Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu (1885 - 1959) is not nowadays a well-known figure of the South African anti-Apartheid struggle, but in the first half of the C20th he was an important voice of the dispossessed; a strong critic of colonial and segregationalist policies. He was active as a Quaker and also as a Methodist lay-preacher, but was very critical of the role of missionaries in a colonial culture.
Jabavu travelled widely, in Britain, the USA and Africa, and engaged with proponents of liberation and civil rights, including Bayard Rustin. He also travelled to India to learn more about Gandhian non-violent resistance, later a tool of the South African struggle.
This paper focusses on Jabavu’s participation in two international conferences: the International Missionary Conference in Jerusalem in 1928, and the World Gathering of Friends in 1937, and discusses his contribution as an early exponent of liberation theology, and also to the literature of decolonisation.