African Intellectuals
African Nation
Anecdotes
Catechist
Category=DCF
Category=DN
Category=DSBF
Colonised Blacks
Debates
Discrimination
Eastern Cape
Edition
Editor
English
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eq_biography-true-stories
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European Administration
European Colonialism
Folklorist
Free Church of Scotland
Historian
Histories
Identity
Insider's Perspective
Isigidimi sama-Xosa
isiXhosa
Letters
Longest Poems
Lovedale Newspaper
Mission Stations
Mobilisation
Morality
Nineteenth Century
Poet
Poetry
Political Independence
Preacher
Proverbs
Religious Independence
Social Independence
South Africa
Southern African Development Community
Subversive Poetry
Teacher
Transition
Translation
University of KwaZulu-Natal Press
Wagonmaker
Western Education
Western Mores
White Control
William Wellington Gqoba
Xhosa Language
Xhosa Man of Letters
Product details
- ISBN 9781847014429
- Dimensions: 150 x 230mm
- Publication Date: 09 Dec 2025
- Publisher: James Currey
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Edition and translation of all of William Wellington Gqoba's clearly identifiable writings in isiXhosa and English, with a comprehensive introduction
William Wellington Gqoba (1840-88) was prominent among the African intellectuals emerging in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa towards the end of the nineteenth century.
By trade he was a wagonmaker, licensed preacher of the Free Church of Scotland, teacher, historian, poet, folklorist and editor. For much of his brief life he served on mission stations as a catechist, and ended his career as editor of the Lovedale newspaper Isigidimi sama-Xosa, to which he contrived to contribute subversive poetry outspokenly critical of Western education, the European administration of black people and the discrimination suffered by colonised blacks. Gqoba fashioned the figure of the Xhosa man of letters. Unrivalled in his time in the generic range of his writing, he was the author of letters, anecdotes, expositions of proverbs, histories and poetry, including two poems in the form of debates that stood for over fifty years as the longest poems in the Xhosa language.
This book assembles and translates into English all of William Wellington Gqoba's clearly identifiable writings. They offer an insider's perspective on an African nation in transition, adapting uncomfortably to Western mores and morality, seeking to affirm its identity by drawing on its past, standing on the brink of mobilisation to resist white control and to construct its social, political and religious independence of European colonialism.
University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community
JEFF OPLAND held appointments at the University of Cape Town, University of Durban-Westville and Rhodes University and taught at the Universities of Toronto, Yale, and Leipzig as well as Vassar College before his retirement. WANDILE KUSE was Director of the Bureau for African Research and Documentation at the University of Transkei, South Africa. PAMELA MASEKO is Executive Dean of the Humanities at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa.
