Background
John L. Dube was born on February 11, 1870, at Inanda, Natal, South Africa. His father was one of the first African ministers ordained by American missionaries.
(Insila, the Eyes and Ears of the King is a fresh, modern ...)
Insila, the Eyes and Ears of the King is a fresh, modern translation of the Zulu novel, "Insila kaShaka", which was first published in 1931, the first novel by a Zulu writer. Dubes narrative is an extraordinary, gripping and haunting window into Zulu life as it was lived before the land was lost to the Europeans. It tells of a young man, Jeqe, who is summoned by Emperor Shaka to his Royal Residence at Dukuza to be his Insila. There is no accurate translation of the word, insila. The only way to find out what it entails is to read Dubes book. An earlier translator, J. Boxwell, translated it as bodyservant. This captures only one aspect of the Insilas role. The word insila means body dirt and conveys the fact that the Insila becomes very close to and inseparable from the king. When Shaka is murdered by his half-brothers, Jeqe must be buried along with Shakas wives and his earthly possessions. Jeqes Buthelezi ancestors come to him in a dream. They tell him he still has much to accomplish and he flees. This is the start of an enthralling adventure involving traversing dangerous bushveld teeming with wild animals of all kinds, crossing mighty rivers and negotiating lands populated by foreign peoples. The story includes some wonderful and thrilling encounters the courting of Zakhi, the love of his life; the island school of Nkosazana, the female mistress of traditional medicine and divining in the swamps of the Usuthu River between what is now South Africa and Mozambique; and an apocalyptic landscape of abandoned villages and dying people on a plateau in the Ubombo Mountains. Dube is anxious to record the culture and social conditions of the time as well as to tell the story. It is thus a Zulu novel in a real sense, quite different to the form that developed in the West. This translation of Insila kaShaka by Thembani Ndiya Nene and Robert Mshengu Kavanagh, comes with a substantial introduction and a glossary.
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John L. Dube was born on February 11, 1870, at Inanda, Natal, South Africa. His father was one of the first African ministers ordained by American missionaries.
Dube studied at Oberlin College (1888 - 1890) and later at the Union Missionary Training Institute in Brooklyn. He became the first African to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of South Africa.
On his return to Natal in 1901, his admiration for such leaders as Booker T. Washington drove him to found the first native-owned educational institution in South Africa, the Zulu Christian Industrial School, at Ohlange. Its purpose was to teach the Christian religion and modern skills while encouraging the development of Zulu culture.
During the first decade of the 20th century, while writing articles in English for the Missionary Review of the World, Dube also launched the first Zulu newspaper, Ilanga laseNatal (The Sun of Natal), in the hope that it would provide useful training ground for future Zulu writers, as indeed it did. In 1912, when the threat of racialist Boer supremacy in the newly formed Dominion of South Africa awoke African intellectuals to the need for unified all-black action, John Dube was elected the first president of the South African National Congress and was sent with a delegation to gain support in Great Britain. This was of no avail, and as a result of this failure, of personal quarrels among black leaders, and of financial troubles in the organization, Dube withdrew from the Congress in 1917 and dedicated himself to running his institute and his journal, to advising the Zulu royal house.
He wrote Isitha somuntu nguye uqobo Iwakhe (1922; The Black Man Is His Own Worst Enemy), in which he preached the gospel of self-help and inner change. This was one of the first books in Zulu by a native author.
Dube may be considered the founder of the Zulu novel: it was as a result of his example that the first Zulu novelist of note, R. R. R. Dhlomo (born 1901), gave up his awkward attempts at writing in English and turned to his native tongue. Insila kaTshaka was Dube's only venture in prose fiction: he later turned back to straight didactic writing, especially a biography of Isaiah Shembe, a Zulu prophet and founder of a dissident church, who died in 1935 after composing the earliest original hymns in the language. But Dube had not given up politics altogether. While disappointment had caused him to renege his earlier radicalism, he had become the leader of the Natal Native Congress, which was considered eminently reliable by the South African authorities. In 1937 he was elected as Natal's delegate at the Natives' Representative Council. He died on Feb. 11, 1949.
(Insila, the Eyes and Ears of the King is a fresh, modern ...)
In his politics Dube was cautious and conservative, yet he was forthright on the rights of blacks and the paramount tenet of unity - he foresaw the necessity of the unity of black people long before Garvey came to the international scene.
His first wife was Nokutela Dube. Their failure to have children was seen to reflect badly on Nokutela and John fathered a child with one of their pupils. The couple separated in about 1914, and Nokutela moved to the Transvaal until she became ill with kidney disease.