Isizwe esinembali

<b>Edition and translation of all of William Wellington Gqoba's clearly identifiable writings in isiXhosa and English with a comprehensive introduction</b><br><br><br>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.<br><br>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 <i>Isigidimi sama-Xosa</i> 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.<br><br>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.<br><br>University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community