The Sunday Independent on 28 June 2015

“I wonder whether the time has not come for the ANC to consider the question of convening a national convention, a congress of the people, representing all the people of this country irrespective of race or colour to draw up a freedom charter for the democratic South Africa of the future,” Zachariah Keodirelang Matthews said on August 15, 1953.

A professor of anthropology at Fort Hare University, “ZK”, as he was affectionately known, was speaking to the Cape ANC, as its president, at its annual conference in Cradock.

There had been mention of a need to call a “convention” to discuss the thorny issues of the time, but none championed the idea as ZK did.

The ANC adopted the idea three months later at its national conference in Queenstown.