Josiah Tshangana Gumede (also J.T. Gumede) (9 October 1867 – 6 November 1946) was a South African politician and father of Archie Gumede. He was born in Healdtown village, Fort Beaufort in the present-day Eastern Cape.
In all probability, he began his elementary schooling at the famous Healdtown Wesleyan Mission School. After completing his elementary schooling, he went on to attend the Native Institute at
Grahamstown either in 1882/83 where he trained to become a teacher. He started his teaching career in Somerset East
in the Eastern Cape.
Through a strange combination of events, Gumede and Martin Luthuli befriended
Lloyd George, 1 December 1919. Before the British annexation of Zululand, Gumede departed for Bergville when he turned to farming. In 1893 he toured England as a member of the Zulu Choir, founded by Saul Msane
and the Reverend William August Illing, a German-trained Lutheran missionary who after 1869 renounced his Lutheran faith and became a convert of the Anglican Church. The Zulu Choir experienced blatant racial prejudice in England.
He was a founding member of two important African organisations in colonial Natal, Funamalungelo and the Natal Native Congress, although he did not attend the inaugural meeting of the Natal Native Congress in June 1900.
Batlokwa and Kgosi Moloi of Makgolokwe to England to protest against the Batlokwa and the Makgolokwe people losing their ancestral lands in the former Boer republics. In England, a Trinidadian-born barrister, Henry Sylvester Williams, had undertaken care of the delegates.[2] The other person noted as having the Tlokwa's interests placed in his hands was Dr. Evans Darby, the secretary of the League of Universal Brotherhood (LUB) South Africa 12 January 1907, p. 122. On his return with the Tlokwa and Kgolokwe chiefs to South Africa on 13 May 1907, Josiah was arrested for having left the country without obtaining the necessary permission. The report of this by Reuters
was carried in the Manchester Guardian and The Times (p. 5) on 5 May.
Gumede's political consciousness had reached new heights before the establishment of the white Union of South Africa. Aware of the excitement among whites before the opening session of the
(also J.T. Gumede) (9 October 1867 – 6 November 1946) was a South African politician and father of Archie Gumede. He was born in Healdtown village, Fort Beaufort in the present-day Eastern Cape.
