Emma Hamilton Dancing

Zachariah Keodirelang Matthews was born in Kimberley, South Africa, in 1901, to Peter Dinku Matthews and Martha Mooketse Matthews. He attended University of Fort Hare, receiving a BA in 1923 and a bachelor of laws in 1930. He was married in 1928 to Frieda Debora Bokwe, and as of 1933, they had three children.

In 1933, he came to Yale with a Phelps-Stokes Fellowship and completed a master’s degree in race relations the following year. He then returned to South Africa with a fellowship from the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures to do anthropological research. There, he was appointed as a lecturer in social anthropology and native law at his alma mater, the University of Fort Hare. Ten years later, he was appointed head of the university’s department of African studies. In 1952, he was appointed visiting professor of world Christianity at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

In 1956 he was arrested during a “mass treason inquiry” targeting opponents of apartheid by the South African government. He and seven other professors at Fort Hare were dismissed due to their views opposing segregation.

In 1966, when the Republic of Botswana was created, Matthews was appointed the new country’s ambassador to the United States and its representative at the United Nations. He served in that role for two years before his death in Washington, DC, in 1968.