FIRST PRESIDENT: A LIFE OF JOHN L DUBE
Heather Hughes
Jacana Media
BIOGRAPHICAL writing is fraught with difficulties. Not only must the writer attempt to retrace the subject’s footsteps, the writer must also try to climb inside the head of the subject to get some idea of their thoughts and feelings.
Nor does the process become any easier even if the subject leaves behind a paper trail, as historian Heather Hughes discovered when she researched First President, her biography of the ANC leader John Dube (1871-1946).
“There are some remarkably frank letters to sympathisers and detractors,” she notes, “but most of what we have is what Dube wanted us to see of his public persona.”
To circumvent this problem, Hughes also drew on the recollections of his family members or associates. Yet even these were only helpful up to a point. “As is so often the case,” she wryly comments, “these tend to say more about their authors than their subject.”
Despite these constraints – which face all biographers – Hughes builds up a remarkably detailed and nuanced portrait of Dube.
She explores a wide spectrum of his activities: he was a school principal, newspaper editor, novelist, church minister, politician and farmer.
Although the book’s title identifies Dube’s ANC presidency as a focal point, she is at pains to explain that there was far more to him.
“The intention is not to privilege Dube’s political activities over the others,” she says, “but to provide a way into the totality of his life’s work.”
Taking her cue from Freudian psychology, Hughes starts her account of Dube’s life by examining his childhood. There was nothing especially precocious about the youngster during his school years, but some incidents were perhaps early signals of a spirit of self-assertion if not outright rebelliousness.
As an 11-year-old, he was implicated in the theft of food at Adams College, a boarding school. The son of a priest, he was clearly not content to put up with reduced circumstances. Nor did he meekly accept the punishment meted out by the school (he was fined, whipped and made to dig ditches).
In 1887, the 16-year-old – now a devoted Christian – left for the US to further his education at Oberlin College. This was not unusual at the time as there were no local facilities for African students to study further.
“Moreover,” adds Hughes, “all the white people who had been the most immediate and influential in (his) life thus far, and whom he most admired, were American.”
He returned to South Africa in late 1891, but still pretty much minded his own business. It was only in 1894, according to Hughes, that he made his entrance into public politics by way of a letter to a newspaper: it concerned the treatment of Africans in magistrates’ courts.
It was still a number of years, though, before he took part in leading an overtly political campaign.
This involved opposition to Natal’s Native Administration Bills in 1908, which, among other things, prescribed greater controls for African settlements.
The following year, he was elected vice-president of the SA Native Convention – his first role in a national political organisation. Then, of course, followed his election in 1912 as the first president of the ANC (then essentially a forum for the African elite).
“Of the three (contenders for the presidency),” notes Hughes, “Dube was easily the best-known nationally, with almost matchless experience.”
His long list of illustrious achievements was by then a matter of public record and he was elected with a large majority.
Dube subsequently tried to forge links with Africans from other tiers of society. Hughes notes: “(H)e oversaw Congress’s first real attempts to connect with ordinary Africans in towns, on farms and in the reserves.”
Yet, despite his many strengths and achievements, Hughes does not shy away from pointing to some of his flaws: his hostility to Indian people, his antagonism towards the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union and his lukewarm opposition to Hertzog’s Representation of Natives Bill.
Hughes observes: “The mix of defiance and compliance, radicalism and moderation, broadness and narrowness of vision, tended to exhibit itself from early in his career until its end.”
She suggests this enabled him to reach a wider range of constituencies than would otherwise have been possible.
While this verdict is a little too lenient – there was considerable resentment at the time about his willingness to compromise – First President remains a vital contribution to our history.
It is an insightful reflection on the life of a complicated figure who sometimes struggled to navigate his way around during a period of rapid economic and political transformation (both locally and abroad).
It is a sound and rigorous work of research (even if, at times, a bit densely and drily written), which deserves careful attention. Hopefully, it will not be drowned out by the cacophony of voices that will claim ownership of the ANC’s achievements during its centenary next year.
That will be a disservice to Dube: he deserves to be remembered in all his complexity.
l August is a former editor of the Cape Times. - Cape Times