Athambile Masola

What is it that I can say which has not already been said about this national poet? Without the voice and the work of his pen, Samuel Edward Loliwe Ngxekengxeke Krune Mqhayi (1875-1945), literature and indigenous languages would be like empty shells, a barrel without water. This initiative to revive Mqhayi's literary work in society is a tribute to us as readers and writers of isiXhosa, as well as a gift to Mqhayi posthumously, to safeguard the literary writer who cherished the black nation. Mqhayi's devotion to protecting his culture was fuelled by the belief that the future of black people would be realised. It would not be swallowed up by colonialism forever.

Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi was born on 1 December 1875 in Gqumahashe in the Eastern Cape. He attended school at Evergreen in the Tyhume Valley, and in Centane. He was trained as a teacher at Lovedale. Later in life, Mqhayi settled in Ntabozuko (Mount of Glory), a hillock on the main road between King William's Town and East London. Mqhayi was a national poet, a lover of people, a preacher of the gospel, an educator, a journalist who wrote in several newspapers, and a lover of African culture. In his biography, UMqhayi waseNtabozuko, he wrote extensively about his forefathers’ history because of the belief that ‘Iingcambu zomntu ngooyise booyise (The roots of a person are the fathers of the fathers)’. While his parents were Christians, they laid a strong foundation for his identity in order to navigate the aftermath of colonial violence in southern Africa. He died in Ntabozuko on 29 July 1945.

Mqhayi came of age during the conflict between Africans and colonial forces and this tension shaped his intellectual work enormously as well as the work of his peers. The challenge that confronted Mqhayi and his peers during this period was how to preserve humanity as well as advance the nobility of the black community as they were exploited and dispossessed of the land by colonial governments. It was not uncommon for the early missionary graduates to be teacher, historian, church evangelist, and music director in one.