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Kilnerton

Heading east from Pretoria on the road to Witbank, much of the undeveloped land between the city’s edge and Silverton four miles on belonged to the Methodist Church. A rugged koppie flanked the road and back then Andy’s Cash Store was the landmark where a left turn took you through the stone gate-posts of Kilnerton Training Institution, or KTI, as the students called it. A graceful red-roofed stone chapel crowned the koppie, with the campus clustered below its northern slopes facing the winter sun. Church land ran north a long way across the veld to a second ridge of low hills. The vast property was bisected by the railroad from Pretoria to Cullinan Diamond Mine and the Witbank coalfields and Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique). This was the railroad used by a young Winston Churchill after he escaped from prison during the South African War – and by me for my more mundane commute to school.

Kilnerton was one of the campuses born through the genius of nineteenth century Methodist missionary strategy. The Reverend William Shaw, chaplain to the 1820 settler Sephton party, was not satisfied to minister only to the settlers and he turned his attention to the indigenous people of the Eastern Cape. Befriending Xhosa chiefs, he was able to build a chain of missions stretching 400 miles from Grahamstown to what is now Durban. Everywhere he linked spiritual work with education, gaining increasing acceptance for the Gospel among the amaXhosa. His strategy was taken up by fellow missionaries and bore rich fruit among other ethnic groups too, and names like Healdtown and Clarkebury in the Eastern Cape, Moroka at Thaba’Nchu in the Free State, Boichoko on the plains of the Western Transvaal, and Indaleni in Natal, became watchwords of Methodist missionary education. Kilnerton was opened in 1885, a full twelve years before any government school for blacks anywhere in South Africa, and at a time when even white education was very limited. By 1906, for instance, in the Orange Free State, of the 37 000 white children in the province, only 17 000 received any schooling at all. Kilnerton was one of the standouts in a Methodist network that at its height was educating 27.3% of black scholars across the land – excluding their many night schools. They were not alone in this enterprise; until their work was ruthlessly dismantled by the apartheid government the Christian churches together were educating the majority of black schoolchildren in South Africa.4

Dad now had responsibility for the leadership and administration of this famous institution with its 1 600 students. The ‘Normal College’ had 230 teachers in training while 600 students attended the high school. A primary or ‘Practising School’ – so named because this is where student teachers cut their teeth – had 700 children. The multi-racial teaching staff numbered 56 and additional administrative staff managed the boarding residences and what had originally been 2 400 hectares of land.5 Students also tended extensive vegetable gardens where food for the dining-halls was grown. Like the streets of Pretoria Kilnerton’s campus was planted with jacaranda trees and around September shimmered in a translucent mauve haze.

Methodists of that era had a high view of their missionary vocation and its potential impact on the fraught issues of race in South Africa. In a 1950 letter to a tutor at his Alma Mater, Richmond College, my dad wrote:

You are all aware that, in this multi-racial land, issues are at stake which involve the dignity and destiny of millions of black men and women. To many, the way here may seem confused, but our own path is quite clear and we have never wavered in our faith that in Christ, all personality finds its dignity and worth and that true education must be grounded in the Christian view of God, Man (sic) and the World. Here at Kilnerton, racial cooperation is on a high level and many young Africans are learning how the Spirit of Christ banishes the devils of racial prejudice and intolerance, and go out to be teachers and potential leaders of their fellow Africans. I believe that the Christian character of our students is the final answer to the doubts and fears of the European minority in this land. In the meantime have no fear: Methodism will be true to her great missionary tradition.

However, with the apartheid government beginning to flex its racist muscles after two years in power, he was far from sanguine about the future:

In the days just ahead, we may have to face a challenge which will test the deepest faith of our Church and we will find strength in the knowledge that you are praying that what was begun in faith by our fathers in Christ, will be continued in faith to the end.6

When we moved into the sprawling old Mission House on the campus, apart from the sound of passing steam trains, there was no hint of the nation’s busy capital nearby. Kilnerton’s lands once embraced parts of Pretoria East, including what are now the suburbs of Hatfield, Colbyn and Queenswood, and Mahlamba Ndlopfu, the current residence of the State President, but they had long-since been much reduced. However, for a ten-year-old kid with his first bicycle and a tendency to solitariness, they were the biggest back yard in the world. The campus buildings occupied only a small fraction of the land and it was the surrounding veld that drew me: head-high grass to lose myself in, cool bluegum forests to build hideouts and plan military campaigns, the rocky sandstone koppie with its thorn trees, scrub, lizards and snakes to discover or keep clear of, and thick reed beds where small streams trickled, waiting to be dammed up with mud. Like any rural kid, black or white, I became fairly deadly with a kleilat – a springy willow branch with a lump of clay moulded to its extremity to be delivered with velocity and accuracy. The trick of course, was the getaway afterward. With an imagination populated by all the adventurers and heroes of my book world there was not a moment that I felt alone, or lacked for ways of filling my time. A lifelong habit of solitariness was probably born in these years.

Around me the rhythms of the Kilnerton seasons brought their own stimuli. Every year held its athletic championships around the 440-yard running track which was also my bike’s dirt track when I could get away with it. Boxing against St Peter’s College students from Johannesburg had Methodist pride on the line and hopes of Anglican blood in the ring. My first sporting heroes were Kilnertonians; cricket, netball, tennis and soccer produced stars for us to idolise and the staff-student cricket match had much more at stake than a simple result: back in the dormitories he who had bowled the Governor out could afford to swagger.

Worship was a command performance, with women and men students singing gloriously as they climbed the koppie from their separate hostels to converge on the chapel. They sat divided by the aisle while staff members, ever watchful, sat on cross-pews in front. The Governor preached in English in the mornings and the Chaplain – delightfully named Reverend Tranquil Bam – led the evening vernacular language services. We did not attend in the evenings but the sound of the singing rolled down the slopes of the koppie and into our home. The students responded well to Dad’s easy and intimate style of preaching. Morley Nkosi recalls that he “had a strong influence on many of us myself included. Listening to him conduct a service was enlightening and exhilarating. His sermons dealt with social issues that I could relate to even though they were based on interpretations of biblical texts. They were accompanied by beautiful joyful singing of hymns he had chosen for every sermon.”7

Winter evenings brought drama productions and choir concerts: Shakespeare plays, excerpts from Pilgrim’s Progress and the works of other masters of English literature received polished and enthusiastic attention. But for a little white kid the moments of deeper fascination were when the roughly printed programme indicated a ‘vernacular’ item. Here students offered their own productions, mainly in Sotho or Tswana, often focusing on their village culture. As some tribal or domestic drama unfolded most of the whites were left guessing but the black audience was suddenly more electric and alive. The students were clearly in a more comfortable zone, and for a little while the power equation altered: this was their world, with most of the whites temporarily shut out. In a small way we were put into the place of disadvantage these black youth occupied almost all the time. It never occurred to my parents to have me learn either of the dominant languages of the region, and there is no mystery why: in those days the cultural current flowed altogether away from what was indigenous toward what was English and the possible value of engaging a black language fell outside the white imagination.

Important events at Kilnerton always ended with the singing of the haunting Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, the hymn written by a Methodist school teacher named Enoch Sontonga. We all learned the words but I’m not sure whites had much sense of their political resonance. Later – much later – it became South Africa’s national anthem, but for the students it already held that status. South Africa was about to enter a defining struggle and youth at places like Kilnerton were becoming politicised, and there were reasons right there to make them chafe. Apartheid in its harsh institutional form may not have yet arrived but we had our own polite brand and even ‘enlightened’ institutions like Kilnerton were shot through with colonial attitudes. The culture was often paternalistic and segregation was practised in some quite unapologetic ways. The staff of 56 was divided roughly down the middle between white and black teachers who worked closely with one another on the job but retired to separate staff lounges for tea breaks. Salaries differed significantly too. I was too young to engage meaningfully with South Africa’s tortured politics of race, but my whiteness nevertheless brought external advantages and internal consequences. Not only was I white but I was the Governor’s son and assumptions of superiority found fertile root in a context where deference was often shown me on those grounds alone. Even at Kilnerton being white was good for privilege and bad for the soul.

With the subtext of South Africa’s racism intruding in these ways into the life of the institution, tensions were sometimes tangible. When they broke the surface they were most often about living conditions and food quality – what today might be called ‘service delivery’. My mother’s duties included supervision of the dining-hall kitchens and the on-site bakery and soon after arrival we were shown how quickly things could go bad. With Dad away one afternoon, the Mission House was surrounded by angry students pelting our windows with stale bread. Someone in the bakery had got the mix wrong and the blame came Mom’s way. Food protests were not new: later we found out that the first at KTI had been led by JB Marks8 in 1917. I soon learned how rudimentary the dormitory accommodations were: discovering that I could make some extra pocket-money on my bike by delivering love letters between the men’s dormitories and the women’s hostel a half-mile away, I had gained access to both. For each student, a bed, some shelves and a metal trunk were more or less all there was. Ablution facilities were also spartan. Kilnerton was providing education and hostel accommodation for a mere £28 per year (around R1 500 today) and there were no luxuries.

Examination season typically brought heaviness and dread. High school principal Charles Jackson, who, it was said, could spot a student with his hands in his pockets a mile off, demanded the highest standards but the best that most of his products could hope for was to go on to the Kilnerton ‘Normal College’ to be trained as teachers under another legendary character, Kenneth Hartshorne. Among the exceptions was Nthato Motlana, who became the first black medical student at the University of the Witwatersrand and a significant community leader in the struggle that lay ahead. Another was Mary Xakane, the first black woman to become a doctor in South Africa. The second president of the SA Native National Congress, later to be renamed the African National Congress (ANC), Reverend Sefako Mapogo Makgatho, was one of the founding teaching staff of KTI; he taught there for 19 years before branching out as a church and political leader. He was renowned for his campaigns against discrimination and for his presidential address of 6 May 1919, in which he declared, “We ask for no special favours from the government. This is the land of our fathers.” Other famous ‘Old Kilnertonians’ were struggle stalwarts Lillian Ngoyi, one of the leaders of the 1956 protest march by 20 000 women on the Union Buildings, and Barney Ngakane, Transvaal president of the ANC, singer Miriam Makeba, and the Robben Island veteran Dikgang Moseneke, who became Deputy Chief Justice in democratic South Africa.

I had to go to school of course, and here the power of custom once more had its way: for a white child to attend Kilnerton would have been unthinkable. So every morning I would walk through the long grass, away from a perfectly good school, to wait for the steam train that would take us to school in Hatfield, the nearest Pretoria suburb five miles away. Two years later, when I transitioned to Pretoria Boys’ High, I swopped the train for a six-mile bike ride in the long hot summers and bitter winters – well worth it for the independence it gave me and the detours past a certain girl’s house on my way home. I was, after all, beginning to explore adolescence.

With the election of the National Party and its policy of specially designed ‘Bantu Education’, places like Kilnerton were doomed: they educated black people too well. It took a while and by the time the axe fell in 1955, my father had been appointed elsewhere, but the intimidation began right after the election. Land had already been expropriated for the massive Koedoespoort railway works across the line and Kilnerton was now described officially as a ‘black spot in a white area’. At night fires were set in our fields by white vigilantes and shots were fired into the mission property. As the first apartheid legislation began to take shape Dad began to confront it in his preaching and in other ways, but he was spared the indignities that came to his successor, Reverend Deryck Dugmore, when the government intervened directly in the institution. Dr Stanley Mogoba9 recalls the day when the Bantu Education inspector came and assembled the entire staff: “The kafferboetie (kaffer-brother) days are over now,” he announced, and began to list a number of draconian changes in the way Kilnerton was to be administered. The response of the students was an immediate strike and for a time the campus was virtually ungovernable, but in the end the state won and KTI’s life as an institution of integrity was over. Curriculum and rules would now be dictated by the apartheid government.

We left in December 1952 for Cape Town, so were gone by the time the takeover happened, but I recall picking up some of the agonised discussions about whether to close KTI entirely rather than hand any part of it to the apartheid administration. My father was of this mind, but the issue was finally decided by the Methodist Conference in response to the pleas of black parents. Their cry was, ‘better half an education than none’. The fact that the church could still offer chaplaincy and supervise the residential, social and spiritual life of the students was a sop that eased the decision, but in reality KTI was gutted. Its tragedy was multiplied all over South Africa as the suffocating hand of Bantu Education fell upon one great mission campus after another. KTI’s life finally ended in 1962.

Almost all of the Kilnerton lands were sold to finance the church’s response to yet another brutal government policy: the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of black people into vast new ‘townships’ outside the cities – places like Mamelodi outside Pretoria and South Western Townships (Soweto) south of Johannesburg. The money was used to build scores of churches for these displaced people in their new, harsh environment, while some funds were husbanded in a trust that continues to resource mission and educational endeavours.

It is impossible to measure the destruction caused by this deliberate dumbing down of black education. Trade union leader Cyril Ramaphosa bluntly expressed the sentiments of millions of black South Africans when he said, “We can learn to forgive many of the terrible things apartheid did to our people, but the worst by far was the Bantu Education Act. It did more long-term damage than anything else. That we cannot forgive.” But while the immediate future was now held to ransom by the apartheid ideologues, they could not undo the past, and because of the Christian mission campuses, a crucial generation of brilliant and increasingly politicised students had already slipped through their grasp. Leaders like Luthuli, Tambo, Mandela, Tutu, Sisulu, Sobukwe and a host of others all owed their school education to the churches. It would show in the quality of their leadership.

A young white lad had also been introduced to black South Africans in a way open to only a tiny fraction of my contemporaries. Instead of encounters always being of a master-servant nature, I was in daily contact with black persons whom I naturally looked up to. However distorted by the customs of the day, the five years on the Kilnerton campus changed my outlook forever and drew an invisible, but real line between myself and other whites of my age.

If you head east these days on the road from Pretoria to Witbank you will find that urban sprawl has obliterated most of the Kilnerton campus. The koppie is built over with pricey white homes, but on the ridge, if you look very carefully, you will see that the stone chapel is there, and alongside the widened road, hidden in tall grass, the stone gate-posts still stand as mute witnesses to an era when fine education and Christian character-building produced the generation who would one day liberate South Africa. And Bantu Education? This iniquitous strategy to retain white supremacy by stunting black development produced its own bitter fruit for South Africa’s white rulers. In 1976 burning resentment over this issue, particularly with the added insult of forcing Afrikaans language instruction upon black scholars, finally exploded. A younger generation, fearless and confident and ready to die, marched out of the Bantu Education schools into history.