Healdtown Native School

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Healdtown Native School
Photo-request.svg
Image wanted BW
type of school secondary school
founding 1845
address

PO BOX 69134, Healdtown (successor institution)

place Fort Beaufort
province Eastern Cape
Country South Africa
Coordinates 32 ° 43 '57 "  S , 26 ° 42' 20"  E Coordinates: 32 ° 43 '57 "  S , 26 ° 42' 20"  E
carrier Methodist Church of Southern Africa
Website www.historicschools.org.za

The Healdtown Native School , known nationwide before 1994 as the Healdtown Institution (short: Healdtown , abbreviated: HI), was a Christian educational institution near the South African town of Fort Beaufort , in the vicinity of the Tyatyora settlement. Their historical starting point was a school founded by Reverend Henry Calderwood as a Birkland mission station . Since the successor institution was reopened in 1994, it is now called Healdtown Comprehensive High School (German: "Healdtown Comprehensive School").

development

The beginning of the school operation in Birklands near Fort Beaufort goes back to the year 1845 and took place under the leadership of the London Missionary Society . Reverend Calderwood later served as a state " Native Commissioner " among the Xhosa people. Originally the school served to train lay preachers and as a primary school for children of the amaFengu ( Mfecane period).

George Edward Gray , the governor of the Cape Colony , initiated the introduction of vocational training opportunities for blacks from 1854. Its decision strongly promoted the creation of institutions or new sub-areas in existing schools.

At the Birklands School , plans began in 1855 for a training program for blacks. The curriculum profile was modeled on the Lovedale Mission with Alice . These were manual courses for future iron smiths, bricklayers, carpenters, shoemakers and other professions. The first class events began in the same year. This gave the Mission Station Birklands a new school status. The institution became a college.

About ten years later, the colonial administration stopped supporting the vocational sector and the vocational school was closed again. It was around this time that James Heald, a British MP and the Treasurer of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society , began raising funds for a Methodist clergy school. This seminary was moved from Healdtown to Lesseyton to the Lesseyton Native Ministers' Training School in 1883, and to the South African Native College at Fort Hare in 1917 , where there had been a theological department since the 1880s.

By the 1880s, Healdtown was known for having one of the highest graduate numbers in primary school for children of the black population.

When the 1956 Bantu Education Amendment Act ( Act 36/1956 ) changed the financing of the non-state school sector nationwide and enacted state supervision over this area, the educational institution was forcibly passed from the direction of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa to the administration of the Department of Education ( Department under the Minister of Native Affairs ) above. Stanley G. Pitts, the last Methodist school principal, left the institution in 1968. Since then, the building has deteriorated.

In 1970 the Ciskei government signed a contract to use the buildings with the Methodists and renamed the school Ilanga High School . Finally, the offices of the Ciskei Department of Education were housed here. The continued inadequate building maintenance resulted in further deterioration of the buildings. In this condition, they became the target of willful damage and suffered significant damage in the process. Finally, in the course of nationwide unrest as a result of the Soweto uprising, there were arson here by unknown perpetrators, with some school buildings being burned down.

The Methodist Church of Southern Africa and the Ciskei government did not reach a joint result on the question of the continuation of the school operation and the costs of the building renovation, whereupon the institution was closed in 1978 by the Ciskei administration.

With the end of apartheid came at the initiative of the Minister of Education and Culture of the homelands Ciskei, PP Jacobs, and supported by the Independent Development Trust and a support group from Canada to reopen as a comprehensive school ( Healdtown Comprehensive High School ). Since then, the Methodist Church has been the owner of the property again, and the expenses for teaching staff and non-educational staff are financed from public budgets.

In 2011, the state oil company PetroSA took an initiative to restore the historic building complex. The project was included in the Historic Schools Restoration Project (HSRP) program, which is under the auspices of the former Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane .

Well-known graduates of the institution

  • John Tengo Jabavu (1859–1921), founder (1884) and editor of Imvo Zabantusundu from 1884
  • Silas Kanunu , former sports official ( football ) and human rights lawyer
  • Nelson Mandela (1918–2013), former President of South Africa (since 1937 for the last two years of his high school years)
  • Seetsile Modiri Molema, author of Bantu Past and Present and former chief treasurer of the ANC.
  • Robert Sobukwe (1924–1978), the founder of the Pan Africanist Congress
  • Govan Mbeki (1910-2001), ANC politician
  • Raymond Mhlaba (1920–2005), ANC politician
  • Rev. Seth Mokitimi (1904–1971), a former director of Healdtown and the first black man to be elected President of the Conference of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa .
  • Alfred Nzo (1925–2000), ANC politician
  • Zola Skweyiya (1943–2018), politician with ministerial offices (public service, social affairs) and South African High Commissioner in London

literature

Liana Müller, Cultmatrix cc: Healdtown School Campus. Fort Beaufort, Eastern Cape: Heritage Analysis and Assessment of the Cultural Landscape . September 2009, online at www.sahra.org.za (English)

further reading

  • Healdtown 1855–1955: Centenary Brochure of Healdtown Missionary Institution . Healdtown, Lovedale Press, 1956.
  • Joseph Ability Mzwanele Peppeta: A portrait of a school: Healdtown Missionary Institution (1925–1955) through the eyes of some of its ex-pupils . Master's Thesis, Rhodes University , Department of Education, Grahamstown 1989

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert HW Shepherd: Lovedale South Africa. The Story of a Century 1841-1941 . The Lovedale Press, 1940. pp. 97, 218
  2. ↑ Kathy L. Gilbert: Methodist school survives challenges over 150 years . Article from October 5, 2004 on www.umc.org (English)
  3. ^ South African History Online: Missionary settlement in Southern Africa 1800-1925 . on www.sahistory.org.za (English)
  4. ^ Robert HW Shepherd: Lovedale South Africa . P. 97
  5. ^ PAW Cook: Non-European Education . In: Ellen Hellmann , Leah Abrahams: Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa . Oxford University Press, Cape Town, London, New York, 1949, p. 350
  6. ^ Robert HW Shepherd: Lovedale South Africa . P. 134
  7. ^ RE Raper: Dictionary of Southern African Place Names . at www.archive.org (English)
  8. ^ A b c Historic School Restoration Project: Healdtown Comprehensive School . at www.historicschools.org.za (English)
  9. ^ Graham Duncan : The Prehistory of the Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa: A Study in Ecumenical Ancestry . In: Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, September 2006, Vol. XXXII, No. 2, pp. 69–97 here: PDF document pp. 18–19, online at www.uir.unisa.ac.za (English)
  10. ^ Robert HW Shepherd: Lovedale South Africa . P. 385
  11. ^ Robert HW Shepherd: Lovedale South Africa . P. 218
  12. ↑ a b c d e f Liana Müller: Healdtown School Campus . P. 97
  13. ^ SAIRR : A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1955–1956 . Johannesburg [1956], pp. 189, 194-197
  14. ↑ Independent Development Trust: Who we are . on www.idt.org.za (English)
  15. ↑ a b PetroSA : PetroSA sponsors former President Mandela's High School . Announcement from February 16, 2011 on www.petrosa.co.za (English)
  16. ^ South African History Online: The first Black SA newspaper . on www.sahistory.org.za (English)
  17. ↑ Shelag Gastrow: Who's Who in South African Politics. Number 5 . Johannesburg 1995, p. 241
  18. ^ South East Academic Libraries System: bibliographic records