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

178 Leisure-time and the Role of Choral Singing: with Special Reference to Adams College
the proper way of preparing food, few opportunities of social exhilaration and festivity, these and similar
conditions combine to establish and conftrm in many people the habit of depending upon intoxicants
for physical enjoyment and refreshment. Besides drink there are still other wrong methods of recreation,
various kinds of coarse self-indulgence and stupefying amusements, e.g. the smoking of hemp, dagga,
opium, gambling, dancing and similar noisy amusements, especially during the night time and often until
dawn. Such things contribute more or less to the moral, intellectual, physical and economic ruin of the
individuals who indulge in them or partake of them, and are consequently not methods of recreation,
but rather ruination.s
The problem related to the abuse of alcohol, and the influence in general of the urban environment
was a constant missionary concern. The missionaries obviously did not always succeed in
their "effort to keep [their flock] out of contact with the cruder life of the 'Location' - the drinking
and fighting and beer-brewing and gambling". According to Z. K. Matthews, " ...their failure was
inevitable. They could not keep us insulated".6 By the time Huss's article appeared, in which he lays
down some guidelines for leisure-time activities at African schools, it is evident that the organisation
and moralisation of leisure-time had become an important part of the missionary endeavour to
provide safeguards and moral directions for their proteges. The expression 'moralise' in the sense
of 'rendering moral' has been used from at least 1930 to describe efforts to fill the spare time of
black people with activities acceptable to Christians. Ray E. Phillips, in The Bantu are Coming (1930),
writes of "the whole great problem of moralizing the leisure time of natives".? Tim Couzens 8
in
1985, quoting Phillips, uses the same word, which I have therefore adopted. Huss was able to point
to the Village Clubs formed in England in 1918 as an example of an organisation concerned with
the development of social recreational and educational activities such as lectures and musical and
dramatic entertainment. Referring to a publication of Dr. Jesse James entitled "Education in Af­
rica", in which he argues for the proper use of leisure-time, Huss insists that
[natives] must not only be taught to work effectively, but also to play healthfully... Guidance for the pupils
in wholesome recreation should be provided even in the lowest type of school. The possibilities of
recreation for the improvement of physical life and morals are too vital to be omitted in any school. The
best of the Native games and especially music offer much material for the resourceful teacher. 9
The fundamental idea in organising the leisure-time of the students at the mission schools was
to inculcate godliness, cleanliness, industry and discipline. lO Norah Mkhize, one of the students attending
the Training College at Amanzimtoti in the early 1940s, remembers:
We clean the campus. We sweep and dust the school every day. On Saturdays we scrub the floors and
sweep the yards and roads. We always have our meals at regular times. The girls dining hall is separated
from the boys dining hall but in the same building. We are always marked for late coming in the dining
hall or class-room or chapel. For one mark we work for the whole hour... We always have something to
5 Ibid. Ouly 1929): 8-9.
6 Z. K. Matthews, 1986: 12
7 R. E. Phillips, The Bantu are Coming: Phases of South Africa} Race Problem. (London: Student Christian Movement Press,
1930).
8 T. Couzens, The New African: a Stu4J of the Life and Work of H.LE. Dhlomo. Oohannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985).
9 Native Teachers' Journal Ouly 1929): 9.
10 lames Steward 1887: xii; quoted in Grant E. Olwage, "Exhibiting Choralism, or Africans on Stage: A Second Take".
Unpublished paper presented at the annual conference of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, April, 2001: 4.