It might seem surprising that H. Rider Haggard, author of King Solomon’s Mines, has a role to play in the year marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ANC, but during a visit to South Africa in 1914 Haggard met and interviewed the first president of the ANC, John Dube. Their meeting only came to light in 2000 with the first publication of Haggard’s Diary of an African Journey by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. The Dube interview, Haggard’s observations on racial tensions, migrant labour and the prevailing conditions in Zululand, together with his sometimes prophetic comments on South Africa’s future recorded in the diary, serve to cut against the grain of popular and academic perceptions of Haggard as a stereotypical colonial author.
