Dr.
Alfred Bitini Xuma served as ANC president from 1940 to 1949. He was born
in 1893 to an aristocratic Xhosa family at Manzana Village,
Engcobo District, in the Transkei, Eastern Cape Province. He
was the seventh child of Mr. Xuma, a lay Methodist preacher
and his wife, a traditional practitioner of medicine. He was
educated locally and rose from herd boy, houseboy, horse
trainer, teacher, shipping clerk and hotel and train waiter,
to one of the country's most influential black thinkers and
leaders.
At the age of seven, he entered the Wesleyan Mission School at
Manzana. In 1908, he rose to the next scholastic level at
Clarkebury Boarding School where, in 1911, he qualified as a
primary school teacher. After he completed his local primary
school education Bitini went to the Maritzburg Training
Institute to study teaching. He taught at various schools,
earning fourteen pounds a term, and as was the custom, gave
his entire salary to his father.
After
working as a teacher, he went to study in the US, the UK and
Europe, where he completed a number of academic degrees.
In
1913, a small Wesleyan Mission scholarship took him to the
United States, to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he
studied for several years. Having no funds, he left day school
to find a living doing odd jobs in Birmingham, while attending
night classes at Tuskegee. He stayed in Birmingham, laboring
14 – 16 hours a day until his unpaid school fees and lodging
debt to Tuskegee was fully discharged.
In
1920 he graduated, with an honors degree in Science and entered medical school at Marquette University in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After two years, he transferred to
Northwestern University in Chicago where, in 1926, he
graduated with an M.D. degree.
He
moved to the world renown Mayo Clinic and then off to Europe
to Budapest, Hungary, where he performed general surgery and
gained experience in women's diseases and midwifery under the
tutelage of famed Professor Emil Sciapedes at the Women's
Hospital at Pecs University. He studied complex surgery at New
St. Johns Hospital, in Budapest.
In
1927, he removed to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland to
sit for his qualifying examinations and licenses to practice
in the then British Empire. Finally, upon successful
completion, he was fully qualified in his specialties of
gynaecology, obstetrics and surgery. He was awarded a Ph.D.,
again with high honors, in Tropical Diseases and Hygiene from
the London School of Tropical Medicine, being the
first black person to obtain a doctorate at the School of
Tropical Medicine in London.
On
his return to South Africa in 1927, Dr Xuma settled in Sophia
town where he opened up a surgery.
In
1931 he married Priscilla Mason of Liberia, West Africa.
Priscilla died three years later, while giving birth to their
second child. In 1940 he married Madie Beatrice Hall in Cape
Town.
After
his freelance political activities in the 30s, Dr Xuma was
elected president of the ANC in 1940. He set about rebuilding
a scattered organisation against great opposition.
Dr
Xuma signed a pact with Dr Dadoo of the SA Indian Congress for a united front
between Indians and Africans. When more conservative members
of the ANC complained that the Indians were "shrewd"
and might dominate the ANC, Dr Xuma retorted: "if you
cannot meet the next man on an equal footing without fearing
him, there is something wrong with you. You are accepting a
position of inferiority to him."
As
ANC president, Xuma worked hard to turn the organisation into
a mass movement. He introduced a new constitution in 1943
which afforded membership to people of all races, eliminated
the House of Chiefs and gave women equal rights in the
organisation. He
acted as unofficial delegate of the African people at the
United Nations in 1946. Although he was responsible for
bringing a large element of young people like Nelson Mandela,
Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo into the organisation, by 1949
Xuma was found he
was not radical enough to
satisfy the ANC’s Youth League and was ousted as president . He was replaced by Dr J.S.
Moroka.
Because
it was a large three-bedroom house, which was regarded as a
mansion in the early Sophiatown as it occupies two plots,
whereas most residents of the old suburb lived in terraced or
semi-detached houses, Dr
Alfred Bitini Xuma’s home was declared a national monument.
His house in Toby Road, Sophiatown (called Triomf by apartheid
rulers who proclaimed it a white area in the 50s), was
declared a historical site.
Dr
Alfred Bitini Xuma died in January 1962.