Rest In Peace Ambassador Mahlangu: Reflecting on Pixley ka Seme's legacy

AT TIMES like this we have to ask, "What would ka Seme advise?" Ambassador Mniwa Mahalngu is no more.

- PALI LEHOHLA

I met him in February this year and we exchanged pleasantaries. I will remember him always for agreeing to deliver a Prixley ka Isaka Seme lecture at the University of Columbia that Francoir Ndengwe and I arranged in 2016.

This was 110 years since Prixley made a remarkable and unforgettable speech about the regeneration of Africa. It is befitting to publish the speech as tribute to Ambassador Mahlangu. He reminds us that precisely in the month of April 2016, marked 110 years since the famous and celebrated speech entitled The Regeneration of Africa by a renowned son of Africa, Pixley ka Isaka Seme.

The speech was delivered on 5 April 1906, at the University of Columbia, in the United States. Seme, like many other sons and daughters of Africa, had gone to the US, and to the United Kingdom, in search of better opportunities for education and in search of global enlightenment.

As the geopolitics of our time take shape Mahlangu reminded us that all over Africa the indigenous people under the dehumanising yoke of colonial masters were denied meaningful education. A few were allowed meagre education that was meant to make them perform menial task under the directives of the colonial masters as well as extend the colonial influence to the rest of their people. Seme came from a different generation altogether. His generation had refused to be academically and intellectually dominated.