Josiah Gumede

Josiah Tshangana Gumede was born on October 9, 1867, in Healdtown, Eastern Cape. Educated as a teacher, he served as a land adviser to Sotho and Zulu chiefs and co-founded the Natal Native Congress in 1900.

Elected President-General of the ANC in 1927, Gumede represented South Africa at the historic 1927 Congress of the League Against Imperialism in Brussels alongside Jawaharlal Nehru and Albert Einstein. Travelling onwards to Moscow, he became convinced that racial liberation in South Africa required mass working-class mobilization and alliance with communist movements, famously telling ANC conferences: 'I have seen the new world!' He laid the intellectual foundation for the ANC's alliance with the labour movement.