Seme's historic rallying cry owes much to US thinkers

Noseweek Issue #212, 1st June 2017   By Grant Christison


Seme's historic rallying cry owes much to US thinkers

The unacknowledged sources of ANC leader’s Regeneration of Africa speech.

Early in 1906 newspapers across America reported that Columbia University’s prestigious Curtis gold medal for oratory had been awarded to “a full-blooded Zulu”, a man “of Royal Zulu blood”, a Zulu “Prince”.  In the 111 years intervening, that speech on “The Regeneration of Africa” has achieved iconic status. Colored American Magazine published it in 1906 and it has reappeared at intervals across the decades. Kwame Nkrumah, first President of Ghana, read it at the first International Congress of Africanists in 1962. Scholars have discerned behind it “a man of vision” and “extraordinary eloquence”. It has been labelled “timeless”, “an important contribution to discourse on the notion of an African Renaissance”, carrying a message that has “inspired later generations of African nationalists”.

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