In early 1916 officials reported ‘three joint Editors’, including ‘Robert Grendon a coloured man who deals with the English portions’. At this time Grendon is also reported as ‘responsible editor’, suggesting editor-in-chief.180 But in July Ilanga was shocked to report that Grendon and Msane ‘have been removed from editing Abantu-Batho. We have also heard that Mr Kunene is to be reappointed to edit that paper.’181 As noted above, the action may have stemmed from their attendance at a public meeting called under the auspices of the ISL. Grendon then went back to Swaziland and into obscurity.
Levi Thomas Mvabaza from Peddie moved to Johannesburg, where in 1910 he and Saul Msane established the English/isiXhosa/Sesotho weekly Umlomo wa Bantu, based at 10 Kruis Street.182 He handled the isiXhosa, while L. A. Ramosime edited the Sesotho. Its policy, according to Skota, was ‘the unifying of all African tribes into one people, and to improve and expedite the education of the African children’. Mvabaza attended executive committee meetings of the South African Native Convention, a body representative of black political views that led to the SANNC’s birth, which discussed the formation of a national paper. Seme then
invited the Mvabaza group to amalgamate with this new company. The Mvabaza Company gladly accepted since the policy of this new paper known as Abantu-Batho was almost identical with its own. It was not long before Mvabaza was appointed managing director of the Abantu-Batho.183
It seems more likely this merger did not occur until 1916, when Ilanga reported that ‘Mr Letanka will preside over the entire paper’.184 Mvabaza, like Letanka and Mabaso, was prominent in the TNC and was radicalised in 1918–20. In 1919 he was a SANNC delegate to Britain, often introduced – as to a somewhat sympathetic Prime Minister Lloyd George – as managing director, Abantu-Batho, Ltd,185 probably assuming this role from Seme around 1917. He was co-editor from 1916, but we know little of his journalistic role in the 1920s.
According to Skota, Seme brought Cleopas Mabaso, a qualified bookkeeper and teacher with roots in Edendale, to Johannesburg from Christiana in 1912 to be secretary-bookkeeper and general agent of Abantu-Batho Ltd. He did much of the correspondence and lobbying. He served on TNC and ANC executives and was national vice-president in 1926 and financial secretary in 1930; La Hausse de Lalouvière sees him as ‘a key political broker on the Rand’. With strong Swazi links, Mabaso lobbied the queen regent for continued support of the paper. He shared generational influences with Letanka and Mvabaza, and together they were active in protests and stayed true to Abantu-Batho until the bitter end.186
Herbert Nuttall Vuma Msane, son of Saul, was an editor or sub-editor in 1917 and possibly into the early 1920s. Educated at Lovedale in 1904–07, he sang as a tenor with his parents in 1908,187 but by 1912 was active, like his father, in Congress, and in 1915–16 was TNC general secretary.188 In 1916 he supported passive resistance, wrote on Ethiopianism for The International and joined Abantu-Batho staff Mabaso and Letanka on a delegation over the fate of Africans in ex-German colonies. He became prominent in the radical Industrial Workers of Africa and the ISL, and, in 1919, the anti-pass law protests.189
Selby Msimang, who worked for Seme, involved himself in Abantu-Batho from at least 1913, when he acted as a ‘Corresponding Secretary’ of the SANNC and wrote several articles that December, one supposedly as ‘Abantu Bantu’s Special Commissioner’. He became embroiled in arguments raging between Dube and Msane over funds and in 1916 attacked the editors, Msane and especially Grendon, at times in terms verging on anti-Coloured prejudice. During his Johannesburg days he may also have served as a sub-editor.190 He then went to the Free State, where he organised black workers and launched his own short-lived (1918–20) paper.191 By the early 1920s he had moved away to write in Umteteli in more moderate tones.
Skota’s autobiographical sketch says he worked as an ‘organiser and later subeditor’ on Abantu-Batho in 1912, but went to Kimberley from 1913 to 1919 and came back to be lead editor in 1928. He may have corresponded in the intervening period.192 In 1922 he was back in Kimberley and a partner with J. T. Gumede in the Inkata African Trading Corporation, then secretary of the African and Indian Trading Association Ltd, also starting a short-lived paper.193 When he ceased editing Abantu-Batho is unclear. He may have remained until the end,194 but equally may have drifted away earlier; after its demise he edited Seme’s African Leader (1932–33), using the Abantu-Batho printing press.
A 1912 letter by Xhosa writer Richard Kawa mentions another editor, Jeremiah W. Dunjwa.195 Skota terms him a ‘distinguished writer and historian’ (suggesting he wrote features) who joined the paper in 1913 and became isiXhosa editor.196 We know little of his press days, but, as with other editors, we glean titbits of his life from brief reports: for instance, that in 1918 he and Thema were fined £50 by Evaton railways.197 Educated at Healdtown, where he came in touch with the grand old editor, Jabavu, he then taught at Klipspruit School and became active against the Land Act. In 1919, during Thema’s spell in Britain, he acted as TNC general secretary.198 Like other editors, he joined the 1918–20 protests and his speech at the 1921 ICU conference was the target of an attack by Umteteli, which sought to blame Africans for the ills of labour recruitment.199
Best known as Natal leader of the ICU, A. W. G. Champion joined the staff of Abantu-Batho after his September 1930 exile from Durban and ICU politics, contributing letters, articles and editorials. The Abantu Batho Press printed his pamphlet ‘Dingiswayo’ about his enforced exile. His arrival came just at the right time: ‘when our staff had been reinforced by capable business and newspaper men in the persons of Messrs. J. H. London and A. W. G. Champion our Sesoto Editor Mr. D. S. Letanka had been greatly relieved.’ Samuel Masabalala, like London a member of the ICU, also joined. His input led to increased coverage of events in Natal and the Zulu monarchy (Solomon kaDinuzulu’s evidence to the Native Economic Commission was carried), and a special illustrated feature on ICU history.200 In earlier years Champion had been critical of the paper; in 1919, with other members of the committee of the ‘Natal Native Congress eGoli’, he sided with Msane against the editors.201 In his hour of need, however, he joined them:
I helped edit that paper … assisting Mr J. T. Gumede in Johannesburg while I was in restriction. … But I was not actually the editor. It was managed by some great editors. There were L. T. Mvabaza, Cleopas Mabaso, D. S. Letanka, and journalists R. V. Selope-Thema and Horatio Mbhele [M’belle], well-known men of education.202
If we go by these comments, Horatio Bud-M’belle also was an editor.203 Educated at Lovedale, he took part in political meetings in Kimberley and came to the Rand in 1912; in 1916 he worked as a clerk for Seme. Like Herbert Msane and Dunjwa, he gravitated to the Left, in 1917 writing in The International about a Trades Hall meeting to protest the Native Affairs Administration Bill that was a ‘revelation of sincere sympathy’ by white socialists.204 He joined the 1918 protests (see chapter 9 in this volume) and was secretary of the TNC Johannesburg branch,205 but of his editing we know little.
Whether prominent Sepedi literati Epafras Mogagabise Ramaila (1897–1962) was involved remains for future researchers to unravel. One work claims he was ‘an early popular contributor to Abantu-Batho (1917–1929)’.206 We have not located his contributions, but he may have used pseudonyms and there are possible connections. One was his role in the Transvaal Native Teachers’ Association, whose affairs Abantu-Batho reported, as in 1916, the year after he qualified as a teacher.207 Others were his deep interest in journalism – he edited the Berlin Mission’s Mogwara wa Babaso (Friend of the Blacks) and he was in Lydenburg from 1915, then from 1920 to 1929 at Rustenburg and Phokeng,208 which may have brought contact with Abantu-Batho via the active Congress branches there, as was the case with Barney Ngakane in 1921.
Finally, yet importantly, as owner from 1929 to 1931, Josiah Gumede is likely to have influenced content, done some editing