Enoch Sontonga

Enoch Sontonga was a Xhosa composer and teacher, born in Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape Colony, who wrote the hymn Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika (God Bless Africa). Trained at the Lovedale Institution, he taught and led the choir at a Methodist mission school in Nancefield, near Johannesburg, and composed the first verse and chorus in 1897 as a school anthem; the poet Samuel Mqhayi later added seven verses. The African National Congress adopted it as its closing anthem in 1925, Tanganyika and Zambia took versions of it as national anthems, and since 1994 it has formed the first half of South Africa's anthem. Sontonga died in 1905, and his grave was declared a national monument in 1996.