The Man Who Founded the ANC

About the book

In 1912, just over a year after returning from his studies at Columbia and Oxford, the thirty-year-old Pixley ka Isaka Seme succeeded where others had failed in forming a political organisation that represented all black South Africans.

Seme also established a national newspaper, became one of the pioneering black lawyers in South Africa, bought land from white farmers for black settlement at the time when opposition to it was gaining momentum, became an adviser and confidant to African royalty, and was considered a leading visionary for black economic empowerment.

And yet, when he became president general of the ANC in the 1930s, he brought it to its knees through sheer ineptitude and an authoritarian style of leadership. On more than one occasion he was found...