South African Choral Music (Amakwaya): Song, Contest and the ...

3.2 The Applications for the Exemption from Native Law: Manifestation of Exclusiveness and Assimilation 81
intention to "reform [black education] so that Natives [would] be taught from childhood to realize
that equality with Europeans is not for them".81 He later explained to the Senate that there was "no
place [for blacks outside the reserves] above the level of certain forms of labour... What is the use
of teaching a Bantu child mathematics when he cannot use it in practice?" He added: "Education
must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities in life".82
The point that I am making here is that, whatever their professed aims were, the effect of the
missionary intervention was to assign inferior status to black Africans. The missionaries were convinced
that there was only one culture - European culture. This, of course, went hand in hand with
the distortion of the African value system. The underlying idea was that "some races are at the bottom
of the ladder, while others have climbed halfway up the ladder".83 The picture being drawn
here would encourage the new converts to set their sights on aspiring to reach the levels associated
with Western culture and to reject their tribal past. The aspiring black elite, under the guidance of
the missionaries who imparted to their converts the belief that they were superior to those who
remained 'heathens', started to adopt the ideas of group superiority and inferiority. Rejecting 'heathenism',
they were encouraged to believe that they were potentially the equals of white people,
sentiments that were bound to remain unfulfilled, as we will see in due course.
Although initially the greatest obstacle for the missionaries was the fact that among Africans
"schools were universally regarded as the door to the church",84 western Christian education for
black mission converts soon became a focal point of hope for social status and integration into
white colonial society.85 In the course of the nineteenth century, the missionaries were successful in
educating a class of African cultural leaders who had accepted - as the first black minister Tiyo
Soga put it in a newspaper article in 1863 - "the blessings which came with the White man".86 Soon
education became a central feature of the new progressive identity of the black middle classes:
"Their overriding concern was with education, because it constituted the primary means for
improving their economic and social condition".87 The black middle class's concern with education
is again obvious in the efforts of the Native Education Association (NEA), which was founded in
1879 88 . The constitution stated that its purpose was "to take a special interest in all educational
matters, in schools, in teachers and all others engaged in similar work, the aim of which is the
improvement an elevation of the native races; to promote social morality and the general and
81 N. Parsons, A New History of South Africa, (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1982): 291.
82 Ibid.: 292-3.
83 K. Mngoma, ''Education and Social Reconstruction". Iso Lomuzi (May/November 1946): 9.
84 Henry Callaway cited in N. Etherington, 1987: 54.
Historically, the school grew out of the Church catechismal teaching and was perceived by the missionaries as a necessary
part of missionary work. The close relation of school and church is furthermore evident in the common Zulu
term isikole (school). According to Doke and Vilakazi, the noun -kolo describes either a school, a Mission station or a
church. Furthermore, the term umfundisi was used for the teacher as well as the minister or missionary. C. M. Doke and
B. \Xl. Vilakazi, Zulu-English Dictionary, Gohannesburg: Wits University Press, 1990).
85 Initially mission schools were designed as instruments of conversion and were indeed almost exclusively used by the
missionaries for this purpose. This is why for Africans the disadvantages of conversion outweighed the benefits of
education. A change in this attitude seems to have set in during the late 1860s when mission schools became more
accepted and enthusiasm for education grew so rapidly that ''local missionary resources could not keep pace with the
demand" (N. Etherington, 1978: 128.). What the Africans expected from the schools was not so much religious instruction
as to learn to read and write. For that reason, the majority of schools taught fundamental arithmetic, reading, and
writing. For a discussion of the central role of education within the black middle class see Chapter 3.2.2.
86 Indaba June 1863, quoted in T. Couzens, The New African: Herbert Dhlomo and Black South Ajrican Literature in English
1857-1956, Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand,
1980: 87.
87 R. H. Davis, 1979: 30.
88 See Imvo,January 21,1887; quoted in R. H. Davis, 1979: 28-29.