Description
Book SynopsisDavidson Don Tengo Jabavu was born in the Cape Colony in British southern Africa on October 20, 1885, when a few African men could vote and the prospects for black equality with the ruling whites seemed promising.
Trade Review“Catherine Higgs’s meticulously researched and well-written biographical study fills an important gap in the historiography of the region…. This is a fine, concise book that illumines a significant and revealing South African life.” * American Historical Review *
“A vivid portrayal of D. D. T. Jabavu, a black leader who helped shape many South African worlds—black and white, rural and urban, secular and sacred—as the shadows of segregation lengthened over his land. With meticulous documentation and lucid prose, Higgs expounds the ideas and aspirations of this many-sided man, his liberalism, multiracialism, and Christianity in particular. Inaugurating a reassessment of Jabavu’s generation of African leaders, she illuminates the early history of some of the South African traditions that, to the world’s surprise, triumphed with the collapse of apartheid.”
“Lucidly written, this first biography of the man is a worthy addition to the literature on black South Africa.” * Choice *
“Higgs provides an engaging and well-informed account of Jabavu’s very public career.” * African Studies Quarterly *
“Catherine Higgs’s fine-grained narrative raises important questions about the adequacy of existing analyses of black South Africans’ reception of British liberalism and the Christian gospel. Higgs demonstrates that the situation in the early to mid-twentieth century was much more complex and conflict-ridden than conventional wisdom allows. What is perhaps most surprising about the D. D. T. Jabavu we meet in these pages is the extent to which his racial consciousness gave form and substance to his liberalism and to his faith. No radical, he was nevertheless what black Americans of his generation would have called, respectfully, a ‘race man.’”
