. 
R. R. Dhlomo, Benedict Vilakazi, Sibusiso Nyembezi, Jordan Ngubane, 
Mazisi Kunene, since their meditations on this monumental figure was an 
essential component of New African(ism) and of their beingness in 
modernity: Shaka was a symbolic representation of the tradition they had to 
transcend and suprass, or incorporate, in order to arrive at modernity fully 
prepared for new things. 

R. R. R. Dhlomo in a treatise in form of a short story seemed to have felt that 
the assassination of Shaka, by his two brothers Dingane and Mhlangana, with 
the participation of his paternal aunt, the great Mkabayi, was justified by the 
bloodshed the son of Senzangakhona had unrelentingly unleashed among 
the Zulus.52 This would seem to put R. R. R. Dhlomo in a position similar, or 
at least adjacent to that of Thomas Mofolo: the difference being that while 
Mofolo viewed Shaka as the quintessential evil in the Manichaean binary 
struggle between Christianity and heathenism (barbarism), R. R. R. R. 
Dhlomo, in less apocalyptic terms, saw him as the representation of the 
rottennesss of tradition that made the triumph of modernity inevitable and 
justified. In other words, for R. R. R. Dhlomo the absolutist terms or vision of 
Shaka, which viewed everything in terms of either/ or, would make it less 
likely that modernity would emerge under the aegis of tradition. What R. R. 
R. Dhlomo seemed to have feared most was modernity colonizing and 
imperializing tradition, thereby leaving it in a state of perpetual petrification. 
The satiric pieces R.R. R. Dhlomo wrote in R. V. Selope Thema's Bantu 

52 R.R. R. Dhlomo, "The Murder Of Shaka September 24, 1928", Bantu World, September 24, 
1932. 

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World in the 1930s made fun of the Africans who were in a hurry to adopt 
the New while rejecting the Old without serious consideration of the 
consequences of the the struggle between Africans and Europeans: for him an 
unreflective acceptance of modernity was an unconscious strengthening of 
the hegemony of whites over blacks. 

Benedict Wallet Vilakazi on the other hand, in contrast to R. R. R. Dhlomo, 
believed in an accelerated construction and acceptance of modernity, thereby 
subverting tradition, as a necessary pathway that would enable Africans 
eventually to overcome European domination. Consequently Vilakazi's 
reading of Shaka's effect in South African history, or for that matter in 
African history, was a perpetual renewal and upturning of tradition as a 
preparation of the New, which Vilakazi saw Shaka as having anticipated and 
having had foresight to have seen as inevitable. It was in this context that 
Vilakazi called on New Africans to develop new perspectives on African 
history: "South Africans are in general, the most ignorant nation in all things 
Africans. It is from this ignorant group of people that we get our history 
written and planned out ... Few people know how Moshesh [sic] of the 
Basotho fame came to be known as a 'nation-builder'; and fewer still are 
those that know why Shaka is known as a tyrant, destroyer and blood-thirsty 
king. What the school books teach us, we accept dogmatically especially about 
the great figures of our black history."53 In contrast to this false and white 
hegemonic position, Vilakazi viewed Shaka as a modernizer in having 
destroyed the class of natural healers ('witch doctors') who had been charging 
exorbitant prices for their expertise while in many ways retarding the progress 
of Zulu nation through their dissemination of superstitious beliefs. Equally 
impressive to Vilakazi was Shaka's modernizing tendencies in having 
incorporated through force of arms of other ethnic groups into the Zulu 
nation. Detailing his reflections, Benedict Bambatta Vilakazi enumerated 
several features which in his estimation accounted for the greatness of the 
son of N andi: he had instilled national pride, a sense of freedom, and 
intituted equal rights and privileges, among the people of the nation he 
forged; his concept of freedom embraced different races and was embodied in 
the communal ownership of land; since the government of the Zulu nation 
was based on meritocracy, it is not surprising that some of Shaka's high 
officials were Basothos; and Shaka rarely attacked a peaceful nation. Most 
impressive to Vilakazi, was that Shaka enabled the citizens of the nation to 
strive for freedom in order to express their individual selves. Although 
Vilakazi himself does not go this far, since he was by nature apolitical, what 
Shaka was constructing in the 1820s found continuation in the founding of 
the ANC in 1912. 

53 B. W. Vilakazi, "Shaka's Plan Of Freedom And Reconstruction", Ilanga lase Natal, July 31, 
August 14, 21, 1943. 

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t It 

In an essay that found inspiration in Vilakazi's doctoral dissertation, Oral and 
Written Literature in Nguni, Nyembezi analyzed the conception of the 
achievement of Shaka as reflected in izibongo. Although originally conceived 
as praise poems of the valour of heroic great men, with time izibongo have 
expanded to include praises of the physical appearance of women, newly born 
children, animals, and oneself. Fundamentally, they are part of the oral 
preservation of history. Nyembezi found in some of the izibongo the potrayal 
of Shaka's travails and tribulations because of his birth as an illegitimate 
child. the very things that were to account for his future fierceness and 
ruthlessness.54 The Shaka who emerges from the izibongo is of a great leader 
with a tragic flaw of unforgiveness. 

Jordan K. Ngubane's great essay of 1976 "Shaka's Social, Political and Military 
Ideas", written in exile in Washington D. C. in a state of bitterness, anger and 
despair, is an extraordinary document by any measure.55 It is haunted by the 
spectre of Dhlomo, his great friend who had been dead by this time for over 
two decades. There is a central allusion to him in the body of the essay. What 
haunted Ngubane was Dhlomo's essay of 1954 which appeared in Ilanga lase 
Natal: "Shaka: His Character, Philosophy, Policy And Achievements". We 
will consider Dhlomo's essay in a moment. What gives remarkable weight to 
Ngubane's essay is that it was part of his historical and life time project to find 
a rational explanation of why Afrikaaner nationalism had defeated African 
nationalism: the breakthrough was his realization and belief that African 
nationalism(s) lacked a metaphysical system based on African philosophies 
which undergird it as a historical process. Without this undergirding 
metaphysical system, he came to believe, African nationalism lacked the 
durability, longevity, cultural fiber, and anchoring in the African soil, to 
make it triumph over Afrikaaner nationalism, or at least force white 
nationalism to come to its historical senses by having a rapprochement with 
African nationalism. The brilliance of the essay is in its construction of this 
metaphysical system which Ngubane believed informed the praxis of Shaka, 
hence his singular greatness. But tragically within the body of the essay itself 
there were already seeds of self destruction which led Jordan Ngubane a 
decade later to die in the arms of Mangosutho Gatsha Buthelezi and Inkatha 
(later Inkatha Freedom Party): the slippage of this anchoring was from 
African nationalism to Zulu nationalism, to the point of absolute 
valorization of the latter: in other words, collapsing African nationalism into 
Zulu nationalism: theorizing the historical form of African nationalism 

54 C. L. S. Nyembezi, "The Historical Background To The lzibongo Of The Zulu Military Age", 
Afican Studies, June-September, December 1948. 
5 Jordan K. Ngubane, "Shaka's Social, Political and Military Ideas", an appendix in Donald 
Burness' Shaka: King of the Zulus in African Literature, Three Continental Press, New York, 
1976, pp.127-164. 

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through the historical content of Zulu nationalism.56 We can be absolutely 
certain that Dhlomo would never have countenanced this tragic slippage. 

Jordan Ngubane reads Shaka as having initiated a revolution to meet the 
challenge of South African history, particularly Zulu history. He traces the 
genealogy of the nature of the challenge and the form and structure of the 
revolution through izibongo, Zulu lore, and patronymic legends. The pre­
Shakan Zulu history, from Zulu ka Malandela Zulu in the second half of the 
fifteenth century, the chief of the small Zulu clan in Natal, to Senzangakhona 
(Shaka's father) in the eighteenth century, had been characterized by chaos 
due to intercenine warfare led by the conservatives within the ruling 
aristocracy. Shaka's hatred of the aristocracy lay in that under the principle of 
defending custom and tradition, they had ostracized him because of his 
illegitimacy as well as his mother, Nandi, on the charge that she was a 
woman of loose morals. In Ngubane's estimation the Shakan revolution lay 
in several undertakings and achievements: he destroyed the conservative 
aristocracy by forging a new society, based not only on tradition and custom, 
but fundamentally on meritocracy; in replacement of the principle of 
traditionalism as a fundamental criteria of evaluation in society, he initiated 
a 'person-centered Buntu civilization' in which critical reason and harmony 
with the needs of society was the sole form of judgement; he established the 
possibility of the new concept of nationhood as a fundamental structure in 
replacement of clan loyalties; he taught that the human body was nature's 
finest masterpiece, and as such must be kept in clean and good health--­
regular exercise of the body will help in keeping the cleanliness of the human 
mind; Shaka's transformation of Zulu society made possible the streamlining 
of the Zulu language; he invented a short spear and new military formations 
which made the Zulus the formidable military instrument in the whole of 
Southern Africa; and the deeds and valour of Shaka inspired great poets, and 
the greatest among them was Magolwane ka Mkatini Jiyana.57 This 

56 In a study of the intellectual significance and historical meaning of Jordan K. Ngubane, it 
will be necessary to specify the nature of his break with Gatsha Buthelezi and the Inkatha 
Freedom Party, just a few years before his death. 
57 Mazisi Kunene has sketched a brilliant portrait of this great poet: "Portrait of Magolwane-­
-The Great Zulu Poet", Cultural Events in Africa, July 1967. As though the fascination of the 
historical meaning of Shaka for South African literary imagination could not possibly exhaust 
itself, and as though his great epic, Emperor Shaka The Great, the Mt. Everest of our 
literature, had not already established corrective parameters concerning Thomas Mofolo's 
Chaka, Mazisi Kunene, a full decade after Jordan Ngubane's reflections on Shaka, wrote a 
major essay in which he castigated Mofolo because of the internalized the ideology of the 
missionaries, had failed to register the real achievements of the son of Senzangakhona: 
transformed political thinking in Central and Southern Africa; incorporated the ideas of a 
united Africa; imprinted military ideas on the whole vast region; invented efficient weapons; 
prepared the region for confrontation with the invading whites; established mutual 
cooperation among African states; initiated political democritization; and posited heroism as 
an ideal: "Into this category [of ignorance and distortion] would unfortunately fall also Mofolo's 
Chaka, who, under pressure from missionaries, created a Faustian Shaka of fiction who has 

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I II 

celebration of the Shakan revolution never blinded Jordan Ngubane to the 
fact that this achievement came to an end through the necessity of 
terminating his despotism, which characterized the last moments of his rule. 

What is extraordinary about Ngubane is his fine judgement that the 
assassination of Shaka was a historical necessity as much as the Shakan 
revolution was a response to the calling of historical destiny. We would like 
quote this rather long passage as an indication of Ngubane's riveting 
brilliance: "Then, tragedy crashed into Shaka's life. Nandi died in October, 
1827. That extinguished the brightest light in his life and left him a changed 
man; something vital cracked in him and unbalanced his faculties. Shaka was 
never to be the same man again. The sick emperor embarked on an insane 
programme of executions, persecutions and misrule; he alienated the army, 
antagonized his friends, spread fear and terror in the nation he had founded 
and imposed a tyranny more brutal than anything he and his mother had 
ever known ... When the Court Poets reported these things to the Zulus, 
people began to believe that Shaka had lost control of his mind; that he was 
sick beyond being cured. As each day of excesses went by it became 
increasingly clear that the chiece for the nation lay between Shaka's life and 
the balanced society itself . .. Shaka towered so much above his 
contemporaries nobody could, or dared, to persuade or force him to abdicate. 
The only way to bring his bloodthirsty tyranny to its speedy end was to kill 
him . .. Mnkabayi [Shaka's paternal aunt] was fearless when it came to epoch­
making decisions. When she called him [Mbopa, one of Shaka's outstanding 
leiutenants] and confronted him with Shaka's crimes against the person and 
the revolution, some Zulus say, Mbopa, always a brave man, broke down and 
cried. When he wiped his tears, he told Mnkabayi he knew what his duty to 
the revolution was." This is a fine sense of historical evaluation. 

little or nothing to do with the Shaka of history. Shaka in this fictitious novel is depicted as a 
leader of darkness whose power is pitted against the leader of light (i. e. missionaries). Shaka 
is also depicted not as an intelligent person, but influenced by an evil force in the person of a 
diviner or a witch. This force, according to the book, totally controls Shaka's mind" ("Shaka 
the Great: Warrior-King And Founder Of The Zulu Nation", in Great Black Leaders: Ancient 
and Modem, (ed .) Ivan van Sertima, Journal of African Civilizations Ltd,. Inc., Rutgers, 1988, 
p.253). Thomas Mofolo was not the only New African intellectual of the early part part of the 
twentieth-century to portray in such negative terms. Although his reflections more nuanced 
than those of Thomas Mofolo, in a chapter devoted to Shaka, John Henderson Soga depicts him 
as being vindictive, ruthless, cruel and bloodthirsty (The South-Eastern Bantu, Witwatersrand 
University Press, Johannesburg, 1930, p.451). Using Mzilikazi as a surrogate of Shaka, in h is 
novel Mhudi, which is really a Shakesperian drama as evidenced by Mzilikazi's 
extraordinary soliloquy towards the end of the text about his inability to make a transition 
from tradition to modernity, Solomon T. Plaatje was hostile to African leaders and chiefs whom 
he considered were enthralled by the principles of militarism. On the hand Plaatje's 
biographical portraits of Chiefs in The African Yearly Register such as Silas Thelesho 
Molema was positive as long as they were nor perceived by him as standing in the way of the 
emergence of modernity. 

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Jordan Ngubane mars this great essay towards its conclusion by arguing that 
the concepts of nationhood and a new nation developed by Shaka found 
continuation in our time (exactly 1974-5) in Gatsha Buthelezi. Even though 
Buthelezi was to reveal his diabolical nature from the moment of the Soweto 
Uprising in 1976, he had by 1974 for all intents and purposes broken with the 
then exiled ANC. Only Ngubane's hatred of the great national organization, 
since he believed that it had been subordinated to Moscow and Communism, 
in effect disengaging from African nationalism, could have blinded him to 
this untenable appraisal of Buthelezi. Correctly viewing Pixley ka Isaka 
Seme's founding of the ANC in 1912 as in the tradition of the Shakan 
revolution of the new concept of nationhood, one is at a loss how Ngubane 
would reconcile this with Buthelezi's intent of forging Inkatha through 
ethnicity rather than a serious alliance with the ANC. Ngubane rightly 
mentions that Albert John Luthuli is in the tradition of Shaka. In mentioning 
only the Africans from Natal as belonging in the Shakan tradition of African 
nationhood and nationalism, Jordan Ngubane could be rightly criticized for 
confusing Zulu nationalism with African nationalism. Also the same 
criticism could be made of the great poet, Mazisi Kunene, in the Preface to the 
magnificent epio in postulating Gatscha Buthelezi as continuing the 
leadership vision of Shaka.58 Kunene situates the revolution Shaka effected 
in military concepts and tactics of warfare. Secondly, in the political authority 
he exerted. In other words, it was in the nature of the fusion of political and 
military structures that Shaka initiated momentous changes in Africa. 

Dhlomo was much longer preoccupied with the consequential historical 
meaning of Shaka for the passages of transition from tradition to modernity 
than many other New African intellectuals. He was very ambivalent and 
conflicted about the legacy of Shaka for South African history. In his first 
appraisal in Umteteli wa Bantu Dhlomo was highly critical of Shaka, hardly 
seeing anything of merit in the legacy. In another appraisal twenty years later 
in Ilanga lase Natal Dhlomo was very adulative. In the earlier evaluation, 
although recognizing Shaka as a great man, Dhlomo believed his policy of 
constant and unrelenting warfare had brought ruin and chaos to the Zulu 
people and nation.59 With a policy of unending militarism, Dhlomo thought 
Shaka had dissipitated the cultural energy of the people, by making many 
writers flee from his rule, and thereby making the nation despise and neglect 
its spiritual and intellectual functions. Under the edicts of militarism, law 
and administration are rigified, in consequence making the people 
conservative, docile and insular. Bringing the issue to the present, Dhlomo 
saw one of the principle consequences of Shaka's militarism in having 
rigified the Zulu people to a conservativism that has hindered them in 
adapting to the new things of modernity. In effect the Zulu nation had 

58 Mazisi Kunene, "Preface", Emperor Shaka The Great: A Zulu Epic, trans. from Zulu by the 
author, HeinemannLondon, 1979, p.xi. 
59 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Tshaka: A Revaluation", Umteteli wa Bantu, June 18, 1932. 

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become suspicious of the new, with the result that they were retarding their 
own progress. The conservatism that Dhlomo believed Shaka had instilled in 
Zulu nation had stifled independent thought and suppressed the expression 
of the individual creative genius. A greater contrast between Ngubane and 
Dhlomo about the legacy of Shaka is not imaginable: whereas for one Shaka 
was instrumental in the development of the concept of nationahood and 
nationalism so central in the construction of modernity, for the he was the 
paragon of its blockage. 

By the time he wrote "Shaka: His Character, Philosophy, Policy And 
Achievements", to which Jordan Ngubane had made reference in his own 
essay, Dhlomo had completely changed his views. Viewing Shaka within his 
newly acquired Carlylean perspective of individuals determining history, 
Dhlomo wrote: "Shaka was a great nation-builder. Out of the crucible of an 
insignificant clan, he built a great and proud people. Such a task required a 
man of original ideas, strong character, tenacity of purpose, and high 
ideals."60 He expressed his admiration for Shaka's deep appreciation of 
nature, orderliness and discipline. Dhlomo believed one Shaka's high ideals 
had been realized in his formation of the great Zulu nation with spirituality 
being one of its essential qualities; by forming a great and powerful nation 
and bringing other ethnic groups into a community of nations, Shaka had 
established the ideal of nationalism. He praised him for having forged 
communalism, in which castes and classes had been abolished, and universal 
citizenship instituted. Completely changing his previous hostility to the 
militarism that Shaka brought into the Zulu nation, Dhlomo saw this as a 
catalyst for change, reform and nationhood. What he found compelling in 
Shaka was his inquisitive mind: the constant search for new knowledge. This 
was the most fascinating aspect of Shaka to Dhlomo: his serious study of 
geography, topography and nature; in his patronage to the arts, encouraging 
the making of Izimbongi; and his search for new ideas about the universe. 
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Shaka to Dhlomo was his belief that 
the son of Senzangakhona had not only made certain that the Zulu language 
would not become adulterated in adjacency to other languages in a greater 
African nation, he had in the process become a great master of it. Dhlomo's 
reverance for Shaka was his belief that he had enabled the emergence of 
major poets such as Magolwane, in effect the flowering of Zulu literature. It 
was because of Shaka's encouragement of the acquisition of knowledge and 
being a pathfinder of the new, that Dhlomo believed that he had many 
lessons for his project of modernity. 

As though inspired by the example of Shaka, Dhlomo seemed likewise to 
have wanted to preserve the purity and elegance of the Zulu language as well 
as the integrity of Zulu literature within modernity, and hence the many 

60 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Shaka: His Character, Philosophy, Policy And Achievements", llanga 
lase Natal, September 25, October 2, 1954. 

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reflections on both of them. In a quarrel of 1938, which will be our concern 
later in the essay, Vilakazi chastised Dhlomo that one does not preserve a 
great literature through theorizing it , but rather through writing it in the 
language that underpins it. While writing his whole ouevre in English, 
Dhlomo seems to have been obsessed with the nature of the Zulu language. 
Perhaps this ironic situation is explained by the intractable dialectic of 
modernity and tradition. In a consideration of "The Future of Zulu", Dhlomo 
was fearful that although Zulu was verile, flexible, beautiful and has the best 
claim to being the African lingua franca in South Africa, and was spoken by a 
historically and numerically greater number of blacks, and as well as being 
taught at the Universities, it still faced formidable obstacles.61 The economic 
and political imperatives of the situation in South Africa was impelling the 
Zulus themselves to clamour for the introduction of English as a medium of 
instruction, while Zulu should be taught only a subject. Dhlomo wanted 
Zulu to be utilized as a medium of instruction up to the doctorate level. 
Second, the publication of Zulu literature in comparison to English literature 
written by Africans, was very small. Third, the absence of literary magazines 
written wholly in the African languages. Fourth, the commingling of 
Africans in the urban spaces of modernity, Dhlomo believed, had the effect of 
forcing them to speak in English. Fifth, and this deeply antagonized him, the 
'white experts' dictated what kinds of books in the African languages African 
authors should be writing for schools. And lastly, the multiplicity of dialects 
were encroaching on the historical and cultural space on the Zulu language, 
likewise Zulu on the other languages. 

Responding in an Editorial to Chief Albert Luthuli's complaint that the 
quality and level of English was deteriorating among New Africans, 
particularly among students, in relation to the African languages, Dhlomo 
sought to halt this deterioration by indicating that English, rather than the 
indigenous languages, was the fundamental instrument of entrance into 
modernity. It was also the language of preferance among progressive 
Africans. Seeking to justify the historical imperativeness of the hegemony of 
the English language, he posed these two questions: "Of what practical value 
will the knowledge of its mother tongue be to a child who will be thrown into 
the world that uses English as its medium of expression? What business or 
other contacts can he [or she] conduct when, after leaving school, he finds 
himself unable to command the English language?"62 Although partial to the 
practical predominance of English as a historical necessity, Dhlomo was 
always supportive of measures to strengthen the African languages. 
Analyzing a report of the Zulu Language Committee on the status of Zulu 
language and literature, Dhlomo took the opportunity to express his concerns 

6l Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review and Commentary "The Future of Zulu", l/anga 
lase Natal, October 7, 1944. 
62 Anonymous, "Mother Tongue", Ilanga lase Natal, August 7, 1943. Its preoccupation with 
certain themes, clearly indicates it was written by H. I. E. Dhlomo. 

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about the Zulu language. He suggested three topics which he felt the 
Committee should seriously examine: in comparison to spoken Zulu, written 
Zulu needed to be modernized through new coinages and elimination of 
archaic terms---he felt the language should be made more flexible and 
evolutionary; the necessity of standardizing the spelling of the language; and, 
much more important in Dhlomo estimation, the coinage of new Zulu words 
and phrases "to cope up with modern trends in all departments of life ... We 
need medical, business, legal, technical, geographical and other words; names 
of birds, animals, colours, etc."63 Although he highly praised the Zulu­
English Dictionary which had been assembled by Doke and Vilakazi a few 
years before, he felt it had not fully tackled these three central issues of 
contemporary African literary culture. Dhlomo's preoccupation with the 
Zulu language was an expression of his deep concern that all the African 
languages must be modernized in order for Africans to make full sense of a 
new historical experience of modernity which had entered African history. 

The call for the modernization of the Zulu language was accompanied by 
Dhlomo's reflections on the condition of Zulu literature. One problem facing 
this literatures as well as other literatures in the African languages, was that 
their publication was not necessarily based on merit, but rather on the 
political exigencies of whether thematically and stylistically they followed the 
pattern and the guide-lines of what the white minority government thought 
were suitable books for schools. This power of political overdetermination in 
cultural matters was because the largest market of literature in the African 
languages was in government schools. The consequence was that mediocre 

63 Anonymous, "Zulu Language Committee", Ilanga lase Natal, June 9, 1951, my emphasis. The 
themes of this reflection are in line with the views of H. I. E. Dhlomo expressed elsewhere. 
This concern with language was part of a large project of Dhlomo's: the role of the African 
newspapers in facilitating the conditions of possibility in the making of African or national 
literature. Given that the potential audience for this national literature read newspapers in 
African indigenous languages, and hardly read any English language newspapers, and given 
that the authors and creators of this national literature preferred writing and reading only 
English language newspapers, Dhlomo wondered how this serious disjuncture could possibly be 
bridged. Although sympathetic to the argument of the African middle class writers, that the 
progress of the Race demands the historical predominance of English, that this predominance 
militates against the possible emergence or tribalism, and that English has become a lingua 
franca in South Africa, Dhlomo was deeply concerned that this would have the effect of 
atrophying the African languages which he believed were the Soil and Soul of a fundamental 
part of national culture (see: Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary 
"Language Problem", llanga lase Natal, April 28, 1951). These ideas were anticipatory of what 
Ngugi wa Thiong'o was to push forcefully from the 1970s onwards. Simultaneous with this 
concern about the future role of the African languages, Dhlomo was anxious to indicate the 
importance of Afrikaans and its literature beyond the cultural politics in which they were 
encased. Not only would knowledge of Afrikaans open the space of a literature which was a 
central part of South African national culture, Dhlomo believed it would make easier to learn 
Dutch and German, hence an opening to knowledge of European literatures (see: Busy-Bee [H. I. 
E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Importance of Afrikaans", Ilanga lase Natal, 
May 12, 1951). 

17 

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books which were obsequios (?) to the political dictates of the government 
were published. In an Editorial Dhlomo argued that only the quality of the 
books should be the only valid criteria for their publication.64 Dhlomo also 
saw this issue of the selection of the criteria for evaluating African 
literature(s) other than on its own intrinsic qualities as in many ways 
implicated in the hegemony of the English language in South Africa. This 
explains the reason why he preoccupied himself with this issue in many 
instances, before leaving cultural matters in the last few years of his life and 
concentrated on political matters. In one particular instance Dhlomo 
speculated that perhaps the English language had become the national forum 
for the readers of newspapers in the African languages.65 It seems as though 
he wanted to transform this readership to be the real audience for national 
literature which was being constructed by New African intellectuals, writers 
and artists. This may explain the fact that although he had deep affinities and 
great love for the Zulu language, he never used it as a medium for realizing 
his creative work. Caught in the intractable contradictions between modernity 
and tradition, Dhlomo seems to have wanted his creative work written in 
English to be viewed as part of the national forum through which great 
vernacular literatures could be realized. Only once in all of his voluminous 
writings did Dhlomo attempt to historicize his decision for having chosen to 
write in English rather in Zulu or any other indigenous language (including 
the the languages of the Khoisan). This profound dilemma necessitates this 
rather long quotation: "An African who writes successfully in English kills 
many birds with one stone. He proves that the African can rise to world 
standards. He gets an international reputation. He speaks to a wider audience. 
He receives better financial returns. There are no political, religious and other 
restrictions. He is not encouraging tribalism. The argument is that he can 
show African genius just as well in writing in English. This is the result of 
the drift to towns, education, the break-down of tribal ties and sentiment. 
These people are not interested in the deeper and finer points of Bantu 
languages being a great treasure or the Soul of the people. they are interested 
in their immediate needs and cravings for entertainment. While politicians 
and scholars argue they voraciously devour all kinds of exciting sensational 
fiction in English. They read the European Press and support African 
magazines published in English. They would not think of reading vernacular 
literature when there is so much variety and quantity of the other kind."66 
Benedict Wallet Vilakazi had already criticized some of these views being 
repeated in 1953 in his intellectual duel with H. I.E. Dhlomo in 1938, as we 
shall see in a moment. Dhlomo was postulating that the needs of the New 
African in the throes of modernity necessitated the primacy of English as one 

64 Anonymous, "Zulu Literature", Ilanga lase Natal, March 31, 1951. 
65 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "English versus Vernacular", 
Ilanga lase Natal, January 17, 1948. 
66 Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Reflections On A Literary Competition", Ilanga lase Natal, 
October 31, 1953. 

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of the effective ways of overcoming the pull or grip of tradition. Modernity 
and tradition were not only only a historical relation, but in a real sense a 
historical contradition. Dhlomo was a classical exemplification of this 
contradiction. 

Given this contradiction between modernity and tradition in the lived 
experience of Africans, which Dhlomo felt the hegemonic white political state 
was exacerbating rather than ameliorating, he came to believe that literature 
or literary culture could provide the means of reconciliation between the two, 
while politics or political practice could provide the praxis or intervention 
that would make possible the transcendence of modernity over tradition: this 
explains his theatre work (plays) predominantly written in the 1930s and his 
political interventions in the African National Congress in order to give it an 
intellectual vision from approximately 1943-4, the moment of the founding 
of the African National Congress Youth League, to about a year or two before 
his death in 1956. It is no mere coincidence that while his plays were 
preoccupied with the past (tradition), his developing political intervention 
engaged itself with the present and future (modernity). Dhlomo had a 
strongly held conviction at this time that the African National Congress 
would eventually succeed in bringing Africans into the modern age, for that 
matter, South Africa itself: to him the historical mission of the African 
National Congress (ANC) and the project of modernity were inseparable. This 
is the reason why while his senior colleagues such as H. Selby Msimang and 
R. V. Selope Thema, founding members of the ANC and outstanding 
intellectuals, with whom he had worked very closely in the Umteteli wa 
Bantu newspaper in the 1930s (a great newspaper in this decade), began 
disengaging themselves and eventually left the organization ib the early 
1950s, Dhlomo intensified his participation. But like all the New African 
Talented Tenth, including Msimang and Selope Thema, he believed that 
United States modernity, specifically African American modernity, had 
profound and incomparable lessons for South African modernity, specifically 
African modernity. Perhaps they believed, what Octavio Paz in another 
context and half a century after their historical mement, that the United 
States was "the most perfect expression of modernity."67 

Simultaneously with the writing of his plays, Dhlomo wrote a series of 
remarkable essays on the position, function and role of drama, literature 
generally, within African traditional societies. Few other essays in the whole 
of South African literary history can match, let alone equal, their astonishing 
brilliance. Before examining them, it is necessary to reflect on Dhlomo's 
understanding of the problematics of African literature in the historical 
evolution of cultural forms. All of Dhlomo's reflections on the arts were 

67 Nathan Gardels, "The Border of Time: A Conversation with Octavio Paz", New Perspective 
Quarterly, Vol.4 no.I, Winter 1987. Paz criticizes United States modernity in its commitment to 
the 'idea of purity' and 'separation'. 

1Q 

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governed by the this philosophical and aesthetic credo: "The Soul of Africa is 
the African. The soul of South African art must come from the Africans, 
therefore. They are of the soil; they are the People. And art that is original and 
great must spring from the soil and the people."68 This affirmation of the 
subject, the creative process and the historical location of the act of cultural 
production did not by itself resolve the contradictory and contestatory nature 
of the process of establishing a national literary culture or nature culture. 
Dhlomo's posing of certain questions for his own self-understanding 
concerning South African national literary culture makes this clear: "What 
about the vexed question of language and a national Bantu [African] 
literature? Can there be a truly Bantu national literature without a lingua 
franca? How will the works of the various language groups be assessed and 
compared? By translated versions or through the originals? Can we, for 
instance, have a Bantu poet-laureate, or shall we have one for each language 
group? What place will the Africans who write in English and Afrikaans 
occupy? What, exactly, is Bantu literature? Of Bantu tribal poetry and modern 
Bantu poetry---shall we have our own laws and standards of criticism or 
adopt the Western standards? ... There are Africans who think that whatever 
we do we must avoid isolationism and try to be international in our outlook, 
influence and achievement."69 His preoccupation with literary and cultural 
theory was a historical consciousness that until some of these historical 
'problems' were resolved, or critically confronted, the entrance of Africans 

68 Busy Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Non-European Art Exhibition", Ilanga lase Natal, October 6, 
1945. 
69 Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review and Commentary "The Cultural Front", Ilanga 
lase Natal, October 25, 1947. What probably impelled Dhlomo to pose these issues was the 
attempt on the part of the Young Lions of the African National Congress Youth League to 
establish an African Academy of the Arts, hence a 'new awakening on the African cultural 
front': A. P. Mda, "African Academy of Arts", Inkundla ya Bantu, July 24, 1947. A. M. Lembede, 
"An African Academy of Art and Science", and Jordan K. Ngubane, "African Academy of Arts", 
Inkundla ya Bantu, July 31, 1947. In another context, Dhlomo's poses one of the fundamental 
questions which would be faced by the established African Acadeny: how to forge a national 
literature without a national language or lingua franca, or when some of the leading writers are 
unfamiliar with the language of other ethnic groups (Weekly Review and Commentary 
"Authors' Society: First Fruits", Ilanga lase Natal, August 30, 1947). Note the proximity of all 
these dates. In a subsequent reflection Dhlomo traces the origins of the idea of establishing an 
African Academy to a Conference of 1936 (X [H. I.E. Dhlomo], "Academy of Arts and Research", 
Ilanga lase Natal, September 10, 1949. Dhlomo's encounter with the Youth League was 
unfortuitous, for from about fifteen years before their emergence he had been callin on the 
younger generation to bring about the New against the Old, bring into being the future 
represented by modernity in contrast to the past symbolized by tradition: "Youth is progressive 
and will not give childlike obedience to our present systems just because they happen to exist. .. 
Instead of allowing our Past alone to influence and guide us, they believe in bringing into play 
the Past, Present, and Future. It is a good omen: it is an improvement on our stagnant way of 
thinking" ("Younger Generation", Umteteli wa Bantu, July 5, 1930). Exactly twenty years after 
Dhlomo's death (1956), the Youth of the Black Consciousness Movement, following the 
historical logic of this principle, initiated the Soweto Uprising of 1976, which was the 
beginning of the end of apartheid. 

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I 

into twentieth-century modernity would always remain problematical, if not 
impossible. 

As already indicated, from early on in his intellectual career Dhlomo had a 
historical sense that literary matters that were part of the foundation in the 
construction of modernity had to be theorized into a historical 
understanding. Beginning with a large portion of his critical reflections in 
Umteteli wa Bantu in the 1930s, were part of this project. Calling on African 
writers and journalists to create an intellectual revival, an Age of Reason, an 
African Hellenism, Dhlomo pleaded for original work that objectively and 
philosophically would enlighten the readers about the total picture of life. He 
all forms of literary expression to be undertaken. Such a literature should not 
only be characterized only, by originality, but iconoclasim and high quality 
treatment, should be part of it, in the effort to make people to strive for the 
'higher things of life'. African writers should not preoccupy themselves only 
with literary form, should transform themselves into political and social 
reformers in the task of emancipation. Literature should be at the center of 
the making of creative ideas about the lived experience of modernity. 
Dhlomo again bitterly lamented that white state hindered the fulfilling of 
such a task by the prohibiting of Africans to use the better endowed white 
libraries and research institutions. He was fearful that the construction of the 
new would not be possible without the availability of books from all over the 
world to Africans.70 Perhaps what inspired Dhlomo to believe in the 
possibility of an 'African Hellinism' was the existence of books written by 
Africans in the English language which he thought outstanding, some of 
which superlative; with justification they could coonstituting part of his 
South African canon, since he referred to them repeatedly in other instances: 
The Bantu by Silas Modiri Molema, Native Life in South Africa by Solomon 
T. Plaatje, The Bantu Problem by D. D. T. Jabavu, Man Must Live by Ezekiel 
Mphahlele, Should the N. R. C. be Abolished by Jordan Ngubane (of his 
estimation of Samuel Mqhayi will be considered later in the essay).71 

70 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "The Bantu Writers and Their Work", Umteteli wa Bantu, April 30, 1932. 
71 Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review and Commentary "Books in English by 
Africans", Ilanga lase Natal, March 25, 1950. Dhlomo laments that because of the absence of a 
common national language. these books written in English are not accessible to many Africans. 
He mentions the debate which was then prevalent whether African creative writers should 
write in English or in the African languages. He enthusiastically notes that the literature in 
the African languages is outpacing that written by Africans in English. Dhlomo does not 
believe that the proposition by Jacob Nhlapo that Nguni languages should be united into one 
language, likewise that Sotho languages be united into a single language, would necessarily 
solve the problem of creating a national and unified literature made easily accessible by 
reduction the number of languages through which it would be accessible (Weekly Review And 
Commentary "The Sixpenny [Bookman] Library", Ilanga lase Natal, March 18, 1944 ). Neville 
Alexander was to celebrate in the late 1980s this proposition by Nhlapo as the solution to all 
South African language problems: . In the style of Thomas Carlyle, again Dhlomo 
praises the famous men: Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], "Great Pioneers of the Movement", Ilanga 
lase Natal, June 30, 1951. In another instance, expanding the possible parameters of the African 

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Speaking of libraries, it is necessary to mention that they held a deep 
fascination in his imagination. Dhlomo saw the task of a library as being not 
only getting books for readers, but more fundamentally, as getting readers for 
the books. He analyzed reading as a systematic process that enables one to 
obtain knowledge, consequently power.72 On more than two occasions he 
wrote articles in high praise of the Killie Campbell Private Library Collection 
of Africana materials, which eventually became the foundation of the great 
Africana library at the University of Natal in Durban.73 In Dhlomo's 
estimation, the importance of libraries in the construction of African 
modernities cannot be overestimated. 

Dhlomo conceptualized the nature and role of literature in modernity in 
relation to the transformations it could possibly effect. Theorizing modernity 
as a process of idustrialization and urbanization, the uprooting and 
transformation of the peasantry into a proletarian class, as well as the making 
of new other classes, he conceived of literature as inextricably connected with 
the question of literacy. For him literacy made possible the introduction of 

political and intellectual canon, beyond the literary one, Dhlomo lists the following: politics--
John Dube, Solomon T. Plaatje, Albert Luthuli, Walter Sisulu, Moroka; law--Alfred 
Mangena, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Anton Lembede; music--Rueben Caluza, Michael Moerane 
(Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], "The Peacock Of Somtseu Barracks: Reply to Mr. 0. A. 
Nkwanyana", Ilanga lase Natal, August 15, 1953). 
72 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "The Bantu Library", Umteteli wa Bantu, June 25, 1932. The occasion for the 
piece was the opening of the Bantu Mens' Social Center (B. M. S. C.) Library in Johannesburg 
financed by Carnegie Corporation. Dhlomo worked for a short time for the library before 
returning permanently to Durban in the early 1940s to join his brother as co-editor of llanga lase 
Natal. The BMSC Library has been made renowned by Peter Abraham's autobiography, Tell 
Freedom, as place in whose shelves he discovered African American culrure and the Harlem 
Renaissance: Alain Locke's The New Negro, W. E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folks, and 
other classics by James Weldon Johnson, Paul Dunbar and others. This act of discovery across 
the Atlantic constitutes one of the stirring moments linking United States modernity and South 
African modernity. In another context he writes of the effects of the prohibition of Africans, 
Indians, so-called Coloureds from using libraries: "It concerns intellectual slavery. Owing to our 
laws and system, our cultural life is affected adversely. So are our moral and other values. The 
Non-European is enchained intellectually and spiritually because cultural opportunities are 
denied him. He cannot enter our so-called public library, archives, art galleries (there are a 
few exceptions) etc. This means intellectual starvation. There can be no free flow of ideas and 
exchange of thoughts. We are paying heavily for this in this country" (Indians and the Public 
Library", Ilanga lase Natal, March 25, 1950, my italics). Anonymous [almost certainly by 
Dhlomo], "Libraries And Progress", Ilanga lase Natal, October 28, 1944. 
73 Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Research", Ilanga lase 
Natal, September 15, 1945: "We really do need African research workers to preserve our 
cultural heritage, expound its philosophy and create great works of art from this rich past." In 
another context, Dhlomo praises the Campbell library as a paradise for all lovers of culture 
and literature. Moreover, the library enabled one to appreciate that Art and Culture are on par 
with Religion (X [H. I. E. Dhlomo ], "The Campbells And African Culture", llanga lase Natal, 
February 5, 1944). The following is a much greater treatment of the Collection: X [H. I. E. 
Dhlomo], "Great Contribution To African Culture: Unique Collection By The Carnpbells", 
Ilanga lase Natal, April 23, 1949. 

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new ideas and new ways of living.74 In this context, the production of 
literature is with the aim of meeting the needs and the taste of the newly 
made readers. It was because of his interest in the making of the new and the 
forging of a new consciousness that he wrote the essay: "Masses and the 
Artist."75 Dhlomo argues that the task of the creative artist is to facilitate 
through a cultural revolution the participation of the masses in the making 
of the new. Taking Shakespeare and Homer as examples, he makes the point 
that great art is born of the confrontation with the most profound adversities 
of life. The adversities are part of the making of a personal and national 
experience. The creative process melds the personal and group experience, as 
well as being a social and aesthetic responsibility. Art for Dhlomo commemts 
and reflects on the experience of the time and the people: hence, serious art 
cannot be created aloof from the people and the masses: "Homer created 
universal art by commenting on the battles actual or symbolic of his day . . . 
Shakespeare wrote of the clowns, the fools, the fables, the Masses, the human 
frailties of his day . .. So Dickens in his great social novels, so the powerfuk 
Russian novelists, Tolstoy and Dostoeyevsky, and so many of the best artists-­
--Wordsworth, Shelley and Byron among them." Alluding to Keats, Dhlomo 
believes that the African artists must meet the challenge of the Masses and 
Art, Beauty and Truth. 

In his quest to create a modern national literary culture in South Africa, 
Dhlomo theorized the production of literature as intertwined with education, 
politics and literary criticism.76 He believed firmly that literature must play a 
role in the educating of Africans as well as in creating an African Renaissance. 
This renaissance could be realized through writing and creating more books 
which will eventually play a fundamental role in the National Liberation 
Movement. Such books must engage themselves with South African history 
in order to be most effective in their educative role. Insisting on the educative 
role of literature, Dhlomo argued that for its self-interest, if nothing else, it 
must undertake this task because the appreciation of imaginative literature, 
which he characterized as the highest form of literature, required a highly 
educated public. He called for the establishing of more literary magazines to 
facilitate this educative process. These magazines anyway, he postulated, were 
not only an important feature of modern life, they would also be the training 
ground for writers and assist in shaping literary taste. Dhlomo foresaw two 
major problems in the construction of modern literary culture. First, the 
question of language: should this culture be realized in the English language 
or in the various African languages! Which language or languages should be 

74 Anonymous, "Literature For The African", Ilanga lase Natal, July 16, 1949. Stylistic 
evidence and a fondness for certain themes makes this clear that it could only have been 
written by Dhlomo. See also the editorial: "Literacy Campaign", Ilanga lase Natal, July 10, 
1948. This also could only have been written by Dhlomo. 
75 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Masses and the Artists", Ilanga lase Natal, April 10, 1943. 
76 Anonymous, "Africans and Literature", Ilanga lase Natal, June 16, 1945. This editorial has 
the imprint of Dhlomo all over it. 

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b 

the mode od expression of these reviews? Secondly, Dhlomo thought 
publishers were a problem, for not only were they paying insufficiently, they 
hardly payed any royalties. He saw this as related to that books were 
inordinately expensive. Disdaining the idea that poverty makes possible the 
creation of great art, he advocated a form of patronage should be created in 
order to assist, particularly, newly emergent writers. The last point he 
considers on the possibility of creating a modern national literary culture, is 
the necessity of criticism. Dhlomo views this necessity on three different 
levels: that criticism begats ideas; that it would tackle the obstacles and 
difficulties standing in the production of serious literary art; and that it 
should help writers engage with the most original and important elements in 
African cultural history---present creativity should be informed by past 
cultural productivity. 

Other than the historical unavoidability of the great figure of Benedikt Wallet 
Vilakazi, Dhlomo wrote little literary criticism. It was was as though the 
politics of segregation and apartheid were so severe, that whenever he set out 
to write literary criticism, these politics of oppression intruded, thereby 
transforming his intent of producing literary criticism into an actual 
production of expansive cultural criticism. Two examples of this concern two 
European plasywrights who had the most pronounced influence on him: 
William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. One classical instance of this 
is his consideration of the importance of Shakespeare to Africans.77 The 
occasion was the barring of Africans from seeing Laurence Olivier's film 
version of Shakespeare's Henry V. Dhlomo begins by observing that it is 
generally accepted that plays have to be seen in order to be appreciated, and 
that many plays worth seeing are not worth reading. But great plays are great 
literature, should be read with pleasure, not wait until they are staged or 
filmed, for in most likelyhood neither of these two things would happen to 
them. The barring of Africans from seeing outstanding films, or from 
concerts and performances, or from exhibitions, is catastrophic and unhealthy 
for the cultural and intellectual life of the country, because it prevents them 
from being inspired, and possibily emulating, the great artists. Dhlomo 
postulates this as part of the reason that while South Africa was potentially 
wealthy, it has not as yet given birth to producers of culture of international 
stature and reputation. Europeans or whites are equally debilitated, 
intellectually and artistically, the quality and level competition is lowered by 
the exclusion of Africans. The so-called white universities are equally affected 

77 Anonymous, "'Henry V' and Culture", Ilanga lase Natal, December 1, 1945. Only Dhlomo 
would be concerned with Shakespeare and European culture in such a profound way within the 
pages of the newspaper, wither editorially as is the case in this instance, or in its regular 
columns. In case there is need to state the obvious, there was no other South African 
intellectual, writer, or artist in the first half of the twentieth-century who had a deeper grasp 
of European culture, European modernity, European modernism, above all his beloved 
Shakespeare, than Dhlomo: not Hermann Bosman, not Solomon T. Plaatje, not Getrude Millin, 
not Roy Campbell, not Laurence van der Post, not William Plomer, or whoever. 

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by this prejudice (because of the limited admission of Africans), because 
instead of being guardians and custodians of the classic spirit and looking at 
art as things in themselves (as Immanuel Kant wished), they judge by means 
of their prejudices. Given that the soil and soul of art are the people, the 
masses themselves should be allowed accessibility to the highest forms of 
artistic expression, since thay are the source of material which inspire creators 
of artistic form. 

The other instance is Dhlomo's review of the production of Shaw's St. Joan 
staged by Adams College students. He takes this opportunity in using St. Joan, 
the heroine of the play, to reflect and reinforce his belief in the Carlylean 
conception of history: that history is made by the heroic action of individuals, 
not by classes or by the masses of people. It is worth quoting the following to 
understand the remarkable transformation Dhlomo effects in the process of 
the review: "Before me I saw the St. Joan of African Genius, Expression and 
Patriotism eager, young, dashing, sincere and honest, determined to serve 
and save her African 'France' from Oppression, Ignorance, Poverty, Despair, 
Keen and Honest, the St. Joan of Bantu Genius and Patriotism came to the so­
called sympathisers and well-wishers, experts and lovers of her sourly 
oppressed race. "78 The staging of the play is metamorphosed in Dhlomo's 
imagination into a tragedy of African birth, transition and progress; s 
displacement into a contemporary context. The oppression in the play is 
similar to contemporary oppression in South Africa. Dhlomo understands St. 
Joan's struggle against entrenched authority as having many lessons for 
Africans. He is fascinated by her convictions, that led onto a lonely path; and 
despite her being vilified and despised, she never renounced her convictions. 
Dhlomo is entranced by the paradox, that her greatest final defeat is also her 
greatest and final triumph. Intrigued by her acceptance of suffering and 
affliction for the cause, he compares her to Buddha, Socrates, Milton and 
Beethoven. All of them are heroic intellectual figures who are makers and 
shakers of history. Dhlomo was also intrigued by heroic literary figures who 
could not take decisive action in history, especially Hamlet. He used this 
Shakespearan drama to read South African political history: Dhlomo was 
fond of repeating that the unwillingness of the white minority segregationist 
governments to meet with the ANC or its political leaders, in preferance for 
retrograde African Chiefs and their associations, is like staging Hamlet 
without casting the role of the Prince of Denmark!79 Shakespeare was much 
more important to Dhlomo in his reading of South African history, or the 
modernistic conflict between European history and African history, than as 

78 Spectator, "Philosophy Of 'St. Joan"', Ilanga lase Na tal, November 15, 1941. This could only 
have been written by Dhlomo because stylistically it is similar to his writings written under 
the pseudoname (?) of "X". Besides, Dhlomo had a passion for Shavian drama. Thirdly, it 
could be argued that Shaw's play had a direct influence on Dhlomo's The Girl Who Killed to 
Save (or Nongqause). Nongqause was a heroic figure caught in the maelstrom of modernity. 
79 Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary " 

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an inspiration in his creative writing. To Dhlomo in many ways, history was 
a dramatist conflict. 

Dhlomo's very intense admiration for Shakespeare's pedagogics about history 
was related to his belief that education was arguably the most fundamental 
entry-way into modernity. The earliest reflections of Dhlomo on education in 
the context of modernity appeared in the cultural and political organ of New 
Africanism, Umteteli wa Bantu, an organ where he and R. V. Selope Thema, 
H. Selby Msimang and others tried to interpret the new historical moment 
which South Africa had entered. Opposing the white government's 
institutionalization of educational policy which sought to re-integrate 
Africans into tribal life, he argued that, given that this mode of life was in the 
process of disintegrating and disappearing for the enlightened segments of 
Africans, the real mission of education should enable Africans to participate 
fully in the new economic, industrial, competitive and civilizational order in 
whose threshold the New African was standing. Unambiguously Dhlomo 
formulated his pedagogical philosophy: "There is dire need for knowledge 
and intelligence. The world needs, and Bantu masses yearn for, brains and yet 
more brains. We need and must have keen, unbiased, clear, critical and 
evolutionary minds---minds that can rise above the influence and bondage of 
the past, popular and accepted doctrines, codes, conventionalities, modes of 
life, and rules and laws of society. Scientists, inventors, engineers, poets---we 
have none; writers, businessmen, educationaslists---but a few; opportunities, 
endowments, and privileges---we have in abundance; yet poverty, disunity, 
misery and diusorganisation prevail."80 With this formulation Dhlomo was 
specifying several things: that education should be geared to individual 
abilities, not to so-called national groups as the government was enforcing 
educational policy, with inferior education for black people and better 
education for Europeans; that since not everyone has the ability, interest and 
temperment to pursue book learning and academic training across all 
national groups, attainment of knowledge should not be delimited to 
particular racial groups, and vocational training to others. With the Du 
Boisian Talented Tenth and Carlylean heroic individuality concepts in his 
mind, Dhlomo stated that since Africans like any other people needed 
dreamers, geniuses, poets, thinkers, scientists, there are Africans capable of 
these highest scholastic attainments. Although berating the government for 
setting obstacles in the pathways of Africans' utilization of education to face 
the complex challenge of modernity, for Dhlomo it was clear that the real 
obstacles to highest scholastic achievement for each individual were within 
rather than without. Despite emphasizing individual ability and attainments, 
for Dhlomo these achievements of the elite to be real had to go hand in hand 
with developing and changing consciousness of the masses. The New African 
elitism he espoused did not blind him of the necessity of unity between the 
African intelligentsia and the masses if progress through education is to be 

80 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Education", Umteteli wa Bantu, June 7, 1930. 

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achievable. Like most of the New Africans, for Dhlomo modern education 
was a means of overcoming 'the old traditional ideas of our inheritance.' 
Concerning the necessity of overcoming traditional inheritance Dhlomo was 
unambiguous and uncompromising: "Mentally, materially and spiritually 
the world is progressing towards an organised unity." The unity of the world 
was being constituted according to the regulative principles of modernity. 

Although from the date of writing these reflections on his philosophy of 
pedagogics Dhlomo was to make many notations on matters concerning 
education,81 it was approximately two decades later that he again 
systematically reflected on this issue. In an Editorial of 1949 in Ilanga lase 
Natal commemorating the centenary of education in Natal Dhlomo pays 
homage to what he considers to have been an 'epic' effort of missionaries in 
making modern education available to Africans.82 Whatever mistakes they 
may have done, to Dhlomo these pale in comparison to the 'outstanding 
achievements' in producing the 'finest African citizens' through their 
educational system. In comparison to this achievement, Dhlomo castigates 
the offort of the white government concerning the education of Africans. He 
considers missionary education to have touched the highest human and 
ethical values as well as having made available the highest concepts of art, 
philosophy and religion which touched on truth, beauty and goodness. 
Concluding this appraisal, Dhlomo writes in uncertain terms: "Our 
civilization is essentially a product and gift of Greek Humanism and Hebrew 
Christianity. Are we drifting away from these foundations and this heritage? 
Have we something better to replace it [with]?" When Dhlomo speaks of the 
finest Africans who have synthesized the legacies of Humanism and 
Christianity he has in mind the New African intellectuals. In another context 
he names these Africans whom he considers to be the embodiment of this 
rich missionary legacy: John Dube, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Mark Radebe, 
Solomon T. Plaatje, Richard Msimang, R. V. Selope Thema, Silas Modiri 
Molema, Z. K. Mathews.83 All of whom he mentions as having been present 

81 All the notations are in llanga lase Natal: January 29, 1944; June 24, 1944; November 17, 1945; 
November 24, 1945; February 2, 1946: "No one who has followed the end-of-the-year 
examination result(especially in higher education) can have failed to admire the grit, 
determination and tenacity of the African. Despite his many disabilities, the African is 
determined to forge ahead. The myth of his being incapable and inferior has been proved---a 
myth. However, much still remains to be done." 
82 Anonymous, "Natal Education Centenary", llanga lase Natal, September 17, 1949. It is clear 
from internal evidence that this has been written by Dhlomo. The last major piece on education 
written by Dhlomo just two years before his death was on the confusion Bantu Education was 
sowing among Africans: Busy-Bee, Weekly review And Commentary "Political Schools Among 
Africans", April 10, 1954. 
83 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Educated Africans", Ilanga 
lase Natal, September 10, 1945. Dhlomo wanted in turn the New African intellectuals to 
educate the ruling white elites about Africans: "One of the most startling and tragic things in 
race relations is the ignorance of the average white voter and of some of the highest 
authorities. This ignorance concerns the African and what is happening in this country" (see: 

.17 

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except the latter at the founding moment of the African National Congress in 
1912. These are some of the New Africans who opened the way to modernity 
for Africans. Dhlomo also applauds the role of educated women in 
organizations such as Daughters of Africa and the National Council of 
Women. Charlotte Manye Maxeke had played a principal role in both 
organizations before her death in 1939. Dhlomo wrote a series of profound 
articles on the role of women in the construction of African modernity. 

Dhlomo was uncompromising in his belief that women like men must 
participate fully in what he called the African Liberation Movement, the 
utilization of the positive things of modernity to overthrow the economic, 
political and cultural oppression of Africa.84 One of the reasons for Dhlomo's 
unmitigating hostility to certain strands of traditional heritage and the 
African past was that it had held and was still holding women in bondage: "A 
few decades ago woman's position was unenviable. She was not allowed to 
hold ·office or even to participate in ecclesiastical, political and civic 
institutions; she was expected to observe a special code of morality and was 
denied many of the privileges enjoyed by men. Today woman has risen from 
a position of subordination, inferiority and obscurity, to a place of 
prominence, independence, power and respect."85 These criticism of Dhlomo 
are in consonance with what Octavio Paz considers to be one of the 
characteristics of modernity, that is the rejection and criticism of the 
immediate past and the interrupting of continuity. To Dhlomo education was 
the fundamental key to interrupting the continuity or legacy of traditional 
heritage and forging an entranceway into modernity. Through education he 
felt women would overcome their position of subordination, particularly in 
traditional societies. Dhlomo saw custom and tradition as forms of tyranny 
which were retarding the progress of women. To him the civilization of 
modernity was inconceivable and unrealizable without the progress of 
womanhood. Though supportive of women in availing themselves to the 
opportunities and difficulties of modernity on the one hand, on the other he 
was intransigent that women should keep themselves 'pure' and 'virtuous' 
through inhibition. 

Dhlomo's passion for womanhood was very profound. Repeating his often 
articulated estimation that the highest peaks of world literature were the Attic 
tragedy, the Bible and Shakespeare, he celebrates and marvels that at these 
highest moments of creativity womanhood is at the center of their 
representations. He ponders the lessons that can be drawn from the fact that 
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides put women in the leading roles of their 

Weekly Review And Commentary "Educating the 'Masters'", Ilanga lase Natal, February 28, 
1953). 
84 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "The African Woman", 
Ilanga lase Natal, August 11, 1945. 
85 H . I. E. Dhlomo, "Bantu Womanhood", Umteteli wa Bantu, May 10, 1930. 

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• •• 

drama. To him the idea of fate or fatalism, which runs through Greek 
literature, seems to find manifestation in womanhood. Comparing 
Sophocles' King Oedipus and Shakespeare's Macbeth as arguably the greatest 
world plays, Dhlomo reflects that in both womanhooh is their central 
preoccupation as well as both being characterized by an unusual rapidity and 
intensity of dramatic movement. He indicates that Homer's Iliad has a 
woman in the central role: "The idea of woman being the best and the worst 
creature is found in Greek mythology also where the story of Pandora as the 
originator of human troubles is to my mind counteracted by that of the 
unique and glorious birth of Athene who came pure ans perfect from Zeus' 
brains."86 Considering Shakespeare, Dhlomo argues that perhaps he painted 
better women characters than those of men. Moving to African history, 
Dhlomo finds fault with those African intellectuals who thought that 
women played a minimal role in tribal or traditional societies. He mentions 
the role of Mkabayi, Shaka's aunt, who played a unique and leading role in 
the lives of Zulu's greatest kings: Shaka, Dingane and Mpande. For him 
Mkabayi had the power of crowning and uncowning kings, as well as 
dictating to the greatest of the Zulu army generals. Also mentioning 
Nongqawuse, who played a tragic role in Xhosa history, he observes: "In fact, 
the more I delve into the matter, the more I am convinced that woman in 
tribal society played as great a role as in the other examples quoted above." 

• Dhlomo is at a loss in understanding how some members of the African 
intelligentsia could possibly have conceived that women constituted a 
problem in African history. He expected women through education to 
achieve greater things in modernity. The more educated and emancipated the 
women become, Dhlomo expected them to play a greater in the 'national 
struggle of the race' against racism, segregation and apartheid.87 Being 
urbanised, educated and Christianized, thereby integrating herself into the 
modern urban industrial society, in Dhlomo's estimation inhabiting both the 
African and the European worlds, the African woman was expected to play a 
leading role in the struggle for human rights as well as in emancipatory 
struggles. 

Dhlomo's concern with how great literature had represented the role of 
women in history was in consonant with his view that literature facilitates 
one of the best readings of history. It is within this purview that he theorized 
the literary form of African drama as the embodinent of the dialectical and 
contradictory unity of tradition and modernity. One of the fundamental 
projects of H. I.E. Dhlomo was creating the historical conditions of possibility 
that would bring into being renaissance in South Africa, with literature at the 
forefront of this flowering. He wanted South Africans to produce their own 
African Goethes, Shakespeares, Keats, Homers, Beethovens, Dovraks, 

86 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Woman", Ilanga lase Natal, August 26, 1944. 
87 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Women and The National 
Struggle", Ilanga lase Natal, January 5, 1952. See also: "Women and Passes", March 22, 1952. 

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Schuberts thereby making Africa play an active role in world literature and 
world culture. Dhlomo saw the literary brilliance of Mqhayi, Jolobe, Made and 
Mqhayi as the prefiguration of what this renascecence could be. In his 
estimation these South African writers had delved into the African Soil and 
Soul by using the cultural heritage, particularly folk poetry, tales and songs in 
creating modern African masterpieces.88 Surveying African literary culture in 
the first half of the twentieth century he thought two literary efflorences had 
occurred: one in Xhosa imaginative literature with Mqhayi, A. C. Jordan and 
others; and the other in Zulu literature with Benedict Vilakazi and R. R. R. 
Dhlomo at the forefront. In each of these literary movements the concerned 
writers had not subsumed the warmth, colour, rhythm of a literary work into 
the abstract technical rules of art; they had written works ethical works with a 
constructive tone which were a contribution to the clarification of African 
problems of life.89 

There were those among his contemporary New African intellectuals who 
saw the creative work of H. I. E. Dhlomo as constituting the central element 
of the very renaissance that he wanted to bring into being by unhinging its 
theoretical blockages. Jordan K. Ngubane, himself an outstanding member of 
the New African elite, then assistant editor to R. V. Selope Thema in Bantu 
World, wrote two extensive reviews in 1941 appraising Dhlomo's published 
poetic work of that year. Appraising four poems which Dhlomo had 
published in Ilanga lase Natal, Ngubane states that although Dhlomo is well 
known as a dramatist, with this serious venturing into writing poems he has 
marked a new phase in the development of Zulu poetry by bringing into it a 
modern national spirit.90 Ngubane sees in the poems the affirmation of hope, 
triumph and victory of the African people: in other words, Dhlomo is a poet 
who sees into the distant future. In one of the poems "The Nile" Ngubane 
argues that Dhlomo is postulating the idea that although Africans are steeped 
in tradition, they will be able to meet the challenges posed by modernity. 
Ngubane interprets "South Africa" as showing the rotteness of the country 
because whites had in effect turned Africans into slaves and outcasts in their 
own country. The third poem "Native" is seen by Ngubane as posing the 
issue that the advance of civilization would outgrow the use of force, and that 
greedom is attainable through struggle. The last poem "Democracy" shows 
that Africans have hope in democracy and freedom; and that Western ways of 
life are not African ways of life, hence Africans have their particular way of 
seeing things. The only criticism Jordan Ngubane makes of the poems is that 
they written in English rather than Zulu. About six months later, Jordan 
Ngubane evaluated H. I.E. Dhlomo's famous book of poetry: Valley Of A 

88 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "'Lalela Zulu'", Ilanga lase Natal, September 17, 1949. 
89 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Dhlomo's 'Indlela Yababi"', Ilanga lase Natal, May 25, 1946. Dhlomo 
was very enthusiastic about Benedict W. Vilakazi's thesis, Oral and Written Literature in 
Nguni. He urged its publication. 
90 Jordan K. Ngubane, "'African poet Sings': Discussion of Mr. Herbert Dhlomo's Latest Poems", 
Ilanga lase Natal, April 26, 1941. 

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• •• 

Thousand Hills.91 Ngubane considers this poem of several hundred lines as 
the expression of an emergent New Africa, in that although the poem uses 
Zulu lore, it is about the glory of Africans as a whole. The poem is centrally 
about the surging of the inner spirit of the African people despite the pain of 
history imposed on them by Europeans. Beside the adversity of Europeans, 
the other is that of tradition and the Unknown Supernatural: in Ngubane's 
evaluation, the poem is about the surge of active creativeness to overcome all 
forms of adversities. Concluding that the poem traverses the whole complex 
field of human experience, to Ngubane this 'epic' signaled Dhlomo's real 
beginnings in the National Letters. 

Analyzing a different aspect of the creativity of Dhlomo than that had 
concerned Ngubane, S. Tuy ka Manzana reported on the lecture on "Bantu 
Poetry" which H. I. E. Dhlomo had given at an International Club in 
Durban.92 Manzana informed the general public that there was a general 
consensus among many members of New African intellectuals that not only 
Dhlomo was considered the ablest scholar on literature produced by Africans 
and the most brilliant scholar of poetic form, he was also a well read and keen 
researcher on Bantu folklore. Manzana designated this lecture as the best ever 
given by anyone at the Club, African or European. In the lecture Dhlomo had 
set forth several ideas: that rhythm is the essence and forum of all art; 
analyzed the various shades of beauty and colour of folk poetry; that dance 
played a vital part in all aspects of Bantu and tribal society; and lastly, that the 
future of African poetry and music depended on educated Africans, and not 
on backward tribal artists as many Europeans thought and wished. 
Characterizing Dhlomo as a sage, philosopher and poet, Manzana wrote" ... a 
young man destined to play perhaps one of the great future roles in the 
history of Bantu literature." Concurring with this high estimation of 
Dhlomo, Inkundla ya Bantu called him one of South Africa's greatest 
national poets.93 There were other appreciations of Dhlomo's other generic 

91 Jordan K. Ngubane, "Valley Of A Thousand Hills: Story of Feeling, Hope and 
Achievement", Ilanga lase Natal, November 29, 1941. 
92 S. Tuy ka Manzana, "Excellent Lecture On Bantu Poetry: An African at the International 
Club", Ilanga lase Natal, April 29, 1944. 
93 Anonymous, "People in the News", Inkundla ya Bantu, August 20, 1947. In all probability 
this news item was written by Jordan K. Ngubane as editor of the newspaper. He was soliciting 
names of black artists and scholars to be included in the African Academy of Arts which was in 
the process of being established. The names of Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Gerard Sekoto 
were also mentioned for consideration. The founding of the Academy was one of the projects 
pursued by the African National Congress Youth League a few months before the death of 
Anton Lembede on July 29, 1947. Ngubane had turned Inkundla ya Bantu into the mouthpiece of 
the Youth League, as the many writings of Lembede in this year in the newspaper testify. 
Concerning H. I.E. Dhlomo, an Unpublished Autobiography of Jordan Ngubane shows how 
closely they collaboratively worked together and in tandem in the late 1940s and early 1950s 
(The Unpublished Autobiography in the Carter-Karis Political Documents on Microfilm 
obtainable from Center for Research Libraries in Chicago). According to the Unpublished 
Autobiography, in tandem, Dhlomo on the pages of Ilanga lase Natal, and Ngubane on those of 

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• •• 

practices at this time. When Dhlomo started writing his extraordinary 
philosophical meditations under the pseudoname of 'X', they elicited a 
stirring positive response. Marin L. Khumalo wrote a short piece expressing 
his joy at reading "Rain" by 'X', which made him aware of the beauty of the 
English language as well as the fact that ordinary things in life and nature 
possess a hidden but deep philosophical resonance.94 Given this impact, it is 
understandable why Walter Nhlapo, an important member of New 
Africanism and a cultural critic of major importance, wrote a poem dedicated 
to Dhlomo.95 Yet another estimation of Dhlomo's poetry, seeing the 
influence of Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" in his poem "Harlot", T. H. Gwala 
ranked Dhlomo among the African intellectuals who were working hard for 
the liberation of African people.96 

Dhlomo's essays on the theory of literature, specifically on poetry and drama, 
clearly indicate why he was arguably the greatest intellectual force of New 
Africanism in South Africa. They have few parallels, if any, in South African 
intellectual and cultural history. In the essay "African Dramatists Should Not 
Fear Being Stigmatised as Imitators" Dhlomo defined the task of African 
dramatists as the expounding and dramatizing of a philosophy of African 
history.97 In such an undertaking, he expected a dramatist to be first and 
foremost an artist before being a propagandist, a philosopher before being a 
reformer, and a psychologist before being a patriot. Postulating the origins of 
traditional drama as religious ritual, rhythmic dances and song, Dhlomo saw 
modern drama by nature as imitative, representing the ideas, cultural factors 
and social processes that inhere in its symbolic movement through history as 
a generic form. He wanted modern drama to make poetic sense of the lived 
experience of kings, ancestors and ethnic groups within tradition. Elaborating 
further on these observations, he called for the establishing of an "African 
Dramatic Movement" in which drama would play a fundamental role in 
liberating the African people, especially the African woman, from the tyranny 

Inkundla ya Bantu, destroyed the political career of A. W. G. Champion in Natal in favour 
that of Albert Luthuli. After meeting with Albert Luthuli secretly, they both, in their 
respective forums, destroyed S. S. Bhengu and the Bantu National Congress, a bogus 
organization favoured by the white press as an alternative to the ANC. Other than its tiring 
uninformed phobic anti-Communism, The Unpublished Autobiography, is an extraordinary 
document by any measure. It was probably written in the 1960s nin exile in Swaziland. The 
document shows that in the 1940s a great intellectual Renaissance took place in Natal 
comparable, if not much greater, than that took place in the 1880s around lmvo Zabantsundu 
newspaper in Alice and King Williamstown. From the moment of institution of apartheid in 
1948, Dhlomo gravitated more and more toward politics as will be apparent in a moment. 
94 Martin L. Khumalo, "The Magic Pen 'X': An Appreciation", Ilanga lase Natal, October 7, 
1944. 
9S Walter M. B. Nhlapo, "To H. I. E.", Ilanga lase Natal, March 30, 1946. 
96 T. H. Gwala, '"This Herbert Dhlomo"', Ilanga lase Natal, August 18, 1945. 
97 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "African Dramatists Should Not Fear Being Stigmatised as Imitators", 
Bantu World, October 21, 1933. 

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• •• 

od custom and tradition.98 Modern drama should concern itself with the 
progress of African people within modernity. In this undertaking drama 
would reconstruct, recreate and reproduce the great experiences of the African 
people. In effect, drama, like cinema, would become a great educating agency 
in the formation of the ideas, ideals and character of the African people. For 
Dhlomo drama, much more than history, politics or philosophy, had the 
potential of greater description of the life and manners of the people. He 
expected that drama would reach a larger segment of masses or people than 
other forms of literary representation. Dhlomo saw one of the tasks of the 
African Dramatic Movement as harminizing and humanizing race relations 
in South Africa. The dramatic forms of representation produced by the 
Movement would be concerned not only with African roots, but would 
borrow and appropriate from European dramatic art forms of expression. 
Reflecting on the necessity of synthesizing African and European dramatic 
forms, Dhlomo wrote: "Some doubt whether Africans can write tragic 
masterpieces. How can it truthfully be said that a people whose life is one 
long series of poignant shattering experiences, have no sense of tragedy, of the 
deeper meaning of life, of the agony that is existence? However, it is not 
always necessary that an artist should actually live what he portrays or creates. 
An artist is one able to reveal and portray objective experience subjectively; 
one whom can be touched and moved by objective reality and experience as if 
it were subjective." Dhlomo anticipated that the African National Dramatic 
Movement would utilize dramatic forms to symbolically unravel the nature 
of history. 

Dhlomo sought to theorize the possible lingua franca of the dramatic forms of 
the African National Dramatic Movement. Examining the lessons imparted 
by early English literary history beginning with Chaucer, he argued it was 
after achieving linguistic and racial unity (the English being the 
conglomeration of Britons, Normans, Danes and Anglo-Saxons) that England 
produced its great literature.99 Likewise in South Africa he believed that the 
African languages and dialects (Sotho, Thonga, Zulu, Venda and Xhosa) 
should evolve a universal African literary language that would facilitate the 
production of great literature. Dhlomo postulated two ways of achieving this 
universal language: the lingua franca could be developed through an 
acceptable process of elimination, combination, comprimise and 
modification; or developing a few union languages, thereby eliminating the 
cumbersome multiplicity of languages. From either of these approaches, 
Dhlomo foresaw the accruition of four advantages; the blending of the genius 

98 H . I. E. Dhlomo, "Drama and the African", in a special issue English in Africa designated 
Literary Theory and Criticism of H. I. E. Dhlomo edited by Nick W. Visser (vol.4 no.2, 
September 1977). The essay originally appeared in:The South African Outlook, vol.66, October 
1, 1936. This essay incorporates large segments of "African Dramatists Should Not Fear Being 
Stigmatised as Imitators", which had appeared three years earlier. 
99 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Language and National Drama", ibid.; originally appeared in The New 
Outlook, March 1939. 

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of each racial group into a greater genius of the nation; a greater field of 
tradition, folklore and ideas would emerge; African literature would expand 
its readership; and make possible the establishing of a national school of 
African drama. He was well-aware that several arguments could be made 
against his propositions: that this attempt at forging languages could result in 
the institutionalization of African literatures; the union language so realized 
would be an artificial language devoid of the strength and peculiarities of the 
African languages; this establishing of cultural forms through edicts and 
regimented constructions would destroy the spontaneity and originality 
realized in the creative process; this attempted cultural and linguistic 
miscegenation would not necessarily result in the creation of original African 
drama. Nevertheless, Dhlomo believed that all of these complex artistic and 
cultural conundrums in the creation of original unifying dramatic forms 
should be one of the central preoccupations of the established "Bantu 
National Dramatic Movement" confronted with the challenges of 
modernity _100 

Dhlomo was clear that the historical conditions of this new experience of 
necessity made an African dramatist in effect be a research worker.101 This 
formulation was derived by him having from having studied yet again other 
aspects of world literatures: in other words, what lessons literatures in the 
forefront of modernist experience had for literary practices in the emergent 
South African modernity. Stating his observation that 'history plays no small 
part in drama', Dhlomo argues that the study of literary history (the past of 
African literature) could yield fruitful and astonishing results. Since there 
were many points of contact between ancient civilizations and African 
culture, a comparative study of African traditional life and literature should 
be undertaken in relation to Hebrew, Greek and Egyptian life and literature. 
The reason Dhlomo emphasized the necessity of this comparative study, was 
that he believed that it would possibly suggest the pathways along which the 
African genius could develop: "Our ideas of Past, Present and Future do not 
rest on an unchangeable rock of finality, but on the plastic wax of time, 
conditions, progress. Research in South Africa not only has still to beget 
startling changes, but will mother great drama." African drama should 
attempt to capture humanity's life as an unfolding process which never ends. 
The African dramatist should attempt to capture the human process of 
change. The real essence of drama for Dhlomo is the complex human 
mechanism that stand behind people's actions. Through combination of 
scientific thinking and poetic instinct, the African dramatist as a research 

lOO These articulations of Dhlomo in relation to drama make it clear that he was trying to 
achieve on the cultural plane what the ANC had undertaken on the political plane as from 
1912: the unity and supposed oneness of the african people. 
101 H. I.E. Dhlomo, "African Drama and Research", in Literary Theory and Criticism of H. I. 
E. Dhlomo. op. cit.; originally appeared in Native Teacher's Journal, vil.18, April 1939. 

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• •• 

worker would grapple with the dialectical forms of the complex human 
mechanism. 

"Why Study Tribal Dramatic Forms?" is one of the most fascinating essays on 
literary theory by H. I. E. Dhlomo because not only it theorizes in a cogent 
manner the contradictory unity of modernity and tradition, but also because it 
conceptualizes dramatic form from his Carlylean historical perspective of 
hero worship.102 Izibongelo, tribal dramatic compositions, intrigued him 
becau$e he understood them as sacred forms that combined the new and the 
old, as well as revealing the essential oneness of the African people. Again 
holding on fast to a comparative perspective, Dhlomo writes that like the 
great Greek dramatists, the African dramatists and scholars should find 
inspiration from the past: "Personally I believe we must work gradually from 
these tribal roots up to the highest forms we can develop." Dhlomo believed 
that the Izibongelo, like Greek drama, Shakespeare and Hebrew literature (the 
Bible), have universal appeal because of their literariness, and not because of 
their acting or theatrical quality: "These universal masterpieces are plays not 
only to be seen, but to be read and seen in spirit and in imagination." Dhlomo 
expected the modern African dramatist to be inspired by tribal dramatic forms 
in creating theatrical pieces that retain literary verveness. Theorizing modern 
African drama as about the relationship between the past and the present, the 
past preserved dynamically in recreating of the new, Dhlomo saw the past as 
the fundamental base of African literary drama. Since the task of the modern 
African dramatist is not to mirror life, but to paint it, he believed this would 
be achievable if the dramatist delved into the past on the basis of having 
grasped the present. In Dhlomo's observation, a correct and fruitful 
understanding of the present would inform the dramatist that although 
modern African drama should be constructed on the basis of tribal dramatic 
form, more fundamentally, this new synthesis should be grafted into 
Western drama. Through this double process of grafting and synthesizing, 
modern African drama would avail itself of the power to reconstruct, 
reproduce and recreate the great experiences of a people, thereby laying the 
foundations for posterity. Reflecting on the similarities of the historical 
conditions then prevailing in South Africa with those that produced 'great' 
Greek dramatic literature and the 'immortal' Elizabethan drama, Dhlomo 
wrote these remarkable words: "It is a time of transition, of migration of 
population, of expansion, of the rise of new horizons and new modes of 
thought and life. It is a time when an old indigenous culture clashes with a 
newer civilization, when tradition faces powerful exotic influences. It is a 
time when men [and women] suddenly become conscious of the wealth of 
their threatened old culture, the glories of their forefathers [and foremothers], 
the richness of their tradition, the beauty of their art and song. It is a time 
when lamentations and groans, thrills and rejoicings, find expression in 

102 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Why Study Tribal Dramatic Forms?", ibid.; originally appeared in 
Transvaal Native Education Quarterly, March 1939. 

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writing. It is a time when men discover in their history, great heroes [and 
heroines] whose activities are near enough to be of interest and meaning, but 
remote enough to form subjects of great, dispassionately passionate creative 
literature. It is a time when men realise they can preserve and glorify the past 
not by reverting back to it, but by immortalising it in art. It is a time when 
men [and women] embrace the old and seize upon the new; when they 
combine the native and alien, the tradition and the foreign, into something 
new and beautiful. It is atime when men [and women] become more of 
themselves by becoming transformed, when they retreat to advance, when 
they probe into their own life by looking outward at the wider world, when 
they sound the mute depths by gazing at the rising stars." Within this 
experience of modernity, which for Dhlomo recurs at different times of 
human history for different civilizational cultures, he expected the modern 
African dramatists as New Africans to participate fully in the creation of a 
New Africa. 

The making of a New Africa was the task of the New African intellectuals. 
The New Africa, of which Dhlomo wrote about repeatedly in the 1940s in 
Ilanga lase Natal, was being brought into being by enormous and accelerated 
changes and transformations that were occurring in matter of decades and 
days rather in centuries as had been the case in the not too distant past. These 
changes, economic, political, social and cultural had the effect of profoudly 
altering the lives, habits, systems and thoughts of African people. The rapidity 
of the changes were so drastic and swift that Dhlomo believed that only the 
few gifted and fexible of the African people would be able sense of them in 
order to intervene in the process of their happening, while the majority of 
the people would be puzzled, confused and uprooted by the dislocations in 
modern society: "Times of upheaval and flux are times of gain or loss, 
progress or retrogression .... all depending on one's readiness and ability to 
exploit the situation."103 It was through the 'great epic' of courage, grit, 
achievement of the newly educated Africans, preferably University graduates, 
by means of endurance, self-sacrifice and industry that they would be at the 
spearhead of the New Africa.1°4 Dhlomo believed that the influence of the 

103 Busy-Bee [H.I. E. Dhlomo] Weekly Review And Commentary "Passive Resistance", Ilanga 
lase Natal, July 6, 1946. 
104 Busy-Bee IH. I.E. Dhlomo] Weekly Review And Commentary "Hail Graduates", Ilanga 
lase Natal, May 24, 1947. The strong coupling and juxtapositioning of education and modernity 
by Dhlomo, like the other New African intellegentsia, was the recognition that modernity was 
not brought into being purely by overdeterrning infrastructural processes, but rather, by the 
intersction of these processes and the enlightened historical consciousness of the subjects 
themselves. Treading on the dangerous zones of Hegelianism and idealism, one could argue that 
it is the subjective historical consciousness which beckons modernity, occasionally even against 
the contervailing forces of objective structures. The most consistent of the New Africans in 
recognition of this dialectic between education and modernity was Z. K. Matthews: "Christian 
Education in a Changing Africa", International Review of Missions, January 1963. Slightly 
earlier than Dhlomo, Z. K. Matthews wrote that the matter of education for the 'New Native' 
was just as important as the issue of political rights, if not more so: "A New Native Teachers' 

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•• 

highly trained young Africans in the different spheres of their work were 
laying the foundations of this New Africa. Criticizing the New African 
intelligentsia as not contributing productively as they are capable of doing, 
given their new knowledge and great talents, he expected more social 
documents on new modes of living from them, as well as more creative 
literature symbolically dealing with the imaginative difficulties of the lived 
experience of modernity: he exhorted the New Arican Talented Tenth to 
write more books.105 Taking the example of what he considered to be the 
great teachers in world history, Buddha, Confu.cius, Socrates, Plato, Erasmus, 
Spinoza, Voltaire, Dhlomo developed a thesis that it was the absolute best of 
the African teachers who are makers and interpreters of a New Africa.1°6 The 
greatness and sacredness of the profession in imparting spiritual and 
intellectual knowledge about life, the immaculate essence of beauty, truth and 
goodness are fundamental in constructing the essential values of 
modernity.107 For Dhlomo teaching was the most demanding of professions, 
demanding the greatesr effort from the best minds. Jacob Nhlapo, Anton 
Lembede and Benedikt Vilakazi exemplified for Dhlomo what the best minds 
among Africans are capable of attaining through education.108 He hoped their 
examples would inspire a movement of artistic expression and national 
awakening. Dhlomo was deeply conscious that his articulations of the 
historical responsibilities of the New African in many ways paralled those of 
the New Negro in United States.109 

Dhlomo's boundless enthusiasm for the African Youth or the younger 
generations of Africans was his belief that uducation had made them commit 
themselves to the New against the Old.110 He praised them for having created 
a stupendous vision which had awakened the African people.111 He called 
upon them to produce doctors, lawyers, journalists and teachers which the 
country needed and was demanding. This explains his support of the African 

Course", Ilanga lase Natal, November 4, 11, 1927. Elsewhere it will be necessary to consider 
Matthew's study of African law and education in relation to modernity. 
l05 Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Intellectual Misers", Jlanga 
lase Natal, May 22, 1948. In another context, he pleaded for a book to be written about the New 
African: "Let us forget our lamentations for once, and tell of our achievements." (Weekly 
Review And Commentary "Books To Be Written", Ilanga lase Natal, October 25, 1947). 
106 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Passing Thoughts On the Teachers' Jubilee", Ilanga lase Natal, June 
26, 1943. 
107 The Romantic philosophical constructs of John Keats had a profound effect on the 
imagination of H . I. E. Dhlomo. We have already indicated that there is a general consensus 
that Dhlomo's poetry was marred by its striving for Romantic poetic effects at the moment of 
high modernism. 
10 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Educational Attainments", 
Ilanga lase Natal, October 13, 1945. 
109 Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Shape of Things To Come", 
Ilanga lase Natal, September 30, 1944. 
llO H. I. E. Dhlomo, "The Younger Generation", Umteteli wa Bantu, July 5, 1930. 
111 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Africa's Call", Umteteli wa Bantu, November 16, 1929. 

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•• 

National Congress Youth League from the moment of its inception in 1944 
on the pages of Ilanga lase Natal. In an Editorial he saw in the emergence of 
the Youth Leaguers the forging of a type of 'New Leader', committed to a 
pricipled democratization process of modernity, in contrast to 'old type of 
Great Leader' still preoccupied with tribalistic thoughts and habits of mind.112 

The New Leader in politics he saw in the careers of Anton Lembede and 
Albert Luthuli. 

The emergence of the New African was part of the formation of the African 
middle and working classes.113 Dhlomo particularized the ideological making 
of the New African. Dhlomo's major and perhaps the only sustained 
reflections on the New African was in the context of abradating white South 
Africans for their ignorance in not knowing that Africans had produced 
novelists and poets, some of whom were as good as the best in their 
communities. He sought to disabuse the stereotypes Europeans had of 
Africans by enumerating the complex categories under which Africans were 
functioning as the result of the modernization South Africa was undergoing. 
Dhlomo characterized the 'Tribal African' as a patriot who unfortunately 
viewed race relations from a perspective of nationalism blinded by 
militarism. Haunted by the military defeat suffered by the African people, he 
or she holds on to tradition blindly, composing poems and songs in praise of 
custom waiting for the moment he or she will be able to reserve this 
shameful moment. Living a Jekyl-and-Hyde existence, she presents a Janus 
face to the Europeans. To her concepts such as socialism, capitalism or 
liberalism do not hold much significance. The "'neither-Nor" African' is 
neither wholly African nor fully Europeanized, yet wishes and dreams of 
becoming fully Europeanized. Caught in the maelstrom of industrialization, 
evangelization and civilization, he lacks a universal national philosophy that 
would mediate her syncophancy to whites. Lacking originality and clear 

112 Anonymous, "Problems of African Leadership", Ilanga lase Natal, February 12, 1949: "The 
two World Wars, the urbanisation and industrialisation of thousands of Africans, the 
emergence of an African working and a middle class, and the growth of education in the mission 
stations and in urban areas, have combined to produce a New African who is no longer 
tribalistic in his thoughts and habits, and who does not believe in the Chiefs and the Great 
Leader, but in trained leadership of real and proved merit based on certain principles." Any 
mention of the concept of New African and expression of contempt for African Chiefs on the 
pages of Ilanga lase Natal could only have been written by H . I. E. Dhlomo. A whole article is 
devoted to exposing the retrogression of African Chiefs, their treachery, and their ill-equiped 
nature to be the leaders of African thought and action in the context of modernity (see: Busy­
Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Cowley Faux Pas", Ilanga lase Natal, July 11, 1953). Dhlomo was not 
alone in his enthusiasm for the Youth League. His contemporary and astute reader, Walter M. 
B. Nhlapo, had superlative praise for the Youth League publication "New Africa" 
("Johannesburg News Letter", Ilanga lase Natal, September 15, 1945). He praised in particular 
articles by Anton Lembede and A. P. Mda. 
113 Dhlomo praised the helping of the poor by young African priests as part of the creation of a 
New Africa or a New Africanism (Weekly Review And Commentary "Silent Service", Ilanga 
lase Natal, January 14, 1950). 

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• •• 

thinking, he avers any progressive ideas consoling himself in the belief that 
eventually all non-African groups will eventually be driven from South 
Africa. Of the third category, to which the 'New African' belongs, Dhlomo 
writes: "The new African knows where he belongs and what belongs to him; 
where he is going and how; what he wants and the methods to obtain it. Such 
incidents as workers' strikes, organized boycotts; mass defiance of injustice--­
these and many more are but straws in the wind heralding the awakening of 
the New African masses . .. [The New African] wants a social order where 
every South African will be free to express himself and his personality fully, 
live and breathe freely,and have a part in shaping the destiny of his country; a 
social order in which race, colour and creed will be a badge neither of 
privilege nor of discrimination .. . He knows too much and sees too far for the 
comfort of those who believe in our present unjust and crippling social 
order."114 Dhlomo articulated the political vision of the New African as a 
'civilized philosophy', for which values and issues are more fundamental 
than.race and color. The progressively thinking African intellectuals and 
democratic political leaders were among the most eminent representatives of 
New Africanism. This is the reason throughout his life Dhlomo preoccupied 
himself with the historical and social responsibilities of African intellectuals. 

Following on the tradition of nearly all New African intellectuals of 
appropriating the historical lessons of African Americans within United 
States modernity in order to negotiate the newly emergent South African 
modernity, Dhlomo argues, in one of his earliest published essays, that given 
the relative comparability of the historical experiences of the two countries, 
the self-reliance, the fortitude, the determination, the seizing of 
opportunities, and the displaying of remarkable capabilities exemplified by 
African Americans should be emulated by African political and intellectual 
leaders. 115 He believed that through the cultivation of reason would 
intellectuals be able to lead the New African masses to prosperity, progress, 
peace and fraternity. Seeking to enhance, enlarge, and deepen the social space 
of involvement of New African intellectuals among New African masses, in 
a letter to Umteteli wa Bantu Dhlomo thought it insufficient of African elite 
to form only political organization like the ANC.116 He thought it necessary 

114 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Racial Attitudes: An African View-Point", The Democrat, November 17, 
1945; "African Attitudes to the European", The Democrat, December 1, 1945. 
115 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Hardship and Progress", Umteteli wa Bantu, October 18, 1924. 
116 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Letter to the Editor", Umteteli wa Bantu, February 18, 1928. Besides his 
support for the formation of Leagues, Dhlomo saw much that was positive in the organization 
of the Co-operative Movement among Africans which would enable the 'African workman [and 
workwoman]' at the local level to overcome the difficulties which resulted from their 
'cheated' by Indians and Europeans ("The Co-operative Movement", Umteteli wa Bantu, July 
27, 1929). Concomitant with his strong advocacy for intervention at civil society, Dhlomo urged 
the formation of a national organization consisting of a council of African leaders who would 
give a sense of cohesiveness to many organizations at this level of society ("National 
Organization", Umteteli wa Bantu, August 31, 1929). It is interesting to note the different 
responsibilities he would have parceled out to the different members of the New African 

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• • • • 

of them also to participate in the construction of civic organizations such as 
the African Social Service League which principally concerned itself with the 
practical matters of social and home life for the betterment of the New 
Masses. The League intervened in the social life of Africans by sheltering 
children, crime, drunkeness and other urban vices which he thought were 
essentially the products of modernity. His support for the League was in 
condordance with his view then that more than color and nationality, it was 
economic achievement determined ones position in social life. Dhlomo 
viewed in this context the responsibilities in a four-fold manner: to work for 
the betterment of present conditions; undertaking moral upliftment; the 
economic reconstruction of communities; and the social organization of the 
African masses. The one New African intellectual whom Dhlomo considered 
to be facing the challanges modernity in an exemplary manner, the forging of 
a dialectical unity between the interests of New African intellectuals and the 
New African masses, was Solomon Plaatje. In an appraisal of the history of 
the methods of struggle by African intellectuals against oppression, racism, 
discrimination and segregation, he praised Plaatje by implication and 
allusion, and without naming him, for having shifted the policy of sending 
African delegations to England to protest to the actions and policies of white 
parliaments in South Africa, to propagandizing the African cause through 
newspapers, publishing books and giving a series of lectures: it was Plaatje 
who founded Koranta ea Becoana (The Bechuana Gazette) in 1901, and 
published Native Life in South Africa (1916), a document indicting the tragic 
consequences unleashed by the Natives Land Act of 1913, while ironically 
with a deputated delegation in London, and gave a series of lectures in 
Harlem in the early 1920s to African Americans, sometimes accompanied by 
Marcus Garvey, about the oppressive conditions of Africans in South 
Africa.117 In the same year of 1930, in taking stock of what had been published 
during its twelve months, as well as the articles that had been published 
during this period, he selected the publication of Plaatje's historical novel 
Mhudi (though written about a decade earlier) as a priceless work for the 
nation that is rare.118 Dhlomo also praised the essays of R. V. Selope Thema 
which appeared in Umteteli wa Bantu, the essays in effect which theorized 
and intervened in the construction of South African modernity. 

intelligentsia, had he the power to so: H. Selby Msimang---national policy; R. V. Selope 
Thema---the Joint Council Movement; Professor D. D. T. Jabavu---educational policy; Richard 
W. Msimang---Union anti-African legislation; Dr. Alfred Xuma or Dr. Silas Modiri Milema--­
Public Health; and Z. B. Mahabane---African National Congress. 
117 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Deputations and Propaganda", Umteteli wa Bantu, January 17, 1931. 
l18 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Through Umteteli's Pages", Umteteli wa Bantu, January 3, 1931. A year 
and a half later, following the unexpected death of Plaatje in 1932, Dhlomo wrote these 
passionate words as part of an obituary: "Now he is no more, and there is nobody to fill his 
place. Never have I found him autocratic, contumacious, or narrow of outlook. Whatever subject 
he touched upon---leadership, literature, travel, amusement---was treated with a brilliancy, 
humour, ability and finish that at once surprised and captivated, inspired and humbled me" 
("An Appreciation", Umteteli wa Bantu, June 25, 1932). 

f ;() 

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Probably one of the reasons for H. I.E. Dhlomo's high estimation of Solomon 
Plaatje's position in South Africa cultural history was his large contribution 
in the writing of the book that represented the modernist historical vision of 
New Africanism: The African Yearly Register. Not only are the contributions 
of Plaatje the only ones which are specifically identified, they are practically 
all about the Chiefs in the first part of the book which deals with tradition. Of 
the second part of the book, which covers the modernist, the editor writes the 
following: "The Editor also wishes to extend his profound thanks to Mr. H. I. 
E. Dhlomo for information and photographs appearing in the second part of 
the book. .. "119 The anthology consists of biographical sketches of leading 
African personalities traversing the spectrum of the tradition/ modernity 
dialectic from Chiefs to New African intellectuals. Most of the figures 
sketched are New Africans such Silas Modiri Molema, Walter Rubusana, 
Charlotte Manye Maxeke, Griffiths Motsieloa, Alfred Mangena, etc. The book 
also articulates a pan-African perspective with biographies of such figures as J. 
E. K. Aggrey, Edward Wilmont Blyden, Bishop Samuel Adjai Crowther. Since 
Dhlomo saw himself as the apostle of modernity, and Plaatje was very critical 
of the social consuquences ushered in by modernity, the book can be read as a 
representation of their differing understanding of modernity. 

The importance of the anthology can be measured by the fact that it is the 
only extended book review Dhlomo ever wrote of any book.120 Dhlomo saw 
the primary importance of The African Yearly Register in contributing to 
finding a solution to the problems of race in South Africa by making available 
to Europeans the outstanding achievements of Africans, thereby proving that 
what whites are capable of achieving, blacks are also capable of attaining. To 
younger Africans it would make available the efforts and achievements of 
African, past and present, which they ought to emulate; it would encourage 
them to learn about the history of Africans as well as that of African 
kingdoms of antiquity as of the immediate past. To Dhlomo the first part of 
the anthology which is on the outstanding achievements of non-South 
African Africans, besides on South Africans Chiefs, shows what greater things 
New African intellectual would be capable were it not for segregation and 

119 T. D. Mweli Skota (ed.),"Preface", The African Yearly Register: Being an Illustrated 
National Biographical Dictionary (Who's Who) of Black Folks in Africa, R. J. Lesson & Co. 
Ltd., Johannesburg, 1930. Not the allusion to W. E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk. The 
reason for this expression of gratitude is that Dhlomo had began on his own to write and 
compile a national biographical dictionary, but on hearing of similar efforts by Mweli Skota, 
decided tp contribute his own work to Mweli Skota's project. It is in this context that one can 
resume that a large part of the second part of the book consisted of contributions by Dhlomo. 

20 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "The African Yearly Register", Urnteteli wa Bantu, October 17, 1931; 
"Thoughts on The African Yearly Register", October 24, and October 31, 1931. Approximately 
twenty years later , when New Africanism was ebbing at the historical conjuncture of the 
development of official apartheid and the emergence of the Sophiatown Renaissance cultural 
movement, Dhlomo called for another book on the national biography of the race: Weekly 
Review And Commentary "African Who's Who", Ilanga lase Natal, November 19, 1949. 

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racism. He viewed the second part of the book as a national biography of the 
national soul. Dhlomo read the book as showing the indispensability of 
education in the transition from tradition to modernity. He believed that the 
self-education of brilliant African intellectuals such as Solomon Plaatje held 
many lessons for the younger members of New Africanism. The presence of 
many eminent women in the anthology Dhlomo took as a positive sign of 
the positive role of women in African history. In short, to Dhlomo the book 
was a historical mirror of the role of African intelligentsia in facilitating a 
transition from tradition to modernity. 

The fascination of the great Xhosa poet Samuel E. K. Mqhayi for Dhlomo was 
in his perception of him as located at median point between tradition and 
modernity. In his obituary, prasing Mqhayi as a pioneer of Xhosa literature 
who made the Xhosa language the vehicle of great power and beauty, who 
practised other generic forms that of novelist and biographer, Dhlomo 
situates him historically as the last link, between a tribal bard whose powers 
of creativity and verbal voice were astounding, and the modern African who 
wrote verse poetry.121 Searching for superlative words to praise Mqhayi as a 
great man, Dhlomo appraises him as not only as a voice of his people, but as 
the very essence Xhosa culture whose voice will always be a source of 
inspiration for generations of South Africans. Another brilliant scholar, a 
leading representative of the New African Talented Tenth, A. C. Jordan, in 
his obituary also praised Mqhayi in nearly the same historical terms: "A lover 
of the human race, he associated himself with several progressive 
movements and institutions. He understood alike the illiterate and educated, 
and as a result, his social influence was very wide. Because of his active 
interest in his people, his knowledge of their history, traditional and modern, 
was amazing ... And now, as the Meteor slides along and swims into the Dark 
Cloud that must for ever hide it, let us hope that the younger generation has 
caught its splendour, to cherish and yo carry to the great New Age that 

121 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Mqhayi", llanga lase 
Natal, September 1, 1945. Two years earlier Dhlomo had praised Mqhayi's book of poems 
Inzuzo as the only major work of cultural expression in 1943 (Weekly Review And Commentary 
"What Did We Do This Year", Ilanga lase Natal, January 8, 1944). Since one of the underlying 
themes of this essay is that H. I. E. Dhlomo would not have been what he was without 
Benedict Vilakazi and Jordan Ngubane, among others, and therefore the emergent Zulu 
intellectucal renascence of the 1940s (in contrast to the Xhosa cultural renascence of the 1880s), 
it remains to indicate that the death of Mqhayi had the same devastating effect on Ngubane 
as it had on Dhlomo. In an editorial obituary Ngubane observed: "The news of the death of 
Samuel E. Krune Mqhayi at Ntabozuku has come as a staggering shock on the African people .. . 
Mqhayi has been discovered not only to have been an outstanding poet among the Xhosas, but to 
have been a son of whom the Zulu, Sutho were rightly prous . .. In other words, he lit the torch 
for the younger generation of African writers ... His memory should be kept alive in the minds 
of all African posterity ... " ("S. E. Krune Mqhayi", lnkundla ya Bantu, August 31, 1945). Jordan 
Ngubane emphasized that Mqhayi had made the Izibongo art form a living tradition of 
modernity. 

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• •• 
Mqhayi must not know."122 Paramount in both evaluations is the 
responsibility of African intellectuals in transcending present obstacles in 
order to bring the New Age into being. 

Throughout his life Dhlomo wrote pieces on the relationship between 
African intellectuals and modernity. It was only in the 1940s that he began to 
reflect on this relatioship with a certain sense of consistency. Dhlomo seems 
to have been spurned on by the emergence of the African National Congress 
Youth League and the beginning of the apartheid era in South African 
history. In the same year as the founding of the Youth League, 1943, he 
castigated African intellectuals for not expressing themselves forthrightly in 
front of government commissions investigating the crisis and the untenable 
under which the African people were living. Dhlomo criticized African 
intellectuals for not pointing out to the commissions that it was the dire 
consequences of government policy that the Africans were suffering. He 
commended the emergence of a group of young African intellectuals who 
were not afraid to state forthrightly what they observed or felt. In an editorial, 
he exhorted African intellectuals to become voices of the African people: "But 
we fear that unless our intellectuals get into the sufferings of their people; 
and weave themselves into their unvoiced fears and anxieties they will never 
speak the feelings of the people."123 It was because of his perception of the 
Youth League as the voice of the people expressing the feelings of the people, 
that he was enthusiastic about its advent. Consonant with the notions he had 
stated in this editorial, he viewed the Youth Leaguers as possessing 
constructive ideas and thoughts, and had the wherewithal to make the 
African people find their true destiny. Within a year of the founding of the 
Youth League, Dhlomo celebrated its young intellectuals as the brain trust, a 
laboratory that would collect facts and make analyses on behalf of the 

122 A C. Jordan, "Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi", South African Outlook(?), September 1945, 
my italics. Reinforcing the New African view of Mqhayi as a bridge between two historical 
moments, a decade later in the 1950s in a series of essays on the theory of African literature 
written in Africa South and subsequently assembled posthumously by his daughter in Towards 
an African Literature: The Emergence of Literary Form in Xhosa, A. C. Jordan wrote: "There are 
some modem Bantu-speaking poets who seem to think that the praise-poem has had its day. 
But there are others who have shown successfully that the idiom, style and technique of the 
traditional praise-poem can be applied most effectively to modern themes. Among the latter is 
the Xhosa poet, Mqhayi" (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1973, p.27, my italics). It 
may be possible that there are greater affinities between Mqhayi and Vilakazi than those 
generally supposed. Besides their concurrence in the greatness of Mqhayi as a transitional 
figure, both H. I. E. Dhlomo and A C. Jordan were entranced by the poetic power and 
intellectual imagination of Benedikt W. Vilakazi. Jordan translated Vilakazi's famous 
"Ezinkomponi", a searing poem about the construction of South African modernity through the 
exploitation of black labor power by white capital ("In the Gold Mines", Africa South, vol.1 
no.2, January-March, 1957). 
123 Anonymous, "Our Intellectuals", llanga lase Natal, July 31, 1943. This editorial and other 
articles and editorials he wrote about intellectuals at this time resonate with ideas that H. I. 
E. Dhlomo began developing in the pages of Umteteli wa Bantu in the 1920s and 1930s. 

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• •• 
seasoned African political leadership. Interestingly, he viewed the Youth 
League not so much as a political body as a national intellectual group 
studying, discussing and presenting papers to the national body of the 
ANC.124 These observations were prescient in several respects. First, it was 
Anton Lembede's specific articulation of the ideology of African Nationalism 
that partly galvanized the ANC towards the Programme of Action of 1949. 
Upon hearing Lembede's famous presentation of this lecture in person, 
Dhlomo seems to have been convinced that African Nationalism could be 
developed into a systematic philosophy that could withstand the challenge 
and what he thought to be the dangers of Communism in Africa.125 Secondly, 
Dhlomo seems to have been excited by the call of the Youth Leaguers, 
especially by Lembede, Jordan Ngubane and A. P. Mda, for the formation of 
the African Academy of Arts and Sciences.126 In his own reflections on the 
possibility of this formation, which are much ampler and denser than those 
of the Youth Leaguers, not surprising given his seniority and greater 
intellectual power, Dhlomo gives historical contextualization by indicating 
the previous attempts to found an African Academy: by R. H. W. Shepherd in 
Lovedale in 1936; by Rheinalt Jones at the University of Witwatersrand in 
1937; by Non-European (Africans, Coloureds and Indians) Arts Congress in 
1944-45; and lastly by Benedict Vilakazi just before his death in 1947. 
Vilakazi's effort was similar to that of the Youth Leaguers, in that both 
wanted the Academy to be established under the aegis of African 
Nationalism, i.e. limited only to Africans. Dhlomo opposed this, rightly 
reasoning: "In essence Art and science are universal and indivisible." For 
Dhlomo, the only crucial and fundamental criteria was assembling together 
the most talented and knowledgeable individuals in South Africa.127 Thirdly, 
the Youth Leaguers through exemplification seem to have convinced 
Dhlomo that the distinction between intellectual work and political 

124 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Congress Youth League", 
Ilanga lase Natal, August 12, 1944. Two months earlier, Dhlomo had praised the Natal Youth 
League for having attempted to bring about a sense of national unity, created a platform for 
Youth, and having infused new blood into the ANC (see: Weekly Review and Commentary 
"Congress Youth League", Ilanga lase Natal, June 3, 1944). 
125 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Commissions and 
Organisation", Ilanga lase Natal, September 7, 1946. Dhlomo called attention to four features 
which had resonated in Lembede's lecture on African Nationalism: African Nationalism is not 
projected against Indians or the Coloureds; it is against any form of domination, especially 
foreign domination; it hoped and believed in the emergence of 'Black Africa' as a world power; 
and it articulated a belief in the leadership of Africa by Africans, and rejected any form of 
white leadership. 
126 A. M. Lembede, "An African Academy of Art and Science", lnkundla ya Bantu, July 31, 1947; 
A. P. Mda, "African Academy of Arts", Inkudla ya Bantu, July 24, 1947; Editorial [by Jordan 
Ngubane], "African Academy of Arts", Inkundla ya Bantu, July 31, 1947; Editorial [by Jordan 
Ngubane], "National Academy", Inkundla ya Bantu, August 7, 1947. This last Editorial was 
accompanied by another announcing the tragic death of Anton Lembede. 
l27 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Academy of Arts and Research", Ilanga lase Natal, September 10, 
1949. 

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I •• 

engagement was artificial. From the moment of this encounter Dhlomo 
gravitated swiftly towards constructing an intellectual and political praxis in 
support of the ANC. Fourthly, Jordan Ngubane gave space to H. I.E. Dhlomo 
in the intellectual and political forum of the Youth League, the newspaper 
Inkundla ya Bantu, to develop further his reflections on the responsibility of 
African intellectuals.128 Among all the Youth Leaguers, Dhlomo was deeply 
fascinated by Lembede and Ngubane. It could be said that Anton Lembede 
signified and represented to Dhlomo in a concrete way the classic instance of 
education facilitating an entrance into modernity from tradition. Ngubane on 
the other hand, signified to Dhlomo someone who fearlessly through 
journalism confronted the challenges of modernity.129 It would not be 
farfetched to suppose that Dhlomo saw Ngubane as a direct descended of 
Solomon Plaatje. Dhlomo's estimation of Jordan Ngubane was so high, that 
together, as we have seen, formed a brain trust of Albert Luthuli's political 
leadership of the ANC in the early 1950s. 

In another Editorial of this period, Dhlomo called upon intellectuals to be 
guided by knowledge and truth. It was written as a critique of European 
intellectuals whom Dhlomo believed were easily susceptible to racial 
prejudice and to the myth of white superiority.130 Seeking to show a selection 
of outstanding intellectuals who had been guided either by the truth-object of 
their analysis or the truth-beauty of their creation, he wrote a letter to each of 
them as a way of discoursing about their intellectual preoccupation. Each was 
preoccupied with the idea of culture similar to his own understanding of it: 
"Culture, embracing, as it does, our language, poetry, music, philosophy, 
religion and education, is the very Soul and Meaning of our race."131 In each 
of the letters, written between April 1 and and June 3, 1950, Dhlomo was 
concerned with how modernity had shaped the intellectual formation of that 
particular intellectual or artist. Perhaps in a preliminary way, these letters 
were the prefiguration of the intellectual history that Dhlomo would have 

128 H. I.E. Dhlomo, "Three Famous African Authors I Knew, II: R.R. R. Dhlomo", Inkundla ya 
Bantu, Second Fortnight, 1946. The other two on unknown authors seem to have been lost. For our 
purposes here, Dhlomo marvels that his elder brother, R. R. R. Dhlomo, is equally engaged 
with both tradition (rural) and modernity (urban). Given this double engagement, it is not 
surprising when Dhlomo states that his brother avoided intellectual circles. The essay gives 
Dhlomo another opportunity to express his great admiration for Solomon Plaatje. Dhlomo 
evaluates Benedikt Vilakazi's estimation that R. R. R. Dhlomo was the foremosr humorist of 
the day. Lastly, given that his brother was witing Zulu historical novels about Zulu kings, 
Dhlomo saw him as the last of the breed of writers more preoccupied with tradition over 
modernity. 
129 Dhlomo was enthusiastic of Jordan Ngubane participating in the formation of an African 
Research Society. He saw danger in the Society giving only priority to social issues, thereby 
neglecting the arts (Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Durban 
African Research Group", Ilanga lase Natal, July 22, 1944). 
130 Editorial, "Dilemma Of Intellectualism", Ilanga lase Natal, July 21, 1951. 
131 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo] Weekly Review And Commentary "African Authors, Scholars 
and Culture", Ilanga lase Natal, June 10, 1944. 

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•· .. 
mapped out had he had the opportunity to have done so. Writing within two 
years of the onslaught of official apartheid, in a letter to E. H. A. Made, a 
formidable Zulu essayist, Dhlomo states that the African people are engaged 
in a war of liberation, of self-expression and of self-determination. In this war, 
which he views as a titanic struggle of ideas, and an unfortunate clash of 
cultures in which issues, ideologies and fundamentals are deliberately 
obscured, the duty of the African writer is to inspire the illiterate, the 
articulate and the oppressed with determination to search for Truth and a 
will to unrelentingly pursue the struggle against oppression until victory is 
assured: "He [or she] must mirror and tell of the people, reveal their soul and 
suffering, expose their exploitation, fight by their side, sing their tribulations 
and triumphs, their naked practical experiences and their hidden, flaming 
and unconquerable spiritual valour."132 In this ideological struggle, words are 
weapons of war which should be effectively employed in the 'Cause' of the 
'Race'. The literary works of Made, which he enumerated as two novels, two 
volumes of biography and history, two books of poetry, and a book of essays, 
were a fundamental part of the cause of the African people. Demanding that 
the writer must identify herself with her people, Dhlomo concludes his letter 
with this commanding tone: "This is your task and that of your fellow­
writers. Africa demands it of you. We do not seek or await your reply. We 
conscript you to the duty." 

In the same issues of Ilanga lase Natal as this one with this communication to 
Made, in fact on the same page, Dhlomo considered the musical importance 
of Simon Ngubane, then a young African composer. Praising Ngubane for 
having researched and studied indigenous African music on a scientific and 
technical level throughout Central Africa, Dhlomo argued that such 
undertakings enable African people to re-construct their cultural history of 
the various ethnic musics as well as their particular art forms. What 
fascinated Dhlomo was the possible reconstruction of the various national 
schools of music, and their particular idioms and characteristics. The 
relationship between rural indigenous music and the urban new African 
musics was constantly in his investigative imagination. Although 
articulating again and again his constantly reiterated position that creative 
arts depend on the gifted chosen few (echoes of Thomas Carlyle and W. E. B. 
Du Bois), Dhlomo was intrigued by the differentiated cultural complexions of 
various nations. In the letters to various intellectuals and artists was not only 
concerned with intellecual history but with tracing the possible forms of the 
interconnected cultural history of the African people. His Letter to Rueben 
Caluza, one of South Africa's famous composers makes this clear, the 
interweaving of these two historical forms. In the Letter Dhlomo recalled a 

132 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Weekly Letter: To E. H. A 
Made", Ilanga lase Natal, April 22, 1950. In one of the very few appreciations Dhlomo ever 
wrote, he praises E. A. H. Made for having passed the stem criticism of Benedict Vilakazi (H. 
I. E. Dhlomo, "Emman A.H. Made: An Appreciation", Ilanga lase Natal, November 6, 1948). 

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t •• 

whole night spent with other New African intellectuals listening to the 
quartettes and symphonies of Schubert and Beethoven. In the process of 
listening, several intense discussions ensued: the nature of the creative; the 
comparative merits of poetry and music; and the role of creative art in nation 
building and national liberation.133 The conversation centered on the capacity 
of the music to portray the tribulations and aspirations of the 'Race'. In the 
midst of these recollections Dhlomo made several observations. While in 
traditional societies the creation of music was done largely through a process 
of spontaneity, in modernity creativity and research are inseperable. 
Although wishing to make clear the distinction the process of creativity 
between tradition and modernity, Dhlomo believed that traditional cultural 
heritage was utilizable to create new forms, since concerning cultural forms 
tradition was evolutionary and progressive. Like practically all the New 
African intellectuals, Dhlomo condemned jazz as 'cheap', presumably in his 
instance because of its spontaneity or improvisational quality. These 
observations make it possible to abstract a fundamental principle about the 
relationship between modernity and tradition that Dhlomo implicity, but 
unfortunately never explicitly articulated into a fully theorized historical 
construct: that concerning cultural matters, there had to be an element of 
continuity between tradition and modernity, whereas concerning political 
matters and processes there had to be complete rapture. 

One of the reasons for Dhlomo's passionate alignment with modernity was 
what what he believed to be the continually expansive autonomous zone of 

133 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Weekly Letter: R. T. 
Caluza", Ilanga lase Natal, June 3, 1950. Preceding these weekly letters of 1950 to particular 
leading African intellectuals, in 1947 in a prefigurative form, Dhlomo had written shorter 
sketches of Snaps about African women and men who had achieved outstanding work: "The 
master minds, the greatest heroes, the saviours are often the unknown but dutiful and faithful 
workers." In these Snaps Dhlomo considered R. T. Caluza (May 24), Compositors Qune 7), D. G. 
S. Mtimkhulu Qune 14), W. J. Mseleku (August 9), Gerald Bhengu (August 9), Dr. B. W. Vilakazi 
(August 16), Mrs. A. J. Sililo (August 30), K. E. Masinga (September 13), Miss Bertha Mkize 
(September 20). The tribute to B. W. Vilakazi was because of his having obtained a few weeks 
before a Doctor of Literature from the University of Witwatersrand. Dhlomo celebrated him as 
a 'native genius in creative literature' who exemplified the achievement of the race in the 
academic field. To Dhlomo, Vilakazi had elevated the power and reputation of Zulu 
literature. Dhlomo was most enthusiastic about Vilakazi and Professor Dike's work on the 
Zulu-English Dictionary; it was published about a year after Vilakazi's death (Busy-Bee [H. 
I. E. Dhlomo] Weekly Review And Commentary "Snaps: Dr. B. W. Vilakazi", Ilanga lase 
Natal, August 16, 1947). Z. K. Mathews in 1961 was to undertake a similar project of 
reconstructing an African intellectual history in Imvo Zabantsundu. Matthews sketches from 
June 3 to November 21 were much deeper and more extensive, beginning with Elijah Makiwane 
and John Knox Bokwe, passing through Solomon Plaatje and Alfred Mangena, to Charlotte 
Manye Maxeke and Pixley ka Isaka Seme. Matthews' sketch involved many other portraits. It 
would seem that H. I.E. Dhlomo's Snaps were a trial run to his writing a major study of the men 
who founded the ANC; he seems to have been hindered from undertaking such a project by the 
inadequacy of historical records (Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo] Weekly Review And Commentary 
"Write That Record or Story", Ilanga lase Natal, January 17, 1948). 

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' .. 
individuality or individualism that it made possible. This expansive zone of 
individualism Dhlomo believed to be critical in order for original creativity 
to take place in a modernist world experience. Exhorting African creative 
artists in music to thoroughly learn from both Western and African music, 
and that creative process is an individual and cannot or should not be 
dictated from without, Dhlomo argued also that there was much to be learned 
from the individualism at the center of the Western creative process: "Like 
Wordsworth and T. S. Eliot, for instance, in poetry, and like Wagner and the 
modern anatonality composers, all of whom introduced new forms, The 
African composer is free to use whatever material he chooses to produce his 
original ideas. The vast collections of tribal music and the material supplied 
by research workers present a useful store-house for him." For Dhlomo 
originality and individualism were inseparable, which partly explains his 
hostility to Soviet Communist edicts about cultural matters. In the letter to 
Caluza Dhlomo explains that it was in the context of the intersection or 
intercrossing of certain issues that Caluza's name came up in the 
conversation among the New African intellectuals gathered together in an all 
night session of listening to classical music: between research and creativity, 
between individualism and originality, the very fact that Caluza had studied 
both African American music and Western music, besides his enormous 
grasp of indigenous rural music and the new urban music. Having 
contributed music to one of Dhlomo's plays, and Dhlomo (an accomplished 
violonist) having presented two of his string quartettes with others to critical 
acclaim in Johannesburg, Dhlomo believed Caluza capable of leaving behind 
great original works of beauty that would enormously benefit the 'Race. 

Benedict Wallet Vilakazi was the New African intellectual who exemplified 
in a most extraordinary way the unity of research and creativity in modernist 
intellectual practices. Although they were close friends, now and the 
intellectual adversaries, and constant interlocutors, Vilakazi was the one 
intellectual of his generation who struck terror in Dhlomo because of his 
enormous intellectual power and fertile poetic imagination. From the 
moment of their intellectual dual over African poetic form in 1938 to 
Vilakazi's tragic and totally unexpected death in 1947, Bambatha (born in the 
same year as Bambatta Rebellion of 1906) was a constant point of reference in 
Dhlomo's intellectual odyssey.134 Vilakazi's impact on South Africa cultural 
history has been profoundly deep, as can be judged from the inestimable he 
has had on Mazisi Kunene,135 the greatest poetic voice after the generation of 

134 An Editorial in Ilanga lase Natal announcing the death of Benedict Vilakazi, in all 
probability written by Dhlomo, spoke of his achievement as so monumental that superlatives 
were unnecessary ("Dr. B. W. Vilakazi", November 1, 1947). 
135 In his book of poetry, Zulu Poems, Mazisi Kunene has a poem on his master, which reads in 
part: "Great poet, who sleeps between the rocks/ ... Shouting your name, Presenting your 
beauty/ To each generation that reawakens with your song" ('Dedication to a Poet', Africana 
Publishing Corporation, New York, 1970, p.88). In the Introduction to the anthology, Kunene 

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Vilakazi and Dhlomo, definitely surpassing the generation separating them, 
that of Jordan Ngubane and Anton Lembede.136 

Immediately following Vilakazi's death, Dhlomo wrote a threnody, that is 
only surpassed by A Valley Of A Thousand Hills, in terms of length among 
his poems. "Ichabod: Benedict Wallet Bambatha Vilakazi" contains some 
remarkable lines:137 

Cry "Ichabod!" Then pause! The people mourn 
Their greatest Bard, noe gone beyond the bourne. 
The singer of sweet songs will sing no more! 
No more his face be seen. Ah! nevermore! 
And nevermore those winged feet shall tread 
The land he loved, that loved him dear! 

How beautiful our native speech resounded 
In the mellowed tones you weaved in Race-pride grounded; 
Now pruned our Tongue and desolate the Race, 
For who have we to fill thy honoured place, 
Who like a planet in the firmament 
Blazed forth; amazed, left us in wonderment? 

Now art thou gone great Vilakazi, sage 
And poet, greatest Singer of your age. 

Black bards and heroes greet their friend and peer; 
Great Shaka, Magolwane there appear, 

Mbuyazi Aggrey, Dube, Mqhayi, ache 
To meet him---so Bambatha, his namesake; 
Not these alone, for here below he loved 
And spoke with long-haired bards, among them moved; 
Now Keats, his idol, whom he prayed to meet, 
Chaste Shelley, too, come forth our Bard to greet, 
And Catholic great Dante, Comedy 
Divine enjoying, smiles to meet and see 

A Catholic bard mate. 

observes: "As the Zulu literary tradition had been devalued, I started writing without models, 
until I discovered Vilakazi's poetry", p.20. 
l36 The mentioning of the names of Benedict Vilakazi, Anton Lembede, Jordan Ngubane, H. I.E. 
Dhlomo together argues for a cultural renaissance which took place among Zulu intellectuals 
and artists in the 1930s and the 1940s, that would compare to a similar event that took place 
among Xhosa intellectuals, Walter Rubusana, Elijah Makiwane, John Tengo Jabavu, Pambani 
Mzimba in the 1870s and the 1880s. 
137 H . I. E. Dhlomo, "Ichabod: Benedict Wallet Bambatha Vilakazi", Ilanga lase Natal, 
November 8, 1947. 

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It is fascinating how Dhlomo situates Vilakazi nationally and wordly: in 
relation to Magolwane, Shaka's court poet who revolutionized Zulu poetry; 
in proximity to Mqhayi, because they both had to modulate their poetic voice 
across the modern/tradition polarity; adjacent to Shelley and Keats, because of 
his emulation of their Romantic sensibility; and Dante, because they were 
both great Catholic poets. 

Approximately three years earlier Dhlomo had written a poem in which 
placed Vilakazi in a context of tradition traditional poets from antiquity to the 
modern times, because their linguistic innovations had not been easily 
descernible, had not been accorded the acclamation they deserved. Celebrating 
Vilakazi as a poet of rare genius, Dhlomo wrote that he had brought 
something new and strong into Zulu language as well as into South African 
culture:138 

Until thou Poet of rare genius uttered 
Word wrought fireworks! Amazed, we 

stood to scan! 

Sing on great Vilakazi, Scholar, death­
less name! 
(How strong and sweet resounds our 

Father's tongue 
In those rich lines you have so neatly 
sung!) 

We hail you, Sage! Your efforts are 
your People's Fame! 

Indeed, Benedict Vilakazi's name has remained deathless in South African 
intellectual and cultural history. Dhlomo marvelled at the unity of the critical 
and the poetic in Vilakazi's intellectual imagination. Perhaps in Africa also, 
for in an essay celebrating the release of Nelson Mandela from a 27-year 
imprisonment in 1990, Ngugi wa Thiong'o invoked the name of Vilakazi 
among other South African writers as exemplifying the best in South Africa 
that is essential to the whole of the African continent.139 Dhlomo's homages 
to Benedict Vilakazi were not limited to versification in threnodic form only, 
but also involved his translating from Zulu into English a long poetic 
homage to the great poet by the eminent Zulu man of letters, Emman H. A. 
Made.140 

138 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Benedict Wallet B. Vilakazi, M. A.", Ilanga lase Natal, January 15, 
1944. 
139 Ngugimwa Thiong'o, "Many Years Walk To Freedom: Welcome Home Mandela", Moving 
the Center: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms Heinemann, Portsmouth, 1993. 
140 Emman H. A. Made, Ubambatha Kamakhwatha, trans. H. I. E. Dhlomo, [no publisher's 
name], Johannesburg, 1949. This is a booklet of about fifteen pages. Mazisi Kunene's estimation 

7 () 

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Five years after the death of his great friend, Dhlomo was able to undertake a 
historical appraisal of Vilakazi in a cultural forum of the then emergent 
Sophiatown Renaissance, Drum magazine. In a penetrative p sychological 
portrait of Benedict Vikakazi, Dhlomo indicates that it was Vilakazi's 
mastering of Latin that had a determining effect on his intellectual 
formation.141 This enabled him to read favourite poet Virgil and other Latin 
classics, like Terence, in the original. Ideologically, this led him to convert 
from Protestantism into Catholicism. Dhlomo believes this conversion may 
have had something to do with Vilakazi's political conservatism, which 
isolated and alienated him from the Youth Leaguers. Despite this, Dhlom o 
states that everyone was of his extraordinary genius: "There is no doubt that 
when he died he was already the most outstanding figure in Bantu literature 
as original writer, critic and research scholar ... But it is doubtful if the present 
will be called his age for time was against him, but in favour of his equally 
determined rivals."142 Dhlomo himself was without a doubt the most 
formidable of Vilakazi's rivals. What Dhlomo admired in Vilakazi was the 
moral seriousness in striving to bring the African people into the modern 
age. This impressed itself on Dhlomo by the fact that although through self­
education Vilakazi had attained the best education available in South Africa, 
obtaining a Doctorate of Literature from the University of Witwatersrand, he 
still wanted to pursue another doctorate from either Oxford or Cambridge 
University. Vilakazi's striving to obtain the best education available 
anywhere in the world in our modern age, his completing a new standard 

of Made's effort is forthright and conceptually exact, thereby making his Thesis on the whole 
the formidable document it is: "In the long elegy on Vilakazi he does not show himself 
sincerely moved by the death of Vilakazi. Vilakazi's death is no doubt a great national loss, 
but not Made's personal loss. As a result, his poem lacks poignancy. He does not mourn his death 
but weeps generally with others. Vilakazi's death reminds him of the great heroes of the 
African nation" (Raymond Kunene, An Analytical Survey of Zulu Poetry both Traditional and 
Modern, Master of Arts Thesis, Department of Bantu Studies of the University of Natal, 1958, 
p.219-20). In the preceding pages (p.212-13) Kunene traces the indebtedness of Vilazi to H. I.E. 
Dhlomo. Kunene's carefully constructed analysis and argument that Vilakazi was the greatest 
modem Zulu poet is riveting. Elsewhere it will be necessary to argue in detail that both 
Vilakazi and Kunene are the greatest poets produced by Zulu literature; and that perhaps 
Kunene is the greatest poet produced by Africa in twentieth century. 
141 It is very ironic that Dhlomo was unaware that the Ilanga lase Natal of the 1920s and 
early 1930s had as much determining influence on the intellectual formation of Vilakazi. It was 
writers for the newspaper such as his brother R.R. R. Dhlomo, A.H. Ngidi, Rev. Nyokana, 
Josiah Mapumulo who were a source of inspiration to him. It would seem that it was the 
English prose of Mapumulo and Ngidi now and then flowered with Latin words that stirred 
Vilakazi into studying Latin (B. Wallet Vilakazi, "What Writers Has This National Paper", 
Ilanga lase Natal, March 17, 1933). In another context, Dhlomo was prescient in having seen 
the influence of Rev. A.H. Ngidi on Benedict Vilakazi (Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], Weekly 
Review And Commentary "Dr. Ngidi's Poems", Ilanga lase Natal, December 13, 1947): "It is no 
secret that the late Dr. Vilakazi owes much to the teachings and example of Dr. Ngidi, with 
whom he was a great friend." 
142 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Dr. Vilakazi", Drum, July 1952. 

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Zulu-English dictionary, his doctoral dissertation on Nguni literature, as well 
as his creative work in prose and poetry, convinced Dhlomo that he was 
arguably the greatest apostle of modernity produced by South Africa in the 
intellectual arena. 

That this high estimation of Vilakazi was universally shared by other New 
African intellectuals can be seen in the following words by Jordan Ngubane in 
an Editorial in Inkundla ya Bantu: "He has refused to swallow 
indiscriminately White misrepresentations of the African and has taken 
every opportunity to make his own enquiries and as a result has succeeded in 
bringing to the surface very useful information on the African. Most of our 
brilliant scholars have been afraid of doing as much research and publishing 
their findings as Dr. Vilakazi has done. In allowing himself to be dominated 
by the spirit of research and the will to find out the truth for himself, he has 
set an example worthy of emulation by all who seek to benefit the nation by 
their academic attainments."143 In other words, for Ngubane, and this we can 
be certain also reflects Dhlomo's position: research must illuminate, and if 
possible resolve, problems of the modern age. 

The debate of 1938-9 between Benedict Vilakazi and H. I.E. Dhlomo about the 
nature of Zulu poetry in the transition from tradition to modernity, takes on 
added weight in the context of this New African political position on the 
responsibilities that accrue to scholarly research. In his magisterial essay, "The 
Conception and Development of Poetry in Zulu", Vilikazi had sought to 
show that izibongo, the classical Zulu poetic form originally associated with 
the praise of kings and warriors, was authentic poetry because it could 
encompass the deep emotional experience and the complex association of 
images characteristic of any excellent world poetry. Vilakazi was responding 
to the condescension of white South African scholars who had argued that 
while izibongo may have had the poetic power to represent the lived 
experience of the Shakan era, it could not comprehend let alone make sense 
of the world created by the entrance of European civilization into African 
history. In other words, while izibongo may have been servicable in the pre­
colonial world (traditional societies), it had not the complex range to grapple 
with the world of the new (modern societies). Vilakazi indicates that it is a 
prevalent mistake to think of izibongo as limited to the poetic praising of 
kings and warriors, for in fact they are attributable to any person or animal or 
any object that resonates with emotional excitement: "Personally I contend 
that they are poetry, because in studying the language of their composition, 
one does not fail to discover a deep and genuine imaginative tone, for the 
composer of izibongo apprehends experience, both in its intensity and its 

143 Editorial Opinion, "Dr. Benedict Vilakazi", Inkundla ya Bantu, April, First Fortnight, 
1946. The coupling of the names of Anton Lembede and Vilakazi toward establishing a 
nationalist project in research has the imprint of Ngubane who was then editor of the 
newspaper. 

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. .. . 
subtlety, and shows undeniable power of revealing unknown modes of being 
through his creation and association of irnages."144 Displaying his 
extraordinary analytical powers, Vilakazi proceeds to discuss the language of 
composition (poetic form) of the various forms of izibongo. To Vilakazi it 
was inevitable that Western poetry would eventually influence Bantu poetry 
or izibongo 'because all the new ideas of our age have reached us through 
European standards'. But in his estimation, the grafting of a Western poetic 
form onto izibongo would not do much to alter inner spirit of this great 
poetry. Reiterating a theme that had been constant with New African 
intellectuals as the twentieth century unfolded, that African modernity in 
South Africa should model itself on African American modernity in United 
States, Vilakazi implied that the tribulations of Negro Spirituals in United 
States modernity held many comparable lessons for izibongo in the context of 
South African modernity: "Every great literature of the nations has 
contributed to the universal meaning of life. This is found in its poetry, and 
here again I feel the heavy burden laid on our poets by the impact of Western 
conditions. In Negro literature where the Black man has sung of human 
ingratitude, atrocious servitude and crude brute power, the whole thing has 
been summed up in two lines, in the most triumphant manner and power. 
The lines are sublime in simplicity and in depth of universal meaning: 

"Goin' to lay down my sword and shield 
Down by the river side-----
Study war no more." 

The Negro song triumphant as it stands brings back to me the Zulu line 
above, Yuma uphansi urnkhonto wezinsizwa! (Corne let us sing of fallen 
heroes and spears!) There is a dream in the song reflecting the Zulu mind's 
devastating experience, and the vanishing of his shadowy faith in war." 
Vilakazi believed izibongo would still possess a universal meaning of life 
even in a world dominated by the ideas of the West. 

There is no doubt that Dhlorno was profoundly affected by these reflections of 
Benedict Vilakazi. In his excited response with passages of great brilliance, 
Dhlorno argued that Vilakazi had failed to register that same variants of 
izibongo whose narrative sequential order was peculiar, in that they were 
characterized by disjunctive continuity ("gaps"), were not wholly pure 
izibongo for they interrupted by the intrusion of dramatic cornposition.145 

Dhlorno reconstructed various forms of izibongo to show their dramatic 
nature. Dhlorno even draws how these intrusive dramatic compositions 
unfolded on the stage. Vilakazi's rejoinder to Dhlorno's intervention was 
uncompromisingly critical arguing that since Dhlorno was principally 

144 B. W. Vilakazi, "The Conception and Development of Poetry in Zulu", Bantu Studies, 
vol.xii no.2, June 1938. 
145 H.I. E. Dhlomo, "Nature and Variety of Tribal Drama", Bantu Studies, vol.xiii 1939. 

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preoccupied with Western literary forms, practically all of which were written 
in English rather than Zulu, and suspiciously resonating with Romantic 
sensibility rather than what Vilakazi understood asa Bantu sensibility, 
Dhlomo could hardly be taken seriously as possessing an adequate knowledge 
of Bantu cultures. In other words, Vilakazi saw in Dhlomo's preoccupations 
with European literary figures and sensibilities a source of his mania for 
searching for hybridizations where none existed at all. Knowing that Dhlomo 
wrote his plays in English, Vilakazi lamented the absence of modern 
'authentic' Bantu drama. Pressing his point, Vilakazi wrote: "By Bantu 
drama, I mean a drama written by a Bantu, for the Bantu, in a Bantu 
language. I do not class English or Afrikaans dramas on Bantu themes, 
whether these are written by Black people, I do not call them contributions to 
Bantu Literature. It is the same with poetry ... I have an unshaken belief in 
the possibilities of Bantu languages and their literature, provided the Bantu 
writers themselves can learn to love their languages and use them as vehicles 
for thought, feeling and will. After all, the belief, resulting in literature, is a 
demonstration of people's 'self' where they cry: 'Ego sum quod sum' [I'm 
what I'm]. That is our pride in being black, and we cannot change 
creation."146 Such a devastating dig could only have enhanced Dhlomo's 
respect for Vilakazi. It was perhaps from this shattering encounter that 
Dhlomo was to continually preoccupy himself with the role of Zulu in 
articulating modernist sensibilities. It remains to note that these observations 
of Benedict Vilakazi anticipated Ngugi by more than forty years in the reasons 
the Kenyan writer gave for abondoning the English language and 
commencing to write in Kikuyu language. 

The relationship between Vilakazi and Dhlomo is one of the most fascinating 
in the intellectual and cultural history of South Africa. Unfortunately, it has 
not received the kind of attention it requires and deserves. It would seem 
that they were both of each other as representing the best intellectually that 
Zulu culture was contributing to South African culture. This was also 
apparent to others. In a lecture he gave to the South African Non-European 
Arts Congress in 1946, a year before his death, Vilakazi is reported to have 
praised Dhlomo in the highest terms possible.147 The lecture was part of 
Vilaklazi's undertaking, as he had formulated in his debate with Dhlomo a 
decade earlier, that Bantu culture was capable of achieving the best that had 
been achieved anywhere in the world. In yet another lecture at the 
International Club given a year earlier than the previously mentioned, with 
Dhlomo presiding, Vilakazi gave a detailed study of Xhosa and Zulu 
literatures. Dhlomo himself reported that one of the aims of the lecture was 
to refute what some white anthropologists were propagating about the 

146 B. W. Vilakazi, "To the Editor", Tl1e South African Outlook, vol.69, July 1, 1939. 
147 L. L. Khumalo, "South African Non-European Arts Congress", Ilanga lase Natal, January 
26, 1946. 

7Ll. 

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supposed backwardness of African cultures and thought systems.148 What 
really excited Dhlomo was that Vilakazi was reading from a massive 
manuscript, which he presumed to indicate that Vilakazi was preparing for 
another degree. In all probability Vilakazi was reading from a manuscript 
which he submitted the following year as a dissertation at the University of 
Witwatersrand: "Oral and Written Nguni Literature". The presentation 
impressed Dhlomo so much that he stated that Vilakazi has to be one of the 
premier research scholars in South Africa. Indeed, this dissertation has a 
reputation of being one of the best ever submitted to a South African 
university. Dhlomo himself was enthused when Vilakazi became the first 
African to receive a Doctor of Letters from any prestigious South African 
university. To Dhlomo, as to many other Africans, Vilakazi's achievement 
was a prove of what Africans were capable of attaining in the process of 
finding their democratic place in the rapidly unfolding historical experience 
of modernity. Dhlomo reports that all of these undertakings by Benedict 
Vilakazi were part of his preparations to organize a Writers' Society, which 
the ANC Youth Leaguers like Jordan Ngubane and Anton Lembede were to 
built on in their attempt to launch an African Academy of Arts and 
Sciences.149 

It needs to be registered that not all appraisals of Benedict Vilakazi's singular 
or collective work were necessarily laudatory. In a review of Vilakazi's new 
book of poems Amal' Ezulu (Zulu Horizons), written a year and half before 
Vilakazi's death, Dhlomo prophetically stated that as a great scholar and great 
poet his legacy will beyond his death: "Both the book and the Doctorate show 
us new horizons of the genius and progress of our Race."150 While in the past 
Dhlomo found Vilakazi obsessed with the idea of classicism in poetry, that is 
art for art's sake, in that the artist was worshipping beauty, music and Nature, 
the new poems announce a new revolutionary departure in concerning 
themselves with the tragic and pathetic conditions of African people caught 
in the maelstrom of modernity. Dhlomo eviscerates that a great artist is 
neither an extreme traditionalist nor an extreme revolutionist. Dhlomo 
thinks Amal' Ezulu has found this median ground. He praises Vilakazi for 
speaking on behalf of the suffering African masses. Dhlomo selects 
"Ezinkomponi" ("In the Gold Mines") for special mention, a poem that has 
entered the canon of South African poetic form. By some strange coincidence 
the poem was translated into English in 1957 in two separate journals by A. C. 
Jordan, the great Xhosa novelist, and Vilakazi's translator, Florence Louie 
Friedman.151 Two excerpted stanzas from a translation by Jordan may indicate 

148 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Mr. Vilakazi at the 
International Club", Ilanga lase Natal, July 28, 1945. 
149 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weely Review And Commentary "A 'Writers' Conference And 
Society", Ilanga lase Natal, August 5, 1944. 
150 H. I. E. Dhlomo "Dr. B. W. Vilakazi: Poet", Ilanga lase Natal, March 30, 1946. 
151 B, Wallet Vilakazi, "Ezinkomponi" ("In the Gold Mines"), trans. Florence Louie Friedman, 
Drum, July 1957. 

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t • • 

what Dhlomo may have found compelling in original Zulu when it was first 
published: 

Thunder away, machines of the mines, 
Thunder loud and loud 
Deafen with noise that we may niot be heard 
Though we cry out aloud and groan 
As you eat away the joints of our bodies; 
Giggle and snigger, you old machines; 
It is well that you laugh and scorn our rage, 
For great is your power and fearful; 
You may do as you please: we succumb. 

We agreed to leave our round-shaped huts, 
To be herded here castrated males; 
We gave up our corn, amasi and milk 
To live here on pap and porridge; 
All gone is our manhood: we are mere boys; 
We see that the world is upside down; 
We are woken at dawn, and we stand in a row; 
Where was it ever done to bury a man 
While he walks and sees with both his eyes152 

This universal central theme of the clash between tradition and modernity, 
which can be found in the Cubist paintings of Fernand Leger, in the 
Constructivist photography of Rodchenko, in the Futurist poetry of 
Mayakovsky, was what Dhlomo found so compelling in some of Vilakazi's 
poems: "How far European thought, art forms and diction influence and 
colour African poetry is an interesting subject which we cannot discuss here." 
Dhlomo suggests that Vilakazi's poetry should be compared to the work of 
other poets; but a real expansive zone of this comparison should be world 
poetry. Although Dhlomo was taken with the spiritual revolution achieved 
by Amal' Ezulu, he nevertheless felt disappointed that it did not demonstrate 
or embody the theory of Zulu rhyme developed by Vilakazi in his landmark 
essay "The Conception and Development of Poetry in Zulu". Also Anton 
Lemdede commented on the absence of the full realization in one of 
Vilakazi's Zulu novels: Nje-Nempela. Contrasting the novel to H. I. E. 
Dhlomo's Dingane ka Senzangakhona, Thomas Mofolo's Chaka, and John 
Dube's U jeqe, The Bodyservant of King Shaka, Lembede argued that Vilakazi 
had not taken full advantange of the raw material of South African history 

152 Dr. B. W. Vilakazi, "Ezinkomponi" ("In the Gold Mines"), translated from Zulu by A C. 
Jordan, Africa South, vol.l no.2, January-March 1957. 

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which avails itself to any serious novelist.153 Lembede found the structure of 
the novel unsophisticated and its literary style not sufficiently complex. As a 
way of conforming the judgement of Anton Lembede, it is interesting to note 
that in the many reflections on Vilakazi's work, not even once did Dhlomo 
comment on his novels.154 

Dhlomo's conception of the role New African intellectuals in facilitating the 
entrance of African people into modernity was not limited only to writers 
and artists, it very much also involved political leaders. This gained in sense 
of urgency as of 1948, when apartheid was officially instituted. In a series of 
Editorials in Ilanga lase Natal at this time he examines the possibilities of 
New African intellectuals intervening within the ANC, not only with the 
intent of making it a modernizing instrument, but much more importantly, 
to making it polititicize the historical consciousness of the New African 
masses. Dhlomo takes it upon himself through his columns in this great 
newspaper not only to wage an uncompromising war against apartheid, but 
also to combat organizations such as Non-European Unity Movement and 
All- African Convention which he felt were just distracting the ANC from 
realizing its historical mission of liberating the dispossessed people from 
oppression as well as well as making them embrace modernity without any 
reservations whatsoever. Hence the appearance of articles attacking I. B. 
Tabata and denigrating the political leadership of A. W. G. Champion. This 
denigration is accompanied by the upliftment of the political leadership of 
Albert Luthuli. Dhlomo wrote several brilliant articles on Luthuli at this 
time. Jordan Ngubane in his Unpublished Autobiography, began secretly in 
South Africa following the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and completed a few 
years later in exile in Swaziland, writes that a decision was made secretly 
between himself and Dhlomo, through their respective columns in Inkundla 
ya Bantu and Ilanga lase Natal, and given as a fait accompli to Luthuli, to 
crush any obstacles to making the fundametal instrument of politically 
modernizing the minds of African people. While writing the Unpublished 
Autobiography in South Africa, Ngubane portrays several sad comical scenes 
of him running to the bedroom to hide the manuscript when someone 
knocked at the house door at night, while his children breaking in 
uncontrollable laughter. But Ngubane knew what he was doing because the 
Unpublished Autobiography is an extraordinary document through which it 
may be possible to construct the intellectual renaissance that took place in 
Natal in the late 1940s to the early 1950s. But profoundly saddening also, this 
document clearly shows the great loss to the African people when Jordan 
Ngubane because of his extreme anti-Communism defected from the ANC in 

153 A. M. Lembede, "Book Review of Nje-Nempela by B. Wallet Vilakazi", in The Collected 
Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede, op. cit., pp.141-146. Originally appeared in: Teachers' 
Quarterly Review, I, 2, September 1946. 
154 The only major study of Vilakazi's poetry argues that he was a better poet than a novelist 
(D. B. z. Ntuli, The Poetry of B. W. Vilakazi, J. L. van Schaik, Pretoria, 1984, p.5). 

77 

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• 

the early 1950s, passed through the Liberal Party, died in the arms of Gatscha 
Buthelezi and Inkatha in 1985. This was a tragic and a great loss. These are 
reflections for another occasion. 

Dhlomo was historically conscious that his movement from being 
preoccupied with literary and cultural matters to concentrating on politics 
was motivated by the necessity to construct a different and a new South Africa 
history. A year before 1948, Dhlomo wrote the following in one of his 
columns: "The task of interpreting South African history still remains to be 
done. It will be done by and when African writers and thinkers give their 
point of view. Historical events, like figures, mean nothing and can be 
distorted unless they are given the right interpretation."155 For Dhlomo a 
correct interpretation of South African history by New African intelligentsia 
would be facilitated by an active participation by them in the contemporary 
struggles of the people. This historical perspective explains an Editorial he 
wrote in Ilanga lase Natal in which he called on intellectual to participate in 
the national struggle being pursued by the African National Congress. He 
called on them to play an active role in this evolving historical process. He 
understood the tasks of the New African intellectuals inside the ANC as 
making possible for the organization to organize all the African people "so 
that they form one, solid mass of one voice and united action."156 At this 
.time Dhlomo was constantly preoccupied with the theme that intellectuals 
must assist the ANC organize all the African people (masses) under one 
banner in order to initiate and sustain the efforts of united action. Dhlomo 
was very enthusiastic about the Defiant Campaign of 1952 which he saw as 
one of the historic results of this united action.157 Dhlomo's interpretration 
of this event was totally opposite that of R. V. Selope Thema who understood 
it as representing the victory of Communism at the expense of African 
Nationalism. This interpretation led to Selope Thema's break with the ANC. 

Dhlomo outlined the other critical task of the New African intellectuals in 
helping the ANC forge a united action among the African people as the 
combatting of tribalism. This ofcourse is the same reason which had 
propelled Pixley ka Isaka Seme in 1912 to found the ANC, to institutionalize 
African Nationalism in opposition to tribalism in the body politic of New 
African masses.158 R. V. Selope Thema, many years later, wrote an important 

l55 Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Dingaan's Day", Ilanga 
lase Natal, December 13, 1947. 
156 Editorial, "Intellectuals And Congress", Ilanga lase Natal, November 2, 1946. The 
certainty that it was H. I. E. Dhlomo who wrote it is indicated by the constant reference of the 
African people as 'Race', which he did in other instances written under his name. Besides the 
literary style which is clearly that of Dhlomo, the theme of the Editorial about the role of 
intellectuals in the making of history was his obssessive fascination. 
157 Dhlomo's support of the DEfiance Campaign ....... .. 
158 P. ka I. Seme, "Native Union", Tsala ea Becoana, October 28, 1911. This is the historic 
document through which Seme founded the ANC. 

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Editorial in Bantu World in which he emphatically stated that tribalism was a 
danger and menace to the progress of the African people and their 
construction of modernity in South Africa: "Many Africans have been 
impressed by, and have admired, the amazing progress made by the 
American Negroes, and have wondered why the African people in this 
country could not do the same. Now what facilitated Negro progress is the 
oneness of the Negro race. American Negroes are not divided into tribes: they 
are one race, speaking one language and they have thus developed a race 
consciousness that has become a driving and creative force in their march 
along the path of progressive mankind. That is the secret of their amazing 
progress. It is true that it will be impossible for us in South Africa to speak 
one language but one thing we can do is to stamm out tribalism and set 
aflame the embers of race-consciousness. We can make every African forget 
his tribal identity and think in terms of race."159 Dhlomo too was historically 
conscious that one of the most effective ways for stamming out tribalism was 
through developing a race consciousness through African Nationalism. In 
his critique of modern tribalism, Dhlomo gave a slightly different inflection. 

Dhlomo attacked tribalism not in the usual way it had been criticized by other 
New African intellectuals. Instead of locating it among Africans, Dhlomo 
undertook a withering critique of apartheid as a modern form of tribalism 
ushered in in 1948. Since all Africans were suffering from apartheid in one 
way or another, this shrewd strategic move sought to delineate its terrible 
consequences as a lived experience of a particular form of tribalism. The logic 
of this approach was that given its totalized effect on all Africans, Indians and 
Coloureds of this modern tribalism, Dhlomo believed it would discouraged 
the atavistic or recidivist resurrection of traditional tribalism among Africans 
themselves. In many of his writings at this time Dhlomo was preoccupied 
with stressing universalism against particularism. In an Editorial "Paradox of 
Modern Tribalism", Dhlomo was enraged that the apartheid state was using 
the the doctrines and edicts of the Christian Church to justify apartheid 
ideology. Dhlomo criticizes apartheid for contradicting historical trends in the 
modern world which were moving toward unity and universalism, co­
operation and integration, interdependence and hybridisation. He argues that 
all the modern conflicting forces, philosophies and ideologies of, idealism 
and dialectical materialism, capitalism and communism, technology and 

l59 Editorial, "The Menace of Tribalism", Bantu World, January 3, 1942. R. V. Selope Thema 
was the editor of the newspaper from its launching in April 1932 to his retirement in 1952. On 
the occasion of his retirement, Ilanga lase Natal wrote a note of appreciation ( ). From 
the early 1920s in Umteteli wa Bantu, Selope Thema untiringly advocated the view that the 
African Americans were the authentic for Africans in the construction of modernity. In all 
probability, the young Dhlomo picked this idea from his senior colleague when Dhlomo joined 
in this newspaper from the mid 1920s. Without doubt also, Dhlomo learned from his very 
admired colleague the ideological reference to Africans as the 'Race'. 

7Q 

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t •• 

religion, are agreed on the unity of the world.160 Dhlomo argued that his 
understanding of the development of modern know ledge supported, let 
alone justified, separateness, isolationism and the supposed development 
along one's peculiar lines. He believed that it was these modern trends of 
integration and universalism that had convinced many intellectuals in the 
world to condemn chauvinism, patriotism and narrow nationalism because 
they were obstacles tp rapid progress, world citizenship and the spirit of 
internationalism. Expressing his reservations about Rousseau's celebration of 
primitivism, Dhlomo stated that the unity and integration then taking place 
were based on realism, science, education and communications were forging 
all races and nations into oneness. Against these modern trends and forces 
expressive of the dynamics of the modern industrial society in the twentieth 
century, the South African state through apartheid was attempting to 
resiscitate feudal tribalism. What totally enraged him, was that because of 
apartheid's support of narrow customs and traditions, and the segregation of 
races, it was trying to force modern African art, music and literature into old 
tribal traditions.161 Also enraging was that apartheid viewed modern 
Africans who had broken with tribalism, backwardness and rural 
isolationism as a threat to Europeans (whites). This remarkable Editorial, in 
its penetrative analysis of the 'feudal' backwardness of apartheid in the era of 
modernity, belongs in the distinctive and unique position opened by 
Solomon Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa confrontation with the 
Natives' Land Act of 1913. They form a central part of South Africa's political 
canon. 

160 Editorial, "Paradox of Modem Tribalism", Ilanga lase Natal, September 8, 1951. His 
references to Rousseau, Charles Darwin, Levy-Bruhl and others in support of his argument 
clearly indicates that it could only have been written by H. I. E. Dhlomo rather than his 
brother R. R. R. Dhlomo. Dhlomo took this occasion to declare again his hostility to 
Communism because of its denial of the authority of God 'Higher Authority', as well as its 
supposed failure to recognize the dignity of the individual human personality. 

l 6l In another Editorial, Dhlomo indicated that for him the dynamic between tradition and 
modernity was not a question of binarism, but the usability of tradition within modernity: "And 
there is no question that African customs, traditions and culture need pruning, grafting, re­
adjustment and reform and re-channelling to meet changed and ever-changing conditions ... 
Tradition is not static and 'final' as some think" ("Customs And Progress", Ilanga lase Natal, 
November 20, 1954). Dhlomo concluded by expressing his support of Anton Lembede's 
"Africanism". In many ways Dhlomo was expressing what had been the standard position of 
Ilanga lase Natal from its inception in 1903. Predating his entrance into the editorial board of 
this great newspaper, an editorial preceding his own by thirty years, took cognisance of the 
existence of modems and traditionalists among Africans. Tradition and Chiefs, because of their 
conservatism, were seen as holding back the progress of Africans. It saw the close contact 
between Africans and Europeans as a great step in progress. The editorial enthused about the 
'civilized life' of Africans in modern towns. It called on the government to encourage those who 
had chosen to emter into the worldy experience of modernity. The editorial urged the 
government to support education among Africans as part of its promotion of enlightenmen t 
against heathenism ("Tribal or Detribalised", January 11, 1924). 

RO 

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" .. 
Concerning tribalism among Africans, Dhlomo wrote with absolute certainty: 
"Tribalism is doomed. "162 He criticizes the government for giving more 
power to Chiefs, thereby reviving tribal institutions and old ways of life, i.e., 
the social and cultural forms that encourage tribalism. Dhlomo is convinced 
that the processes of change and progress will break down the hegemony of 
these institutions as well as their patterns of life: "Tribalism centres around 
the Chief, cattle, communal ownership of land, ancestral worship. etc." 
Rather than believing or aligning themselves with the Chiefs, the New 
Africans believe in elected leaders, people who are elected for their ability, 
courage, character and achievements. Dhlomo was convinced that Chiefs, 
tribal Indabas, cattle and the Reserves were the pivot and essence of tribalism. 
Modernity, in the form of education, industrialization, urbanisation, soil 
conservation schemes, and the movement of migrant labour, would bring 
about the demise of tribalism. Stating a fundamental conviction of his, which 
asccounted for his pronounced anti-Communism, Dhlomo noted that the 
New Africans, who were progressive and patriotic, wanted freehold property, 
definitely against the communal ownership of land.163 With these beliefs and 
choices and convictions, Dhlomo believed that the New Africans had chosen 
the universal path of progress. For him institutions such as the African 
National Cogress, trade unions, the Independent African Church Movement 
and the African newspapers were instrumental in making Africans align 
themselves with progress and modernity. Dhlomo was a fervent supporter of 
such institutions, because since they were being lead by elected and well 
educated Africans, they were in synchrony with what the New Africans 
wanted and where they wanted to go. H. I. E. Dhlomo's membership in the 
African National Congress was based on his historical judgment that it was 
the best exemplification of the institutional form and representation of 
modernity. 

Dhlomo's unwavering support of the African National Congress was not 
oblivious to its weaknesses. He was sometimes very caustic in his criticism of 
the organization. Because of the tradition of frowning upon criticism and of 
regarding critics of national leaders and national organizations as enemies in 
African political circles, Dhlomo believed that these unacceptable means of 

162 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Reviving Tribalism", 
Ilanga lase Natal, March 4, 1950. Dhlomo had expressed similar views about modernity and 
tribalism twenty years earlier when he was one of the New African intellectuals writing in 
Umteteli wa Bantu. There he had argued that the modern state cannot rest on the foundations 
and principles that underlie tribal or a purely racial organization: "Instead of encouraging 
antipathies and differences between white and black in South Africa we should endeavour to 
amalgamate them into a South African Race" (H. I.E. Dhlorno, "Aspects of the Race Problem", 
Umteteli wa Bantu, March 14, 1931). 
163 Dhlomo was conscious that the nomenclature 'New African' designated a new historical 
awakening of the African people. He criticized the Natives Teachers Journal for calling black 
people 'Native', which he associated with colonial domination and European hegemony. The 
only nomenclature he accepted as historically proper was 'African' (ibid., "Teachers Journal 
and 'African Studies'). 

~ 1 

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• •• 

deflecting criticism had resulted in the stagnation, obscurantism and 
mediocrity of certain organs of the ANC. Although addressing this 
observation directly to the Natal African National Congress, he felt it was 
symptomatic of the national organization itself. Forthright in his criticism, 
Dhlomo wrote: "Take this province for example: Congress is stagnant. It 
cannot claim to speak for the majoi.-ity---let alone progressive African 
thought. Prosedure is invariably unconstitutional. Members dare not criticise 
the leaders in the meetings. The biggest branch, Durban, is for all intents and 
purposes dead. Congress officials make Press and other statements without 
consulting members or even their Executive Committee colleagues. Thus 
frequently one official says one thing, and another something diametrically 
opposed. In these elections the amazing statement has been made that critics 
of Congress and its policy---even if they are bona fide members of Congress--­
should not be voted for as they are 'enemies'!!! The Executive is torn from 
top to bottom on many important issues."164 Dhlomo was fearful that 
schisms would develop which would eventually lead to the self-destruction 
of the organization. Approximately twenty years earlier in an essay on the 
responsibilities of the "National Organisation" in Umteteli wa Bantu 
Dhlomo had pleaded that a discussion of African problems, especially at a 
national level, should accomodate a diversity of thought and opinion.165 He 
strongly believed that problems or issues should be approached from 
diametrically opposed angles. For a national organization to achieve full 

. success, it must be fully representative of all the African people by 
accomodating and accepting all modes of construtive criticism. 

Dhlomo thought the situation in which the Natal African National Congress 
had put itself to be tragically lamentable, since it was largely the Africans from 
Durban who found the national organization in 1912 in Bloemfontein.166 He 
was alluding to Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Alfred Mangena, Richard Msimang, H. 
Selby Msimang, John Dube and others. It is interesting that Dhlomo never 
refers to them as 'Zulus'. He also mentions that Durban intellectuals were 
prominent in the Industrial Commercial Union of Africa founded by 
Clements Kadalie. Here Dhlomo was referring to A. W. G. Champion and H. 
Selby Msimang. Dhlomo's criticisms of the ANC was based on intimate 
knowledge because at this time he was a member of the Executive Branch of 
the Natal African National Congress under the Presedential leadership of 
Champion.167 In fact, he used his columns to announce the time and location 
of the regional branch. He felt strongly that the organizational structure of the 
ANC must be radically transformed thereby it was the organization itself that 

164 Busy-Bee [H. I. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Congress", Ilanga lase Natal, 
January 31, 1948. 
165 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "National Organisation", Umteteli wa Bantu, August 31, 1929. 
166 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Paradox of Durban 
Africans", Ilanga lase Natal, May 28, 1949. 
167 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Congress", Ilanga lase 
Natal, June 30, 1945. 

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went to the people, rather than forcing the people to it. In his analysis the 
ANC could only renew itself by becoming a living force among the people: an 
organization possessing wisdom, patriotism and vision, leading the people 
toward unity and progress.168 Dhlomo formulated specific objectives the 
organization should strive to attain in order to reach its fundamental goal of 
overthrowing the oppressive political system of oppression, racism and 
discrimination. In order for it to become the voice and the symbol of people's 
will, thought and attitude, the ANC must undertake particular research into 
the lived experiences of the African people. The resulting findings should be 
published so that the New Masses could have deep knowledge about their 
historical condition. Secondly, it should institute lecture programmes, in 
which both Africans and Europeans could participate. Thirdly, it must initiate 
and find structures that would enbqable the people, economically and socially, 
to help themselves. Fourthly and fundamental, all financial and other 
records must be kept.169 In order to achieve all its objectives Dhlomo was 
convinced that the ANC must enlist the 'best brains' of the New African 
Talented Tenth. 

Dhlomo was very critical of what he regarded as too much complaining and 
lamentation by Africans in politics and in writings about their oppression. 
Much more productive was finding avenues and opportunities, within 
oppressive conditions themselves, to help ourselves. There should be 
thorough consultation betweeen the organization and the African people. 
Praise and criticism should be accepted in equal measure by all the organs of 
the African National Congress. Although Dhlomo strongly believed success 
can only reside in us Africans helping ourselves, he stated that he saw no 
harm in Africans accepting genuine help from 'non-Africans'.170 Dhlomo 
was profoundly preoccupied with the demands and challenges modernity was 
making on the ANC as a political organization destined to unify the African 
people. His analysis of the 1949 Annual Conference of the ANC in 
Bloemfontein shows Dhlomo's deep understanding of that particular 
conjuncture. Dhlomo was gratified that although the organization was 
polarized between its two dominant wings, the moderates spearheded by Dr. 
Alfred Xuma (then its President-General) and R. V. Selope Thema, and the 
Youth Leaguers whose members included A. P. Mda, Jordan Ngubane, 
Nelson Mandela, it was clear about the danger and divisiveness of apartheid 
policies. Dhlomo was re-assured that the Annual Conference was in 
agreement in affirming African nationalism rather than Communism as a 
political philosophy that would enable the African people to resolve some of 

168 Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Congress", Ilanga lase Natal, May 13, 1944. 
169 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Congress", llanga lase 
Natal, March 17, 1945. 
l70 Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary " " Modernity 
and Political Responsibility COMPLETE THE FOOTNOTE 

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the political contradictions inhered in the experience of modernity.171 Equally 
gratifying to Dhlomo was that the kind of nationalism ANC had adopted for 
decades was not characterized by fanaticism, narrowness, and exclusivism. In 
another context, Dhlomo wrote of the dangers when ideology becomes more 
important than race or nation.172 

From this appraisal of 1950 to his death in 1956, although convinced that the 
ANC would eventually triumph, Dhlomo was never complacent about the 
structural and ideological difficulties the organization would perhaps 
recurrently encounter nor the challenges the apartheid state was imposing on 

171 Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Bloemfontein in 
Retrospect", Ilanga lase Natal, January 14, 1950. 
172 Busy Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "The New Martyrdom", 
Ilanga lase Natal, April 29, 1950: "A person's nation, race and country became everything. This 
has been so for a long time. But now the world is reverting back toi the old order where 
ideologies seem to count more than one's own country and race. From Europe, America and Asia 
come reports of men and women who are prepared to betray their own countries and fellow-men 
for the sake of an Ideology." Dhlomo wrote this in criticism of Dr. Yusuf Dadoo's unyielding 
alignment with Communism, which for some strange reason he equated with betrayal of South 
Africa, since Dhlomo's perception was that Marxism did not serve the national interests of the 
'non-Eoropean' people. Writing his Unpublished Autobiography fifteen years later about this 
period, Jordan Ngubane wrote with violent anger that when Walter Sisulu, then Secretary­
General of the ANC, came supposedly under the influence of Yusuf Dadoo, it was one of the 
greatest betrayal that organization had ever been traumatized with. Dhlomo questioned the 
wisdom of Sisulu's 1953 trip to Eastern Europe and China (see: "Problems of the National 
Congress", Ilanga lase Natal, October 17, 1953). It would seem that it was because his 
perception, implied in Unpublished Autobiography, that through Walter Sisulu (who was not 
a Marxist or a Communist) the South African Communist Party had taken control of the ANC. 
This lead to Jordan Ngubane's subsequent break with the ANC, and his joining the Liberal 
Party. Albert Luthuli, then President-General of the ANC diasgreed with Ngubane, who had 
one time served Luthuli as his personal secretary. Some of the most extraordinary pages of 
Jordan Ngubane's remarkable document is preoccupied with the excrutiating between the two of 
them. Despite the horrendous hostility that ensued between, clearly indicated that not even 
once Luthuli mentioned Jordan Ngubane in his autobiography, Let My People Go, Ngubane 
writing his Unpublished Autobiography after having read Luthuli's book, his love and 
admiration for Luthuli never waned. It is clear from reading Dhlomo's reflections of 1950 on the 
question of ideology, what brought him and Jordan Ngubane was their hostility to Communism, 
their commitment that African Nationalism must be made to triumph over Afrikaner 
Nationalism, their deep affection for Albert Luthuli and contempt for A. W. G. Champion, and 
most important, that the ANC is the greatest political instrument of modernization in South 
Africa (despite Ngubane's break with the organization). Despite many similarities in their 
understanding of their particular historical moment, given Dhomo's greater possession of 
Western culture, European intellectual history and African American literary culture, he was 
never given in to Ngubane's impulsive and extremist political and personal alignments 
(Ngubane joining the Liberal Party [mid-1950s] and the Inkatha Freedom Party [perhaps 
secretly in the mid-1970s]). Ngubane's An African Explains Apartheid (1963) is not totally 
persuasive as for his justifications for joining the Liberal Party. His aim to through this book, 
at this particular time, to align South Africa with American imperialism, is enormous matter 
for another occasion. Far more important, the vastly different cultural textures of the 
intellectual thoughts of Dhlomo and Ngubane, cannot be overemphasized. 

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the African people. The historic importance of the 1949 Conference for 
Dhlomo was in the national organization having embraced the Programme 
of Action largely formulated by the Youth League, that the ANC must 
aggressively, radically and decisively challenge the apartheid state. Its other 
importance lay in having elected Dr. Moroka in replacement of Dr. Xuma, as 
the General-President of the national body. Dhlomo saw a major structural 
problem in the implementation of ANC national policy at the four regional 
zones of South Africa since consent of the regional president-general of the 
ANC was invariably necessary if the policy was to succeed.173 Whereas for 
example Professor Z. K. Mathews as regional general-president of the Cape 
Province was enthusiastically committed to the Programme of Action, A. W. 
G. Champion in likewise position in Natal was opposed to it. Because of his 
opposition, Jordan Ngubane's Unpublished Autobiography depicts in detail 
how Dhlomo, Ngubane himself and other Youth Leaguers engineered a 
democratic coup de tat overthrowing Champion and installing Albert 
Luthuli. 

In an important essay of 1953, "Problems of the African National Congress", 
Dhlomo wrote the following: "Congress must make decisions, sooner or 
later.It should sooner than later. It is up against difficult and grave problems 
the most urgent and delicate of which, is cleansing its own house. Here are 
some [of] the problems" First, the apartheid government was taking drastic 
action against the militant of the ANC, while initiating 'compromises' with 
bogus African political organizations or black institutions in civil society. 
Secondly, other more credible parties and organizations, such as respectively 
the Liberal Party and the Moral Rearmament Movement, were garning and 
raiding for support from the African people who had traditionally supported 
the ANC. Dhlomo was particularly concerned the Moral Rearmament 
Movement since R. V. Selope Thema had exited from the ANC and joined. 
For Dhlomo at one time, brilliant journalism in South Africa was associated 
with the name of Selope Thema (Ngubane in his Unpublished 
Autobiography uses excessive terms of praise). Perhaps as a way of mitigating 
this threat, Dhlomo was enthusiastic about Professor Z. K. Matthews call for a 
national convention, which eventuated as the 1955 Congress of the People 
thatformulated 'The Freedom Charter'. Thirdly, through its violent hostility 
to the ANC, more than against the apartheid state and government, the Non­
European Unity Movement was distracting the organization. Fourthly, 
Dhlomo found the national organization lacking serious discipline, which 
resulted in unauthorized people thinking they could speak on behalf of the 
ANC. Fifthly, he urged the national organization not to fudge and speak in 
double talk as to whether its driving ideology was Marxism or African 

173 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Domestic Politics", Ilanga 
lase Natal, April 1, 1950. Approximately twent years earlier, R. V. Selope Thema had 
broached the same issue among others: :The African National Congress: Its Achievements and 
Failures I, II, III", Umteteli wa Bantu, September 14, 21, November 2, 1929. 

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•• 

Nationalism. Dhlomo made it clear that for him Marxism was incompatible 
with the fundamental interests of the African people. Lastly, Dhlomo felt it 
was imperative that the ANC must make it clear to New African masses 
whether it was a Party or a mass organization.174 

Dhlomo chose to intellectually engage himself with the detrimental 
initiatives of the apartheid government, especially concerning apartheid itself 
and Bantu Education. In one of his early reflections on apartheid, Dhlomo 
criticized New African intellectuals in seeming to have been caught off by the 
institutionalization of apartheid as a result of the election of 1948. He called 
for a comprehensive study of its nature, history and the disastrous 
consequences it had visited on the African people. Dhlomo suggested to 
African scholars several topics that may facilitate a thorough study of 
apartheid: "l. History of South Africa and the policy of Segregation: 
Voortrekkers, British Settlers, the attitude of African Chiefs. 2. Land and 
Apartheid. 3. Economic and Industrial Development and Apartheid. 4. The 
Church and Apartheid. 5. Social Aspects of Apartheid. 6. Political Aspects of 
Apartheid: the policies of Leading Administrators such as Grey, Shepstone 
and Hertzog. 7. Cultural Aspects of Apartheid. 8. Apartheid, the 
Commonwealth and the Colonial Policies of France, Belgium and Portugal. 9. 
Apartheid and Modern World Trtends and Opinion."175 Dhlomo himself 
was to concentrate on the cultural aspects of apartheid. 

Dhlomo lamented that the government had began to impose cultural, 
intellectual and spiritual separation. Government subsidies for cultural 
matters, social welfare and education were being given to organizations that 
subscribed to apartheid, and those which stood by their principles of repulsing 
were marginalized. For Dhlomo the foirceful implementation of apartheid 
struch at two sacred principles: the democratic principle of choice and 
personal conscience. The net consequence of all this was the effecting of a 
dictatorship in cultural matters: "We all agree that the worst things about 
dictatorships is that they prevent individuals reading, listening in to music 
and news, attending plays and lectures, moving where and when, and 
meeting culturally, spiritually and emotionally the people and groups they 
like."176 In effect, apartheid was atrophying the South African spirit and 
mind. Drawing an analogy with the Iron Curtain, he attacked apartheid as 
pulling a spiritual and intellectual curtain across the soul of South African 
culture. In his subsequent writings Dhlomo was constantly to refer to 

174 Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Problems of the African National Congress", Ilanga lase 
Natal, October 17, 1953. 
175 Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "What Answer to Apartheid", Ilanga lase Na tal, May 27, 
1950. 
176 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Cultural Separation", 
Ilanga lase Natal, November 25, 1950. 

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apartheid as an intellectual curtain.177 In other words, apartheid unveiled a 
curtain of darkness, barbarism, heathenism against the enlightenment, 
civilization and progress of modernity; apartheid stood for ignorance, 
conservatism and backwardness like the African chiefs, towards whom 
Dhlomo was profoundly hostile at this time. Apartheid was against all the 
great things the the New Africans, like modernity stood for: progress, 
compentence, sophistication, westernization.178 

Dhlomo was absolutely certain that the success or failure of apartheid 
depended much more on the attitudes and actions of Africans than on the 
official theorists and government administrators. Although he was well 
aware that Africans were not of one opinion, he stated the four reasons why 
on priciple the Africans were adamantly opposed to apartheid: apartheid 
stigmatized and humiliated the African people; it stratified society with 
Africans at the lowest level; it is predicated on a continuous contravening of 
democratic, economic and human laws; and lastly, it encourages racial 
animosity and conflict.179 

Dhlomo was equally uncompromising in his hostility towards Bantu 
Education, the inferiorization of education for Africans in order 'to put the 
Native in his place'. In an editorial characterizing Bantu Education as 
"Intellectual Slavery", he vehemently denounced it as an attempt by the 
government to control the spiritual and intellectual content of the whole 
African nation.180 Given that Dhlomo had always expressed his deep felt 
gratitude for missionaries in having educated Africans, in other words 
making their entrance into modernity possible, he was appalled that Bantu 
Education was partly intended to force the missionaries to hand over their 
religious private schools to the government. Secondly, he saw Bantu 
Education as it intended to making the teaching of Afrikaans compulsory, at 
the expense of geography and history: "History and geography introduce the 
mind of the child to the wider world. The two studies make the child realise 
that it [sic] is a citizen of the world State, and has human rights and 
responsibilities just like other people." Dhlomo interpreted this directive or 
edict as intended to make Africans "kaffirs" (niggers). Dhlomo also 

177 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Intellectual Curtain", 
Ilanga lase Natal, April 14, 1951: "The fact emerges clear and threatening. It is Nemesis. 
Apartheid measures are playing havoc with our moral and ethical values and ideas. It is 
creating dissention even among Europeans. lsw the country prepared to enslave itself 
intellectually and morally fot the sake of the policy of apartheid?" 
178 Even though now and then, Dhlomo thought of the dialectic betwen modernity and 
tradition in Manichean terms, his reflections on these matters were usually profoundly nuanced 
and complex. 
179 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], "Africans and Apartheid", Weekly Review And Commentary 
Ilanga lase Natal, July 21, 1951. 
180 Editorial, "Intellectual Slavery", Ilanga lase Natal, April 17, 1954. The style of thinking 
could only be that of Dhlomo. Some of the ideas expressed here had been articulated in articles 
written under his prorer name, than even under his pseudo names. 

R7 

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considered as equally galling that simultaneously with the introduction of 
Bantu Education, the apartheid also announced an increase in African poll 
tax to finance the education of Africans. He saw this as an attempt to make 
Africans pay for their own intellectual enslavemen. Given Dhlomo's 
unshakeable conviction that education was the principle entryway into 
modernity, this attempted enslavement through inferior education, could 
only trigger his outmost outrage. 

Perhaps it was this intellectual and historically driven outrage that compelled 
Dhlomo to a write a series of editorials in Ilanga lase Natal on apartheid, the 
challenge it posed for the ANC, and the role of the New African intellectuals 
in making the ANC meet the challenge posed by the apartheid state. The 
implicit theme of these editorials, which was reflected in all of Dhlomo's 
reflections on modernity, was that in the then colonial countries (e.g. Kenya) 
and post-colonial countries (e.g. India) and countries simultaneously existing 
as colonial and post-colonial entities (e.g. South Africa), modernization was 
invariably also Westernization. The first editorial in this series, "A Queer 
Mentality", sought to show that by instituting apartheid policies and laws 
under the pretext of making Africans develop in accordance with their 
historical traditions, i.e. 'according to their own lines' by preventing them 
'imitating' Western civilization, the net effect of these laws was to forestall 
Africans from embracing modernity.181 Rightfully seeing this as pernicious 
strategy of controlling Africans by keeping them in the darkness of tradition, 
in effect disenfrachising them, Dhlomo argued for a position that there was 
no alternative to modernity. Clearly Dhlomo's logic of argument seems to 
have been that had Europeans really wanted Africans to develop according to 
their own lines they would have been able or should have been to prevent 
European modernity from entering African history forcefully and colonizing 
it as an imperial empire. Since it was modernity itself that had made Europe 
triumph over Africans, there was no historical path for Africans other than 
the appropriation of that modernity itself. Dhlomo was correct in seeing 
implicity that the aim of preventing Africans from embracing was in actual 
fact the intent of making Africans the objects of history rather than its active 
subjects and participants. 

In the second of these editorials written in the last year and a half of his life, 
actually written two months before the previous one, opened the first two 
sentences with capital letters: "SOUTH AFRICA IS FAMOUS OR 
NOTORIOUS FOR ITS ALMOST INSANE DESIRE TO EXCLUDE AFRICANS 
FROM ENJOYING THE FRUITS OF WHITE CIVILISATION AND 
CHRISTIANITY. ONE CAN ALMOST LUDGE ANYTHING TO BE 
REGARDED AS A VERY EXCLUSIVE BY THE WARNING OR NOTICE 
ATTACHED TO IT TO THE EFFECT THAT IT IS FOR EUROPEANS ONLY. 
Immediately you see this sign anywhere you know that you are, that is if your 

181 Editorial, "A Queer Mentality", llanga lase Natal, April 2, 1955. 

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skin is black, warned to keep away from the holy ground."182 As it bears no 
serious mentioning, ontologically speaking, no civilization or religious 
system is the exclusive ownership of a particular racial group. The third 
editorial in the series condemning apartheid, written a year earlier than the 
previous two, is the bitterest document of Dhlomo's. It concluded with a 
prediction, which happily 1994 has disproven: "The final crash will destroy 
master and slave."183 It opens by arguing that the pre-industrial conditions of 
the poorer classes in England depicted in Charles Dicken's Bleak House have 
replicated themselves in South Africa with utter ruthlessness. Dhlomo 
appropriates a motif of the novel and thinks is applicable to South African 
history as the edict of apartheid: "Keep on moving there". The migrant labor 
system uproots Africans who are peasants or farmworkers from the 
countryside and transforms them into the proletariat in the urbarn areas. The 
paas laws and the influx control system turns them into an army of the 
dispossessed and homeless refugees: "So-called locations in the sky must be 
abolished and their thousands forced to travel the road to Nowhere." The 
Group Areas Act makes the permanent residence of Africans in the urban 
areas an uncertainty: "Keep on Moving." Bantustans are created to 
accomodate the dispossessed Africans in the countryside: "We said Africans 
are forced to travel the road to Nowhere. We are wrong. It is the road to 
chaos, strife, crime, bitterness, and destruction. Economically, it is downright 
robbery against the African." The whole cycle of capitalism uproots healthy 
Africans from their organic communities and returns them as broken and 
dispossessed proletariat in the poverty-stricken Bantustans. The passion of 
analysis in this editorial is unprecedented in the writings of Dhlomo. While 
displaying his analytical powers and unparalleled grasp of English prose, the 
editorial also displays his conservatism and reactionary politics: his fear that 
these policies would trigger the clash of fanatical nationalism and would also 
open the door to communism. That as it may, Dhlomo was not about to halt 
his indictment of the utter destructiveness of apartheid. He saw the role of 
the New African intellectuals and the ANC as paramount in this halting 
process. 

In the fourth and final editorial of the series, Dhlomo counterposed the 
National Party's separatist ideology of apartheid to the ANC unifying 
ideology of integration. "Out of the Night" is characterized by analytical 
soberness. Viewing apartheid as extremist, full of contradictions and 
inconsistencies, as an unrealizable dream and nightmare, projected against 
world trends and opinion, and not recognized by universal laws, Dhlomo 
thought integration based on the natural laws of human evolution and a 
sound policy of sanity would inevitably prove more naturally human: 
"Integration regards civilisation as universal and as a matter of certain 
values, standards and ways of life and conduct. Apartheid is based on race and 

182 Editorial,"'For Europeans Only"', Ilanga lase Natal, February 12, 1955. 
183 Editorial, "Forever Hamba", Ilanga lase Natal, March 13, 1954. 

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colour. Integration recognises individual merit, and is based on the scientific 
fact that people are classified according to individual qualities and talents and 
opportunities. There is more kinship between African and European creative 
minds (in art, science, literature and philosophy), for example than between a 
European artists and a European prize-fighter, than between a white introvert 
and a white extrovert."184 For Dhlomo Albert Luthuli was a supreme 
embodiment of these principles of integration. 

Dhlomo had absolute disdainfulness for the Non-European Unity Movement 
and other organizations which attacked the ANC, while the national 
organization of the African people was engaged in a deadly struggle with the 
forces of apartheid. In his estimation, the fact that the ANC had built a 
progressive and a united African nation through merging of different 
African ethnic groups into one wholeness, through waging a constant battles 
against the internal weaknesses of ignorance, illiteracy and conservatism 
among different African nations, and through striving for economic, social 
and cultural progress, was a remarkable achievement in and of itself. 
Continuing further on his reflections, he felt the national organization 
should speak more promptly and authoritatively when upheavals and 
developments necessitated it. Lastly, the dramatic change of 1948 demanded 
strong protest action from the organization.185 He saw the 
institutionalization of apartheid as the greatest challenge the organization 
had encountered.186 

In his appraisal of the Non-European Unity Movement, Dhlomo found its 
leaders (Z. Mahabane, Drs. Gool and Limbade and I. B. Tabata who were 
visiting the Natal Province to find more members) to be more 
metaphysicians than realistic and practical political leaders. The Movement 
had no supporters whatsoever among the New African masses, even among 
those who were Coloureds, which the organization purported to represent. 
Dhlomo objected most strongly to its penchant for attacking other 
organizations such as the ANC or the Indian Congress, instead of 
concentrating on formulating its own sound political policy. He remarked on 
certain qualitative distinctions between the ANC and the Unity Movement: 
while the former sought to politically educate the masses and in turn be 
educated by them, the latter was only interested in telling the masses what to 
do in accordance to its revealed edicts; while the former was deeply 
preoccupied with the difficulties of practical politics, the latter is merely 
satisfied with its rhetorics. The most crucial distinction for Dhlomo is that 

184 Editorial, "Out of the Night", l/anga lase Natal, February 27, 1954. 
185 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Congress, What We 
Exfected", l/anga lase Natal, June 30, 1951. 
18 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "This Will Not Do", Ilanga 
lase Natal, July 7, 1951. 

on 

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while the ANC organized itself on a unitary basis, the Unity Movement 
sought to do so on a federal basis.187 

It is clear from the following statement that Dhlomo in his political 
imagination coupled the Bantu National Congress and the Non-European 
Unity Movement as distractory adversaries of the ANC though lacking 
support among the African people: "Just as Bhengu [leader of the Bantu 
National Congress], the leaders of the Non-European Unity Movement 
thought they saw their chance in the state of confusion and flux that existed 
after Bloemfontein."188 Dhlomo was alluding to the decision of December 
1951 by the Executive Committee of the ANC at the Annual Conference in 
Bloemfontein to initiate protest demostration that was to lead to the Defiance 
Campaign of 1952. Confusion ensued within the ranks of the ANC when 
conservative stalwarts and veterans of the organization such as R. V. Selope 
Thema in opposition to the decision formed an ANC 'National Bloc'. Given 
his high regard for Selope Thema, Dhlomo greeted this development with a 
sigh and a sense of sadness. As for S. S. Bhengu and I. B. Tabata, the leader of 
the Unity movement, he considered them "opportunists, informers, 
iconoclasts, theorists" who did not merit serious attention. This does not 
mean that Dhlomo put the Unity Movement and the Bantu National 
Congress on the same plane of political seriousness. As already stated, among 
the reasons for his hostility towards the Unity Movement was its Marxist 
ideology. For his historical moment, Dhlomo believed that African 
Nationalism was the valid and authentic ideology for the liberation of the 
African people. His ideological belief was enhanced and consolidated by the 
emergence of the ANC Youth League in 1943-44, the Programme of Action in 
1949, the Defiance Campaign of 1952, the election of Albert Luthuli as 
President-General of the ANC, and the Congress of the People of 1955 while 
he was lying in bed terminally ill. As for the newly founded Bantu National 
Congress, Dhlomo regarded it as an opportunistic organization which lacked 
political and intellectual substance, led by a criminal. 

In his Unpublished Autobiography, Jordan Ngubane states that the founding 
of the Bantu National Congress caused the utmost apprehension, anger and 
outrage in Albert Luthuli, then President-General of the regional Natal 
African National Congress, just before being elected to the head leadership of 
the national organization.189 It was Luthuli who appealed to Dhlomo and 

187 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Unity Movement Leaders in 
Natal", Ilanga lase Natal, February 23, 1952. 
188 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Non-European Unity 
Movement', Ilanga lase Natal, March 8, 1952. 
189 It is extremely unfortunate that some pages of Unpublished Autobiography have been lost. 
The document itself is confusion because of its two pagination systems. Despite this, it has the 
most remarkable portrait of Albert Luthuli ever written, much more insightful that Dhlomo's 
brilliant sketches. Ngubane had a deep understanding of the personality and political 
psychology of Luthuli. Given its extraordinary candor and absolute frankness, one doubts 

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• •• 

Ngubane for assistance. Ngubane wrote in the autobiography that Dhlomo 
assured Luthuli to leave the matter to them. Dhlomo and Ngubane set about 
to destroy S.S. Bhengu and the Bantu National Congress, which they 
succeeded through their respective columns in Ilanga lase Natal and in 
Inkundla ya Bantu. They also set about, as the Unpublished Autobiography 
contends, building Luthuli as a possible national leader. These contentions of 
Jordan Ngubane are supported by the scathing articles in the early 1950s by 
Dhlomo on Bhengu, and by remarkably penetrative and laudatory portraits of 
Albert Luthuli. It is necessary to state that the great leadership qualities of 
Luthuli were already apparent to Dhlomo in the mid-1940s, nearly a decade 
earlier before embarking on a joint project with Jordan Ngubane. Many of the 
brilliant essays. articles. profiles and analyses that appeared Ilanga lase Natal 
from the late 1940s to his death in 1956. clearly show that H. I.E. Dhlomo was 
the most brilliant intellectual force behind the politics of the ANC. and the 
most seriously engaged within the organization to make it move the African 
people into the center of modernity in the twentieth century. 

Dhlomo's scathing articles on Bhengu and Bantu National Congress should 
perhaps be interpreted as part of his construction of political modernity in 
South Africa. In this instance, a construction through elimination, whereas 
concerning Albert Luthuli it was a construction through centering and 
enhancing. As indicated, Bhengu launched the Bantu National Congress as a 
protest against the decision of the National Executive Committee of the ANC 
to launch protest marches, demonstrations, civil disobedience, whose first 
serious manifestation was the Defiance Campaign of 1952. Taking him 
seriously at first, not aware that Bhengu had been instigated by some 
Afrikaner conservatives to form a rival organization to the ANC, Dhlomo 
criticized Bhengu for not organizing within the ANC to democratically throw 
out through elections the leadership he found dissatisfactory, replacing it 
with the leadership reflecting his ideologically perspective. Dhlomo believes 
he should have attended the Annual Conference, and urge many ANC 
members to attend in order to a vote of no confidence in the leadership. By 
forming a rival organization, Dhlomo wrote: "He spurns and rejects and 
belittles what the whole African Race has done since 1912. Instead of working 
from within to right what he thinks is wrong, he tries to break down a 

whether Ngubane wanted ever to see it published, let alone in his lifetime and that of Luthuli. 
It was written as an expression of a deep personal political crisis stemming from his having 
turned his back on the ANC because of his questionable perception that it had been take over by 
Communists and Marxists. The autobiography was really written to heal himself from himself. 
Although began in the late 1950s, the real driving force for the necessity of its writing was the 
crisis of 1960, the Sharpeville Massacre and the banning of all political organizations. Jordan 
Ngubane correctly perceived that Afrikaner nationalism had delivered a major blow to African 
nationalism. Following this tragedy, Ngubane, for the rest of his life, in Ushaba, Conflict of 
Minds, and in many historical biographical sketches, was to preoccupy himself with 
constructing a metaphysical system of African nationalism for the final battle, the mother of 
all battles, of the war between the two nationalism. These are reflections for another occasion. 

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national edifice that has been built with blood, sweat and tears."190 What 
Dhlomo found more even more galling was that Bhengu argued that 
aparttheid laws and all other discriminatory practices were for the benefit of 
Africans! This demented position, coupled with his opposition to Africans 
and Indians working politically together to fight apartheid hegemony, going 
so far as to outrageously call for the repatriation of Indians, as well as 
associatingly closely with certain unsavory Europeans, Dhlomo believed led 
to his undoing: "The eclipse of Bhengu and his movement has thus helped to 
clear the atmosphere in one direction."191 For Dhlomo the cleared 
atmosphere was for Albert Luthuli to occupy as a great leader and hero of the 
African people. 

Dhlomo's understanding of the role of outstanding figures in history, 
especially within modernity, as already alluded to, was profoundly influenced 
by Thomas Carlyle's theory of history as constituted by heroic action. 
Dhlomo's enthrallment with, and fear of, Benedict Vilakazi was in the 
Carlylean manner of the Hero as Poet: "The Poet is a heroic figure belonging 
to all ages; whom all ages possess, when once he is produced, whom the 
newest age as the oldest may produce;---and will produce always when 
Nature pleases. Let Nature send a Hero-soul; in no age is it other than 
possible that he may be shaped into a Poet."192 Equally, Carlyle afforded 
Dhlomo the instrumentarium by which to conceptualize and theorize Albert 
Luthuli in the manner of the Hero as Divinity: "One comfort is, that Great 
Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however 
imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is the 
living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light 

190 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Bhengu Blunders", Ilanga 
lase Natal, February 23, 1952. 
191 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Bhengu's Movement Is 
Stillborn", Ilanga lase Natal, March 8, 1952. Over a year later Dhlomo posed a series of 
rhetorical questions about Bhengu: "It seems quiet on Bhengu's Bantu Congress front. What has 
happened to this organisation wgich we were told has a monster membership? Where are the 
thousands of pounds which the country was told the organisation possesses? Why is Mr. S. S. 
Bhengu himself so quiet and where is he?" (Busy-Bee, Weekly Review And Commentary 
"Bhengu's Bantu Congress", Ilanga lase Natal, July 18, 1953). What Dhlomo did not tell the 
readers of Ilanga lase Natal is that he himself had destroyed Bhengu and his organisation. 
According to Jordan Ngubane in the Unpublished Autobiography Dhlomo, through a 
complicated process, had instigated and manouvred a white newspaper, The Natal Witness, 
which had initially supported Bhengu through laudatory portraits of him as an expression of 
its hostility to the ANC, to publish an expose of Bhengu which the paper was unaware would 
lead to his long imprisonment. Dhlomo asked these questions knowing very well that Bhengu 
was in prison and Bantu Congress had self-destructed through his political machinations. In 
other words, Dhlomo was not just an arm-chair intellectual, but could get in the mud of politics 
and fight a dirty war when the fundamental political interests of the African people were at 
stake. Dhlomo prided himself in travelling extensively throughout the country, especially in 
Natal, in order to know the pulse of the people. 
192 Thomas Carlyle, On Great Men, Penguin Books, New York, 1995 (1840) [Penguin 60s 
Classics], p.3. 

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which enlightens, which has enlightened the darkness of the world; and this 
not as a kindled lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the 
gift of Heaven; a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of 
manhood and heroic nobleness;---in whose radiance all souls feel that it is 
well with them."193 Without doubt, Dhlomo viewed Luthuli as an 
incandescent light that enlightened the darkness of the world. 

Dhlomo had at one time wanted to write a history of the heroic figures of the 
ANC. This was not to be. His long obituary of 1946 on John Dube, the first 
President-General of the organization, can be seen as an elementary 
prefiguration of the contours of what this Carlylean book would have taken. 
Dhlomo begins by postulating a principle that all forms of African creativity, 
or for that matter, all work of Africans, must be judged by the most absolute 
standards.194 The criteria for this judgment is the opinion of the learned and 
the wise; the approval of the masses; and the judgment of time (posterity). 
Dhlomo states that Dube wanted to be judged in accordance with the 
following dictum: "Do not judge me by the heights I have attained, but by the 
depths from which I have come." In Dhlomo estimation John Dube 
overcame the handicaps, disabilities and ideologies of traditional tribal society 
in the form of superstition, regimentation, uniformity and conservatism. 
From these 'handicaps' John Dube discovered his strength, philosophy and 
uniqueness through constructing a great epic poem or symphony of 
modernity. Located in the profoundly problematic period of the transition 
from tradition to modernity, like many New Africans of his generation, 
Dhlomo marvels that John Dube took this as a challenge and opportunity to 
construct institutions that enabled many Africans to make an entryway into 
modernity: he built the Ohlange Institute in 1903, in which future 

193 ibid., p.2. It cannot be strongly enough emphasized that Dhlomo's fascination with the 
heroic mode was not only because of Carlyle, for some of the greatest Zulu poets like 
Magolwane and Mshongweni sung in this mode. 
194 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Dr. J. L. Dube, Ph.D., M. R. C.", Ilanga lase Natal, February 23, 1946. On 
the same page as this obituary wrote two songs, one a sonnet with the following lines: 

" 

Of battles fierce--great scholar, 
author, sage--

Find time the Muses fair to serve. 
Ourmist 
Of ignorance you raised, Light of 
our age! 

In pangs of birth we stood when 
he began; 
'Twas dark! God spoke! and there 

arose this man!" 
Dhlomo is celebrating that John Dube participation in the making of a New African through 
the conjuction of Christianity, civilization and knowledge (education) is analogous to God's 
creation of Adam! Dhlomo held John Dube in such high esteem that barely two years after his 
death called for a major biography of him (Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo] Weekly Review And 
Commentary "Ohlange and Dr. Dube", Ilanga lase Natal, November 29, 1947). 

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.. , 

modernizers such as Vilakazi, Caluza, R. R. R. Dhlomo and others passed 
through during their formative education---an Institute modelled on the 
Tuskegee, founded by his mentor Booker T. Washington; he launched the 
newspaper Ilanga lase Natal (which was and still is bilingual: in English and 
in Zulu) in 1903, which not only enabled Dhlomo in the 1940s and the 1950s 
to theorize modernity in South Africa, but was essential in the political 
education of the future Youth Leaguers like A. P. Mda, Jordan Ngubane, 
Anton Lembede and others; he was one of the principal founders of the 
African National Congress which made the historic events of 1994 possible; 
and was one of the founders of the Zulu novel with Insila ka Shaka (Jeqe, The 
Bodyservant of King Shaka).195 In his estimation of the greatness of John 
Dube, Dhlomo was not so much taken with the institutions he had founded, 
as much as the effects they had had on the New African intelligentsia and on 
the New African masses. Dhlomo saw two interrelated incomparable 
achievements: in having "lifted the veil of backwardness" from the African 
people by changing their habits and thoughts through new ideas, new 
knowledge, and new forms of beauty. In comparing the tasks of Booker T. 
Washington and that of John Dube, Dhlomo found that of the African much 
more difficult than that of the African American, because whereas the New 
Negroes were relatively homogeneous, the New Africans were definitely 
heterogeneous. Having been immortalized in poetic form by Mqhayi and 
others, being a true democrat and statesman, and having stood for a united 
South Africa and for progress, Dhlomo eulogized John Dube as no longer 
merely a prominent leader, but a national symbol and institution. In this 
most detailed appraisal of any heroic figure in South African history, with the 
possible exception that of Shaka, Dhlomo was fully engaging himself with the 
Carlylean poetics of history. 

Even though H. I.E. Dhlomo (born 1903) outlived John Dube (born 1871) by a 
mere decade, he experienced Dube as a historical figure who profoundly 
shaped the passages of transition from tradition to modernity, whereas Albert 
Luthuli (born 1898) for Dhlomo was a contemporary with whom he shared 
the same historical coordinates of lived experience as well as participating 
together, as with many others, in constructing South African modernity.196 

195 In an essay evaluating his literary works, Dhlomo posits that with Insala ka Shaka John 
Dube had reached the summit of the literary heights of his brilliance, for its Zulu prose flows 
with musical rhythm, the descriptive passages are compelling, and its literary style is the 
consummation that of the Ilanga lase Natal. Dhlomo is enthralled with the story of the 
novella which is about Shaka "that fertile inexhaustible mountain" (X [H. I. E. Dhlomo ], "Dr. 
J. L. Dube Ph.D., M.R.C., As Author", Ilanga lase Natal, August 19, 1944. The English 
translation: Jeqe, the Bodyservant of King Tshaka, trans. Professor J. Boxwell, The Lovedale 
Press, 1951). The peculiar spelling of Shaka is inexplicable. 
196 The only political sketch of John Dube by Dhlomo is of his struggle with A. W. G. 
Champion for the leadership of the regional Natal African National Congress. In this instance 
he makes observations: that Dube's career exemplies the principle that in order to serve the 
people, a leader must have a deep sense of love for the people (Race in Dhlomo's invariable 
lexicon); the Cause of the Race should be the central issue for African politics; that although 

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• • I 

Even though Dhlomo for over a decade preceding his death in several pieces 
reflected on the historical importance of Albert Luthuli, for instance when he 
was removed by the apartheid government as Chief because he would not 
endorse apartheid policies and in his conflicts with A. W. G. Champion for 
ANC leadership in the Natal Province, it was on two occasions that Dhlomo 
wrote major pieces on him. In a "Weekly Letter" which begins by stating his 
Du Boisian principle that it is through the action of the a few outstanding 
individuals that a national culture is truly known, and since Dhlomo 
considered him a member of the African Talented Tenth because of his 
achievements as a Chief, as a former teacher of Adams College, as a stalwart 
of the ANC, and having represented South African Christian missions in 
United States and India, Dhlomo wanted to know Luthuli's thinking on 
particularly vexing problems within modernity confronting the New 
Africans.197 One particular issue was the seemingly inability of the Natal 
province African National Congress to confront the challenges posed by 
apartheid when the Youth League had suggested viable alternatives to 
challenging this confrontation! In other words, without mentioning names, 
without saying so openly, and doing his utmost not to ruffle feathers, 
Dhlomo was bluntly asking Albert Luthuli about his inaction concerning 
Champion who then as President-General of the provincial was doing all he 
could to block the execution of the Programme of Action which had been 
approved a few months before by the Annual Conference of the ANC in 
Bloemfontein in December 1949! As the Unpublished Autubiography reveals, 
the Weekly Letter to Luthuli was the beginning of the implementation of the 
strategy secretly arrived at by Dhlomo and Jordan Ngubane, without Albert 
Luthuli's knowledge, to prepare the public for the ousting of Champion and 
his possible replacement without Luthuli himself. Possible replacement, 
because as Jordan Ngubane's penetrative psychological profile shows in this 
extraordinary document, Albert Luthuli was deeply averse to politics.198 He 

white oppression has put many obstacles in the path of African progress, many others are of our 
own making because of the absence of proper organization and assertion of self-help; and that 
African leaders must work together (X [H. I.E. Dhlomo], "Dr. Dube's Triumph", Ilanga lase 
Natal, May 8, 1943). At this writing Dhlomo had not as yet violently against Champion, as he 
was to do a few years later. The seeds of distrust were already present, because Dhlomo said 
nothing about him, except a perfunctory statement that both of them are patriots. 
197 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Weekly Letter: To Chief A. 
J. Luthuli", Ilanga lase Natal, April 1, 1950. 
198 Jordan Ngubane had a profound knowledge of the political psychology of New African 
intellectuals. As his biographical portrait of Albert Luthuli is a masterpiece, his essay on 
Anton Lembede is rivetingly brilliant: "Lembede and Africanism" (in the Gwendolyn Carter 
and Thomas Karis Collection). It is extremely unfortunate that this nine-page essay was not 
included in Freedom in Our Lifetime: The Collected Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede, 
op. cit. Since the editors were aware of this document, it is inexplicable why it was excluded. 
Did they doubt the veracity or authenticity of its narration! Its inclusion would have made a 
pertinent contrast to the perspectives of A. P. Mda and Walter Sisulu on Lembede in the book. 
What makes this essay fascinating is its autobiographical element concerning Lembede and 
Ngubane's student days together at Adams College; their decision to storm the citadel of the 

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t . 

hated the public noise and the amorality that sometimes accompanied 
politics. This is the amorality in which Champion thrived. Dhlomo and 
Ngubane made a conscious decision to do the dirty political work on his 
behalf, since Luthuli himself was constitutionally incapable of doing it. All of 
these decisions were made without Luthuli's knowledge. Dhlomo and 
Ngubane and other Youth Leaguers succeeded in ousting Champion and 
replacing him with Luthuli.199 Perhaps one of the reasons Jordan Ngubane 
never published his autobiography, arguably the best political autobiography 
written in South Africa, whether one agrees with its politics or not, was a fear 
that it would offend Albert Luthuli. After the death of Luthuli in 1967, 

Old Guard within the ANC through their founding of the Youth League; and their tragically 
vociferous anti-Communism. This essay is much superior to the Ngubane essay that found 
inclusion in the book. 
l99 Perhaps as part of the strategy to deservedly defame Champion, Jordan Ngubane in the 
critical year of 1952 wrote a two-page biographical piece on him for the famous Masterpiece in 
Bronze series of the Drum magazine, in which not even a part of the sentence, let alone a whole 
sentence was about Champion's relationship with the ANC. The whole piece is about 
Champion's role in the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (I. C. U.) of the 1920s. The 
implicit meaning is that this was the only decade in which Champion was relevant to African 
politics. Presumably his role in the ANC in the 1930s, 1940s and the 1950s was purely 
destructive. The following deserves qouting: "Brilliance was not one of his gifts; nor did 
hisperformance in and out of class suggest a future teacher or Minister of the Church. But there 
were things he did which marked him out as a pupil quite distinct from the other boys. He did 
not take kindly to the discipline enforced in our schools at the time" ("A. W. Champion: The 
Courageous Fight of a Great Zulu for his People, and for the ill-fated I. C. U.", October, 1952). 
Note the praise as a 'Great Zulu', not as a great New African; and the implication is that the 
ill-fated nature of I. C. U. was due to Champion's undisciplinary nature. It would be interesting 
to know what went through Champion's mind as he read this supposed appreciation. Although 
Anton Lembede's reading of Champion precedes the latter's open uncompromising hostility to 
the Youth League, it is interestingly different from that of his comrade-in-arms. In an 
appreciation, Lembede quoted Champion as having said the following: "Continuing he said 'I 
am two things: I am a Zulu and I am an African: I cannot be a good Zulu unless I am a good 
African'. He then pointed out that today we need a leader to lead the Africa of all united 
African tribes. Africans must learn to respect, obey and follow their leader. It is immaterial 
from which troibe this leader comes; he may be a Nyasa (like Kadalie) or a Xosa (like Xuma) 
but if he is placed before us as a leader we have no alternative but to follow him. Today we 
must think in terms of wider horizons of African nationalism" ("Councillor A. W. G. Champion 
In Johannesburg: An Appreciation", Ilanga lase Natal, November 24, 1945). Although perhaps 
the Youth Leaguers may have been willing to give total obedience to Anton Lembede himself 
because of their enthrallment with him, after his unexpected and tragic death, their unwilling 
to extend that privilege or uncriticalness to anyone else.From this quotation it is clear that a 
major study of the New African and African Nationalism is imperative. Also R.R. R. Dhlomo 
always had a high regard for Champion. As editor of the Ilanga lase Natal from 1943 to 1970 
(?), perhaps R. R. R. Dhlomo never allowed his younger brother to openly attack Champion on 
the pages of the newspaper. Even more, for some years from 1964-74 R.R. R. Dhlomo gave 
Champion a column in the newspaper; perhaps the very column space that his younger had 
written astonishing things on modernity a few decades earlier. R. R. R. Dhlomo was later to 
write hid biography: A Biography of A. W. G. Champion (included in The Views of 
Mahlathini: Writings of A. W. G. Champion: A Black South African, [ed.] M. W. Swanson, 
trans. E. R. Dahle and A. T. Cope, University of Natal Press/ Killie Campbell Africana 
Library, Pietermaritzburg/ Durban, 1982). 

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Ngubane abandoned the document to concern himself with the construction 
of the metaphysical system of African Nationalism.200 A crucial point to raise 
here is that although H. I. E. Dhlomo was never an official member of the 
Youth League, being eleven years older than its most senior member Anton 
Lembede (born 1914), he completely aligned himself with its political and 
ideological principles, especially concerning African Nationalism. To be 
convinced of this, one needs to note the laudatory comments on the Youth 
League by Dhlomo in Ilanga lase Nataz.201 In the intellectual public space of 
shaping the historical and political consciousness of the New Africans 
Dhlomo was more effective in articulating the political philosophy of the 
Youth Leaguers than any of its official members, more than Jordan Ngubane 
or Anton Lembede or A. P. Mda who wrote in Inkundla ya Bantu in the late 
1940s, and certainly more than Nelson Mandela or Walter Sisulu who wrote 
in Liberation in the early 1950s.202 The incomparable writings of Dhlomo in 
the Durban-based great newspaper are a testimony to this intellectual 
supremacy; a dirty word in our South African context. The greatness of 
Dhlomo in this particular instance resides in having synthesized intellectual 
content and political philosophy to a remarkable degree. 

The second issue raised by Dhlomo with Luthuli concerned the nature and 
effect of modernity on the making of the New African. Here he was 
preoccupied with interrelated conundrums. Dhlomo asked Luthuli as to what 
should one make of the fact that a supposedly antiquated and anachronistic 
ideology of tribalism belonging in backward traditional 'tribal' societies was 
continuing and maintaining itself, despite the fierce opposition of New 
African enlighteners, in a modern and acquisitive society! In other words, 
wasn't tribalism a political phenomenon of tradition rather than modernity, 
which the founding of the ANC in 1912 set out to eliminate or destroy. If so, 

200 A. P. Mda indicates that one of the life-time projects of Jordan Ngubane was to alter politics 
in South Africa through African Nationalism(" Jordan Ngubane", Masterpiece in Bronze, 
Drum, May, 1954). 
201 There were other reflections by Dhlomo on the politics of the Youth League other than 
those already referred to above: a piece analyzing the complex politics hindering the 
immediate implementation of the Programme of Action ("Programme of Action", January 12, 
1952). A related piece reports on the clash between the ideologies of African Nationalism and 
class struggle in the ANC ("Clash of Ideologies"); an extended piece of the after effects of the 
Defiance Campaign of 1952 which will be considered more in detail belo w ("Bannings: The 
Political Situation", June 27, 1953). 
202 Dhlomo contributed a major piece in the intellectual forum of the Youth League, Inkundla 
ya Bantu, on the invitation of its editor Jordan Ngubane. Ngubane had inaugurated a series 
called Three Famous Journalists I Knew in which he wrote on John Dube (I), on Ngazana Luthuli 
([II] took over the editirialship of Ilanga lase Natal from Dube, was himself by R. R. R. 
Dhlomo in 1943), and on R. V. Selope Thema ([III] June, Second Fortnight; July, First Fortnight; 
July Second Fortnight, 1946). Dhlomo followed this series, but unfortunaley the issues of the 
newspaper in which separately two jounalists appeared have been lost, only his piece on R. R. 
R. Dhlomo (II) survived (August Fortnight, 1946). It is with almost certainty that one of the 
other journalists Dhlomo considered was Solomon T. Plaatje. This has been a major loss for 
South African intellectual history. 

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what were the metaphysical, political and psychological reasons for its 
persistence in modernity? Related to this vexing problem of tribalism, 
Dhlomo requested Luthuli to inform him about the line of demarcation 
"between a tribal or rural African and the urban African worker." Dhlomo 
was interested in knowing how modernity structures class formation. 
Another related issue Dhlomo posed was the penetration of the capitalist 
relations of production into the feudal system of agriculture: what was the 
nature of the logic of capitalism of uprooting and causing upheaval in the 
rural areas through the migrant labour system, and yet still wish to maintain 
order thereby making possible the exploitation rural workers in agriculture. 
Dhlomo argued that these were crucial issues that the New African Talented 
Tenth had to make sense of in order to understand their historical moment 
of modernity. 

The third set of issues he broached was the relation between knowledge and 
modernity. Believing as Octavio Paz was to brilliantly express it that United 
States was the perfect expression of modernity, Dhlomo wanted to know 
whether Luthuli could make it possible for the New African Talented Tenth 
to travel discourse with the New Negro Talented Tenth. This would enable 
the New Africans to dessiminate information about the New Africa in the 
making to the American people, as well as learning more about their cousins 
in United States. At this time Dhlomo was deeply involved with W. E. B. Du 
Bois about the social responsibility of black intellectuals in modernity, with 
Countee Culleen about the nature of poetic form in modernism given the 
legacy of Romanticism, particularly Shelley and Keats, and with James 
Weldon Johnson concerning the Negro Spirituals, religious hymns and other 
African American songs. Lastly, he wanted to know whether the mission 
schools and the schools belonging to the Independent African Churches 
would play a role in resisting Bantu Education. Would the Christian 
Churches and African Churches put on a resolute resistance to apartheid. 
Dhlomo concluded his Letter in the following manner: "These are but a few 
of the question[s] one would like to address to you. Do not blame one for 
using the Press." 

The usage of the Press to help in catapulting Albert Luthuli to the leadership 
of the New Africanism had been the calculated aim of Dhlomo and Ngubane. 
Two years later Dhlomo wrote an intellectual and political portrait of him. He 
began by noting that given the name Luthuli means dust, son of the soil, it is 
not surprising that he became an outstanding South African and leader of the 
people.203 His chieftancy gave him stature and usefulness, while at the same 

203 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Chief A. J. Luthuli", Ilanga lase Natal, September 6, 1952. This is one of 
the few instances in which an article appeared under his name. It had originally in The Bantu 
World in Johannesburg, having been commissioned by R. V. Selope Thema just a few months 
before his retirement of the as the editor of the newspaper. Due to a huge demand by Africans 
in Durban, to whom the Johannsburg newespaper was not easily accessible, R. R. R. Dhlomo in 
his newspaper. The relationship between the two brothers seems to have been an uneasy one at 

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time it enabled him to become a wise, progressive administrator. Locating 
him in an African School of Thought that believed in cooperation, realism, 
honesty and compromise, Dhlomo states that it was not surprising he became 
an excellent interpreter and mediator between Africans and Europeans, since 
his greatness was in overcoming obstacles. Dhlomo reads Luthuli historically 
as situated at the central fault lines of South African history: between the Old 
and New. In his political struggles against A. W. G. Champion he represented 
the New, but in his serious reservations about the Youth League, he was on 
the side of the Old. Dhlomo pays tribute and enormous gratitude to him 
observing that despite his hostility to the Youth League, as a democratic and 
standing for unity, he put into movement the Youth League Programme of 
Action, because it was what the majority of the African people had willed. He 
also commends him for having stood for the unity of Africans and Indians, 
when someone like Champion sought to take advantage of the poisonous 
atmosphere between the two people, as a consequence of the Durban riots of 
1949 which resulted in many Indians being killed by Africans. Paying tribute 
to him as an intellectual, with an analytical and objective mind, Dhlomo 
sorrowfully wrote: "Chief Lit[h]uli's life is an example of the tragedy, 
contradictions and waste of human life inherent in our system ... This is a 
bare outline, an incomplete picture of the man. But is there a greater theme, a 
more notable example, of the tragedy of race relations in South Africa!" In 
another context Dhlomo called on Henrik Verwoed who was then Minister 
of Native Affairs to meet with Albert Luthuli to attempt to resolve the 
tragedy of the race relations in the country. Dhlomo was indignant that Dr. 
Verwoed was lightly dismissing Luthuli, who had by then become President­
General of the African National Congress. He was at a loss in understand the 
logic of the obdurate ideologue of apartheid given what had taken place 
recently: "The very fact that the voluntary defiance campaign showed the 
power and influence of Congress among the masses all over the country, 
should have made the authorities pause and think. Eight million people 
cannot be wrong nor can they be suppressed always by artificial lwas no 
matter how drastic. Yet Dr. Verwoed says Luthuli chose the wrong path, 
spoke in such a way that the Department had to take notice of it, and that if he 
mends his ways and shows regret for the wrong he has done, his 
reinstatement might be considered."204 Enraged by this arrogance, Dhlomo 
prophetically wrote: "And as we say, time and history will not only justify, 

times. Now and then Dhlomo jokingly complained, it was apparent that it was made in 
earnest, that the editor has refused to give him ample space or had made him cut short his 
thought. There is no doubt that R. R. R. Dhlomo viewed his younger brother as a naive 
enthusiast and apostle, and uncritical proselytizer of modernity. R. R. R. Dhlomo was 
extremely ambivalent about modernity, as is evident in his early writings in Ilanga lase Natal 
in the late 1920s and the satirical pieces, poking fun at the making of the New Africans, which 
appeared in The Bantu World in the 1930s. R.R. R. Dhlomo's sketches/stories in Stephen 
Black's Sjambok would make for an interesting reading. 
204 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Luthuli], Weekly Review And Commentary "Verwoed and Luthuli", 
Ilanga lase Natal, August 1, 1953, my emphasis. 

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., 

but will canonise him." This indeed has come to pass, for Nelson Mandela's 
recently published autobiography Long Walk To Freedom is a definitive 
political canonization of Albert Luthuli. Although Dhlomo wrote more 
pieces on Luthuli, as in this instance on the occasion of his dismissal as a 
Chief by the apartheid government, he slyly noted writing under his plume­
nom-gurre "Busy-Bee"with tongue in cheek: "Only recently my journalistic 
colleague, H. I.E. Dhlomo, wrote about Chief Luthuli and race relations. I 
shall not repeat what this writer said, save to say this. Like Ors. Moroka, 
Njongwe, Conco and other leaders of the Resistance Campaign, ex-Chief 
Lut[h]uli is, comparatively speaking, a newcomer in active politics."205 

As these repeated references make clear, the Defiance Campaign of 1952 had a 
most profound effect on H. I.E. Dhlomo. So much so that he devoted three 
political articles to its historical nature, effect and possible long lasting 
consequences. Not only did it bring him closer to the inner sanctums of the 
ANC, he in effect became arguably the organization's most vitalizing 
intellectual force. By this time, he moved completely into the realm of 
political philosophy and preoccupied himself less and less with directly 
cultural matters. In the process of the unfolding of the Defiance Campaign, 
Dhlomo assessed various opinions concerning its dynamic.206 Those opposed 
to it consisted mostly of Europeans and a few Africans who gave several 
reasons for their opposition: that it alienates sympathetic Europeans because 
it puts themn in an ackward position; that not only are the African masses 
unintetrested in it, it has caused division among Africans, Indians and 
Coloureds; that it will only lead to more animosity between Europeans on 
one side, and the Africans, Indians and Coloureds on the other; that Africans 
are being deceived and misled through it by the Indians; and lastly and 
principally, that it is against the law. 

Those supporting the Defiance Campaign argued that it had deepened and 
strengthened the synpathy fot it overseas and particularlt in Africa; that it had 
shaken the government; that not only had it aroused the masses, but it had 
given a sense between Coloureds, Indians and Africans; that a democratic 
segment of the Europeans were in sympathy with it; and that history teaches 
that bad laws have to broken as a part of the challenge to its hegemony. 
Assessing these different opinions, Dhlomo observed from his own personal 
observations that the majority of Africans were supportive of, and 
enthusiastic about, the Defiance Campaign. The reasons for Dhlomo's 
alignment with the Campaign were that women were playing a principal role 
in civil disobedience, it had infused a New Spirit among the people, and it 

205 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Albert John Luthuli", 
Ilanga lase Natal, November 15, 1952, my emphasis. Elsewhere he writes that he chose the 
plume-nom-gurre "Busy-Bee" because like a bee he wanted to string the 'Race' into awakening 
about the pleasures and challenges of modernity: 
206 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], "Some Observations on the Resistance Campain", Ilanga lase 
Natal, August 9, 1952. 

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had given a New Impetus to the movement itself. Dhlomo wrote the 
following words which seemed to indicate a monumental shift in his 
historical consciousness: "The fact that ordinary, obscure men and women 
and humble musket-bearer have volunteered shows that, not personal glory 
and heroism, but the Cause is THE thing; that discopntent is universal; that 
individual leaders can no longer win glory, martyrdom and a name for 
themselves merely by going to jail. It suggests a great change in outlook, 
political consciousness and in tactics." It would seem then that the nature and 
impact of the Defiance Campaign changed Dhlomo's conception of history, a 
shift from the Carlylean vision of its making through individual heroic 
action, to the recognition that the masses play a fundamental role in its 
shaping. This change of perspective never had the impact one would 
otherwise have expected in Dhlomo's writings, because by this time he began 
to be besetted by health problems and wrote fewer and fewer essays and 
articles. Another possible explanation is that by the time of the change of this 
viewpoint, Dhlomo was no longer preoccupied with theorizing modernity 
but much more with describing its manifestations. 

Assessing the situation a year later, when the government had crushed the 
Defiance Campaign and had turned the country into "a vast and inescapable 
inter[n]ment camp" through bannings of political leadership and many 
people, Dhlomo defended this historic manifestation as a noble cause which 
was relatively peaceful had been been well organized by the ANC in order to 
avert a tragedy from happening: "It was emphasised and publicly repeated 
that the struggle was not racial or aimed against the Europeans as such. It was 
against unjust laws and a social system that could only lead the country to 
ruin ... The leaders rejected the method of strikes, sabotage and other 
revolutionary methods."207 He attributed this achievement of the 
organization to its adoption of the Programme of Action in 1949 which 
imbued it with New and militant Voices (i.e. The Youth League) and a New 
Spirit of Nationalism. Dhlomo attributed the ferociousness of the reaction of 
the white minority government against the Campaign as properly having 
seen as connected to the rise of the Mau Mau in Kenya, both of which were 
the expression of the a new form of African nationalism. Dhlomo thought 
that the ANC would eventually prevail because its struggle was for justice, 
freedom and democracy: "For it is true today as it was yesterday and will be 
tomorrow that sayof no man you know him unless he is at liberty fully and 
freely to express himself in words and in deeds." In the third and last essay 
reflecting on the political conjuncture of the Defiance Campaign, Dhlomo 
analyzed the dramatic changes that were set in motion by the advent of 
apartheid in 1948 and the oppositional forces that coalesced around the events 
of 1952. Looking at the political landscape, seeks explanations for the crises 
which the Liberal Party and the Federal Party were undergoing. He praises the 

207 Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Bannings: The Political 
Situation", Ilanga lase Natal, June 27, 1953. 

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Catholic Church for being steadfast against apartheid policies, while it was 
deflecting the hostility of the Dutch Reformed Church which condoned the 
policies of racial discrimination. Dhlomo salutes the incipient progressivism 
of the African Independent Churches which were under the watchful eye of 
the government. Praising the ANC for having initiated the Defiance 
Campaign, he again emphasizes the discipline the organization exhibited and 
the creative initiatives which were exemplified in the peaceful nature of the 
campaign. He profoundly laments the action of R. V. Selope Thema in 
forming the National Bloc in opposition to the national organization for 
politically joining hands with the Indians and the Coloureds.208 Dhlomo 
expressed a profound sense of apprehension that Selope Thema and A. W. G. 
Champion might form an alliance against the ANC.209 But the real 
importance of this document is in its indication of the very pronounced 
transformations Dhlomo was undergoing as the direct consequences of the 
Defiance Campaign: "Brief and sketchy though this review is, it shows that far 
from frightening and incapacitating the people, our policies have set about 
great and revolutionary movements."210 This clearly indicates that besides 
his having changed the role of the masses in history, in this quotation 
Dhlomo seems to subscribe to the historical perspective of the necessity of 
revolutionary transformation of oppressive societies, relinquishing his 
earlier ideological position of subscribing only to evolutionary changes. This 
essay marked a new development in his political beliefs for it negated the 
maxim of Paul Valery which had underpinned his ideological beliefs: "Those 
who believe in evolution should not forget Paul Valery's words 'Revolutions 

208 Although he did not hold it in high estimation, Dhlomo was concerned that while the 
ANC was being decimated by the white government through the banning of its leadership 
following the Defiance Campaign, this may open the way for Professor D. D. T. Jabavu's All 
African Convention which had been formed in 1936 as a response to Hertzogian bills to 
disenfranchise the African people even further. Dhlomo took this opportunity to indicate that 
history had proven John Dube correct in having opposed the formation of the Convention 
believing that one day it will would constitute itself as the rival of the ANC. This was 
conjuncture in which the Convention was insituating itself tp this role (Weekly Review And 
Commentary "Congress Sacrifice", Ilanga lase Natal, January 10, 1953). 
209 Jordan Ngubane and H. I.E. Dhlomo's hostility toward Champion never relented and 
abated as can bee seen in two of their articles denouncing his political unscrupulousness, 
separated by six years: Jordan Ngubane, "Speak The Right Language Mr. Champion!" 
(Editorial), Inkundla ya Bantu, August 6, 1949; Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review 
And Commentary "Mr. Champion's Blatancy And Bankruptcy", Ilanga lase Natal, January 8, 
1955. Champion responded with ferociousness to Dhlomo's attacks, and seems to have hard an 
intuitive feeling that he was somehow collaborating with Ngubane: "One name was that of 
Mr. J. K. NGubane. I am afraid, as usual. Mr. Ngubane's letters are too long to be reproduced. In 
any case they are on the lines of Busy-Bee's [Dhlomo's] attack on Senator Cowley and myself: 
that he voted for the Bill to place Coloureds on separate voting lists" (Busy-Bee Groaning 
With Political Pains", Ilanga lase Natal, January 22, 1955). 
210 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], "Moves and Counter-Moves", Ilanga lase Natal, August 8, 1953. 

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come from the slowness of evolution"'.211 Dhlomo held Valery in high 
esteem. 

Simultaneous with these changes in his historical consciousness was his 
engagement with international affairs. Although it is evident from one of his 
earliest ever written essays of 1924 that the internationalism of pan-African 
perspective informed his intellectual imagination, unavoidable given the 
existence of the African diaspora, it was really from 1945, the moment of the 
founding of the United Nations Organization, that he preoccupied himself 
with world affairs in a systematic and serious way. It is necessary to consider 
this early period for it influenced his future major writings. Influenced by his 
senior colleague with whom he was to work together in Umteteli wa Bantu 
as a member of the New African Talented Tenth, R. V. Selope Thema, 
Dhlomo was also to articulate the view that the New Negro experience 
within American modernity had invaluable lessons for the New African 
experience within the newly emergent South African modernity. Selope 
Thema invented and theorized the construct of the New African(ism) which 
he modeled on that of New Negro(ism). Constructing on what Selope Thema 
had initiated, in this relevant essay "Hardship and Progress", Dhlomo was 
concerned to draw lessons for the New Africans from the New Negroes since 
he believed that Africans were undergoing a similar experience that the 
African Americans had undergone: modernity, racism, oppression, suffering, 
exploitation, etc.212 Dhlomo tabulated these lessons of New Negroism for 
New Africanism: that the experience od slavery made possible the unity and 
fraternity of the Negro; that slavery not only led to emancipation, it instilled a 
caspitalist work ethic; that the horrible conditions of slavery did not lead to 
despair, but led to their transcendence and to success on the part of African 
Americans; given that Africans in South Africa were confronted with land 
acts, racialism, and retrenchment, they too likewise wanted to achieve success 
through self-determination; Africans too through daringness and hardwork 
can conquer all, foir it depends on self-reliance and not on the white man; the 
New Africans too like the New Negroes were endowed with the same mental 
and physical powers and capabilities as anyone else; Africans too like their 
African American cousins must struggle for freedom which would enable 
them particularly to educate their to meet the challenges of the new era. 
Encapsulating his observations, Dhlomo called for a new leadership that 
would lead the people wisely, and that difficulty leads to fraternity, fraternity 
leads to progress, prosperity and peace. Dhlomo transformed himself into an 
agent of modernity exemplifying all of these values who theorized this 
particular historical moment. Thereafter he relinguished a direct engagement 
with this internationalism of the black world as it became a substratum of his 

211 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Race Relations 
Renaissance", Ilanga lase Natal, March 16, 1946. Dhlomo did not concern himself with the 
~regnant but contradictory nature of the formulation. 

12 Herbert I. Dhlomo, "Hardship and Progress", Umteteli wa Bantu, October 24, 1924. 

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•• 

thought, preoccupying himself, particlarly in the 1930s, with major plays 
predominantly about the African past, writing poems haunted and debilitated 
by Romantic poetics, and constructing his extraordinary edifice of literary 
theory mediating the dialectic between tradition and modernity. When 
twenty years later in the mid-1940s, he began engaging himself with the 
international world order created by the Second World War, having in effect 
transformed himself into the intellectual voice of the ANC, Dhlomo in this 
newly defined context connected himself again to the historical constructs of 
New Negroism, for example Du Bois' concept of the Talented Tenth, the 
Romantic poetics of Countee Cullen, and James Weldon Johnson's 
theorizations on the multifarious forms of Negro Spirituals, hymns and 
Gospel music. But fundamentally this new internationalism which 
preoccupied him was what was necessitated by the emergent experience of the 
Third World. 

The founding of the United Nations was the beginning point of his 
reflections. Dhlomo thought that the formation of the UN and what was 
begining to emerge from its forums was prove that the New School of 
African Thought had been correct in wishing the South African racial 
situation and oppression to be seen within an international context.213 The 
intellectuals and political leadership of The New School in contradistinction 
to the Old School had achieved this internationalization of the national 
situation through articulating the problems of the oppressed all over the 
world as essentially singular or one, through the belief that justice, peace and 
liberty were indivisible, and through the ideological perspective that Africans 
on the continent should cooperate with whatever progressive forces of other 
races they can work together with.214 This last point had deep implications for 
the ANC inside the country that an alliance with the Coloureds and Indians 
would be essential in order for African nationalism to triumph over white 
nationalism. Perhaps this is the explanation that Dhlomo never supported 
the exclusive Nationalism or Africanism of Anton Lembede, Jordan Ngubane 
and A. P. Mda. He supported an inclusive form of African Nationalism. 
Dhlomo was enthusiastic that the New School of Thought within the ANC 
was being proven correct because the UN was taken up the issue of the 
'Native policy' by means of its direct discussion of the Indian issue and the 
matter of the trusteeship of South-West Africa (Namibia). Because of the role 
of the Indian nationalist movement in bringing these issues to a head at the 
UN on the eve of attaining its independence, Dhlomo was to believe that 
India was in the forefront in illuminating the problems, if not finding 
solutions to them, of the colonial and oppressed peoples all over the world. 

213 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "UNO and Africans", Ilanga 
lase Natal, November 16, 1946. 
214 Interestingly and in another context concerning literary matters Fredric Jameson was to 
speak of the neccesity of constructing an internationalism of national situations at the moment 
of the advent of postmodemism: 

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This explains the fact that the internationalism of Dhlomo, other than its 
obvious pan-Africanist projection, was nearly wholly concentrated on India, 
at whose center was an uncritical idolization of Nehru. Dhlomo was 
convinced that within the context of a developing and interconnected 
modernity in many parts of the world following the Second World War 
rendered the consideration of 'purely African' problems and grievances 
within a localized context historically untenable. Dhlomo was adamant that 
the New School must vanquish the Old School in it struggle to bring new 
changes and new great things to the African people. 

The clash between India and South Africa at the UN "created a first class crisis 
in matters of race relations, especially in this country."215 Dhlomo was 
alluding to one consequence of challenge in New York being the organizing 
of the Indian Passive Resistance by the Indian Congress in South Africa.216 

From this manifestation of a crisis in race relations at the national and 
international levels Dhlomo drew several "lessons". The first lesson for 
Dhlomo was that freedom can only be won by means of militant action or 
policy only. Dhlomo, without naming names, criticized the ANC for having 
failed to recognize for a long time that its policy of cooperation and 
accomodation had abysmally failed a long time ago. He believed that 
persistence on this policy of cooperation by Africans had been taken by the 
minority white government as a sign of their weakness and stupidity: "Only 
the militant and the mosy vocal are respected." The second lesson was that in 
order for this policy of militancy to succeed there had to be an extensive and 
intensive campaign of political education and organization. This organizing 
and educating would not clarify to the New Masses the reasons for fully 
supporting the struggle, but would also lessen the dangers of the ANC 
following the tactics and methods of other organizations blindly. Dhlomo 
believed the clash at the UN had had a profound effect on the nature of the 
struggle in South Africas against racial oppression. One direct effect on 
Dhlomo intellectual and politically was to prompt him to write a series of 
articles over the years on the state Indian-African relations. 

Gandhi and Nehru, the two leaders of the Indian independence struggle held 
a deep fascination for Dhlomo. On the occasion of the tragic assassination of 
Gandhi, he wrote an obituary, which among other things said the following: 

215 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "UNO Creates a Stir", 
Ilanga lase Natal, January 4, 1947. 
216 Dr. Yusuf M. Dadoo, the great Indian leader who was imprisonment for having organized 
the Indian Passive Campaign, said in part following his release from prison for having 
organized it: "The struggle of the Indian and African people is welding unity and cooperation in 
action and we are forging the forces of democracy which alone can destroy fascist practices in 
our counntry" ("Speech at Mass Welcome Meeting in Johannesburg on Release from Prison, 
September 29, 1946", in Dr. Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo: His Speeches, Articles and Correspondence 
with Mahatma Gandhi [1939-1983), compiled by E. S. Reddy and edited by Fatima Meer, 
Madiba Publishers, Durban, 1991, p.94. 

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• • 

"Gandhi's life was a reminder of the fundamental human urge or ideology to 
seek perfection of mind, personality and humanity through religious 
abnegation and submission. He was an apostle of things spiritual and 
mystical. Whatever we may say against this practice or method being 
translated into the mundane sphere of politics, the fact remains that he and 
others before him have used it with conspicuous success. Gandhi's life shows 
that greatness knows no colour and is respected everywhere."217 Dhlomo 
speculated that some Africans would understand the impact of Gandhi's 
death only through internal politics, in that he was understood to have been 
against the exploitation of Africans by Indians. Dhlomo criticizing this as a 
narrow appreciation for, for him he was an exemplification paradoxically of 
the unity of Christian ethics and Platonic idealism projected against 
materialism and acquisitiveness. 

Concerning Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, for Dhlomo he was "The Hamlet of 
Power Politics".218 Dhlomo in his reflections on him exercised the most 
unbdridled form of hero-worship that even Thomas Carlyle would have been 
ashamed of. Enthralled by what he considered Nehru's synthesis of Western 
education, aristocratic intellectualism and Indian politics, Dhlomo was 
captivated by how Nehru was attempting to resolve the historical problems 
besetting many of the newly decolonized countries or those that were 
preparing for or actually undergoing the process of decolonization: "And his 
country was oppressedand dominated over by the representatives of the same 
Western country or cukture whose intellectualism, independence, modernity 
and even democratic ideals Nehru admired. On the other hand Nehru's own 
aristocratic intellectualism and modern outlook conflicted with, was 
impatient of and was embarrassed and even opposed to some of the hoary 
and retarding customs, traditions, beliefs and behaviour of his people. Nehru 
is not the first and only person to find himself in this predicament, this 
dilemma." Viewing Nehru as a fascinating enigma, a Hamlet of modern 
international politics and a genius who was synonymous with India itself 
"for in one sense (in politics) Nehru is India and India, Nehru", Dhlomo was 
mesmerized by the contradictory choices of political modernity that 
confronted the statesmen(women) of the newly emergent countries: Nehru 
being the enemy of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism yet aligned 
himself with Britain and made remain with the Commonwealth, and 
pursuing in India a capitalist mode development; forging a republic with 
monarchical tendencies---a monarchical republic; criticizing the NATO, 
SEATO and Warsaw power blocs, yet pushing hard for the formation of the 
Non-Aligned Movement consisting mainly of Asian and African countries; 

217 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Gandhi", Ilanga lase 
Natal, February 7, 1948. 
218 Anonymous, "International Review: Nehru, The Hamlet Of Power Politics", Ilanga lase 
Natal, November 20, 1954, my emphasis. The usage of Hamlet as a metaphor for political 
analysis can only indicate it was written by Dhlomo, who was fond of it. 

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utilizing his aristocratic intellectualism and idealism which "dislikes the 
regimentation, uniformity, vulgarity and brutality of communism, and its 
non-democratic tendencies", to attempt to construct an egalitarian society; 
admirer of China's achievements under communism, yet not wising to 
follow China into communism. Reflecting on the contradictory system of 
political modernity, Dhlomo though of Nehru as a modern Hamlet caught in 
the dilemma of the political question: "To be or not to be." For Dhlomo 
Nehru was a Man of Destiny and the Voice of India (reverting to the 
Carlylean constructs he had momentarily abandoned), an enigma, a magnetic 
and tragic figure negotiating a complicated labyrinth of political modernity. 
Dhlomo was convinced that the political dilemmas encountered by Nehru 
would face African political leadership in the near future. 

Shifting his engagements from international preoccupations to continental 
matters in Africa, Dhlomo focused on Ghana as opening something new in 
African political modernity: "To millions of Africans to whom the Gold Coast 
[it was to be known as Ghana three years later in 1957 upon attaining 
independence] is political gold, the current news from that country is 
somewhat disturbing. The country is political gold to Africans because success 
or failure of what is falsely, naively, arrogantly and mockingly called 'the 
Gold Coast Experiment' affects them all profoundly." Dhlomo was 
apprehensive about the consequences for Africa of the serious political clash 
between Kwame Nkrumah's Convention Peoples Party (CPP) and the 
Ashanti powerful political traditions, who had previously supported the CPP 
but were now moving to support a new opposition party, National Liberation 
Movement. In this context also, Dhlomo was concerned with understanding 
the dynamic dialectical structure of modernity and tradition. He was fearful 
that this intractable dilemma could be used by external forces as a pretext for 
intervenin in Ghanain affairs. As usual, here too, Dhlomo was profoundly 
attuned to the principal coordinates of history of modernity within a 
particular national inflection: "This is especially true of the Gold Coast whose 
enemies and detractors contend that her new status and the introduction of 
the democratic, parliamentary system of government will fail because these 
things depend on a modern, complicated and multiform social structure and 
economy, and an ages-long, diverse and specialised training that the Gold 
Coast with its tribal structure and recent and partial emergence from barbaric 
illiteracy, does not have."219 Dhlomo was afraid that the complicated struggle 

219 Anonymous, "International Review: Gold Coast's Growing Pains", Ilanga lase Natal, 
December 18, 1954, my emphasis. The politically correct language of today would castigate 
Dhlomo for being supposeldy mesmerized by the illusion of the binarism of tradition and 
modernity; going even further, this language of correctness may add the charge of essentialism. 
These are unconvincing philosophical and ideological perspectives of postmodernism. But the 
new African intelligentsia in the early part of the twentieth, from Blaise Diagne in Senegal 
through Azikiwe in Nigeria and Harry Thuku in Kenya to Walter Rubusana in South Africa, 
were appropriating that which enabled to triumph over Africa: modernity. They were all 
totally convinced that modernity must be made to triumph over tradition. Their lived 

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between the new and the old could be used as a pretext by Western 
colonialism and imperialism to retrench themselves deeper in Africa, 
particularly in Ghana. He urged Nkrumah to negotiate carefully this 
conundrum which he perceived as possibly threatening the upcoming 
independence of Ghana. Dhlomo was adamant that tradition must be made 
to yield to modernity. Concerning this particular context, he tabulated that 
efficiency, avoidance of nepotism, availability of foreign capital would enable 
modernity to concensually exercise hegemony over tradition. Dhlomo 
viewed the conflict within the Ghana experiment as the growing pains of 
entrance into modernity. Dhlomo believed that a particular kind of politics 
were necessary to insure the concensual hegemony of modernity over 
tradition: the politics of African nationalism and Pan-Africanism.220 African 
nationalism would forcefully dismantle all artificial racial policies by 
governing all the people living in a national territory under the same laws 
and system. A Pan-African perspective would enable Africans in their 
emergent modernities to inform themselves of the lessons of the more 
advanced modernities in the African diaspora, particularly that of United 
States. 

The importance of Gandhi and Nehru to the political and historical 
imagination of Dhlomo was in many ways necessitated by the presence of the 
people of Indian descent in South Africa. The riots of 1949 between the two 

experience informed that tradition and modernity were real historical forces of the present. I 
attempted tpo articulate these problematics elsewhere: "The 'Black Atlantic' and African 
Modernity in South Africa", Research in African Literatures, vol.27 no.4, Winter 1996, pp.88-
96. 
220 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Africa and the Union", 
Ilanga lase Natal, September 24, 1949. Elsewhere Dhlomo was anxiously to distinguish his 
advocacy of African nationalism and an inclusive Pan-Africanism, from what he respectively 
designated as 'fanatical nationalism' and 'Black Pan-Africanism', both of which he associated 
with Garvey whom he found disageeable, a position similar to that of other New African 
intellectuals; to Dhlomo it was clear that a multiracial solution had to be found racial crisis in 
South Africa: "They [Africans] do not want to dominate over or drive out the European. Not 
even the much maligned Indian. They want a South Africa where every person will have full 
citizenship rights, where merit and not race will be the criterion" (Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo] 
Weekly Review And Commentary "Black Domination Bogey", Ilanga lase Natal, October 3, 
1953, my emphasis). The other part of the world, other than India, in which Dhlomo seemed to 
have had lasting interest was the tragic conflict between the Jews and the Arabs in Palenistine. 
One of the important things that made him have deep interested in this conflict area was 
because of it being the origin place of the profound thoughts of human life that still resonated 
in the era of modernity: "There are many reasons why the tragedy of Palestine will stir the 
feelings of all democrats in every part of the world. Together with Greece and Rome, Palestine 
is the cradle of modern civilisation and the birth place of some of the most precious things and 
the highest ideals of modern culture" (Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And 
Commentary "Palestine", Ilanga lase Natal, May 22, 1948). With these reflections Dhlomo 
was indirectly re-emphasizing the point that the Bible was not only centrally important to the 
New Africans in the construction of themselves as the pathfinders of modernity, but also 
embodied ethical ideals which for them were important in the making of African modernities. 

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people which resulted in many Africans being killed and some Indians dying 
caused a spiritual and political crisis in Dhlomo. This was the context in 
which he began appraising the political relations between Africans and 
Indians over several years. In a major editorial, perhaps one of the longest 
that Dhlomo ever wrote for the Ilanga lase Natal, Dhlomo argued that it was 
the Indians who were to be blamed for the tragedy because of their ill­
treatment and humiliation of Africans over decades. Because of the nature of 
apartheid, which favoured Indians much more than Africans, the Indians 
monopolised business among Africans by blocking Africans from obtaining 
licenses to start and participate in business ventures, and by using "unfair and 
immoral business methods". Using uncharacteristically harsh language, 
Dhlomo put the blame for the crisis on the shoulders of the Indians. Not only 
were Indians sabotaging African business ventures in several ways, Dhlomo 
was absolutely how Indian men behaved toward African women. On this 
matter, Dhlomo used very venomous language. Extending his sheet of 
indictment, Dhlomo was extremely angry about the exorbitant rents Indians 
were charging Africans, taking advantage of the apartheid laws which 
prevented Africans from owning property in the urban areas. He condemned 
the Indians for their practices, that while they did attend Fort Hare University 
and Adams College, for example, they prevented Africans from Indian higher 
institutions of learning. Using some of the harshest language he ever wrote, 
Dhlomo was unrelenting in his hostility to the behaviour of a large portion 
of Indians towards Africans: "Now it happens that the very Indians who 
oppose to the bitter end those Africans who desire to run their own buses, 
stores and cinema houses, behave with nauseating adolescent arrogance, 
superiority, patronage and even brutal insult to African customers and 
patrons. Where they can they segregate them. Where they cannot, they insult 
and humiliate them."221 Although Dhlomo acknowledged that it was 
ultimately the apartheid system to blame for the abysmal relations between 
Africans and Indians, he held the Indians directly responsible for the tragic 
consequences that had resulted in their objectionable behaviour toward 
Africans. He called upon the ANC to intervene immediately to prevent a 
greater crisis from emerging. It is clear that the harshness of the tone of the 
editorial was partly governed by the need to prevented a large section of the 
African population from captivated by the rhetoric of A. W. G. Champion 
who was pushing for an extremist resolution to the crisis in favour of 
Africans against the Indians. 

In another major editorial statement a few months later on, Dhlomo 
counseled against viewing the status of the relations between Africans and 
Indians only within the context of the racial riots which had occurred. He 
believed that a better vantage point from which to view these relations in 

221 Anonymous, "How Long, 0 Lord", Ilanga lase Natal, January 22, 1949. The stylistic tone is 
unmistakably that of Dhlomo. 

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South Africa was in the context of international politics.222 In advocating for 
this larger context, Dhlomo was agreeing with Pundit Nehru's advise to the 
Indians in South Africa that they must forge a political unity with Africans in 
order to participate in gaining freedom for all. He was gratified to note that 
the new leaders of the South African Indian Congress in Natal and Transvaal 
were in agreement with this ideological position. The previous Indian 
leadership which consisted mainly of the merchant class which was 
extremely nationalistic had aligned its interests and those of the Indians with 
that of the white segregationist state. This old leadership of the merchant class 
looked with disdain at a possible political unity between Africans and Indians. 
Dhlomo mentioned five factors which made possible a progression toward 
this political unity: the Hertzog Bills of 1936 which politically disenfranchised 
all non-whites; the trade union movement where Africans and Indians had 
to work together for bargaining purposes against the employers as well as 
against the government; the awakening of the colonized and oppressed 
peoples in many parts of the world demanding independence and freedom in 
their struggle against colonialism and imperialism---this process of uniting 
many different people together; the emergence of the new Indian leadership 
which he characterized as "leftist"---Dhlomo had in mind Drs. Dadoo and 
Naicker, who began working closely with Dr. Alfred Xuma who was then 
President-General of the ANC; the Asiatic Land Tenure and Representation 
Act which specifically target Indians with with certain white discriminatory 
practices; the emergence of the African middle class which in some areas 
associated with the Indian middle class. While these factors militated for 
political unity between the two groups, Dhlomo enumerated others which 
worked against this possible unity: the clash of economic interests between 
Africans and Indians; the Indian Organization opposed the Indian Congress 
by working against the political unity between the groups. Dhlomo believed 
that all of these factors have to be taken into consideration if the political 
unity of Africans and Indians is to have any tangible results. 

In the last editorial consideration of these relations four years later, Dhlomo 
viewed them in the context of the nationalist independence movements in 
Africa.223 Surveying the continent as a whole, he marked the differential 
position of Indians from region to region: in West Africa they wanted to have 
an equal share of power in the post-independence African governments; in 
East Africa, specifically Kenya, the Indians were not only economically the 
most powerful group, they were allowing themselves to be recruited as 
soldiers by the British colonizers to fight against the Mau Mau nationalist 
movement---Dhlomo thought this last point would have profoundlt never 
consequences for Indians on the whole continent; in Central Africa the 
Indians' attitudes towards the attempted Federation (which consisted of the 
later independent countries of Zimbabwe, Zambia and tangentially Malawi) 

222 Anonymous, "United Front Or Separate Ways", Ilanga lase Natal, March 26, 1949. 
223 Anonymous, "Indians and Africans", Ilanga lase Natal, August 8, 1953. 

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was being followed throughout Africa because of the dictates of Pan­
Africanism. Given these positionings of Indians throughout Africa, some of 
which he considered opportunistic, Dhlomo was intrigued and fascinated by 
Pundit Nehru's statement that Indians were guests of Africans in Africa and 
should not be positioning themselves to share in the spoils of Africa. Nehru 
made it clear India would not support such a position. Dhlomo was stunned 
by Nehru's further position that Indians must serve Africans, and if they 
were not prepared to do that they should definitely leave the continent. 
Nehru emphasized that India would not be prepared to intervene on their 
behalf in relation to Africans. Dhlomo reflected on the issue that had these 
utterances been made by an African, he or she would have been condemned 
as anti-Indian, and supporter of pogroms and riots. Dhlomo was awed by 
Nehru's forthrightness. Aware that some Africans and Indians would see the 
motives behind Nehru's statement in bad light, Dhlomo was anxious to 
point Nehru long lasting commitment to Africa. Although not fully agreeing 
with all the points Nehru had made about the African and Indian relations, 
he found them to be characterized by veracity, originality and forthrightness. 
Dhlomo found them to indicate a profound understanding of Africa on the 
part of Nehru. 

In this same year of 1953 Dhlomo undertook a major re-appraisal of the 
African and Indian relations. Conscious that such undertaking would be seen 
by some as jeopordizing the tentative political unity between the two peoples 
which had found concrete realization in the Defiance Campaign of the 
previous year, he made it unequivocally clear that his inquiry was distinctly 
'sociological' rather than 'political'. The aim was to state the facts objectively 
with the intent of resolving the difficulties through scientific methods in 
order to facilitate a correct political action. Dhlomo stated the historical 
necessity for such an appraisal within the larger context of other adjacent 
conundrums which defined the complex nature of what was South Africa 
then: "The truth is that there is an lndo-African 'problem' in the sense that 
there is a tribal problem among Africans themselves, a religious caste system 
among Indians, a Boer-Briton problem among South African Europeans, and 
a 'cross-over' or 'remain black' problem among pur Coloureds. It is so in 
other parts of the world. To deny the inter-play of race prejudice is idle as long 
as our political policy and thinking, our educational system, our social set-up 
and our cultural background remain what they are. Reform must begin there. 
Our duty is to study the cause and results and try and eliminate the evils."224 

Dhlomo located the causative factors of the crisis between the two peoples in 
the 'divide and rule' policy of the ruling white classes in South Africa which 
gave rise to the caste system of race and colour, with Indians being given 
more rights and privileges than the Africans. He underlined four factors 
which accounted for this wedge: the Indian proletariat was more compliant 

224 Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Indo-African race Relations", Ilanga lase Natal, January 17, 
1953. 

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• I 

than the 'tribalized' or 'casual' African worker to the interests of the white 
industrial class in making more profits; the Indian merchant classes had been 
given more privileges than any class of Africans; although the Indians as a 
group were not as privileged as the Europeans, they were nevertheless above 
Africans; and lastly, the Indians were utilized as a buffer between Africans 
and Europeans. 

In a remarkable turn around from his 1948 obituary in which Gandhi was 
practically held as a paragon of the Carlylean heroic figure, here Dhlomo 
launched into a devastating critique of him, nearly debunking his greatness. 
He criticizes Gandhi for the fact while living in South Africa for about a 
decade in the late nineteen century and in the early twentieth century 
formulated and executed a political policy that was against the unity of 
Africans and Indians. The organizations he founded were mainly concerned 
with interests of Indians, explicitly excluding Africans. Even more troubling 
for Dhlomo, he indicts him for having supporters the imperial forces during 
Bambatta Rebellion of 1906, which Dhlomo designates as the 'Zulu 
revolution of 1906'. Dhlomo points that because of his religious philosophy, 
Ghandi sympathized with Africans as victims of the hostilities only: in other 
words, Gandhi had no historical understanding of Africans as the active 
subjects of history. Also profoundly troubling for Dhlomo is that long after he 
returned to India Mahatma Gandhi advised not to have anything to do with 
Africans, but be concerned only with pure matters that served only the 
interests of Indians.225 Castigating the Indian merchant class for having 
supported this political position of Gandhi, sounding like a Marxist despite 
his hatred for Marxism, he writes: "They regarded---and most of them still 
regard---Africans as a lucrative 'market' only. To deny this fact is to reject a 
universal phenomenon, namely that the petty bourgeoisie always supports 
the ruling class and exploits the masses. The fact that these things are 
sometimes done unconsciously and without knowledge of the implications, 
does not alter the matter." Again Dhlomo criticized the earlier history of the 
Indian Congress for having subscribed to the political line which ultimately 
only represented the interests of the Indian merchant class. He again repeated 
the criticisms he had made four years earlier. 

225 One can rightly object that his appraisals of Indo-African relations were too one-sided, too 
extreme and profoundly Manicheaen, for they seemed to place the onus of blame only on 
Indians, totally absolving Africans of blame or responsibility in the matter. Though the 
appraisals were totally penetrative in thrust, they were perhaps not sufficiently nuanced in 
reflecting the complexity of matters at hand. Though enthusiastic about the new directions the 
young Ors. Dadoo and Naicker were taking the Indian Congress, unfortunately he never had 
occasion to reflect on their extraordinary feat in a major political piece, a feat that paralleled 
and was adjacent to that of the ANC Youth Leaguers. The achievement of the Natal 
intellectuals in the 1940s, across the racial divide, would rival and perhaps surpass that of the 
Sophiatown Renaissance of the 1950s. The 1940s still await its scholars. In other words, it is no 
longer acceptable that the Sophiatown Renaissance is always appraised in isolation, rather 
than within the longitudinal structure of South African intellectual history in the twentieth­
century. 

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. ,. 

It was inevitable that sooner or later Dhlomo would have to concern himself 
with the other major group of people in South Africa who are non­
Europeans, the Coloureds. One other distinguishing feature of Dhlomo, other 
than his great intellectual brilliance, was his forthrightness in interrogating 
the historical problematics that constituted the South African conundrum. 
His intellectual sharpness and impatience was not only reserved for Indians, 
Coloureds or Europeans, if anything they were directed more penetratively at 
Africans themselves: for instance, despite predictable howls of anger directed 
at him from some New Africans, he was fond of repeatedly complaining or 
stating that he found too many Africans who were lazy when the historical 
challenges facing us were so daunting. So his posing of the following 
'dilemma' of Coloureds in South African history, is not because of malice or 
prejudice, but reflects the thoroughness of his intellectual searches: "The 
dilemma and tragedy of the Coloureds lies in their failure to decide 'where 
they belong'. That is no problem to the Africans, Europeans and Indians. 
They know where they belong, and take their stand with pride, defiance, and 
piece of mind and soul. Not so the Coloureds. Some would identify 
themselves with the Non-Europeans and the mass struggle. Others would 
prefer to be the political appendix of the European. These think they are 
somewhat 'superior' to Africans and even to Indians by virtue of their 
'white' blood. Unlike the three other racial groups we have mentioned, the 
bitterest battle of Coloured people who think in this way is within and against 
themselves." Continuing on these racial contrastive modes, Dhlomo put 
forth the questionable thesis, that unlike other racial groups, Coloureds had 
no distinct language, culture and historical background of their own.226 It is 
not clear what Dhlomo meant by this concept of distinctiveness. After all the 
Coloureds were among the central participants in the creation of the 
Afrikaans language and in the making of Afrikaans culture.227 In any case, 
concerning this writer's cultural background, is Ndebele language and culture 
really distinct from Zulu language and culture, from which it derivated in the 
nineteenth-century; or for that matter, is Zulu language really distinct from 
its antecedents. How about Xhosa language and culture: are they really 
distinct from Khoisan cultures, which were fundamental in forming the 
language that Mqhayi made great through his poetic voice. Without wishing 
to sound postmodernistic: cultural processes are products of hybridization. 

Much more compelling is Dhlomo thesis that by following the example of 
African Americans (then the 'American Negroes') in their historical choices 
of location and positionality, the Coloureds would be able to resolve their 
'problems', 'tragedy' and 'dilemma' by choosing the side who were destined 

226 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Dilemma of the 
Coloureds", Ilanga lase Natal, May 30, 1953. 
227 Breyten Breytenbach, 

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... 
to determine their future: the Africans.228 This is one instance of the 
exemplification of the prescient genius of Dhlomo. For Dhlomo Peter 
Abrahams was exemplary in having made the correct choice in "fully 
identifying with Africans, lived among Africans and attended African 
schools." In one of the most memorable pages in whole of South African 
literature, in an autobiography Tell Freedom published in 1954229 , a year after 
Dhlomo's profound observation, Peter Abrahams portrays that historic 
moment in the late 1930s at the Library of the Bantu Men's Social Center in 
Johannesburg when he chose to intellectually and culturally identify with 
African American culture was in effect choosing politically as a Coloured to 
identify himself as an African: "I moved over to the bookshelves . . . I reached 
up and took out a fat black book. The Souls of Black Folk, by W. E. B. Du Bois. 
I turned the pages. It spoke about a people in a valley. And they were black, 
and dispossessed, and denied. I skimmed through the pages, anxious to take it 
all in ... Du Bois's words had the impact of a revelation ... But for all that, Du 
Bois had given me a key to the understanding of my world ... I replaced the 
book and reached for others. There was Up From Slavery; Along This Way, by 
Weldon Johnson; a slim volume called The Black Christ; a fat volume called 
The New Negro. I turned the pages of The New Negro. These poems and 
stories were written by Negroes! Something burst deep inside me. The world 
could never again belong to white people only! Never again! I took The New 
Negro to a chair. I turned the pages."230 In turning him away from the white 
world, African American literature was actually directing Peter Abrahams to 

228 I understand Dhlomo to be alluding to the fact that because of the nature of United States 
society, whatever composition of interacial mixture, especially with whites, involving an 
African American, that person is considered black or African. despite the lightness of the 
complexion. In other words, what Dhlomo was underlining, was that Coloureds were Africans. 
Dhlomo' preoccupation with the social positioning and historical location of the Coloureds was 
motivated by deeper concerns than only politics. It was really issues of cultural production 
which exercised his mind. Formulating a problematical thesis but fascinating because of the 
depth of the issues it raised, Dhlomo believed that until the Coloureds identified with the 
Soil and Soul of Africa. which he saw as represented and embodied by Africans, they would not 
ever in a position to create great art: "When he speaks of freedom and opportunity, the South 
African Coloured is really thinking of being allowed to go white. On the other hand the · 
African wants freedom to express and assert himself as he is. Not from Coloured or European 
sources will a Dickens and a Milton, a Tolstoy, and a Pushkin, a Goethe or a Beethoven come. 
Such art comes from the soul of this soil, of the People. It is the African who by paint and pen 
must tell the Great Tradition and Spirit of the land---the pain and toil of the common man, the 
mute music and hidden beauty of the mountains, rivers and creatures of the land, the mythology 
and customs of the patriarch" (Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo] "Non-European Art Exhibition", 
Ilanga lase Natal, October 6, 1945). It need no emphasizing that positing patriarchy as an 
inspirational creative process is unacceptable, or at least, profoundly riven with contradictions. 
229 In an interview of 1947 Richard Wright indicated that he had read the whole manuscript 
or part of Tell Freedom: "Why Richard Wright Came Back From France", Conversations with 
Richard Wright, (eds.) Kenneth Kinnamon and Michel Fibre, University Press od Mississipi, 
Jackson, 1993, p.124. At this time Wright and Abrahams were sharing an apartment in Paris: 
Henry Nxumalo, "Peter Abrahams", Drum, December 1955. 
230 Peter Abrahams, Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa, Alfred K. Knopf, New York, 1954, p. 

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•• 

his compatriots of a darker hue than himself. From this moment of 
encounter with classic African American literature, Peter Abrahams was to 
engage himself fully with the black world, as a delegate representing South 
Africa at the 1945 historic Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, writing a 
novel like Wreath of Udomo which is a fictionalization of the struggles, 
tribulations and victories of the Independence Movement in West Africa in 
the early 1950s, and his permanent residence for over thirty decades in 
Jamaica, in the Caribbean. • 

In his considerations of the political identity, historical choices and cultural 
location of Indians and Coloureds in the white dominated emergent South 
African modernity, Dhlomo was anxious to forestall the possible rejection of 
European intellectual and cultural traditions traditions by Africans, Indians 
and Coloureds because of this oppression and domination. He sought to 
indicate that not all the Europeans in South Africa subscribed to racism, 
discrimination and apartheid. Dhlomo now and then reflected on the liberal 
perspective of the white experience. Severely criticizing the onset of the policy 
of Bantu Education231 within the context of apartheid, he argued that not 
only was apartheid a perversion of the best European intellectual traditions, 
but he also felt imperative that democratic whites and oppressed people of 
other ethnic groups should work together using the forces of democracy and 
intellectual freedom represented by Milton, Voltaire, Shelley and Spinoza to 
defeat it. Not only was he appalled by the shockingly low economic resources 
being allocated to the the education of Africans, he also lamented the 
devastating cultural consequences that were resulting from Indians, 
Coloureds and Africans being barred from using research libraries, attending 
excellent film showings, concerts, etc. Dhlomo characterized this working 
together of all South Africans for democracy and freedom against apartheid as 
the happenings of an "imperceptible revolution".232 Dhlomo took this 
necessity of all South Africans working together to defeat apartheid with the 
utmost earnest, for his understanding of its destructiveness was very 
profound, whether at the civil, social or cultural level, as exemplified in these 
extraordinary words: "A dangerous situation has arisen in South Africa. It 
consists of using law to undermine law and create disorder; using the police 
to produce crime and criminals; using democracy to bring about 
regimentation and the dictatorship of a coterie; using Christianity to support 
and justify evil; using education to prostitute education and corrupt and 
enslave the minds of the young; creating courts of law in order to by-pass 
courts of law and deprive them of their independence and impartiality; 
'preserving civilisation by destroying its essence and meaning; using 
Parliament to undermine parliamentary institutions and about a state of 

231 Dhlomo wrote three major articles on the genealogy and structure of Bantu Education: 
232 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Significance of the Students Ban", Ilanga lase Natal, January 6, 1951. 

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anarchy."233 Dhlomo saw the role of enlightened Afrikaners with others as 
bringing about a halt to this enveloping state of anarchy. 

Dhlomo was enthusiastic about the emergence of Europeans who were 
openly and boldly on the side of democracy and humanism.234 He was clear 
that they were not necessarily supporting the African cause, but putting 
themselves on the side of democracy and humanism. Although aware that 
given the political overedetermined divide between blacks and whites, hence 
no personal contact between the groups, he urged Africans, Indians and 
Asians to extend a hand of friendship to the Europeans who had taken a 
courageous moral stand. Dhlomo expressed his deep admiration for 
Europeans who were doing all they could practically to alleviate the suffering 
of the oppressed and the dispossessed. Reflecting on Afrikaner Liberalism, 
Dhlomo indicated the danger of making political policy statements and 
decisions in terms of "them" against "us".235 He urged that people should be 
judged and assessed in terms of their individuality, because it is their 
convictions, upbringing, interests, ideals and thoughts that determines who 
they are, rather than race. Dhlomo paid tribute to present and past exponents 
of Liberalism among Afrikaans speaking people: J. H. Hofmeyer and Dr. 
Marais. As part of this tribute to him, he qouted part of a poem in which the 
man of letters, Louis Leipoldt, who had then recently passed away, 
condemned apartheid and re-affirmed his alignment with liberalism: 

Ye say we shall sit asunder, 
apart and separate, 

And the way ye walk, ye judges, 
ye proclaim a Christian gait, 

Oh, no divided household shall stand 
but as a sham, 

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••················· 
Ye vision a new-made world, part 

white and part unwhite ... 
Oh, each is a piebald complex when 

seen in the sun's clear light. .. 
Since these reflections on the complexity of the lived experience of 
Europeanism in South Africa were written in 1952, there can be little doubt 
that they were made possible by the political success of the Defiance Campaign 
of that particular year. 

Although these meditations were necessitated by a particular political 
conjuncture, from about the mid-1940s Dhlomo had been preoccupied with 

233 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Using Law To Prostitute 
Law", Ilanga lase Natal, October 3, 1953. 
234 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Review And Comments On Current Events "European Democrats 
and Humanists", Ilanga lase Natal, October 4, 1952. 
235 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Afrikaner Liberalism ", 
Ilanga lase Natal, November 29, 1952. 

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the possible forms cooperation or understanding between Africans and 
Europeans. In an Editorial he argued that it was through the co-operation 
between the missionaries, exemplified by figures like Livingstone, Moffat, 
Colenso, Schweitzer, and the 'broad-minded and far sighted Africans' that 
African modernity was constructed.236 Dhlomo was unimpressed by those 
Africans who saw missionaries as agents of colonialism and imperialism; to 
him such critics were 'fanatics' and 'extremists'. Co-operation around 
religion in building churches, education in building schools, health in 
building hospitals had made possible simultaneously the combatting of 
ignorance and superstition and the bringing of progress to the African 
people.237 Dhlomo was insistent on the role of missionaries in bringing 
modern African development into being. To him the invaluable work being 
done concerning African languages, literature, mythology and anthropology. 
Dhlomo urged African research workers, scholars, writers and musicians to 
build on the foundations that missionaries had laid down.238 Genuine co­
operation had made possible the establishing of publishing houses, the 
founding of the Institute of Race Relations, the setting up of the Departments 
of Bantu Studies at various universities. Concerning publishing houses, he 
repeatedly urged New African intellectuals to establish autonomous 
institutions. As will be evident in a moment, in his first reflections on the 
importance of the city in the realization of modernity, Alice, which had made 
possible the efflorescence of Xhosa intellectual culture in the late nineteenth­
century and early part of the twentieth-century, Dhlomo was fascinated and 
enthralled by the combination of an educational institution (Fort Hare 
College, later University of Fort Hare) and a major publishing house 
(Lovedale Press). One could postulate that as much as for Dhlomo the 
greatness of the Xhosa poet Mqhayi was inseparable from the Lovedale 
publishing institution, likewise the greatness of the Sotho novelist Thomas 

236 Anonymous, "Afro-European Co-Operation", Ilanga lase Natal, August 21, 1945. Dhlomo's 
preoccupation here with the historical importance of missionaries in the realization of African 
modernity, is a theme he had broached earlier, as we have seen. His calling for reconciliation 
and reciprocity between Africans and Europeans was an attempt to mediate a profound 
contradiction that many New Africans encountered caught in the maelstrom of modernity: 
"Today Natives value. appreciate and understand the meaning of Western civilizarion. But 
they also value and want to preserve the best in Bantu culture" ("Native Policy in South 
Africa", I, II, III, IV, Umteteli wa Bantu, March 22, 29, April 5, 12, 1930). This is a major 
~olitical document. 
37 With the possible exception of Silas Modiri Molema, of all the New African Talented 

Tenth Dhlomo was conscious of the importance of the sciences, particularly the medical 
sciences, in the forging of modernity. In the 1930s, in the intellectual forum for the forging of 
African modernity, Umteteli wa Bantu, Dhlomo reflected on these issues: "National Health", 
August 30, 1930; "Health Problems", January 10, 1931; "Psychology of the Race Problem", 
February 7, 1931. And: X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Socialised Medicine", Ilanga lase Natal, October 9, 
1943. 
238 On the other hand Dhlomo was violently indignant of Europeans setting themselves as 
'experts' concerning African matters: Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And 
Commentary "Joint Council Social", Ilanga lase Natal, March 10, 1945; Weekly Review And 
Commentary "Race Relations: Parliament and Speeches", Ilanga lase Natal, March 17, 1945. 

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Mofolo is inseparable from the Morija Printing and Book Depot in Morija.239 
Continuing on his reflections on the historic importance of co-operation, 
Dhlomo wrote the following words, which today, two years after 1994, have 
absolute pertinence: "This is as it should be for the peace and progress of any 
community depend[s] on mutual co-operation ... Today we need co-operation 
between the races more than ever. But it takes men of great courage and 
vision to do so. It means sacrifice, tolerance, the readiness to give and take, 
the ability to see one's faults and weaknesses, and the gift to understand the 
other man's point of view and his difficulties and worth ... It is the only path 
to a united, prosperous and peaceful South Africa" (my italics). 

An essay on Edgar H. Brookes, who was a member of Parliament as well as 
occupying a seat in the National Representative Council, gave Dhlomo an 
opportunity to reflect on the principles at the center of his own political 
philosophy.240 He sought to understand the differences in perception between 
the New Africans who looked unfavourably at the way Dr. Brookes 
represented the political interests of Africans in Parliament out of his own 
volition, since Africans could not be officially represented, and the Old 
Africans who were enthralled with him. Dhlomo argued it was necessary to 
be tolerant of the methods and approaches one fundamentally disagreed with 
because South African political problems were too many and too complex to 
be comprehensible from only a particular perspective or viewpoint. He 
observed that although they may be agreement or consensus on principles 
and fundamentals, aims and objectives, there could still be irreconcilable 
differences about approaches and methods. What intrigued Dhlomo about Dr. 
Brookes is that although in his politics he was conservative and predictable, 
in his poetry he was radical and denounciatory of the way whites oppressed 
Africans, in effect the way they intellectually enslaved themselves. He was 
impatient with Brookes the politician whom he felt was always seeking 
appeasement, compromise, middle course and enslaved to an evolutionary 
method. This critique of Brookes clearly implies that for Dhlomo co-
operation does not mean, or should not necessarily lead to unprincipled 
compromise, appeasement or acquiescence. The real importance of this essay 
of 1945 is its indication that because of the progressively deepening lived 
experience of oppression of African people at the hands of white South 
Africans, Dhlomo underwent a profound philosophical transformation, 
whereby he embraced a revolutionary method of transformation of society, in 
replacement of the evolutionary method he had originally favored. One 
consequence of this was the increasing politicization of his imagination, 
leading to his support of the radical options proposed by the Youth League 

239 Thomas Mofolo seems to have had a pronounced effect on two writers participating in the 
national forms of their respective modernities: Edouard Glissant in Martinique and Saul Bellow 
in United States: Glissant, Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays, trans J. Michael Dash, 
University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1992, p.134-35; Bellow, 
240 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Dr. Edgar H. Brookes: Poet vs Politician", Ilanga lase Natal, April 7, 
1945. 

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•• 

and the methods of the Defiance Campaign, as we have seen. This 
progressive position of accepting a revolutionary method was accompanied 
by a regressive one of constantly searching for ways of delinking this method 
from its possible Communist or socialist outcome. From this moment of 
delinking, Dhlomo strove to harness the revolutionary method in the cause 
of African Nationalism, if need be, necessarily against Marxism and 
Communism. This is what cemented his ideological passion with the Youth 
Leaguers such Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, A. P. Mda and others.241 

Still concerned with the historical meaning of the role of Europeans in South 
African history, Dhlomo undertook an examination of white political parties. 
The context of this appraisal in 1953 was the emergence of two new political 
parties, Liberal Party and the Union Federal Party, joining a political 
landscape already occupied by the Nationalist Party, the United Party and the 
Labour Party.242 Subscribing to the rigid doctrines of Calvinism, hence seeing 
the Afrikaners as the chosen people, for Dhlomo the Nationalist Party was 
driven by the ideology of fanatical Nationalism bordering on fascism. The 
central aim of the Party was the establishing of an Afrikaner-dominated 
republic, possibly with one volk and one language. Dhlomo saw these rigid 
attitudes as partly explainable by the defeat of the Afrikaner people in the 
English-Boer War of 1899-1902. He had no doubt that its political policy and 
practice of apartheid, which was superficially known as the separation of 
races, when in actual fact was the entrenchment of a rigid caste system based 
on race and color ('perpetual domination of the Blacks by the Whites'), would 
fail because modernity was predicated on the integration of peoples and 

241 This question of consensus in fundamentals and principles and dissensus in methods and 
approaches, which so profoundly occupied the political imagination of Dhlomo in the 1940s 
and 1950s, was to bring to an end the historical role of the ANC Youth League as an autonomous 
entity, following the death of Anton Lembede in 1947, as the progressive wing of African 
Nationalism represented by Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others clashed with the 
regressive wing of African Nationalism occupied by A. P. Mda, Jordan K. Ngubane and others. 
Dhlomo took an ambiguous position on this central divide, sympathisizing with Ngubane but 
very much fearful that Ngubane's fanatical extremism could lead to disastrous consequences, 
which actually happened after the death of Dhlomo in 1956. We have seen Ngubane in his 
Unpublished Autobiography denouncing Walter Sisulu as Secretary-General of the ANC in the 
early 1950s for aligning his wing of African Nationalism with the South African Communist 
Party, in the person of Yusuf Dadoo. The spectacular result of this alliance was the Defiance 
Campaign which culminated in the Congress of the People drafting the Freedom Charter in 
Kliptown in 1955. Dhlomo limited himself in assessing these shifting political positions to 
asking who had authorized Walter Sisulu to visit Communist countries. Presumably Dhlomo 
was responding to Sisulu's enthusiastic report on his vist to China (see: "I Saw China", 
Liberation, no.7, February 1954). Nelson Mandela had some sharp words for Ngubane's 
characterization of the Defiance as a colussus failure in his column in the Indian Opinion, as 
well as his denouncing of the ANC alliance with the Indian Congress and the Communist Party 
(see: "Towards Democratic Unity", Liberation, no.6, November 1953). Jordan K. Ngubane, an 
intellectual giant, was one of South Africa's greatest political enigmas. 
242 Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "The Present Situation", 
llanga lase Natal, May 23, 1953. 

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cultures, however problematic the integration may be in actuality. Dhlomo 
vehemently disputed the self-proclamation of the Party that it stood for 
Western civilization (in his understanding: modernity). Rather, in his 
estimation, it stood for a backward form of an Afrikaner way of life. Since it 
rejected a Western way of life, quintessentially understood by Dhlomo as 
democracy and freedom, and its policy of apartheid was condemned by 
Western countries, including United States, and the United Nations 
Organization, how could the Party pretend to represent Western civilization! 
He was convinced that the complexity and contradictions of modernity would 
prove fatal to its hegemonic political power. 

Although forged and defined by benevolent paternalism towards the 
Africans, Dhlomo believed that in essentials and fundamentals, the United 
Party did differ that much from the Nationalist Party. In contrast to the latter, 
its one central defining characteristic was its betrayal of the African people 
through disenfranchisement at the formation of the Union of South Africa 
in 1910. He criticized the Party of Botha, Smuts243 and Hertzog, supposedly a 
gathering point of white moderates and true patriots, for not keeping abreast 
with the dramatic changes which had been initiated by the rapid 
transformations of modernity. As for the Labour Party, Dhlomo found it 
moribund since it was more interested in representing the interests of 
'advanced' workers (that is European), to the near total exclusion of 'true' 
workers (Indians, Coloureds and Africans). Sounding more radical than 
usual, he wrote: "The 'advanced' workers referred to (including Whites in 
South Africa) forget that their high wages and favourable conditions are the 
result of the misery and groanings of millions of colonial workers." In other 
words, the Labour Party had betrayed its historical mission by refusing to 
defend the class interests of all workers, only concerning itself race matters of 
white workers. To be sure, for Dhlomo class interests of all workers did not 
necessarily mean all workers of the world should unite to create a socialist 
state or society. The possibility of socialism or communism were a great 
anathema to Dhlomo under any circumstances. The other limitation with 
which Dhlomo taxed the Labour Party was its failure to lure the white 
workers from rabid nationalism and racism, with the aim of forming a 
progressive proletarian front with other workers. 

Given that the Nationalist Party, the United Party, and the Labour Party were 
not that different from each other, Dhlomo was intrigued by the new political 
configuration he expected would result with the establishing of the two new 
white political parties. Part of the explanation for this new configuration was 
that 1953 was the year of the first elections since the elections of 1948 
instituted official apartheid, and a year after the Defiance Campaign of 1952, 

243 Over many decades Dhlomo was fascinated by Smuts whom he considered a brilliant 
political leader and a major intellectual force. His three columns in Ilanga lase Natal are 
replete with many references to him. For instance: 

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which•was first manifestation of the Youth League's Programme of Action 
adopted by the ANC Annual Conference of 1949. 

Dhlomo thought the ideology of the new Union Federal Party similar to that 
of the Nationalist Party, in that it too supported white supremacy and racism 
in relation to Africans, and believed also that the differences between the 
Afrikaners and the English-speaking whites were unbridgeable. The 
difference between these two parties concerning matters affecting white South 
Africans was that whereas the Nationalist Party wanted to absorb all whites 
into an Afrikaner volk republic and their way of life, the Union Federal Party 
believed each of the two white groups should have their own state, hence 
federation. Grappling with the absurdities of these political positions (or 
posturings), Dhlomo wrote: "Never mind that Europeans are so interwoven 
that (as in the case of apartheid) it is difficult where to start, in fact, to tell wjo 
is who. The policy is fraught with grave possibilities. Failure of federation 
might lead to a demand for partition. Refusal of partition might lead to a 
policy to gain it by force." Concerning Indians, Coloureds and Africans, the 
Union Federal Party believed their subordination to the interests of whites 
should be maintained and continued. 

To Dhlomo the emergence of the Liberal Party was one of the most significant 
events of the time. He stated six reasons for his positive evaluation it: its 
presentation of a challenging political alternative to apartheid, segergation 
and racial discrimination; its attempt to bridge the racial divide; its 
interpretation of Western civilization as concerned with merit, values and 
standards, rather than with race and colour; its recognition of the importance 
of the dignity of the individual, human rights, ethics and justice; its taking 
cognisance of the fact that Africans were a central part of the experience of 
modernity; its analysis that South African racial problems are not so unique 
that they are not amenable to universal and historical solutions that have 
been tried in other societies. Dhlomo concluded by observing that while the 
Liberal Party was far in advance of European public opinion, it lags behind the 
demands of many New African intellectuals and of such organizations as the 
ANC. Perhaps this last point explains why Dhlomo was never tempted into 
joining it, thereby defecting from the ANC, as was tragically to be the case 
soon thereafter with Jordan Ngubane. 

Dhlomo's concern with the political conjuncture of the 1950s led him to 
reflect on certain aspects of South African history. Postulating this history as a 
series of battles between Light and Progress and those of Darkness and 
Destruction, between Black and White, between Boer (Afrikaners) and 
British, he developed the interesting thesis that Africans were not defeated by 
Europeans by military means, rather, it was through religion, medicine, 
education, jurisprudence, rationalism, economic rationality and 
administrative efficiency: "These were victories over the mind and spirit and 
upon ways of living ... The conquest of the Bantu [African] by these subtler 

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agencies was his salvation. He changed, learnt and multiplied, and South 
Africa remained a Blackman's country."244 Believing militarism as an 
insignificant part of it. for him it was modernity and the actualization of its 
ideas in lived experience that brought about the defeat of Africans at the 
hands of Europeans: the adaptation by Africans of new patterns of life, 
Western standards and ways of living. It would not be mirepresenting his 
historical perspective to indicate that Dhlomo the missionaries were a much 
greater and potent force than soldiers in the success of the colonialist mission 
and imperialist project. It was with the ideas of modernity that Africans had 
been marginalized, and it was through them that they would have to 
reconquer. 

This may be the fundamental reason why of all the New African Talented 
Tenth, Dhlomo was the most profoundly conscious of the historical forms of 
modernity, its actual cultural representations, social actualizations, and 
political manifestations. Merely theorizing on modernity was insufficient, 
creating the cultural forms of its representation was imperative. It was in this 
context that undertook the construction of a particular aspect of African 
modernism. Given that Octavio Paz states in the above epigraph that there 
are types of modernity as there are societies, are there also not as many types 
of modernism as there are corresponding historical national situations! 
Dhlomo's poetic philosophical meditations, much more than his plays and 
poetry would seem to be the cultural representations of African modernism. 

Like the other New African intellectuals, Dhlomo was historically aware that 
modernity and modernism were the products of the cosmopolitanism of the 
cities: R. V. Selope Thema on Johannesburg, Solomon T. Plaatje on King 
Williamstown, Maseru and London, Lewis Nkosi on New York and Paris, 
Nathaniel Nakasa on Johannesburg and New York. It is important to note the 
first essays by Africans on the role of the city in the creation of modernity in 
South Africa by both Solomon T. Plaatje and H. I.E. Dhlomo were not about 
the country's major cities, be it Johannesburg or Durban or Cape Town or 
Bloemfontein or Port Elizabeth or East London, but two small towns adjacent 
to each other, respectively King Williamstown and Alice, which enabled the 
extraordinary efflorescence of Xhosa intellectual culture in their midst in the 
late nineteenth-century. This intellectual culture was created by the first 
group of black Talented Tenth who were conscious of themselves as the 
African pathfinders of modernity:245 John Tengo Jabavu, Walter Rubusana, 
Elijah Makiwane, Pambani Jeremiah Mzimba.246 All of them articulated their 

244 Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Bantu, Boer and Briton", llanga lase Natal, March 20, 1954. 
245 I have borrowed the expression 'African pathfinders of modernity' from great medical 
historian, Henry Sigerist, who in his great book speaks of the 'European pathfinders of 
medicine': The Great Doctors: A Biographical Histpry of Medicine, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, 
W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1933 [1931], p.18. 
246 Elsewhere I make detailed presentation of the historic importance of this group of African 
intellectuals in an anthology I have recently edited: "The Trans-Atlantic Connection of the 

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viewpoints and perspectives in the newspaper, Imvo Zabantsundu (Native 
Opinion), which was founded by John Tengo Jabavu in November 1884. It 
was among these intellectuals that the role of the city in bringing new ways of 
living, cultural expression and thinking was broached. In an Editorial to the 
first copy of The Kaffir Express (later published as Isigidimi Sama Xosa [The 
Xhosa Messenger]), a newspaper founded fourteen years earlier than Imvo 
Zabantsundu (published in King William's Town) Elijah Makiwane 
expressed the importance of Venice in the founding of the first European 
newspaper in 1563. He wrote that he expected The Kaffir Express in Lovedale 
[Alice] (the town from which it emanated) in collaboration with the 
missionaries through the means of education would bring about new ways of 
thinking among Africans: "The demand for the products of the press is a sure 
gauge of the intelligence of the people of any country and a just measure of 
the results produced by education. The newspaper of the present day is 
undoubtedly a great educator ... The paper will be addressed to the intelligent 
portion of the native community who are able to read, or have an interest in 
what is going on in the world beyond their own dwellings."247 Jabavu who 
received his education on the pages of Isigidimi Sama Xosa, and subsequently 
became its editor, in founding his newspaper was continuing the cultural and 
intellectuals aims first formulated by Makiwane. 

In the first editorial of his newspaper, paying homage to Elijah Makiwane, 
Jabavu mentioned the importance of cities, whether be they Pretoria or Port 
Elizabeth, in making available the new forms and experiences of modernity: 
"For over half a century Missionaries have been labouring assiduously 
among the Natives [Africans] of this country, and Government has invested, 
and is still investing enormous sums of money with the professed object of 
civilising them. The result---which will ever be mentioned in these columns 
with gratitude---is, that a large class has been formed among the Natives 
which has learnt to loathe the institutions of barbarism, and to press for the 
better institutions of a civilized life. Hitherto this newly formed class has been 
tossing from pillar to post, despised by its former friends of the heathen state, 
and misundersttod by the representatives of civilization in this country."248 It 
was this newly formed African intelligentsia that was sensitive and 
susceptible to the new ways of living and thinking made available by city-life 
experience. Elijah Makiwane, ever so exemplary in many ways, was the first 
African intellectual to write an essay devoted solely to the qualitative forms 
of lived African experiences in the urban social spaces. Although concerned 
to combat what he considered were the negative effects of city life experience, 
the social hierarchization along class lines among Africans, the accelerated 
rate of the incidence of alcoholism with the attendant social consequences, 

New African Movement", United States and South Africa: The Historical Field of Social and 
Cultural Interaction, Verso, London, 1987. 
247 Elijah Makiwane, "To Our Readers", The Kaffir Express, vol.1 no.l, October 1, 1870. 
248 John Tengo Jabavu, "The Launch", Imvo Zabantsundu, November 3, 1884. 

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the economic exploitation of Africans by Europeans, and prostitution, 
Makiwane was gratified with the way Africans were adjusting and adapting to 
urban life, which indicated to him that they were accepting modernity and 
modernization: "Natives who have been long in towns are in some respects 
better than those who live in the country. While i am not prepared to say that 
they answer to the well-known comparison of town and country life .. . . it 
may be stated that town Natives have a better idea of the value of time; that 
they are more punctual and make an effort to do a days work each day; they 
attend-better to the inside of their dwellings and are more active both in body 
and intellectually."249 It could be said that Plaatje and Dhlomo were 
fascinated by the reposition of the mind and body which modernity made 
possible through city-life experience. 

With their essays Plaatje and Dhlomo were paying homage to the Xhosa 
intellectual renascence of the late nineteen century and early twentieth­
century, as well as seeking to establish affiliative links of African intellectual 
traditions across ethnic boundaries. Plaatje' essay was published a year before 
the founding of the ANC, a founding moment that transformed different 
ethnic groups in South Africa into aligning with the historical principle of 
the unity of the African people. Plaatje states that King William's Town was 
founded by the London Missionary Society in 1835. He explicity salutes John 
Tengo Jabavu, remarking that he still wields a 'trenchant pen' which he has 
been doing since 1884 when he launched Imvo Zabantsundu.250 Comparing 
the town to Pretoria, he found King William's Town very picturesque, 
principally painted by the colorfully cultural contrast between the British and 
the Xhosa, and their respective languages, English and Xhosa. In relation to 
these languages, Plaatje was intrigued by the struggle of the German 
community for the recognition of their language. Having earlier in his young 
adulhood been a court interpreter in Kimberley, he was fascinated by the 
existence of two courts of Law, one principally concerned with the custom 
laws of tradition and the other with modernity by establishing procedures and 
contracts for mineworkers about to depart to the Johannesburg goldmines. 
Since the court of Law dealing with tradition had only white interpreters who 
spoke Xhosa, Plaatje wondered whether a European (presumably immersed 
in modernity) could ever understand the 'native mind' still dominated by 
the throes of tradition. In a statement celebrating the transformations 
modernity was effecting, Plaatje wrote: "You will not need to be told of the 
impracticability of segregation if you will but come here and see for yourself 

249 Elijah Makiwane, "Natives in Towns", Imvo Zabantsundu, July 19, 1888. 
250 Sol. T. Plaatje, "King Williamstown", Tsala ea Becoana, October 14, 1911. This celebration 
of John Tengo Jabavu by Plaatje was to change within a year when Jabavu opposed the 
formation of the South African Native National Congress (known from 1925 as the African 
National Congress) in 1912. In a chapter devoted to John Tengo Jabavu in his classic book 
Native Life in South Africa (1916) Plaatje traces the unfolding of this tragedy. Though 
profoundly pained by this, Plaatje never turned his back to Jabavu, as happened with many 
Africans, intellectuals and masses. 

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the flood of black peasantry from our surrounding locations pouring into the 
streets; see the natives walking up and down the thoroughfares staring at the 
shop windows, meeting and gossiping with friends, bartering with white 
men, and purchasing provisions: and you will be satisfied that, should 
segregation ever become an accomplished fact, fully four-fifths of the 
merchants would leave King Williamstown by way of the Bankruptcy Court." 
From this moment of the inception of reflections on the transformative 
effects of modernity by New African intellectuals, it was clear to them that in 
order for the African people to make a full entrance into modernity, all forms 
of artificial barriers imposed by the Other, rather than the real historical 
barriers of traditional customs, have to be actively combatted. The ANC was 
founded as one of the most effective instruments for this historical entrance. 

Dhlomo, who had at one time wanted to write a cultural history of South 
African cities, in his consideration of Alice where Fort Hare University and 
Lovedale Institute are situated, emphasized the acquisition of knowledge and 
high learning as prerequisites for an effective negotiation with, and location 
within, modernity: "A post-matriculation student, one of my friends there, 
told me that the absence of attractions and amusements in the town was to 
them a boon as it not only helped students to live a life all their own, create 
an educationally elevating atmosphere and make their own traditions, but it 
was an incentive to study, concentration and application just because there 
was nothing else to do."251 In Alice to attend a Conference organized by the 
American New Negro Max Yergan and the participation of other New 
Africans, R. V. Selope Thema, Charlotte Manye Maxeke, Dr. Xuma, Z. K. 
Matthews, D. D. T. Jabavu, among others, he reflected on the contrast between 
the town characterized by efflorescence, luxuriant colors, brightness, 
gleaminess, boldness, wealth, majesty and the poverty of the countryside: 
"The picture of the surrounding country, congested with poor Native huts 
standing amid untilled or partly-tilled lands, fills one with surprise and 
indignation. Right here we have heathen people living their old fashioned 
life, impervious and even hostile to the teachers of modern life. It is indeed a 
ghastly contrast of ignorance and education; modernity and heathenism; 
advancement and retrogression. The people are poverty-stricken ." Dhlomo 
observed that while in the not too distant past Africans and Europeans had 
been engaged in a series of serious conflicts, around modernity, as 
exemplified by the Conference, there was agreement among the intelligentsia 
of both racial groups about the necessity of extending modernity into the 
country. 

In his next consideration of the city in relation to modernity sixteen years 
later, Dhlomo was captivated by the personality the city projected, the 
traditions it embodied, and the history it dramatised. Meditating on the rank, 
reputation and status of Bloemfontein, he posed a series of questions: "What 

251 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "An Impression", Umteteli wa Bantu, July 12, 1930. 

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is a City: Is it the people or the buildings and the streets? Is it these combined 
or neither? I don't know. What I do know is that a City lives and breathes. It 
is more alive and enduring than some of its unfortunate citizens who many 
of them are but walking ghosts and rotting souls---victims of either 
themselves or the Social System. But a City is animate."252 For Dhlomo the 
city symbolized the intersection of two major strands of South Africa history: 
the 1836 Great Trek of the Afrikaner people for whom the city was a resting 
place and a source of encouragement as they sought to escape British imperial 
rule in the Cape Province; and the political awakening of the African people, 
for it was here the ANC was founded in the wake of the Union of South 
Africa in 1910 which resulted in the disenfranchisement of black people by 
English and Afrikaner settlers. He lamented that because of the political 
hegemony of the Cape Province and the gold power of the Transvaal, 
Bloemfontein, geographically centrally located, was not chosen the Capital of 
the Union. Although aware that Bloemfontein was conservative and 
reactionary, Dhlomo hoped it would eventually become a center of new ideas, 
a fountain of spiritual ideas and move toward realizing the ideals of better 
race relations. Perhaps as part of the expression of this hope and ideal, 
Dhlomo, in another context, wrote a poetic song of struggle and freedom 
about Bloemfontein: 

0 Bloemfontein,---grim wars of 
liberty. 

Thou art the heart, the centre, 
Capital 
Of Bantu hopes, fears, throes and 
strife. Here all 
Our giants past and present stood 
and fought, 
And many great campaigns here 
planned and wrought. 
Rejected as the Capital by the whites, 
Thou art the Capital of freedom's 

fights.253 (Excerpt) 
With the liberation of the country from racial oppression, Dhlomo expected 
African historians to write tomes on the calls from this city that launched 
many struggles. 

The city dearest to Dhlomo's heart naturally was Durban. He begins his 
reflections with this thought: "The story of our cities has not been told. It 
requires telling as it is a great drama. Each of our leading cities---and even the 
humble dorps, the rivers, hills and main roads---has an exciting 
autobiography . .. Each has its idiosyncracies, glories, faults .. . what a mighty 
epic cannot these and other places relate! And relate it I mean to do some 

252 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Bloemfontein", Inkundla ya Bantu, First Fortnight, October, 1946. 
253 H. I. E. Dhlomo, "Bloemfontein", Ilanga lase Natal, November 20, 1948. 

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. . '\. 

day."254 Dhlomo seemed to have had a deep fascination for the Great Trek, 
for the first event of historic importance he mentions in relation to the city is 
their arrival in Durban, having trekked all the way from the Western Cape. 
There are two areas in which the autobiography of the city centrally 
intersected with the history of Africans. In politics, Durban had at one point 
the largest number of ICU members than any other city. In this for Dhlomo 
the city played a leading role in 'National Liberation' struggle. Secondly, 
concerning intellectual and cultural matters, the city nurtured the likes of 
Jordan Ngubane, Rueben Caluza and John Dube; Dhlomo thought that it 
inspired and facilitated great creativity.255 The presence of Indians in Durban 
was celebrated by Dhlomo in the context of their presence having made the 
Indian government challenge the white minority government at the United 
Nations, as we have seen. The absolute uniqueness or distinctiveness of 
Durban for Dhlomo more than any other South African city was its equipose 
between city and country: " ... is the only one where one can bring the 
country to the city and the city to the country." He believed the city would 
bring about the regeneration of Africa (perhaps an allusion to Pixley ka Isaka 

254 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "On Durban", Ilanga lase Natal, February 22, 1947. 
255 It is interesting to note that Durban never inspired the great Portuguese modernist poet, 
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), who spent four critical formative years of his childhood in the 
city as well as for a short period in Cape Town (January1896-August 1901). He was a shade too 
young for South Africa to have impacted on him in a fundamental way. It was here he learned 
Enghlish. One of the absolutely best essays on Pessoa has been written by Octavio Paz. 
Speaking of the heteronyms of Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis under which 
Fernando Pessoa wrote, Octavio Paz ruminated: "The authenticity of the heteronyms depends 
on its poetic coherence, its verisimilitude. They were necessary creations because in no other 
way could Pessoa have devoted his life to living and creating them; what counts now is not that 
they were necessary for their author but that they are also necessary for us. Pessoa, their first 
reader, did not doubt their reality" ("Introduction: Pessoa or the Imminence of the Unknown", 
Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa, trans. Edwin Honig, The Swallow Press Inc., Chicago, 1971, 
p.7). Likewise the heteronyms of X and Busy-Bee which HI. E. Dhlomo used possess their own 
concrete reality and have become an absolute necessity for us. In all of his ouevre on two 
occasions he reflected on his heteronyms. He explained his heteronym of Busy-Bee in the 
following manner: "Quick on our heels of criticism, the Activities Organiser has answered, not 
by nebulous words, but by action. That's the spirit! The Bee's sting is directed as a spur to 
progress" (Busy-Bee [H. I.E. Dhlomo], Weekly Review And Commentary "Bravo B. S. C.", 
Ilanga lase Natal, October 14, 1944). Since sometimes two separate columns on totally different 
matters would appear on the same page of Ilanga lase Natal under Busy-Bee and H. I. E. 
Dhlomo, once Busy-Bee jokingly explained that his colleague H. I. E. Dhlomo was plagiarizing 
and stealing his ideas ( ). As Busy-Bee, articulating the concepts ans 
constructs of New African, New Africa and New Africanism, Dhlomo was simultaneously 
theorizing the transformations modernity was effecting in changing the Old Africans into New 
Africans, and the active interventions the New Africans initiated in shaping the form, 
structure and processes of South African modernity. Like most historical processes. especially 
concerning cultural matters. this essay has been arguing that the making of South African 
modernity as a historical process and event has involved both subjective intervention and 
objective structuring. Consequently, as Fredric Jameson would have said, Busy-Bee was 
preoccupied with cognitively mapping this emergent colossal form. As X. Dhlomo produced the 
cultural forms of modernity. the expressive forms of modernism: prose poems and poetic essays. 

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' . . 
Seme who with the essay of the same name established the philosophical 
foundations of New Africanism).256 

Dhlomo's other consideration of the city, "In Praise of Durban", which is a 
variation on the previous essay "On Durban", was notable for its contrasting 
of the way modernity realized its effect on the urban space of Johannesburg as 
opposed to that of Durban.257 He was surprised by the strong influence of 
public relations and advertising had on Randites (Africans who reside in 
Johannesburg), especially on the black middle class.258 The New Africans in 
Johannesburg are assertive, pushy, coercive, recklessly adventurous---these 
characteristics hidden behind the mask of humility, calmness and simplicity. 
They are wholly westernized because of their pride in shedding their Past, and 
their hallmark was sophistication and progress. On the other hand the 
Durbanites (New Africans in Durban) were seen by Dhlomo as being 
phlegmatic, staid and sedate, because for them the Past was pridefully 
treasured, and considered unique and rich. To them African tradition was to 
be grafted onto European modernity, rather than discarded in quest of 
sophistication. This deliberateness in life tends to make Durbanites more 
philosophical than the Randites. Taking these contrasts further, Dhlomo 
wrote: "Johannesburg glories in its teeming, kaleidoscopic, fast life. It leaves 
you breathless. In Durban you can relax and retire into the country (rivers, 
hills, birds, moonlight). No rivers in Johannesburg and moonlight is 
invisible." Being a sea-port, Dhlomo saw Durban as an opening to the larger 
world, while Johannesburg was turned in on itself being a congested 
metropolis. His love for Durban was enormous, as can be seen in one of the 
poems dedicated to the city: 

Here with my lady nestling by my 
side, 

We sit and watch the launches fleet­
ing by, 
Curled wavwlets dance, pied scenes; 
while fish play hide 
And seek, and ships like heaving 

hills tower. 

Such calm removes all thought of 
life's surcease. 
How peaceful, lone and weird the 
waters lie! 
How beautiful and charmed the 

256 Pixley ka Isaka Seme, "The Regeneration of Africa", Royal African Society, vol.5, 1905-6. 
257 Busy-Bee [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "In Praise of Natal", Jlanga lase Natal, December 18, 1954. 
258 During his Umteteli wa Bantu period Dhlomo wrote an essay reflecting on how advertising 
was changing the consciousness of Africans self-perception of themselves: "Advertisements", 
November 8, 1930.To Dhlomo advertising was the soul of modern commerce. 

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space poetry and prose, the individual and the collective, the ideal and the 
everyday."268 

The third paragraph of the eleven paragraph prose poem "The Falling Leaf" 
reads in part: "It was in this mood [ of forlorness] I boarded a bus and repaired 
to Brighton Beach the other day. After wandering about happily but aimlessly, 
enjoying the peace and the scenery, away from the filth and depression, the 
moise and unceasing garrulity of my slum residential area, I sat down in a 
dense bushy growth, my eyes, ears and mind fascinated by the music and 
magic of quietude and the sea. I took my pencil (my bosom friend) and 
wrote. "269 The fourth paragraph continuing on the narration also reads in 
part: "My mind had outpaced my eyes and ears, running into and shattering 
itself, like the waves before me, on the rocks of the meaning of Nature and 
Man. And, like the beaten, humble waves at low tide, my mind now tired and 
listless after a tussle with these immensities and mysteries of life, began to 
wander aimlessly." The fifth paragraph which ostensibly modulates the real 
theme of the prose poem begins with these lines: "A leaf fluttered and fell. .. 
My mind caught at it---if only in revenge, despair, laziness! I looked up at the 
branches from which it came." The sixth paragraph begins with these two 
lines which conveys the real object of its intent, the critique of modernity: 
"The falling leaves themselves seemed to be in rebellion against the 
dictatorship and paternalism of the branches; appeared eager to escape the 
grip, regimentation and insipid safety of their own crowded life. And as they 
came down they fluttered and trembled with the joy of emancipation 
mingled with fear, danced a magic dance of life and death, and somersaulted 
with ecstacy and doubt." 

Even in this excerpted form, the prose poem conveys the deep Romantic 
sensibility of Dhlomo, which was also true of other brilliant New African 
poets and writers: Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, J. J. J. Jolobe and others. Perhaps 
this explains Lewis Nkosi's deep ambivalence to this generation of 

268 Jennifer Forrest and Catherine Jaffe, op. cit., p.289. · 
269 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "The Falling Leaf", Ilanga lase Natal, March 11, 1944. Dhlomo was an 
intellectual who thrived in paradoxes. While his essays on the making of modernity were 
adulative of this historical process, his contruction of African modernism through the prose 
poems was critical of modernity as an incompletable eventuation as long as history and nature 
remained non-synchronous with each other. Likewise, his reflections on modernity postulated 
the necessity of Carly lean heroic in its making, his African modernism is devoid of any hero­
worship mongering. It is interesting to know what Dhlomo would have made of Walter 
Benjamin's observation: "The hero is the true subject of modernism. In other words, it takes a 
heroic constitution to live modernism. That was also Balzac's opinion. With their belief, 
Balzac and Baudelaire are in opposition to Romanticism. They transfigure passions and 
resolution; the Romanticists transfigured renunciation and surrender. But the new way of 
looking at things is far more variegated and richer in reservations in a poet than in a 
storyteller" (Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, trans. Harry 
Zohn, New Left Books, London, 1973, p.74). 

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intellectual which preceded his own, that of the Sophiatown Renaissance.270 

Although his poetic master was John Keats, part of the fascination of the 
poem is its attempted marriage of two classic Romantic poems: William 
Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortaslity from Recollections of Early 
Childhood" and Percy Bysshe Shelley's "To a Sky-Lark". Despite this 
attempted poetic conjunction, there are various extensive allusions to Keats 
in paragraph nine of the prose poem: "I said Beauty. The enchantment of the 
tumbling leaf, brown or green (for some leaves are blown off in the strngth 
and glory of the green life), brought to my mind back to that elusive entity--­
Beauty ... Watching the falling leaf, I wondered if the delicacy was an 

270 Lewis Nkosi, Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature, Longman, 1981, 
p.113-115: "To put it as bluntly as possible, Vilakazi's revolutionary themes are not matched by 
a similar revolutionary approach to poetic technique. Consequently, repeatedly aware of these 
echoes from another tradition, we are obliged in discussing Vilakazi's work to confine ourselves 
only to those of his achievements about which there can be no dispute ... The poem's ambitious 
scope [Dhlomo's Valley of a Thousand Hills], its combination of a 'nature' theme familiar to 
lovers of traditional English verse, with a vigorous protest at the defeat and humuliation of 
Zulu power, were crucial in ensuring for tha author a wider attention at its publication than 
had hitherto accorded a work by an African writer ... Though there is an unmistakable 
similarity between Dhlomo and Vilakazi's failure to adapt lessons learned from English verse 
to their own native tradition, Vilakazi at least enjoyed the advantage of having written 
mostly in his mother tongue, with the result that however derivative his poetics it could not 
include the use of an exact European imagery and temimology as Dhlomo was sometimes 
compelled to do." These astute observations are marred by Lewis Nkosi constant reference to 
Vilakazi and Dhlomo as "Zulu poets". Even in the case of Vilakazi who wrote in Zulu this is 
unacceptable, for these were great continental poets. Dhlomo avoided referring to "Zulu 
intellectuals", for he used the desugnation of Africans from Natal or Africans from Durban. 
This essay on Dhlomo hopes to put some of these mis-conceptions to rest, even from our 
outstanding intellectuals, like Lewis Nkosi. This prevalent criticism that Dhlomo was 
incapable of adapting Romantic poetic sensibility to the needs of the present was always 
partially true even when referring to his poems. The eventual publication of Dhlomo's prose 
poems will dispel some of this illusions. Not all of Dhlomo's poetry which appeared in Ilanga 
lase Natal has been assebled together. Nick Visser and Tim Couzens commendable effort show 
inexplicable gaps and lacunae (editors of H. I.E. Dhlomo: Collected Works). There are serious 
scholarly problems with this edition. Without indication of where the poems assembled in 
this edition originally appeared, it would appear some of the poems are jumbled together or 
wrenched out of context or even broken in half. One example chosen at random should be 
sufficient. For instance the poem published as "Fuze" in the Collected Works (pp.341-43) 
appeared in Ilanga lase Natal (February 23, 1946) as "Valediction", a second song of two songs 
called "John Langalibalele Dube"; the other song is a "Sonnet". Since Dhlomo was in a habit of 
republishing some of his already published poems in slightly changed form, as well as the 
penchant for cannibalizing some of his essays, it is possible appeared somewhere as it stands. 
The format in which the poems appear in this edition, not as they originally appeared in 
Ilanga lase Natal, destroys or profoundly disturbs their alliteration and rhythmic movement. 
Major and important poems all of which are excellent are inexplicably excluded from this 
edition: "Zulu (Traditional) Conceptions Of Universe" (Ilanga lase Natal, July 21, 1945), a 
poem about African cosmology, makes a connection between Mazisi Kunene and Dhlomo; two 
poems "Cetshwayo" and "Battle of Isandlwana" appeared under a collective title of "That 
Their Praise Might Be Reported" (Ilanga lase Natal, March 27, 1948), are patroitic poems 
reconstructing Zulu history and implicitly denouncing imperialism in the form of European 
intrusion ---appear in the Edition disjointed from each other. 

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essential attrribute of Beauty .. . Still I could not believe that Beauty was not 
something strong, awe-inspiring, and eternal as Truth." What the prose 
poem seems to represent is a disjuncture in Dhlomo's being: between the 
historical consciousness which welcomed the arrival, creation and 
construction of modernity, and sensibility, largely Romantic in nature, which 
lamented that modernity brought the icompleteness of organic forms, which 
intertwined liberation and domination. Paraphrasing Walter Benjamin, it 
would be as though modernity made Dhlomo aware that every document of 
culture is equally a product of barbarism and civilization. 

A detailed reading of the prose poem is in order. Dhlomo makes clear that 
"The Falling Leaf" is concerned with a search for spiritual solitude, not to be 
found in the physical and natural environment, but can only be attained 
through a peaceful discourse with the spiritual self. The physical journey he 
makes is a metaphor for the inner journey which is about to commence. 
Dhlomo also makes it clear that the spiritual journey was necessitated by the 
politically imposed obstacles of racism and discrimination imposed by whites 
on the African people. Beside this political reason for seeking solitude, he 
unequivocally states that the bustling crowds in the cities and the attendant 
patterns of chaos that are so characteristic of modernity also necessitate 
moments of peace, introspection, and solitude. In the process of writing the 
prose poem, Dhlomo reflects on the process of creativity in the context of 
modernity. He writes that in this historical context, the process of creating the 
new involves a disjuncture between the Mind and the Body, as well as the 
disharmony between Man (or Woman) and Nature. For Dhlomo there were 
no such disharmonies and disjunctures in the creative acts of the Romantic 
poets: their creative process was part of the organic process and harmonious 
unity with nature with which they hoped to hold in abeyance the chaos 
unleashed by industrialization. In the context of modernity, the creative act 
no longer possesses the spiritual power to hold in abeyance chaotic forms. 

Dhlomo's critique of modernity is the incompleteness of the absorption 
Romantic organic project of creativity by modernism; the philosophical 
constructs of Romanticism not fully integrated into moderrnism. The 
spiritual journey is a search for organic forms so characteristic of the 
Romantic era which present day racial and political oppression in South 
Africa was making unrealizable. For him a particular organic form in South 
Africa would be characterized by the full realization of the democratic rights 
of the African people. The whole prose poem gravitates around the question: 
what kind of creativity is achievable when whole organic forms are 
unrealizable: what kind of Beauty and Truth the creative process makes 
possible in the context of modernity. Watching the fluttering leaf, Dhlomo 
wonders whether the mind can conjure and make sense of the natural world 
friom which it emanates; he notes also that the branches are spread 
heavenward as though seeking inspiration and succour like himself. Here 
Dhlomo is posing the question of the source of inspiration and creativity: is it 

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nature or the imagination. He is fascinated by the branches, that the more 
they grow the more they expose themselves to the pruning dangers of the 
wind, yet it is in their growth that their beauty and splendour is realized. The 
leaf falling off the trees is escaping the paternalism and dictatorship of the 
crowded branches; in this they proximate to him the contemplator having 
escaped the chaos of the crowded streets of modernity. The leaf falling down 
'tremble with joy' but 'mingled with fear' at the process of emancipation. 
Likewise the act of creation is an emncipatory process which is both a release 
of joy and the instilling of fear. The falling leaf is neither life nor death, but 
constant becoming. It symbolizes the dialectical and cyclic process of life: 
creation and constant remaking. Finally, for Dhlomo the falling leaf is an 
enchantment of beauty, like the beauty and truth which Keats found so 
characteristic of human civilization. Dhlomo ends the prose poem by 
reflecting on the processes and happenings of nature that precede humanity, 
and will continue after humanity has disappeared. He writes that this 
indicates that there is no inherent relationship between nature and 
humanity. The falling leaf is a challenge to humanity. Dhlomo in "The 
Falling Leaf" like many other of his prose poems is concerned with the 
discourse between natural history and human history, how the natural 
patterns of the former could possible inform the makings and creations of the 
latter. In another prose poem on the theme of hair (symbolizing nature) in 
European literary history from the Bible and Milton's "Samson Agonistes" 
through Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and Pope's "The Rape of the Locke" to 
Keats and Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon", Dhlomo laments that the commerce 
and commercialism so prevalent in modernity by creating the illusion of the 
real has widened the possible unity between nature and history: "We waste 
time and money, tamper with our tempers, trying to grow bushes on our 
heads and deserts on our chins. Vain! Insane! And Nature, sane, opposes, 
fools and foils us all the time. But obstinate clay that we are, we refuse as 
tenaciously to work with Nature as we do to learn from History. In this, 
women are far wiser than men. Nature made their chins bare and their heads 
fertile with hair, and they themselves do everything in their power to assist 
Nature to keep things so. But men!"271 Dhlomo states that the Bible has some 
of the best stories on hair, perhaps one of the reasons he considered it the 
greatest literary masterpiece. 

The discourse between nature and history are a central preoccupation of 
many of Dhlomo's prose poems: the reluctance of the latter to be schooled in 
the lessons of the former: the constancy of change in one and its inconstancy 
in the other. The dialectic between nature and history is imbricated in what 
Dhlomo saw as the perennial struggle between modernity and tradition. Peter 
Dews has recently astutely observed: "The reverse side of modernity is the 
permanet crisis of tradition. Perhaps one could even go so far as to define 
modernity as the uncompletable task of questioning what is handed 

271 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Hair", Ilanga lase Natal, October 7, 1944. 

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down. "272 As much as Dhlomo saw modernism as the uncompleted project 
of Romanticism, he also viewed tradition as not as yet fully integrated into 
modernity. Some of his prose poems are preoccupied with the 
incompleteness (?) of his historical moment. In the prose poem "Rain", as an 
indication of this incompleteness, Dhlomo contrasts the integration of nature 
(rain) into the countryside (tradition) and the resistance and hostility of the 
city (modernity) to it. Using rain as a metaphor in exposing the artificiality of 
the city and its ugliness, hence its falsity, he writes: "Just as there is a 
difference between the falling of the rain in the coastal belt and in the 
uplands, there is one between rain in the city and rain in the country. To me 
rain in the city instead of enveloping the place with its cloak of vigorous 
beauty, seems to strip it naked and expose its artificiality, callousness, and 
injustices. Think of the dirty city waters scurrying away to hide themselves in 
croaking drains---the nasty drains themselves sometimes refusing to swallow 
these filthy streams, and the conflict resulting in flooded streets. The gutters 
are city rivers---and what rivers! Pity the city! ... At times rain forgives the 
city and shrouds and bathes it in all glory, mercifully shielding its ugliness, 
weaving at night halos around the electric light standards where mists, like 
clamorous, murmuring bees, seem to gather in silent swarms."273 In the 
country-side rain reveals the beauty, hence Keatsian truthfulness of life: "On 
the other hand, rain rejuvenates and crowns the beauty of the contry-side. 
Imagine the inspiring glory of riverson a rainy day; of mountains and valleys! 
The birds and flowers find delight in bathing, frolicking and hymning in its 
purity and freshness. Where can the rain be more musical, more magical ? 
Why, even the lone figure caught in the rain in the country, struggling along 
a muddy path, bre(u)shed (?) wet by the grass, and forcibly caressed by 
dripping branches, seems more happy, romantic, dignified and comfortable 
than the city man sheltered, shiveringly and sheepilly, under a street 
verandah. Mother earth herself exudes a strange pleasing perfume as she 
receives the cleansing showers." In this dramatic contrast lies part of the 
complex nature of Dhlomo's artistic and historical imagination: while his 
great essays beckoned and celebrated the new historical experience brought 
into being by modernity, the prose poems delineated its limited form because 
of its incomplete integration of natural history. For Dhlomo as for the 
Romantics, in nature resided the Keatsian beauty and truthfulness. 

Is Ezekiel Mphahlele's characterization of H. I. E. Dhlomo's Romantic 
sensibility as making him a "thorough-going romanticist" justifield?274 

Perhaps such a characterization may be correct if one has considered only 
Dhlomo's poem Valley of a Thousand Hills as Mphahlele has done. But if 

272 Peter Dews, The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy, 
Verso, London, 1995, p.59. 
273 X [H. I. E. Dhlomo], "Rain", Ilanga lase Natal, September 16, 1944. 
274 Ezekiel Mphahlele, The African Image, Praeger Publishers, New York, Revised Edition, 
1974 (1962). p. 223. 

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one considers his total ouevre, one cannot fail to register that Dhlomo was a 
thorough-going modernist. While his Romantic sensibility may have 
substantially marred his poetry, as a general scholarly consensus has agreed, 
in the prose poems it has been of service in indicating the imcompleteness 
and/ or imcomplitability of modernity as long as it does attempt to reconcile 
natural history and human history. The deep irony of the prose poems as 
instruments of critique make them one of the extraordinary achievements of 
African literary modernism. In this sense, like what Roberto Fernandez 
Retamar says of Jose Marti, Dhlomo "was one of the initiators of a different 
reading of modernity, a reading of modernity from the point of view of its 
other."275 Dhlomo enabled a different reading of modernity by synthesizing 
two intellectual traditions which are not usually associated together, the 
African American intellectual tradition represented by W. E. B. Du Bois and 
the European intellectual tradition exemplified by Thomas Carlyle. The point 
of view of the other from whose perspective Dhlomo wanted to participate in 
constructing this modernity was that of the New African in the maelstrom of 
utilizing the ANC as the essential instrument in modernizing South Africa. 
Like Jose Marti again, as Retamar emphasizes, Dhlomo was part of "an 
intellectual tradition of modernity."276 This intellectual tradition of 
modernity found its origins in Elijah Makiwane and John Tengo Jabavu 
(Xhosa cultural renascence of the late nineteenth-century around Tengo's 
Imvo Zabantsundu weekly) was given intellectual armour by R. V. Selope 
Thema and Solomon T. Plaatje (the great Umteteli wa Bantu intellectuals in 
the 1920s, among whom Dhlomo found his intellectual teething) and 
amplified continentally and internationally by Lewis Nkosi and Ezekiel 
Mphahlele in the 1950s (the 'School' of Drum writers [Can Themba], 
photographers [Peter Magubane] and performers [Miriam Makeba]). Without 
a doubt, H. I. E. Dhlomo was the greatest exponent of this intellectual 
tradition which was terminated by the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960. In the 
last major statement written a few months before his death in 1956, Dhlomo 
reflected: "Past events cast shadows before them. The past is the womb of the 
future. It is a sign and reflection of things to be. For there is no beginning or 
end, there is constant becoming only. Otherwise life would cease. Despite set 
backs and disappointments, pain and calamities, frustration and failure, man 
believes and must believe in the idea of progress for his own sake. It is time, 
therefore, to take stock not only of man's material works but of man himself-­
whether he is changing and becoming more mature or is retrogressing in his 

275 Roberto Fernandez Retamar, "These Are the Times We Have to Live In: An Interview with 
Roberto Fernandez Retamar", conducted by Goffredo Diana and John Beverly, Critical Inquiry, 
vol.21 no.2, Winter 1995, p.422. 
276 ibid., p.425. In another context Roberto Fernandez Retamar speaks of the American 
intellectual tradition of modernity founded by the disciple of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt 
Whitman, with which Jose Marti profoundly sympathesized despite his hostility to the then 
emerging United States imperialism: "Roberto Fernandez Retamar: An Interview", conducted 
by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Diacritics, December 1978, p.80. Walt Whitman, Jose Marti, 
H. I. E. Dhlomo, what a perspective on world modernity! 

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nature, productions, ideas, standard of values, mind and spiritual life; are his 
greed power, pride, selfishness and materialism becoming more or less? Are 
the ideas of the Brotherhood of man [Sisterhood of woman], of the sanctity of 
the individual_ human soul and personality, of beauty and truth, of 
fundamental human rights gaining ground or are they being rejected and 
replaced by others?"277 These questions posed at the final moments of 
modernity are still relevant within the context of the emergent African 
postmodernity. The full historical meaning of the legacy of H. I. E. Dhlomo is 
still unknownto us South Africans as we about to enter the twenty-first 
century in a few years time, and as we approach in five years, in 2003, the 
centennial of his birth.278 

277 Anonymous, "Thoughts At The Close Of The Year: Recapitulating Events of Importance", 
Ilanga lase Natal, December 24, 1955. Without a shadow of a doubt this was written by H. I. E. 
Dhlomo, as indicated by its preoccupations with Keatsian ideas of Beauty and Truth, as well 
its unending glorification of Nature. 
278 Tim Couzens' outstanding biography opened the way to appraising this enormous and 
complex legacy (The New African: A Study of the Life and Works of H. I.E. Dhlomo, Ravan 
Press, Johannesburg, 1985). In recent years Dhlomo has been instrumental in re-mapping and re­
constructing the intellectual and cultural history of South Africa in the twentieth-century. In a 
recent informative essay in which Liz Gunner reads the poetry of Dhlomo and Vilakazi as a 
reclamation of the meaning of culture through articulation of the constructs of land, history and 
nation, she mistakenly posits Dhlomo's The Valley of a Thousand Hills as an "inclusive black 
nationalist gesture" and a "South African nationalist poem" ("Names and the Land: Poetry of 
belonging and unbelonging, a comparative approach", in Text, Theory, Space: land, literature 
and history in South Africa and Australia, (eds.) Kate Darian-Smith, Liz Gunner and Sarah 
Nuttall, Routledge, London and New York, 1996, p.121-2, my italics). As this monograph has 
attempted to argue, Dhlomo did not subscribe to African nationalism as a possible 
metaphysical system, as was unfortunately the case with Jordan K. Ngubane, but rather as a 
historical necessity imposed by the hegemony of Afrikaner and white nationalism. Again in 
contradistinction to the tragedy of Ngubane, Dhlomo never collapsed African nationalism into 
black nationalism or Zulu nationalism. Dhlomo would not have accepted his poem being 
aligned with any form of nationalism, let alone black nationalism. Ngubane's reading in a 
Ilanga lase Natal review of The Valley of a Thousand within a few weeks of its appearance in 
1941 as having infused a new spirit into South African literature was very acute. In other 
words, it had infused a modernist spirit, rather than nationalist spirit, into African cultures. 
Ian Steadman, in a theoretically stimulating formulation, situates Dhlomo as the founder of 
modem African theater, which subsequently found new voices in Lewis Nkosi, Gibson Kente and 
Black Consciousness theater ("Toward popular theater in South Africa", in Politics and 
Performance: Theatre, Poetry and Song in Southern Africa, (ed.) Liz Gunner, Witwatersrand 
University Press, Johannesburg, 1994). Bhekizizwe Peterson considers how the founding of the 
Bantu Dramatic Society in 1932 by Dhlomo and others, and the staging and performance of his 
plays such as Dingane, Cetshwayo and Moshoeshoe, initiated a new sensibility in South 
African theatrical space ("Apartheid and the Political Imagination in Black South African 
Theatre", in Politics and Performance, op. cit.). All these three formulations are constructing 
new ways of incorporating H. I. E. Dhlomo into our South African imagination. 

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