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

3.2 The Applications for the Exemption from Native Law: Manifestation ofExclusiveness and Assimilation 83
tolerated our company because of our little education. Under such conditions, I am hopefully led to
conclude that there shall yet come a time when the Bantu shall have some status in the population of
South Africa... I have said, this may seem a very optimistic outlook considering the present flow of the
tide; but I am confident that with educated minds we can still stem the tide. Therefore let the Bantu find
the key to open the doors that bar them from European Society, and the key is nothing but 'Education'.97
The family of Z. K. Matthews epitomises the thirst for education of black middle class families.
98 His parents were passionate about education and insisted that their children attend school:
"Education was the magic word in our family. Our parents insisted with genuine passion that we go
to school and never miss a day if we could help it".99 The Matthews children distinguished themselves
in the fields of law, the health sciences, and the natural sciences. In his autobiography, Matthews
remembers his graduation ceremony: "I listened, my mind divided between my sense of
achievements past and speculation about the future. I was sure Dr. Roberts was right. I was a new
specimen in the zoo of South African mankind, an African with a South African university de-
,,100
gree
.
An important argument in this context is that it is on the basis of achievement that distinctions
of class are largely drawn. This means that the level of education one has and the kind of job one is
in determine one's position in the social hierarchy.lOl Vocations that require a long and thorough
education like teaching, the ministry, law, medicine and other 'white-collar' jobs, confer respect.
Matthews recalls: "All my teachers were Africans, young men and women upon whom I looked with
deference and awe... In the 'Location' they were regarded with immense respect. Even the most
wayward child did his best to conduct himself properly in the presence of his teachers".102 Being a
teacher not only conferred status, but was perceived as a real vocation, a calling with significance
and wide-ranging responsibilities:
And I was determined upon a career in teaching. It was the one way I knew I could fulfill my need to
serve my own people and discharge my enormous obligation. I would be able to pass on to others what
had been given to me. I would help make a wider way of the narrow path. Our graduation [as the first
students of Fort Hare to obtain the Degree of the University of South Africa] ... had raised our whole
people "by a perceivable amount". It would be my function to help raise it more, until it was no longer a
noteworthy thing, but a commonplace, for men with black skins, as well as men with white skins, to learn
and make use of all that they were capable of absorbing. Teaching in a society like that of South Africa
was not like teaching elsewhere. It was not merely a profession. It was more like a mission than a way of
earning a living, a vocation, a call to help satisfy the great hunger for education that existed among the
millions of our people, a hunger which so few had done so little up to now to appease. I would find my
work here. 103
97 Ibid. (May 28, 1938).
98 In the course of the twentieth century, the importance of education for the black middle class became increasingly
11llportant. This trend is recognised in the speeches and articles of Matthews, who, during the 1930s, repeatedly spoke
of education as the means of escape from poverty; and the condition of political participation. See M. Wtlson, Freedom
for my People: the Autobiograpfry of Z. K Matthews: Southern Africa 1901 to 1968. (Cape Town: Africasouth Paperbacks, 1986):
217.
99 Z. K Matthews, 1986: 13.
lOO Ibid.: 82.
101 For a discussion of vocation see also Chapter 2.2.1.
102 Z. K Matthews, 1986: 17.
103 Ibid.: 82.