John Tengo Jabavu was born on 11 January 1859 near Healdtown in the eastern Cape. In 1875 he graduated from the Methodist mission school at Healdtown and became a teacher at Somerset East.

While teaching, he began to write articles for some South African newspapers and he apprenticed himself to a printer. In 1881, Jabavu was invited by Reverend James Stewart of the Lovedale Mission School to become the editor of the institution’s Xhosa-language journal, Isigidimi samaXhosa (“The Xhosa Messenger”)