Yet Letanka had another side. A musician and organiser of choirs,160 he put these skills to good use to raise funds for Abantu-Batho. He does not seem to have attained a high educational standard and this may account for a decline in the paper’s grammar in its final years when he was at the helm.161 Like Kunene, he was a newspaper man. In 1910 he had started a weekly, Motsoalle (Friend, from 1911 Moromioa (Messenger)). Skota, who appeared briefly on the editorial floor soon after, describes how in 1912 his paper
was amalgamated with the well-advertised and thoroughly organized Bantu-Batho …. In this new company, Letanka became a director and one of its four editors, which position he held until his death, in 1934. Letanka took a great interest in the welfare of the Africans. He participated in the politics of the day.162
If Cooke thought him weak, others thought that his resolve was firm. As Albert Grundlingh notes, Letanka responded without naivety to the declaration of the great powers in favour of the self-determination of small and oppressed nations. It was ‘a message of hope that the dawn of freedom is at last breaking forth’, but ‘if this doctrine is not applicable to the native inhabitants’, then ‘the case [for colonial rule] … falls to the ground’.163
After a poverty-stricken childhood in Pietersburg (Polokwane), Thema went on to Lovedale and came to the Rand in 1915, where he worked for lawyer and Congress leader Richard Msimang. Herbert Msane introduced him to the Bantu Debating Union and probably Abantu-Batho. By 1916, with Plaatje absent in England, he was TNC assistant general secretary, also serving as general secretary of the SANNC Transvaal branch and the SANNC. In 1919, as general secretary, he signed the TNC constitution that stipulated Abantu-Batho as the TNC’s ‘official organ’.164 At ANC head office Thema met the editors of Abantu-Batho. In 1915 he wrote in its pages on the iniquitous pass laws. By 1918 state officials thought that he was ‘Acting Editor in Zulu and English in the absence of Msimanga’.165 In his unpublished autobiography he emphasises the role of Abantu-Batho in his politicisation and journalism career: it ‘helped me in my journalistic endeavour and made it possible for me to express my views on questions that affected the African’. If in 1918 the government thought him ‘none too reliable’ as an editor, this was due to his self-confessed radicalism. Writing in 1935, he recalled that at the time he was ‘a radical writer who called a spade a spade’; Abantu-Batho must have fuelled his radical views. In 1915 the ‘message of unity which came out week by week in the columns of the “Abantu-Batho” carried with it the vision of a “Promised Land” and thus sent a thrill of hope throughout Bantudom’.166 Thema’s obituary, printed in the paper he had edited for white owners for 20 years, notes that he soon realised that ‘not only the platform but the Press of the Abantu-Batho newspaper which was the chief African paper during World War I’ was the way forward.167 Upon taking a course on journalism while in London as part of the SANNC delegation in 1919, he seems briefly to have been a sub-editor of Abantu-Batho on his return in early 1920.168 This explains articles under his pen in the special magazine format of the paper in February–March 1920 (see Part II). After this he abandoned his radicalism for the moderate liberalism of the Joint Councils, won over in 1921 by the Christian apolitical message of J. E. K. Aggrey, who urged cooperation with whites, ironically in the very African Club that had hosted many an Abantu-Batho function (see chapter 11 in this volume). Letanka, Mabaso and Mvabaza at first followed him into the Joint Councils, but withdrew and attacked them in Abantu-Batho; burnt into his memory was Letanka’s attack that forced his resignation as Transvaal Congress secretary. He castigates the editors for hailing ‘hothead’ leader of the ICU Samuel Masabalala as a hero and failing to denounce rioting Lovedale students.169
It is possible, but unlikely that Thema returned to Abantu-Batho after this spat. Rodney Davenport cites him (without provenance) as an editor in 1923, writing, ‘we have a share and a claim to this country. Not only is it the land of our ancestors, but we have contributed to the progress and advancement of this country.’170 A 1921 letterhead shows him still TNC general secretary, alongside Letanka, hence it would have been natural for Thema still to be writing in at least some columns in its organ, even if he opposed more radical editors.171 It is possible he continued to write for Abantu-Batho as he transitioned to a more moderate journalistic home with Umteteli, then as editor for Bantu World.
Saul Msane was involved with Mvabaza’s Umlomo wa Bantu and may have been elected Abantu-Batho editor at the February 1914 SANNC conference, although there is no evidence of such a role before late January 1916. His editorship was short, lasting only until July, when he and Grendon were expelled.172 By 1914 he had resigned his previous position as a compound manager to work as SANNC organiser and then sailed to London in June with the Congress delegation, to return on 8 October. Intense rivalry manifested in claim and counter-claim about the use of Congress monies saw him involved in unseating Dube as SANNC president and becoming S. M. Makgatho’s general secretary; Walshe points to the involvement of an Abantu-Batho group with Congress Transvalers to defeat Dube.173 Msane’s editorship was stormy. His attendance with Grendon at a meeting sponsored by the radical International Socialist League (ISL) may have led Seme, who in 1916 wrote vituperatively of them, to sack them both. This was ironic, for in June 1918 Msane fiercely condemned black strikers and their ISL, TNC and Abantu-Batho supporters, leading to his vilification in its columns (see Part II). It is tempting to put this down to radicals, yet there was widespread opposition to his perceived dalliance with the state at a time of revulsion with the cruel sentences handed down to strikers, while criticism of Msane extended to moderates like R. W. Msimang, who commented: ‘Some of our educated natives are a danger to their people in that they go and arrange with white people without first consulting other natives.’174 For its part, the mainstream white press such as the Sunday Times attacked Abantu-Batho’s criticism of Msane as typical of the ‘contempt which some natives have for those who run in opposition to their views’:
‘Nango U Mr. S. Msane (There he is! Mr S. M’Sane). The leading article in the paper is headed ‘U M’Sane Akafunoki [?] (He is not wanted). The article contained an attack on Msane of a nature which is being brought to the attention of the authorities.175
Abantu-Batho was not cowed. The following week it reported that speakers at a mass meeting in Vrededorp were warned ‘not to be disturbed by what was in the white press by Mr Saul Msane’.176 In 1919 Msane was clearly involved in moves to get Chamber of Mines support to outflank Abantu-Batho. Yet after his death later that year all was forgiven. Abantu-Batho acclaimed him as a ‘courageous and doughty leader’ who ‘always commanded … respect for the civilised blackman’. It added that ‘[h]is death was a shocking loss, particularly in the Transvaal it has been keenly felt’.177
The poet Robert Grendon had a short, but eloquent stint as editor. As Christison notes in his chapter in this volume, he had considerable experience: as a printer for Inkanyiso, editing an ephemeral paper in Uitenhage and serving on Ilanga. In 1977 Couzens interviewed Selby Msimang, who recalled he had met Grendon in Johannesburg, where the latter ‘was round about the newspaper Abantu-Batho’, and that he spoke very good isiZulu and siSwati. The year before, Couzens had interviewed Skota, who remembered that Seme ‘got hold of’ Grendon ‘somehow, and brought him along to edit the first edition of the Abantu Batho’.178 This timing is unlikely, for Kunene clearly was the first editor: Skota’s memory was not always reliable. Christison, Grendon’s biographer, argues that his stint was more likely to have been