The University of Fort Hare, once known as the South African Native College (SANC) or simply the College at its founding, marks its 100th year this month.
Let Africa celebrate this milestone in the history of higher education.
The SANC for a long time nurtured students from all over Africa. Among those who drank from the waters of the Tyhume River are Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Charles Njonjo (Kenya) Gaositwe Chiepe (Botswana), Apolo Kironde (Uganda), WM Chirwa (Malawi) and Julius Nyerere (Tanzania).
Needless to say since 1916 the College has been the mother of higher education for the African people of this country.
Indeed, 2016 is a special year for South Africa’s history of higher education.
The making of the College took some time and occurred in fits and starts. It gained speed as the 19th century came to a close. But let us start from the beginning.
After the Xhosa-British war of 1835 – during which Kumkani Hintsa was killed – Scottish missionaries sought to establish a new site as the school at the mission station at Ncera had burnt down.
Balfour Noyi Gciniswa, umKwayi, and one of the early converts took along a Scottish missionary to approach Nkosi Tyhali, son of Nkosi Ngqika, and ask for land in the Tyhume valley.
According to Phyllis Ntantala,
Tyhali granted the missionaries land to build a school. This is where Lovedale sprang up.
It was also on this land given by Tyhali that the SANC was later built, in 1916. It was the land of Imingcangathelo, a sub-house in the House of Phalo.
The Rev Dr James Steward, the principal of Lovedale, is credited with being the first to raise the idea of a college for “natives”.
This also appears on the University of Fort Hare website.
This however, is unlikely as in his early days as a missionary educationist Stewart was involved in discussions about a curriculum that best suited “natives”. This, in his view, should be tilted towards equipping them with vocational skills as opposed to intellectual development.
A view that fails to recognise African agency in the founding of the College however, is typical of colonial history writing. In reality it was Africans themselves who championed the cause.
By the last quarter of the 19th century Africans had taken to missionary education with amazing enthusiasm. Their thirst for formal learning was unquenchable. They had appropriated Western education for their needs.
Education was seen as an entry point to being “civilised” and also a ladder to achieving equality with the colonisers and missionaries.
The indigenous people in the southern African region went to great lengths to send both girls and boys to school. “There are innumerable instances of dire sacrifices on the part of African parents that their children might have schooling” observe Shepherd and Paver.
Africans were also gaining confidence in their progress in education. Rev SP Sihlali was the first African to pass the Cape university matriculation examination in 1880 and was soon followed by John Tengo Jabavu in 1883.
Mary Ann Mzimba and Margaret Makiwane were the first African women to matriculate in the Cape colony.
During the 1890s, as recorded by Shepherd (1940), news came out that the best student in maths in one of the lower university examinations in the colony was an African girl from Lovedale. Her name was not given.
There was a growing desire for higher education for which there was no provision. A number of African students – women and men – managed to get themselves into overseas universities.
The first African woman graduate, Charlotte Manye Maxeke, obtained her degree at Wilberforce University in the United States in 1893.The desire for a higher education institution for Africans was also spurred on by the segregation policies of the pre-1910 colonial governments as well as the Union government.
The imposition of blanket segregation policies targeting all Africans exposed as a sham the ideology of education as a gateway to being accepted as a civilised person, as opposed to being treated as a “kaffir” in colonial societies.
Maxeke’s connection with Wilberforce University had other major consequences for the history of South Africa. While in the US she made contact with and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) which was part of the Ethiopian movement.
The AME Church which had started in the US in 1816 under the slogan “Africa for Africans” called for freedom for Africans in worship and for independence in their churches.
At the end of the 19th century the AME provided an international link and the hope of support to the nascent independent church movement that had made its presence felt in the missionary churches of SA through leaders such as Nehemiah Tile (1884), Mangena Mokone (1892), Mata Dwane (1894), Mpambani Mzimba (1897) and others.
By 1896 contact was firmly established with the leadership of the AME Church in the US and Dwane had also paid a visit to the US.
With the Ethiopian movement gaining ground and confidence, the question of education for Africans as provided by the missionaries came to the fore.
If there was to be independence from the missionaries it would mean independent schools and African developed education.
In the meantime Dwane, who had managed to gain an upperhand in the AME movement, had embarked on an ambitious plan to set up an institute of higher learning.
In 1899 Dwane went to the US with the main purpose of raising funds for an institute planned for a site he had bought in Queenstown.
Meanwhile, the Ethiopian movement had caused consternation among missionaries who did not see the birth of independent churches as the natural progress of their missionary enterprise. The missionaries struggled to come to terms with the idea of a native who was no longer a child, but was ready to join humanity in the field of research and the production of new knowledge through higher education learning.
At the same time government officials perceived the Ethiopian movement as carrying subversive fires that would question and threaten white rule.
It was thus expedient for these two centres of power – the colonial government and the missionaries – to embrace and support the idea of an institution for higher learning which they would have under their control.
Thus the South African Native Affairs commission was set up in 1903 and two years later was ready to recommend the establishment of a central native college.
Rev Dr James Stewart, had made a similar recommendation just before he died in December 1905.
Thus, during the first 15 years of the 20th century, two groups – African intellectuals and leaders as well as missionaries and colonial officials – devoted their energies to raising funds, planning a curriculum and deciding on the site of the envisaged institution of higher learning for Africans.
The opposing intents of the planners – an institution for continued control of the natives versus a centre for liberating the indigenous people from colonial fetters – was a contradiction that ran like a golden thread through the life and history of the new institution.
By February 1916 everything was ready to launch the South African Native College at the present site of the University of Fort Hare in Alice.
Dr Nomathamsanqa Tisani is a retired academic from Rhodes University and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. This is the first of several articles she is writing marking UFH’s centenary
Africans championed pursuit of education
Let Africa celebrate this milestone in the history of higher education.
The SANC for a long time nurtured students from all over Africa. Among those who drank from the waters of the Tyhume River are Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Charles Njonjo (Kenya) Gaositwe Chiepe (Botswana), Apolo Kironde (Uganda), WM Chirwa (Malawi) and Julius Nyerere (Tanzania).
Needless to say since 1916 the College has been the mother of higher education for the African people of this country.
Indeed, 2016 is a special year for South Africa’s history of higher education.
The making of the College took some time and occurred in fits and starts. It gained speed as the 19th century came to a close. But let us start from the beginning.
After the Xhosa-British war of 1835 – during which Kumkani Hintsa was killed – Scottish missionaries sought to establish a new site as the school at the mission station at Ncera had burnt down.
Balfour Noyi Gciniswa, umKwayi, and one of the early converts took along a Scottish missionary to approach Nkosi Tyhali, son of Nkosi Ngqika, and ask for land in the Tyhume valley.
According to Phyllis Ntantala,
Tyhali granted the missionaries land to build a school. This is where Lovedale sprang up.
It was also on this land given by Tyhali that the SANC was later built, in 1916. It was the land of Imingcangathelo, a sub-house in the House of Phalo.
The Rev Dr James Steward, the principal of Lovedale, is credited with being the first to raise the idea of a college for “natives”.
This also appears on the University of Fort Hare website.
This however, is unlikely as in his early days as a missionary educationist Stewart was involved in discussions about a curriculum that best suited “natives”. This, in his view, should be tilted towards equipping them with vocational skills as opposed to intellectual development.
A view that fails to recognise African agency in the founding of the College however, is typical of colonial history writing. In reality it was Africans themselves who championed the cause.
By the last quarter of the 19th century Africans had taken to missionary education with amazing enthusiasm. Their thirst for formal learning was unquenchable. They had appropriated Western education for their needs.
Education was seen as an entry point to being “civilised” and also a ladder to achieving equality with the colonisers and missionaries.
The indigenous people in the southern African region went to great lengths to send both girls and boys to school. “There are innumerable instances of dire sacrifices on the part of African parents that their children might have schooling” observe Shepherd and Paver.
Africans were also gaining confidence in their progress in education. Rev SP Sihlali was the first African to pass the Cape university matriculation examination in 1880 and was soon followed by John Tengo Jabavu in 1883.
Mary Ann Mzimba and Margaret Makiwane were the first African women to matriculate in the Cape colony.
During the 1890s, as recorded by Shepherd (1940), news came out that the best student in maths in one of the lower university examinations in the colony was an African girl from Lovedale. Her name was not given.
There was a growing desire for higher education for which there was no provision. A number of African students – women and men – managed to get themselves into overseas universities.
The first African woman graduate, Charlotte Manye Maxeke, obtained her degree at Wilberforce University in the United States in 1893.The desire for a higher education institution for Africans was also spurred on by the segregation policies of the pre-1910 colonial governments as well as the Union government.
The imposition of blanket segregation policies targeting all Africans exposed as a sham the ideology of education as a gateway to being accepted as a civilised person, as opposed to being treated as a “kaffir” in colonial societies.
Maxeke’s connection with Wilberforce University had other major consequences for the history of South Africa. While in the US she made contact with and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) which was part of the Ethiopian movement.
The AME Church which had started in the US in 1816 under the slogan “Africa for Africans” called for freedom for Africans in worship and for independence in their churches.
At the end of the 19th century the AME provided an international link and the hope of support to the nascent independent church movement that had made its presence felt in the missionary churches of SA through leaders such as Nehemiah Tile (1884), Mangena Mokone (1892), Mata Dwane (1894), Mpambani Mzimba (1897) and others.
By 1896 contact was firmly established with the leadership of the AME Church in the US and Dwane had also paid a visit to the US.
With the Ethiopian movement gaining ground and confidence, the question of education for Africans as provided by the missionaries came to the fore.
If there was to be independence from the missionaries it would mean independent schools and African developed education.
In the meantime Dwane, who had managed to gain an upperhand in the AME movement, had embarked on an ambitious plan to set up an institute of higher learning.
In 1899 Dwane went to the US with the main purpose of raising funds for an institute planned for a site he had bought in Queenstown.
Meanwhile, the Ethiopian movement had caused consternation among missionaries who did not see the birth of independent churches as the natural progress of their missionary enterprise. The missionaries struggled to come to terms with the idea of a native who was no longer a child, but was ready to join humanity in the field of research and the production of new knowledge through higher education learning.
At the same time government officials perceived the Ethiopian movement as carrying subversive fires that would question and threaten white rule.
It was thus expedient for these two centres of power – the colonial government and the missionaries – to embrace and support the idea of an institution for higher learning which they would have under their control.
Thus the South African Native Affairs commission was set up in 1903 and two years later was ready to recommend the establishment of a central native college.
Rev Dr James Stewart, had made a similar recommendation just before he died in December 1905.
Thus, during the first 15 years of the 20th century, two groups – African intellectuals and leaders as well as missionaries and colonial officials – devoted their energies to raising funds, planning a curriculum and deciding on the site of the envisaged institution of higher learning for Africans.
The opposing intents of the planners – an institution for continued control of the natives versus a centre for liberating the indigenous people from colonial fetters – was a contradiction that ran like a golden thread through the life and history of the new institution.
By February 1916 everything was ready to launch the South African Native College at the present site of the University of Fort Hare in Alice.
Dr Nomathamsanqa Tisani is a retired academic from Rhodes University and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. This is the first of several articles she is writing marking UFH’s centenary
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