Читать книгу Let My People Go - Albert Luthuli - Страница 9

Life at Adams College

THREE DISTINCT DEPARTMENTS, each with its own head, came under the supervision of the Principal of Adams College – a High School, a Training College for Teachers, and an Industrial School. For the next two years I lived uneventfully and busily as a student in the Training College, settling down to the vocation which seemed to have chosen me. The careers open to Africans, then as now, were extremely few – except for manual labour. Besides teaching, very little was open to us beyond the church, and clerical posts with lawyers and (in the third grade only) in the Civil Service. In these circumstances it is not surprising that I had done very little about picking a career, and I took it for granted that I would spend my days quietly as a teacher. I must add that, even had I lived in a country where the colour bar does not impose so restricted a range of careers, teaching would probably have been my choice – either that or law.

I was fascinated by the horizons which my own education opened up, and eager to be instrumental in helping to educate others. The riches of the land and the material opulence of the cities were not for Africans. All the more, then, did we regard education as a thirsty wayfarer yearns for a water-hole.

At the end of my student year I was faced with a hard choice. Dr Loram offered me a bursary which would see me through the University College of Fort Hare. To this day I have no doubt that I chose rightly, but I regretted terribly having had to decline. My reply to his offer needed little pondering.

“I’m grateful for the offer, Dr Loram, extremely grateful. But my mother has been labouring all these years to ensure my education. Now she’s old. For the last two years I’ve been able to do nothing to help her. I must go out to teach again, so that I can release her from work in her old age.”

I did not, however, go out to teach. I stayed on to teach at Adams. Adams was then leading the way in the experiment of using Africans to train African teachers. With one other African teacher I was appointed to the staff at Adams. The subjects in which I specialised were Zulu and Music, and some years later School Organisation was added. Besides these, there was much general teaching. At the end of my time at Adams, thirteen years later, I had become Supervisor of teachers in training at outlying schools. Throughout these years one job, which I enjoyed immensely, persisted – I was College Choirmaster. It did indeed appear that I was settling in to a teacher’s life.

When I first joined the staff at Adams, African education in Natal was undergoing a drastic revision. The revolutionary at the helm was Dr Loram, newly appointed as Natal’s first Chief Inspector of Native Education. Previous to his appointment, African education had followed conventional lines. Except in the matter of language, there was not much difference between black and white education, and both conformed to the general pattern evolved in Europe.

Now came Dr Loram, a vigorous product of the craze for “practical” education which was then in vogue. His driving intention seems to have been, in all good faith, to equip African children for the lives white South Africa decreed they would have to live. Since they had been cast for the role of hewers of wood and drawers of water, their education must equip them to hew wood and draw water. I doubt whether Dr Loram was aware of how cramped a future he was (by implication) predicting for us. In fact, I imagine that he assumed uncritically that we shall for ever be what most of white South Africa says we are, and he set out to make us contented in our mental shackles. He had, I do not doubt, the best of intentions.

The result of his efforts was that the Three Rs became luxury subjects almost at once, and a disproportion of time was awarded to manual work and menial crafts. Utility was the thing. Standards of attainment in Arithmetic, Mathematics, and English went down-hill at a gallop.

Fortunately Dr Loram did not stay in his position for long, though it took longer to repair the damage than to inflict it. He did, however, stay long enough to coin the phrase “develop along their own lines” which has become one of the war-cries of apartheid. Whether the Nationalists learned anything from Dr Loram’s educational theory or not, there is some similarity.

For Dr Loram it can be said that his rash adventure was an experiment in keeping with fashions then current elsewhere, especially in America. Though not judicious, it was a sign of life. Against the present policy of the Nationalists it must be pointed out that they have resuscitated and intensified an approach already tried and abandoned.

It now seems ironical that at the time I broke a lance in defence of Dr Loram’s revisions. In the African Teachers’ Journal I expressed support of the extension of the vernacular in our schools (Mother Tongue Instruction), though I did not agree with the emphasis on manual subjects. Ilanga laseNatal, a newspaper edited by Dr Dube and published in Zulu, took me severely to task, and there is no doubt that the African community was very strongly opposed to Dr Loram’s reforms.

I learned a lesson, seeing clearly for the first time the danger of giving such matters purely academic consideration, and of being an enthusiast in the realm of theory. To me, at that moment, and in spite of my disagreement over some things, Dr Loram seemed to represent progressive trends in education. The Zulu community, more wisely, knew that he was cutting off the air supply. Like most young teachers at the time, I did not take into account the political and social context. I was aware of an educational situation, I was engrossed with equipping myself to be of some use in it, and failed to reckon with the setting in which Dr Loram was going to work.

Life at Adams College contrived to insulate us in some measure from what was happening in South Africa. It was not that restraints were put on us. Rather, in some ways Adams was a world of its own in which we were too busy with our profession to pay more than passing attention to what happened elsewhere.

It was an extremely busy world. For the first five or six years the urge to master my profession kept me fully occupied in the interludes of a very heavy schedule. When I could spare the time I fitted in haphazard reading – religion, sociology, political philosophy. I must confess that I still have a large gap in my political education: I have read none of the Marxist classics, and now it would be illegal (in South Africa) to do this.

In 1928 secretaryship of the African Teachers’ Association was added to my voluntary and routine activities, and in 1933 I became president of the same body. Probably the main preoccupation of the Association was not teaching but pay – not surprising, since we were paid something like £120 a year. This work, involving as it did negotiations with the authorities, gave me some training in arts which have since become redundant. South African authorities no longer receive deputations, and they do not discuss their decisions with those affected by them.

As secretary of the Association I had some practice in organisation, too, and during these years we made our first application of the boycott method. We boycotted Dr Loram’s Winter Schools on the grounds that the money spent on them would be better used to raise our wages.

But we did concern ourselves – and more wholeheartedly – with more than money. While I was secretary of the Association it became increasingly clear to me that if we were to devote our major attention to conditions of employment and pay we should end up in chronic disgruntlement.

With this, among other things, in mind, I took the initiative in founding the Zulu Language and Cultural Society as an auxiliary to the Teachers’ Association. I believed then, as I do now, that an authentic, comprehensive South African culture will grow in its own way. This will not be determined by cultural societies, but they may influence it. It seemed to me that African teachers ought to play some part in the process.

We were thoroughly aware of the meeting of cultures, African and European, and of the disorganisation of both – especially the African – as a result. We did not have the desire of the Nationalists that we should return to the primitive. But we did have an intense wish to preserve what is valuable in our heritage while discarding the inappropriate and outmoded. Our people were ill-equipped to withstand the impact of a twentieth-century industrial society. Our task seemed to consist of relating the past coherently to the present and the future.

The Zulu Language and Cultural Society throve satisfactorily until some time after I had left the teaching profession. Then it accepted a government grant, lost its independence, became involved in the Native Affairs Department and Zulu Royal House politics, went into decline, and (after withdrawal by the teachers) collapsed.

Beyond playing an occasional game of tennis for exercise, I took no part in sport while at Adams. None the less, the streak of fierce fanaticism which is looked for in presidents of African National Congresses showed itself in one way even then – I became a compulsive football fan. To this day I am carried away helplessly by the excitement of a soccer match, and I confess that when I watch matches between white South Africans and visiting teams, I invariably want the foreigners to win. So do other Africans.

Leaving Adams wrenched me from this addiction, as my political ban does now. All the same, over twenty-five years I have played what part I could in organising African and inter-racial sport, to the extent, for instance, that I was made the first secretary of the South African Football Association.

I think that what has attracted me as much as the game has been the opportunity to meet all sorts of people, from the loftiest to the most disreputable. I well remember how on one occasion after a football match, I found myself the only sober man in a car which was being driven at breakneck speed. To take my mind off my own imminent death, I confined myself to restraining a companion from simply opening the door and stepping out on to a road moving backwards at sixty miles an hour – in order to relieve himself!

One of the great benefits of Adams was that it brought those of us who stayed there over a number of years into contact with many people. I am not aware that I have ever been dominated by a stereotyped set of ideas – it could probably be said that I have spent a lifetime modifying my views in the attempt to fit them to the realities as I have been able to understand them. My ambitions are, I think, modest – they scarcely go beyond the desire to serve God and my neighbour, both at full stretch. But contact with people is the very breath of life to me.

At Adams the privilege of meeting people extended beyond students and staff. Perhaps because it was an American foundation, it attracted numbers of visitors, men who preached in the College Chapel or who addressed us at meetings, who were open to challenge and discussion, and who brought in with them a breath of the larger world.

Although I can thank no one person for exerting a decisive influence on me, I must set down here my gratitude to the many (most of them unwitting) who have deepened my understanding.

Among my colleagues I recall the pleasure and stimulus of friendship with Professor Matthews. He was not a professor then. He came to head the High School soon after I joined the staff of the Training College, and he built up his department of Adams in an impressive way. Certainly neither of us young African academes had the faintest suspicion that we should meet one day in Johannesburg to stand trial together for High Treason – Professor Matthews to be hauled from his study at Fort Hare University College, and I from my mission allotment. Still less could I foresee that at the end of an honourable and distinguished career, the professor would resign within two years of retirement, forfeiting about £7 000 in gratuities rather than submit to the travesty of the Separate Universities Act.

Still among my colleagues I recall with affection the head of the Industrial School, Dr Breuckner. I did not find him an arresting preacher, but one sentence which he spoke has lived with me until today: “You must give a charitable interpretation to every man’s actions,” he told us, “until you can prove that such an interpretation is unsound.” I have tried to adhere to this in my meetings with people.

One of my strangest encounters – subsequently it has become a bewildering one – with a colleague was my interchange with a man named De Villiers: an Afrikaner who, because of the “modernist” views which he held, was not accepted into the ministry of the Dutch Reformed Church, Mr De Villiers seemed closer to the Africans on the staff than did most white teachers. Certainly he associated with us more freely and more often than did his white fellows. Not only did he often join us in our common room – a mild brand of apartheid prevailed at Adams – but he engaged us in lengthy discussions in our private rooms.

More than any one person, this man helped me to forestall intolerance of whites in general and of Afrikaners in particular. Although at this time the existence of oppression was seldom in the forefront of my mind, Mr De Villiers made me aware of it as the product of deliberate training which he had revolted against.

“If you find an Afrikaner who is liberal,” he once told us, and I took it that he referred to himself, “you must recognise that he gets to that point only after a good deal of heart-searching and repentance, because he’s been brought up to dislike and look down on natives. We’ve been taught that natives aren’t like you people here.”

I cannot forget the horror with which I understood that in South Africa children were being brought up to despise other children, and even their elders. Until this time I had, I suppose, looked on brutalities as individual aberrations rather than as the rotten fruit of childhood training.

Mr De Villiers made some impact on us as a person because he opened up a side of South African affairs of which we were largely ignorant. A vigorous apologist for Afrikaners, despite his own revolt against their ethos, he gave us a sense of Afrikaners as victims of their own past. Although the tendency to see oneself perpetually as a victim will lead to the evasion of responsibility and the condoning of evil, I think that much of this man’s interpretation of South African history was valid. It did enlarge my understanding of the forces which go to the making of men, and it gave me some insight into the dilemma of whites, particularly Afrikaners, which has possibly served in later years as a real protection against hatred and bitterness.

But Mr De Villiers has confronted me with a problem to which I find no solution. He is now Secretary for Bantu Education under the present government. He has aided the work of destroying African education. Can it be that he has repented of repenting?

There are many questions I should like to put to Mr De Villiers. Above all, I would like to understand what has caused this drastic change in his outlook, his apparent reversion to his childhood. I would like to understand how he reconciles his past with his present. But much has changed since last we met, and now I suppose that we could not meet as men, equals without constraint, to discuss our differences. It is regrettable.

Among visitors to Adams came Dr Aggrey. I remember his visit chiefly because of his impressive eloquence, and because he gave us a glimpse, rare in those days, of the eminence which black men may achieve. Yet I cannot say that even then his advice seemed wise, and certainly I reject it now. “Take what you are given,” he urged us, “even if it is only half a loaf. Only when you’ve used up the entire half-loaf should you ask for more.”

I am open to progressive compromise, but I reject Dr Aggrey’s advice to accept anything given. I must be sure it is bread I am offered, and in apartheid I see not bread but a stone.

At least one visit to Adams had a comic sequel. A Congregationalist minister spoke to the students about the British Royal Family – it was the occasion of George V’s jubilee. The speaker drew on more patriotism and less knowledge than was desirable, comparing the British Royal Family with the Zulu, greatly to the disparagement of the latter. There was no outward sign that the students had even taken in what was said – not a ripple. Then Edward VIII abdicated. When he abandoned his throne and his people (that is how a Zulu would see it) the students staged a minor demonstration. “Call Mr Taylor,” they clamoured, “to tell us more about the British Royal Family!”

Of my superiors at Adams, two at least made a deep impression on me. Dr Edgar Brookes took over the Principalship at a time when morale was very low. Starting with this disadvantage, he pulled the place together again in a short time, impressing his efficient personality on every department. He was the first head of Adams who was not a visiting missionary. He was a South African and not a missionary. Yet – this is what made the deepest impact on me – he treated his religion with utter sincerity. It may be that it was from him, together with CW Atkins, that I gathered some understanding of lay activity and witness in the church.

Dr Brookes was then a member of the Oxford Group. Frequent meetings were held at his house, and at them many themes were discussed in a free and relaxed atmosphere. Among other things, we found ourselves able to consider quite frankly the difficulties brought about by the confluence of races in South Africa. I cannot say we solved our country’s problems, but we did exchange ideas with a simplicity and charity which now seemed totally discordant with the present mood.

I do not know whether Dr Brookes still belongs to the Oxford Group, now known, I believe, as Moral Rearmament, but he continues to be one of South Africa’s greatest champions of public and private sanity and morality.

Early in my career at Adams I came under the influence of CW Atkins, head of the Training College, and for a time principal of the entire institution. This man typifies for me the side of Adams which I found most valuable and enduring. He placed his emphasis on loving God and on service of the society in which one finds oneself, and he had no hesitation in involving us deeply in the affairs of the African communities which lay within reach of Adams. Possibly this was really the combined achievement of Adams, but Atkins remains in my memory as a symbol of it.

Among my many debts to Adams and its people the greatest was the gift of an ethos gradually absorbed, and profoundly lasting in its effects. It became clear to me that the Christian faith was not a private affair without relevance to society. It was, rather, a belief which equipped us in a unique way to meet the challenges of our society. It was a belief which had to be applied to the conditions of our lives; and our many works – they ranged from Sunday School teaching to road-building – became meaningful as the outflow of Christian belief.

Adams taught me what Edendale did not, that I had to do something about being a Christian, and that this something must identify me with my neighbour, not dissociate me from him. Adams taught me more. It inculcated, by example rather than precept, a specifically Christian mode of going about work in society, and I have had frequent reason to be grateful for this in later life.