organisation. In 1943, he was elected to the National Executive Committee and at the same time he became a member of the Native Representative Council, a purely advisory body that has been condemned as a “toy telephone” and which Z.K. found generally frustrating, although he found dealing with the Native Education Act of 1945 a “valuable experience” not for the process but for the people he met. In June 1949, Matthews succeeded James Calata as ANC provincial president in the Cape. In June 1952, on the eve of the Defiance Campaign, he left South Africa, and took up a position as visiting professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. He returned home in May 1953, and although not present at the Congress of the People in 1955, he assisted Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein in drawing up the Freedom Charter that was adopted there. Denis Goldberg credits him with being one of the driving forces behind the proposal for gathering and documenting the wishes of the people for the Charter. Matthews was arrested in December 1956 and was one of the accused in the Treason Trial. On his release from the trial in late 1958, he returned to Fort Hare, but resigned his post in protest against the passing of legislation that reduced the university to an ethnic college for the Xhosa community only. In 1961, he moved to Geneva to become secretary of the Africa division of the World Council of Churches. In 1966, he accepted the post of newly formed Botswana ambassador to the United States and he died there in Washington on 11 May 1968. Selected publications A New Native Teachers' Course, Ilanga lase Natal, November 4, 11, 1927 Bantu Law and Western Civilisation in South Africa: A Study in the Clash of Cultures Yale University, 1934. Master of Arts thesis. A Short History of the Tshidi Barolong, Fort Hare Papers, vol. 1 no. 1, June 1945 Foreword, in Responsible Government in a Revolutionary Age, [ed.] Z. K. Matthews, Association Press, New York, 1966. Freedom For My People, Cape Town: Collings, 1981. (Published posthumously in 1981) Africa holds her own. An appreciation of Bantu tribal and national culture in the Imperial Protectorates and in the Union of South Africa. By W. Bryant Mumford. in co-operation with Hugh Ashton . [and] Z.K. Matthews. African awakening and the universities, Cape Town University of Cape Town, 1961. See also Joe Matthews Naledi