Abstract

John L. Dube is mostly remembered today as the founding president of the African National Congress in 1912, yet it is the sheer breadth of his achievements that impresses. Inspired by the struggles of African Americans for political and social equality, he became the leading campaigner for Africans' rights in South Africa through the first half of the twentieth century. Apart from being active in Congress politics, he was the founder of the Phlange Institute near Durban (where Nelson Mandela cast his vote in the first democratic elections of 1994), and of the newspaper Ilanga Lase Natal - both of them still in operation. In addition to being an ordained clergyman, he authored the first Zulu novel and published several other works besides. This biography traces the story of his life, revealing much that has either been hidden or forgotten.