Chapter 8 A Muslim Boy in Sunday School
Abdullah Abdurahman’s Early Childhood and Education in Cape Town at the End of the Nineteenth Century
In: The Individual in African HistorySearch for other papers by Eve Wong in
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Abstract
Once the juggernaut of coloured resistance against racial inequality in the first half of the twentieth century, today, Dr Abdullah Abdurahman has been almost entirely effaced from South African historiography. As the first politician of colour elected to public office, Dr Abdurahman held a seat on the Cape Town City Council for nearly 40 years. Descended from enslaved grandparents and possessing a complex interplay of Indian, Cape Malay, and coloured identities, how was he able to rise to such prominence? What were the foundational influences in not just motivating his political activism but in the formulation of his ideologies and philosophies regarding the relationships between the individual, society, and governance? This chapter focuses on Dr Abdurahman’s early education and family to challenge the minimisation of childhood and its significance in orthodox political biography and to contribute further studies of childhood in historical studies.