A Zulu Woman’s Encounter with the American Press: Nokutela Dube in New York

By Chérif Keita,
The William H. Laird Professor of French and the Liberal Arts, Carleton College.

In the years between the two World Wars, Senegalese student Léopold Sédar Senghor and his Martinican friend Aimé Césaire defiantly proclaimed that they were going to tear down the Rire Banania from all the walls of France. These budding intellectuals, who became the proponents of the philosophy of Négritude or Black Cultural Pride, a movement they spearheaded during their studies in the prestigious preparatory schools of Paris, had been angered by the ubiquitous advertisement for a breakfast drink called BANANIA, that used a very demeaning image of the black African soldiers from the colonies, the tirailleurs sénégalais, who had valiantly fought to liberate France from German occupation during the first World War. Challenging this poster and the image of the naïve and forever childlike African colonial subject became their mission.
 
Forty good years earlier, on the other side of the Atlantic, in New York City precisely, a young black South African woman had been confronted with the image of the ferocious and savage Zulu, propagated by the Western press since the famous battles of Blood River and of Isandlhwana, in particular, where Zulu battalions had resoundingly defeated the British army in 1879. Her name was Nokutela Mdima Dube, a student at that time at the Union Missionary Training Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where she had been studying Home Economics and Music. An 1899 New York Sun article titled, “Ideas of a Zulu Woman: Customs of the Savage State which she prefers to Civilization”, described her encounter with a number of jeering American reporters, curious to meet a Zulu woman, who “has ideas about American civilization.” The article opens in this way:
 
“There is a young Zulu woman here who has ideas about American civilization. She knows what it is to be in an African savage state and a civilized Christian, and she is not quite sure yet which she prefers. She is in her civilized state now, but is homesick for Zululand. “Oh, no, she said today, “I want not to be a barbarian again, but I like not all civilized customs”.”
 
As much as Nokutela hated to talk about herself, in the face of such attack by a crowd of “arrogant” journalists, she felt compelled to tell them a bit about her long journey with Western civilization, a journey that gave her every right to have “her own ideas of American civilization”. She was born to a Zulu family that was among the early ones to be Christianized by American missionaries in the 1850s in the British colony of Natal, South Africa. She had gone to school and successfully completed her education at Inanda Seminary, during the early days of a school that was to become in the twentieth century a stellar training ground for female leadership in Southern Africa. After her training in Homemaking and other subjects, she was asked to teach at that same school, opening the eyes of other Zulu girls to the new Western culture that was being spread through the Christian religion. After tactfully dispelling one more myth about the “savage” Zulus, “One of the reporters said that my parents made mince pies of the missionaries. And that is not the truth”, Nokutela is happy to invite them to sit down and hear her perspective of their society. She tells them that it is not a particular love or fascination for American civilization that brought her to America. ”Civilization is not all, she says. I like my country better. I would like to go there this minute.” She goes on to say: “Americans are too extreme and they are not happy for it.” From her experience of living almost three years in America, she turns the gaze on American society by pointing out the ills of its consumerism, on society in general but on the women in particular:
“They are very busy—always engaged—but they do not work as my Zulu women do. They must be taken care of too well or they will complain. They hurt their bodies with their clothes, and they will not bother with children. They are no use in the house kraal and they have too many clothes. American women are always busy--every day, they go shopping, and always for something to wear. Never do they wear anything until it is gone. That is not better than my savage people who wear none. I do not wish the Zulus to become like that. It would make many unhappy kraals.”
After Nokutela puts forth such an insightful criticism of American society, one can easily imagine the demeanor of the gentlemen reporters gathered around her. They finally begin to take this “uncivilized woman” seriously. Calmly, she goes on to tell them the real reason behind her presence in America: her great desire, which she shares with her husband, John Langalibalele Dube, to educate their people and equip them with the knowledge of science and the industrial arts:
“I will tell you why we are here…. We do not want to teach them all your civilization, only enough to better their condition, not to make them unnatural or unhappy. The Zulus are not dull. They are intelligent, but they do not know how to do things for themselves. They think it is only white men who can make houses and cities. The women attend to the business and they do all the labor. They dig the ground and plant the crops, build the huts for storing them, and do all the heavy work.”

Had Nokutela been more inclined to speak about herself, she would have told her listeners about the leadership she and her husband John had already shown in the education and uplifting of the black races in South Africa, even before coming to New York to further their own studies. In fact, in 1894, the couple, as newlyweds, had undertaken to build a school and a church on the hilltop of a small village called Incwadi, Natal, making them the first black people to build a school in South Africa[1]. She would have said how hard she and her husband worked to raise funds in America between 1896 and 1899, to expand their pioneering educational project, by crisscrossing the East coast of the United States, lecturing and singing the click songs that were so mesmerizing for American audiences.
 
By the end of this one encounter among many Nokutela had with the American press during her 3-year stay in the United States, it became clear that she had convincingly dispelled the myth of the ferocious and savage Zulu, because, in an article that was reprinted over and over, from New York to Los Angeles(The LA Times), on January 13, 1899, the reporter came to the following conclusion about her:
“Nokutela is young with blazing black eyes, smooth brown skin and handsome regular features. She speaks English with a deliberation that is charming and in the softest voice in the world. HER MANNER IS GRACE ITSELF[2].”


[1] This elementary school, which exists to this day in the small rural community of Incwadi, near Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, deserves to be celebrated today in South Africa as a Heritage site because of its historic importance.

[2] “Her manner is grace itself.” These are the words inscribed on the headstone that now identifies the newly discovered anonymous and nameless grave of Mama Nokutela Mdima Dube(1873-1917) at the Brixton Cemetery in Johannesburg. How ironical that the woman who was a pioneer in giving a positive image of her people overseas remained unknown to the nation of South Africa until we found her grave in 2011 and made a documentary film about her, titled “uKukhumbula uNokutela/Remembering Nokutela”(2013, distributed by Medialabafrica.com). Among Nokutela and John’s legacy are the historic Ohlange Institute(now High School) built in 1900 after their return from the United States, where Nelson Mandela voted in 1994, saying that “this is where everything started”; the newspaper Ilanga Lase Natal, the first English-Zulu newspaper, started in 1903 on the grounds of their school; and finally the South African Native National Congress(precursor of the ANC), of which John L. Dube was the first President-General, from 1912 to 1917. 

A Zulu Sun in the Heart of America:
John Langalibalele Dube

by Cherif Keita
In most traditions in black Africa, a first name, given at birth, is either a call and wish for a positive destiny for the person-to-be or to conjure away frightening prospects in the life of the newborn. A case in point: a certain John Langalibalele Dube, the future co-founder and first President of the African National Congress of South Africa, was given the name, “the sun is red hot”, not only in memory of a 19th century Zulu chief martyrized by the British, Chief Langalibalele, but also and above all, as a wish that one day he would lead his people into a more glorious era of their history, away from the despondency of their collective defeat in the hands of European Colonialism. After all, was that not his grandmother Dalitha’s goal, when she decided several decades earlier, to be the first AmaQadi convert of the American missionary, Reverend Daniel Lindley, at the Inanda Mission Station? Thus, John Dube, just like his father James before him, were sent to white people’s school with a mission similar to the one so eloquently described in the famous West African novel, Ambiguous Adventure, by Cheikh Hamidou Kane: “to discover the secret of how the whites can win without necessarily being in the right.” An article titled “Reverend Wilcox’s Zulu Boy”, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, of October 22nd, 1887, proves how earnestly 17-year old John Dube took this mission, from the very first days he landed in Ohio in the heart of America, hoping to gain an education he was denied in colonial South Africa.
 
            The article describes the exchange between an inquisitive white judge and a young black man who had appeared unexpectedly in his courtroom, in a small Ohio town:
 
“At the close of court yesterday, Judge Noble’s attention was directed to a young man of dark skin who had been seated quietly in the court room and it was in vain that he strained his mind to take in the force of the arguments, although not a movement or word escaped his notice. On questioning him, the judge learned that the object of his inquiry is a native of Natal, South Africa, and belongs to a Zulu family of high rank. ........[and that] when the missionaries visited Natal, they succeeded in converting his father and changed his name to James Dube. James named his boy John, which name, John Dube, the son now bears. His grandfather was a noted Zulu chief.
 
This surprising moment of encounter, immortalized in the American press, conveys through two significant characters, a celebrated American judge of his time and a future African intellectual and political leader, a few important lessons about the shared history of 19th century United States and South Africa. The first question one may ask, and this certainly explains the white judge’s curiosity about this black boy, is the following: what could possibly bring a black person into a courtroom in those days? The most logical answer would be that he or one of his relatives is being tried for some “crime”. Given that the scene takes place barely two decades after the devastation of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, there is a lot of effort underway by white society to thwart the newly gained freedom of the former black African slaves. And the white-controlled judicial apparatus was a primary tool for achieving such a result. This was a familiar reality that would keep away from a courtroom any reasonable African-American person in those days. Therefore, in his mind, Judge Noble suspected that this young black man sitting in his court did not fit the mold; hence his desire to know who was this young man and the motives of his surprising presence in his courtroom. John is described as being “about 5 feet 8 inches tall and very muscular, with high cheekbones, dark skin, very bright eyes and an expressive countenance indicating an intelligent and inquiring mind.” He is also said to be “full of humor” and showing a set of very white teeth whenever he smiled. Judge Noble learns also this:
 
“He began going to a school established by a missionary, learned enough to make him yearn for better opportunities and advantages and he resolved to go where he could get a good education and then go back to teach his ignorant people. .... he came here about two months ago with Mr. W.C. Wilcox, a missionary sent to South Africa by the American Board of Foreign Missions.”
 
           
 Picture
The second question one should ask is this: what would lead a young Zulu boy from Inanda(Natal Colony), who barely spoke English, to enter the most austere-looking building in any American town of that day, the Court House and the courtroom? One may reasonably surmise that the American Court House is where the young man believed, as a colonial subject, that he could get a glimpse of Justice in the new country he was eager to explore. In spite of his limited competence in English, he was mature and perceptive enough to know that back home this institution is the main underpinning of white control over his people, therefore, “one of those secrets of how whites win without being in the right.” Therefore, he was curious to see how a court proceeding worked in the United States and compare it to his native South Africa.
            Above and beyond that, John Dube had another more practical reason for going into a courtroom: he was eager to learn and master the English language and what better place to hear the best models of his new language than the house where fiery verbal jousts took place daily? We get confirmation of this assertion when several decades later, John Dube said in his English-Zulu newspaper Ilanga Lase Natal that his American classmates used to mock his English when he first arrived at the Oberlin Preparatory School, where he spent five years completing his secondary education. The summer after John’s first year in school in Oberlin, he went to join Reverend Wilcox and the rest of his adoptive family in the small town of Keene Valley, in the Adirondacks mountains of New York. There, a decisive event occurs, that will define the future of his relation to the English language and turn him into the fiery political orator, the eloquent minister of the Church and the prolific writer and publisher he became a few years later. Wilcox, determined to put John at the forefront of his efforts to raise awareness among Americans about the plight of the Zulus under British colonialism, gave him an assignment: to prepare a personal speech based on the manuscript he (Wilcox) had been preparing on the topic of Self-help among the natives of South Africa. The speech that John wrote and delivered in front of a packed Keene Valley Congregational Church is said to have been such a hit that Wilcox arranged for many more speaking engagements for him that summer. Those lectures allowed him to earn enough money to pay more comfortably for his education at Oberlin. These speeches became also the basis of John’s first book published in the mid 1890s under the title, A Familiar Talk Upon My Native Land. Thus started John’s career as a pioneer spokesman for his people and his nation, a role he assumed brilliantly in the late 1890s with the help of his talented first wife, Nokutela Mdima Dube(1873-1917).
 
            One can say that on that October day of 1887, a Zulu sun was rising in the heart of America and thank goodness, the press was there to record it for posterity.