The Cullens agreed, on the condition that Dube was to maintain himself financially; however, they advised him, and William found him his first work on the road gang when he arrived in America.

However, Dube navigated this social schism with a statesman-like ability, as in his later years, when he was able to win the trust of the Zulu royal family.

It is conceivable that Dube would never have been part of the SANC, except that his teaching and discourse on the necessity of unity chimed in with the then-nascent political atmosphere.

The next formation of black people into a coherent socio-political movement was to come into being with Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, founded in 1914.

Dube had identified the need to combine Western education with local customs and traditions, all grounded in broad African communal behaviour.

The work that was to earn him the honorary doctorate of philosophy was the 1992 essay Umuntu Isita Sake Uqobo Lwake ("A man is his own worst enemy"; text in pre-1936 Zulu old orthography).

He went on to publish, in 1930, a historical novella that has proven to be popular and influential in Zulu canon titled Insila kaShaka (Shaka's Body Servant).

[6] He embarked on writing biographies of the Zulu royal family, especially that of King Dinizulu, making him the first biographer in African literature.

In addition to his literary works, Dube and his wife founded the first Zulu/English newspaper,[7] Ilanga laseNatali (The Sun of Natal), in 1903, a publication that in 2003 celebrated its centenary.

Dube was particularly influenced by reading Washington's Up From Slavery (1901), a book on self-reliance, the gospel that was taught by the American sage Ralph Waldo Emerson.

This was a feat that was never duplicated, except by Garvey and his movement and, on a minor scale, by the political figure Steve Biko in his hometown of King William's Town in the province of the Eastern Cape.

In Isita, he preached self-reliance and the need for black people to initiate economic ventures to gain respect in the eyes of the world.