Zintle Filtane
Delivering the inaugural ZK Matthews lecture at the University of Fort Hare in 2001, former president Thabo Mbeki expressed somewhat of a longing about the legacy of the African pioneers who had walked the corridors of the then University College of Fort Hare.
“Perhaps if we had the power to make them talk, the old silent walls of this University would whisper to us that they have listened to generation after generation of eager and enthusiastic Africans, striving to expand the frontiers of knowledge as well as ensure that, thus armed, they do what they have to do to change especially the African world,” Mbeki said.
One such pioneer was the scholarly Zacharias Keodirelang (ZK) Matthews, an educationist, politician and ecumenist who was also Fort Hare’s first African graduate in 1923. A native of the then Bechuanaland, ZK was born in Kimberley in 1901 and formed the coterie of those African students who crossed the Tyume River to acquire the fountain of knowledge from the fledgling native college of Fort Hare. He was to spend the next 40 years of his treasured life as a student, political activist, teacher and principal at the university.
Immersed by the living bequest and vision of missionary education, and the enduring influence of missionary institutions like Lovedale, Healdtown and St Matthews College, the University College of Fort Hare espoused the liberal ideals and open-mindedness of its missionary forebears and founders. Though founded and built on the ruins of a military fort – which, in good measure, was the battleground during the frontier wars of the British and Native Africans – the liberal tradition at Fort Hare defied the artificial racial boundaries that formed the basis of the apartheid system.
In 1955, when the apartheid government made its first attempt to introduce apartheid to universities, ZK was an Acting Principal at Fort Hare and it was during this time that his worldview on race relations and human co-existence was exposed.
He protested profusely and insisted that, at a critical time such as the one mooted by the segregationist government, the College needed the guidance and the statesmanship of an experienced educationist who was familiar not only with the theory and practice of university education but also had a critical grasp of the problems of human relations in a plural society such as ours.
Clearly, when the segregationist government won the day in 1959 and took over what promised to be an icon of African excellence, his resignation demonstrated his disdain for bigotry and the subjugation of the African.
Little wonder that the democratic and humanist values espoused in the Freedom Charter, which in many ways is a product of his brainchild, permeate even the spirit and purport of our present day constitution. It was ZK, who as a Provincial President of the ANC in the Cape, first advocated a “national convention for all races to draw up a freedom charter” in 1953. What followed was the historic congress of the people which gathered in Kliptown in 1955 to draw up one of the most revered and enduring human rights’ documents of our time.
In his protests of 1955, against the reversal of the liberal traditions of the University College of Fort Hare, ZK had sounded the clarion call:
“In a country like South Africa in which so many racial and cultural groups are represented, it is very easy for people to get into the habit of allowing their blood rather than their brains to determine their attitude to various questions and peoples…
“Our experience at Fort Hare confirms the scientific view of the race question that, given equality of opportunity, it is possible for people of different races to live together in peace and harmony.”
The recent racial uproars and shenanigans which played themselves out in social media and other platforms in this day and age of our democracy serve to remind us of the epic struggles that ZK and his peers fought so relentlessly at Fort Hare and around the country and Continent.
Their struggle, intertwined as it was with the historical mission of the liberation movement, was to usher in a democratic dispensation informed by values of freedom and equal opportunity for the African native. In ZK Matthews’s view, a university like Fort Hare offered that theatrical stage on which such noble struggle was to unfold.
Not only did ZK campaign against segregation at Fort Hare, he also imbued a sense of worth and belonging to the African native students as their social anthropology and native law teacher of 24 years. The subject of the African Renaissance and the role of the university in achieving that ideal informed his worldview in the cause of producing and disseminating knowledge. This conviction, which he repeated ever so emphatically at a TB Dawie lecture at UCT in 1961, strengthened the cause for the integration and development of Africa as a continent.
In celebrating its centenary today (February 9, 2016), the University of Fort Hare would do well to rekindle the legacy of those heroes and heroines who contributed to its stature as the cradle of African leadership and knowledge. From its bosom, South Africa, the African continent and indeed the world has been blessed with such visionaries and forebears as the towering figure of ZK Matthews. The countless African intellectuals, authors, leaders and business moguls that straddle the continent and the globe serve as an epitome of a proud legacy deserving of celebration.
When Don Davidson Tengo Jabavu, another African giant who drank from the same fountain of knowledge and incidentally became the first African member of staff of the University College of Fort Hare uttered the following words – “We must have men with the highest education to teach and uplift the masses. Light comes from above” – he probably had in mind the calibre of the pioneers and African thinkers of ZK Matthews’s mode.
Through his leadership and forthrightness, ZK Matthews became the embodiment of African thought leadership of the time and a beacon of light for generations to come. Today, and at its centenary, the University of Fort Hare can be proud that it has produced a leader who has demonstrated in thought and action that indeed the current university motto “In your light, let us see the light” can become a living reality.
Last month, the African National Congress, the political home of ZK Matthews, celebrated its 104 years of existence striving for an egalitarian society with such values as non-racialism, non-sexism and democracy for all humanity. It is such enduring values and ideals that ZK Matthews instilled at the University of Fort Hare and the country as a whole.
These ideals should inform the behaviour and posture of all Fort Harians of both present and future generations.
l Filtane is Director of Institutional Advancement at the University of Fort Hare