Allan Kirkland Soga was among the founding members of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1912, he was the youngest son of Tiyo Soga, the first African in South Africa to be ordained a minister. His mother was a Scot, and he was educated in the Cape and in Scotland, receiving sufficient legal education to be appointed a magistrate. Later dismissed from this position, he was employed at other times as a labour bureau agent and a road inspector in the Transkei. His first calling, however, was journalism, and he was associated both with the Izwi Labantu, a Cape paper that rivaled John Tengo Jabavu's Imvo Zabantsundu, and with the Native Advocate, a paper published in Pretoria. He was a founder and secretary of the Bantu Union, a Cape voters' association, and was an influential participant at numerous conferences. He died in 1938.