Walton Zacharias Fenyang

Walton Zacharias  Fenyang was born in 1877 in Thaba 'Nchu distric in the Orange Free State. An early treasurer of the African National Congress (ANC) and for some years the ANC provincial president in the Orange Free State. Educated at Healdtown Institution, he was a chief of the Barolong, a subgroup of the Tswana, and owned a large farm in the Thaba 'Nchu reserve. He belong to a chiefly family of the Barongsub-group of the tswana and was an active Methodist.A relative of James Moroka by marriage,he was also related to Sol Plaatje's mother.In 1913 he was a member of the ANC deputation to the minister of Native affairs, which protested against the Land Act. In the early 1920s he established a newspaper, the Messenger-Morumioa, which was published in Bloemfontein for about two years.

Fenyang hosted Plaatje when the latte was studying the impact of the 1913 Land Act in the Orange Free State,and when Plaatje launched a newspaper,Tsala ea Becoana (Bechuana Friend) in Kimberly in 1910,Fenyang  was one of its funders.Fenyang was Orange Free State provincial ANC president from 1912 into the late 1920s.In May 1913 he was in a delegation of nine officials of the South African Native National Congress(SANNC)that met four times with J.W.Sauer,the minister of Native affairs to protest against the pending Land Act.In 1946 he sold 500 morgen to Alfred Xuma.In 1937 he joined James Moroka in establishing Moroka High School in Thaba 'Nchu,a co-educational bording school for Africans, one of very few such schools in the country at that time.