Enoch Sontonga

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie tells the wonderful story of the rediscovery of the grave of Enoch Sontonga, composer of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. The article was first published on the City of Joburg's website on 11 January 2002. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

An act of vandalism at Braamfontein Cemetery helped locate the missing grave of Enoch Sontonga, the man who wrote South Africa's national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika (God bless Africa). The discovery of the grave, now a national monument, ended months of patient and ingenious detective work by city officials, archaeologists and historians.
 
Sontonga, a teacher and lay preacher, wrote the first verse and chorus of the anthem as a hymn for his school choir. He died in obscurity in 1905, aged just 33, seven years before the African National Congress launched his hymn into prominence as an anthem of black struggle against oppression.
 
The search for Sontonga's grave started by chance at a dinner by the National Monuments Council in honour of then-President Nelson Mandela, in Cape Town in late 1995. A relative of Sontonga's who was present told Mandela that Sontonga was believed to be buried somewhere at the Braamfontein Cemetery in Johannesburg. Mandela called for a memorial to Sontonga in the cemetery, to be erected in time for the first post-apartheid Heritage Day.

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Enoch Mankayi Sontonga was born in Uitenhage, Eastern Province (now Eastern Cape) around 1873 as a member of the Xhosa-speaking Mpinga clan of the Tembu tribe. He trained as a teacher at the Lovedale Mission Training College, after which he was sent to a Methodist mission school (unnamed) in Nancefield, near Johannesburg in 1896. He taught here for nearly eight years.

Sontonga was the choirmaster at his school, as well as an amateur photographer. Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika was composed by him in 1897. He based the melody on the hymn tune 'Aberystwyth', by Joseph Parry. Sontonga originally composed the hymn in B-flat major with a four-part harmony supporting a repetitive melody characteristic of both Western hymn composition and indigenous South African melodies. The words of the first stanza and chorus were originally written in Xhosa as a hymn.

Enoch Sontonga (via City of Johannesburg)

It was one of many songs he composed, and he was apparently a keen singer who even wrote songs for his pupils. Most of Sontonga’s compositions were sad, witnessing the suffering of African people in Johannesburg, but they were popular and, after his death in 1905, choirs used to borrow them from his wife.

In 1927, Samuel Mqhayi, the famous Xhosa poet, added seven additional Xhosa stanzas to Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. 

In 1901 it was taken up by the choir of the Methodist-founded...