D.D.T. Jabavu

D.D.T. Jabavu (image sourced from South African History Online)

Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu was a Xhosa educationist, politician and founder of the All-African Convention (AAC), born on October 20 1885. The objective of the AAC was to unite all non-European opposition to the segregationist measure of the South African government. He was born in King Williams Town, in the Eastern Cape, and the eldest son of political activist and pioneering newspaper editor John Tego Jabavu. David had a daughter named Noni Jabavu, who gained the family gene and became the first African female writer and journalist. He completed school at the Morija institution, a mission centre in Basotholand (Lesotho). He studied at Lovedale in the Cape province before moving to the United Kingdom, where he completed his matric at Colwyn Bay in Wales. He was one of the founding members of the University of Fort Hare in 1916 and became the first and only African academic at the institution. He died on August 3, 1959.