Z. K. Matthews

Z. K. Matthews (1901-1968), black South African scholar and lawyer who gave intellectual weight to the African National Congress (ANC). He was born at Kimberley the son of a mineworker who brought him up to serve God and his people. As a youth he was inspired by the arguments of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, the founder of the ANC, against the Land Act of 1913 which drastically curtailed black rights to purchase or own land. Matthews was the first black to graduate from Fort Hare College in 1923, the first black headmaster of Adams College in Natal and the first black Bachelor of Law. He and Albert Luthuli became leaders of the Africa Teachers' Organization. He went to Yale University in the United States where he gained an MA in Bantu Law and Western Civilization, and from there to the London School of Economics where he studied anthropology under Bronislaw Malinowski. In 1936 Matthews was appointed research fellow of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures in London. He was also appointed to the Commission on Higher Education for Africans in East Africa and the Sudan by the British secretary of state for the colonies. He joined the All-African Convention to campaign against the new restrictive legislation being introduced by the South African Deputy Prime Minister Jan Hofmeyr (1945-1946). It fell to Matthews to reply to Hofmeyr's refusal to allow black trade unions or even consider the resolution to abolish discrimination. He repudiated Hofmeyr's suggestion that blacks were extreme and reckless, pointing out that there had been no advance in native policy since 1903. He had been a moderate intellectual who was radicalized by the South African government's refusal to make concessions to blacks. He joined the ANC in response to the plea of Alfred Xuma for intellectuals when he was lecturer at Fort Hare College in Social Anthropology, Native Laws, and Administration. In 1949 he became vice-chairman of the Senate at Fort Hare. By then Fort Hare had become a breeding ground for a generation of radicals and Matthews was teaching students who would lead nationalist movements all over Africa. He helped the ANC Youth League frame its Programme of Action. In 1952 he went to New York as Henry Luce Visiting Professor to the Union Theological Seminary; when he returned to South Africa at the end of the year he suggested to the Cape ANC conference that it convene a National Convention of all people to draw up a Freedom Charter for the Democratic South Africa of the future. This became the 1955 Freedom Charter. In 1958, when the Nationalist government applied tight controls to African education, Matthews was told he could remain at Fort Hare if he resigned from the ANC; instead he resigned from Fort Hare and established himself as a lawyer. He was one of the defence team that represented the 156 people who stood trial on charges of treason between 1958 and 1961, all of whom were eventually acquitted. His autobiography, Freedom for my People (1901-1968) was published in 1981.