LETANKA, DANIEL SIMON

Daniel Simon Letanka (1874-1934), a newspaper editor and publisher, was also an African National Congress (ANC) leader dedicated to his people’s cause, which he served devotedly.

He was born at Saulspoort, in the Rustenburg district of the Transvaal. He was educated at what was then known as the “Kaffir College” Grahamstown, in Cape Province. He was a musician and, on leaving school, he returned to the Transvaal where he organised a choir for the purpose of promoting concerts in all the villages, towns, and cities of the Transvaal. His aim in doing so was to raise enough money to finance the overseas studies he was then contemplating. Though his plans for acquiring higher education abroad failed, he applied himself diligently to the struggle for the liberation of his oppressed people in South Africa.

In 1902 Letanka accepted a position as court interpreter in the Supreme Court in Pretoria. Between 1906 and 1909 he also interpreted in the courts of Blaauwberg and Warmbath. He resigned from this work in 1909. In 1910 he organised a weekly newspaper called Motsoalle (“The Friend”), the name being changed the following year to Moromioa (“Messenger”). Letanka, a man of seemingly limitless energy, was sole editor and publisher of this paper. In 1912 his newspaper was incorporated with the prestigious and well-organised Abantu-Batho, founded by Dr. Pixley Seme. In this new company, Letanka became a director and one of its four editors, a position he held from 1912 until 1931.

Letanka was always concerned about the plight of his people. For example, he was prompted into action by the first African strike, in 1918, of “night-soil boys” sanitary workers who went on strike in Johannesburg to demand a sixpence a day wage increase. The workers, 152 in number, were arrested, and the ANC hired an European lawyer to defend them. The magistrate found them guilty and sentenced them to two months’ hard labor. The magistrate gratuitously told them they would be shot or beaten if they tried to escape or to disobey orders.

The ANC then led the storm of protest which followed by calling for a general strike for a shilling (10¢) a day increase in wages. The police promptly arrested Letanka and other Congress leaders, as well as S.P. Bunting and two other members of the International Socialist League who had been organising labour. They were charged with incitement to violence. The case fell apart when the main witness repudiated his evidence. Laws and regulations of various kinds requiring Africans to carry passes had long been a feature of South African life, but in the earlier years of the 20th century they were further systematised by legislative acts such as the Native Labour Regulation Act of 1911.

Other acts were to follow, as a result of which the pass laws became the government’s most effective instrument for controlling the movements of Africans and maintaining them in total subjection. Letanka committed himself to the struggle of fighting the unjust pass system all of his adult life, and on several occasions Letanka took part in the ANC’s nonviolent anti-pass demonstrations. In one of these protests, Letanka, together with four Congress leaders, was arrested and charged with incitement to violence; they were described as “dangerous” elements by the prosecutor.

Letanka had another distinction. He was one of the most frequently arraigned ANC officials. He nevertheless scored a major victory in the case of the Transvaal Poll Tax Ordinance of 1921, when he challenged the law by refusing to pay the increased poll tax. He was again arrested, but won the case at the appellate division of the Supreme Court in Bloemfontein, with the result that the Transvaal rate was reduced by 75 percent to £1 a year, and other rates throughout the country were brought into line with this reduction.

Letanka is remembered as a humanist who took great interest in the welfare of his African people in the era when violations of human rights were unchecked. He participated in the politics of the day, and was one of the foremost leaders in the Transvaal, known then as the seat of African agitation for justice and fair play. He was a founder member and secretary of the Council of Chiefs in the African National Congress. Like the other distinguished leaders of the ANC, Letanka was a constitutionalist.

Because of his understanding of the laws relating to the disenfranchisement of the Africans, his organisation often used him to test the validity of certain acts of parliament. Letanka was widely acknowledged as being a kindly and modest man who was above ethnic differences. He was a loyal friend and a man of unquestionable integrity.

The bulk of the chief’s donations which passed through his hands were spent on two deputations to England, and on supporting a number of test cases in the Supreme Court and the appellate division at Bloemfontein. Letanka’s only income was a meager remuneration for his Abantu-Batho work. Truly a philanthropist, he neither received nor demanded compensation for collecting thousands of pounds for his organisation. But he remained honorably poor. So poor that, on the evening of his death, there was not a candle in the house, let alone other necessities of life. He nevertheless served his people with distinction, and was greatly honored and respected by all his colleagues, as well as by the thousands of people whose leader he was.

ENOCH W.D. DUMA