John Hammond : 13th October, 1979
The story of education in this country is one of such dynamism and achievement, despair and hope that I hope it will one day be written. Not from the point of view of the professional academic … that has already been done, but very much more in the shape of personal reminiscence.”
My father came to Rhodesia in 1906 as headmaster of Plumtree School. For twenty years he and my mother lived in pole and dagga huts; I was born in one. Until I was 15, I and the other boys in the school, seldom wore shoes except on Sundays. The main buildings for many years were old wood and iron structures, which had served as barracks for the army during the siege of Mafeking. Few of our teachers had professional educational qualifications, though most of them were university graduates. In the early days it was a church school until, owing to extreme financial difficulties, the government was asked to take it over.
A great friend of my father’s was Mr H S Keigwin who was responsible for opening the first government schools for Africans; Domboshawa in 1920 and Tjolotjo a year later. These schools were originally started as local schools to serve the immediate areas in which the schools are situated.
Very soon however, they became national schools drawing boys from all over the country. They were intended to assist people to improve their conditions by giving instruction in building, carpentry and agriculture at the same time as they undertook their academic studies.
I went to Domboshawa in 1935 and was given responsibility for the direction of the academic work of the school. Colleagues of mine at that time were Cephas Hlabangana and Gideon Mhlanga who were the first two Africans in this country to be awarded university degrees. It is interesting to note that in that same year, we had, for the first time to refuse entry to the school to some applicants. In all previous years, our accommodation far exceeded demand.
In 1937, I went to Tjolotjo and later that year, took over as principle. At that time, we still depended, for teaching in our upper primary classes on men from South Africa. On my staff I had three amaXhosa, one Zulu and two Botswana. We had to rely on an ox wagon to bring most of our supplies from Nyamandhlovu, some 45 miles away. In one rainy season we were completely cut off, except by telephone, for two weeks, when the Gwaai river was in flood.
Some of the boys used to walk up to 100 miles to get to the school, they all slept on the floor in their dormitories and they played football in bare feet. Some of the pupils were older than I was and I recall cases where leave was granted at weekends for pupils to go home to visit their wives and children.
I would like to pay tribute to those who were being trained at that time – they were the grandfathers of boys and girls who now enjoy the facilities of schools like Goromonzi. For their secondary education they had to go to South Africa or work on their own through correspondence courses.
But of these, whom I knew as small boys, one is now a member of the Public Services Commission, another is a Regional Officer in the Ministry of Education; others are senior education officers, one is a Senator, several are members of Parliament, others have made their way as businessmen and a variety of other occupations. Without them, much of the development undertaken in this country over the past forty years would not have been possible. They were and are excellent people.
Meanwhile most of the primary school education and the training of teachers was undertaken by missionaries. It must, however, be remembered that in the main, these men and women were preachers of the Christian gospel first and only undertook teaching because the need was great.
Malaria eventually drove us out of Tjolotjo. We had no DDT and relied on quinine as a cure. None of the modern drugs had been produced. At that time we were drawing boys from all over the country and many of them came to Tjolotjo from areas where malaria was not a problem. To give you some indication of what we were up against, I remember one term - we only had two terms a year in those days – when out of 230 boys in the school we had an average of 40 boys every day in hospital with malaria, throughout the term.
We moved the school to Essexvale and renamed it Mzingwane. It took us three years, because we had to keep Tjolotjo operating at the same time as we were building the new school at Mzingwane - much of the building was undertaken by the boys themselves, as part of their instruction.
At that stage, the department of African Education was concerned that too few girls were attending schools. We had passed the stage where parents believed that the herding of cattle and goats was more important than going to school, but there remained a strong prejudice against the educating of girls.
When I came to Goromonzi in 1953, we were unable to find a sufficient number of suitably qualified girls to fill a single class in Form 1, and we then ran a domestic science teacher training course to make up the numbers in the girls hostels.
Goromonzi School was opened in 1946 and was the first African school to prepare pupils for the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate. Before that time, what secondary schooling there was orientated towards the South African examination system.
Two points I would make about the opening of Goromonzi, Sir Godfrey Huggins, who opened the school, gave it as his opinion that Goromonzi would serve the country’s needs for secondary education for Africans for as far ahead as he could then visualise. This surely must have been one of the few short-sighted observations he made. The second point is that the average age of Form 1 when the school first opened was 18 and a half years.
When I arrived, there were only two boys in Form V. Those who wanted university training had to go to South Africa. Girls who wanted training as nurses had to go to McCord Hospital in Durban, while those wanting to become doctors of medicine had to go to Natal University. There were few scholarships and bursaries for university training compared with the number available today.
I have tried to outline some of the highlights of African education during my involvement with it during the past 44 years. It is, I believe a story of which we can all be very proud. When I started at Domboshawa, the country was very poor. There were few industries, agriculture was, by today’s standards, very unproductive and mining was still in its infancy. It is also worth recording that the population of the country was well under two million.
What I want to say to those of you who are now in this well established school is that should you ever feel sorry for yourselves, should you ever think that the way ahead is very hard for you, and that there are not enough opportunities to give you full scope, think back for a moment to the conditions under which your grandfathers and grandmothers, your fathers and mothers, had to labour in order to get an education.
Many of them achieved it and have made their way into the world with distinction.
You have many more opportunities and if you follow their example, you will not go very far wrong.
One of the major problems with which we had to contend in these earlier times, was to try to marry the individualism of the school system under which most of the whites were educated with the co-operative outlook of traditional African society.
In our boarding schools the system introduced was based very largely upon the type of schooling offered in English boarding schools. This was the system we knew and rightly or wrongly we passed this on to our African schools.
This system places much emphasis on the development of the individual; it is highly competitive and places great emphasis on individual responsibility. Some of you will shortly be receiving prizes for your individual efforts in the classroom. You have achieved this in competition with your classmates. This kind of competition ensures that everyone aspires to the top and is aimed at bringing out the best that each has to offer.
But there are dangers in individualism if it is carried to extremes. It can lead to arrogance, to selfishness, to the spirit which denies to others due recognition of their excellent qualities. If you have won a prize for Latin or mathematics, or any other subject, remember that the award is made for excellence in a very limited field. It says nothing about what kind of a person you are. It makes no comment on your ability in other directions. For these reasons it is important that counter measures be taken within our schools to ensure that individualism, while being encouraged, is directed towards the overall benefit of the society in which you live.
To this end, it is important that the school should provide as much scope as possible through clubs, through individual projects, through games and through giving responsibilities to as many individuals as possible so that each in his or her own way can make a contribution to the life of the school. Most of these opportunities will be provided by extra mural activities. These are seldom provided by government and in making provision for them the school is heavily dependent upon parents, and former pupils of the school, who by raising funds, by encouraging a variety of interests in their children while they are on holiday will contribute so much to the life of the school, to the benefit of all the children who attend.
The aim must be to try to ensure that each boy or girl in the school has something to contribute. Through such contribution, no matter in how small a way, the individual will develop into a worthwhile member of the society of which he or she is a member.
In English schools much of this is achieved by a strong dedication to the Christian religion. The humility which this demands is a great counter to the pride which can result in high individual achievement. If parents and former pupils wish to embark on a major project for Goromonzi School I can think of nothing better than the raising of funds for the building of a school chapel. A place where the boys and girls can worship, where they can seek peace to give thought to those higher values which are so important in this material world in which we live.
The second major requirement to counter excessive emphasis on individualism, is the provision of opportunities for service. In this country there will be a great need for those who will render service to others in the days ahead. In rendering such service, individual expertise will be much in demand. But it must be offered in a spirit of unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
You will be faced with many temptations to amass great fortunes and there will be opportunities for this. In any individualistic society, there is no harm in this. But I hope that when the time comes you will not forget your responsibilities to lend assistance to the community of which you may be a part.
This responsibility, which is so strong a feature of African society, must not be allowed to diminish. It is a part of your heritage. I sincerely hope you will not allow it to die and that you will not allow selfish considerations make you disregard it. In this way our European attitude to individualism and your background of community responsibility can be brought together for the benefit of this country and for all the people who live here.
There I leave you with a thought that given a high standard of achievement which results from disciplined, individual effort, and marrying it to the high level of duty towards your communities, to which you are all heir, we shall build a society which will be the envy of many.
