A. B. Xuma: “Bridging the Gap between White and Black in South Africa”

Audience

Some 344 men and women attended the 1930 Bantu-European Christian Student Conference, which Alan Paton identifies as the first sizable interracial meeting convened in South Africa. There were 130 African students and sixty European students who were enrolled in South African universities and secondary schools. More than 150 black and white South African, European, and American prominent personages were there, including speakers, educators, ministers, and others who were specially invited. Emphasizing the interracial nature of the conference, Paton writes that the white and black participants held a joint Communion service, probably the first large “ecumenical and interracial service” ever held in South Africa (p. 125).