Though his family came from Botswana, Mathews was born in Cape Colony (present-day Cape Province), South Africa. He graduated in humanities at University College of Fort Hare, South Africa, in 1924, then studied anthropology and law at Yale and at the London School of Economics under Bronislaw Malinowski. He taught at Adams High School in Natal and for twenty-four years was lecturer in social anthropology and native law at Fort Hare. He was active in the Council of Europeans and Africans for Interracial Harmony in Durban and with the Native Bantu Teachers’ Union. In 1936, when the Native Representation Bill removed Africans from the common voter’s roll, he served on the Native Representative Council and was active in the African National Congress (ANC). In 1952-1953 he was the Henry W. Luce Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He also served on the royal commission that investigated higher education for Africans in Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika (Tanzania), and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
John S. Pobee (Sun,) studied this question.