Dube, John Langalibalele

▪ South African author and educator

born Feb. 22, 1871, near Inanda Mission Station, Natal [now in South Africa]

died Feb. 11, 1946, Umhlanga, Natal, S.Af.

      South African minister, educator, journalist, and author of Insila ka Shaka (1930; Jeqe, the Bodyservant of King Shaka), the first novel published by a Zulu in his native language.

      After studying at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, U.S., and being ordained a minister, Dube returned to Natal with the goal of establishing a school for his fellow Africans similar to Alabama's Tuskegee Institute. In the early 1900s he founded Ohlange Institute, 15 miles (25 km) from Durban, S.Af., and several years later he founded a girls' school nearby. His work with the institute and on Ilanga lase Natal (“The Natal Sun”), the first Zulu newspaper (which he helped to found in 1904), made him widely known. In 1912 he was elected the first president general of the South African Native National Congress (later the African National Congress).

      Political involvement occupied much of the rest of his life, but he also found time to write a biography of the prophet Isaiah Shembe (U-Shembe) and Insila ka Shaka, his historical novel about Shaka, the great 19th-century chief who brought the Zulus to power. Dube received a Ph.D. degree from the University of South Africa in 1936, and from 1937 until his death, he represented Natal at the biannual meetings of the Native Representative Council in Pretoria.

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