Early years Z.K. Matthews was born in
Winter's Rush near
Kimberley in 1901, the son of a
Bamangwato mineworker. Z.K. grew up in urban Kimberley, but maintained close connections with his mother's rural
Barolong relatives. He went to Mission high school in the eastern Cape where he attended
Lovedale. After Lovedale he studied at
South African Native College in
Fort Hare. In 1923 he wrote the external examination of the
University of South Africa. In 1924, he was appointed head of the high school at
Adams College in
Natal.
Albert Luthuli was also a teacher here. The two men attended meetings of the Durban Joint Council and held office in the Natal Teacher's Association, of which Matthews eventually was elected president. While in Natal, in 1928, he married
Frieda Bokwe, daughter of
John Knox Bokwe and his wife. He had met her as a student at Fort Hare. Their son,
Joe, was born in 1929 in
Durban. He later became a prominent politician. In 1930, after private study, Matthews earned an
LLB degree in South Africa, awarded by the University of South Africa. He was admitted to the bar as an attorney and practiced for a short time in
Alice, Eastern Cape. In 1933, he was invited to study at
Yale University in the
United States. There in the following year he completed an MA. He then studied at the
London School of Economics, pursuing anthropology under
Bronisław Malinowski. He returned to South Africa in 1935. In 1936 he was appointed Lecturer in
Social Anthropology and Native Law and Administration at University of Fort Hare. After
Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu’s retirement in 1944, Matthews was promoted to Professor and became head of Fort Hare’s Department of
African Studies.
Political activism Matthews did not confine himself to an academic career. He combined his study of
anthropology and the law with an active political involvement. He found his true political home in the
ANC. He had attended meetings as a boy in the company of
Sol Plaatje, a senior relative. He did not become a member until 1940. In 1943, he was elected to the
National Executive Committee. At the time he also became a member of the
Native Representative Council, a purely advisory body that has been condemned as a “toy telephone”. Matthews found his participation on it to be frustrating, although he found dealing with the
Native Education Act of 1945 to be a “valuable experience” for the people he met. In June 1949, Matthews succeeded
James Calata as ANC provincial president in the Cape. In June 1952, on the eve of the
Defiance Campaign, he left South Africa for a position as visiting professor at New York's
Union Theological Seminary. He returned home in May 1953. Although he did not attend the
Congress of the People in 1955, he assisted
Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein in drawing up the
Freedom Charter that was adopted there.
Denis Goldberg credits Matthews with having been one of the driving forces behind the proposal for gathering and documenting the wishes of the people for the Charter. Matthews was arrested in December 1956, and was one of the accused in the
Treason Trial. On his release from the trial in late 1958, he returned to Fort Hare. He resigned his post in protest against the passage of legislation that reduced the university to a status of an ethnic college for the
Xhosa community only. In 1961, Matthews moved to
Geneva, Switzerland after being selected as secretary of the Africa division of the
World Council of Churches. In 1966, he accepted the post of
ambassador to the United States for the newly independent nation of
Botswana. He died in the capital
Washington, DC on 11 May 1968. ==Selected publications==