UNLEARNED LESSONS
With the Afrikaans language (taal) and education again under threat, today, it is pertinent to look at the education in the Transval prior to October 1899 and in the period of the immediate post Anglo Boer War years, from mid 1902.
The British economist, J.A. Hobson was in SA before and during the war and his book, ‘War in South Africa’ (1900) gives the flavour of the times.
Hobson notes the Education director, Mansvelt’s, policy was to get Hollanders in, as headmasters, even to the exclusion of Cape Dutch (Afrikaners).
Hobson, quoting an Anglican clergyman, said the Uitlanders Educational Council, formed to deal with the educational needs of their children was generally illiberal and got the backs of the Volksraad up. The clergyman said that the Volksraad was generally not as illiberal while the EC had no real desire to work with the ZAR government and were even unpopular with the Uitlanders.
Hobson says, according to his Anglican informant that he (the church minister) was on the point of “making our Church school a Govt school….partly because with the Govt we had free entry to the school-with the Council we were excluded.
The minister also repudiates the criticism of the ZAR Govt not making provision of the English language and Hobson quotes from an interesting letter in the Transvaal Leader (22/8/1899), by Hugh J. Evans. Hobson labels the facts, in Evans letter, as “undeniable.”
Evans elaborates on remarks made, and briefly reported on, by Rev. J.T. Lloyd, of the President’s School. Lloyd said the ZAR government had done the following:- (1) Established four State schools in which the soul medium of education is English (2) Established 8 State Schools in which English children are taught in their language and Dutch children in their taal (3) That the ZAR Govt granted subsidies to six other non-State solely English speaking schools (4) That the said Govt, via the Education Dept would provide English education on the goldfields to any community making application.
Hobson investigated this claim and names the schools in all categories (p39).So far from being anti-English in educational policy this small state of about 30,00- burghers was making for a provision for an unpreferred language to accommodate those entering the ZAR.
The interesting aspect of this era was also the fact that the Boers had not only founded two functioning republics where the home language was Dutch but they were also developing their own language-Afrikaans, a mere generation before the aftermath of a ruinous war would stifle it for a period.
Afrikaans would not officially supplant Dutch until as late as 1925 but from 1875 the home taal quickly became preferred. In a sense there was now a great verbal language trek going on to match the physical one of the mid 1830s.
Another British writer, David Harrison (BBC deputy editor) recorded, in print and a TV series (The White Tribe of Africa), that the defeat of the Boers came at a critical juncture for Afrikaans. In written form the taal hardly existed, as High Dutch was the official language of the two Boer Republics, as used in school text books and the Bible.
With the smashing of the OFS and Transvaal, Milner, the real architect of the Anglo Boer War, adopted the policy of the British in the early part of the 19th century, after taking over the Cape. In 1822 Lord Charles Somerset, the Cape Governor, proclaimed English as the only language of the courts and schools, even though the Dutch settlers had an eight to one majority. English and Scottish teachers and ministers were imported, although ironically many of the Presbyterian ministers were in sympathy with the Calvinist Dutch.
By 1828, in Government schools in Cape Town, there were 675 pupils; but with the enforcement of English, 11 years later the combined attendance was 84. It was hard for children to learn in an educational system that had alien language lessons. English only was to be spoken, Dutch was forbidden. Failure to comply meant the three R’s stood for reading, ’riting and reckoning. It would be a portent of things to come at the end of that century and early in the 20th century.
However, before the British version of the Mfecane descended on the hapless people there was the ‘Pretoria Spring’ (apologies to the Czechs and their Prague Spring!) where those like the Malherbe family had no intention of allowing their taal to be supplanted. On the 14th August 1875 a group of Afrikaners held a meeting in Gideon Malherbe’s home, in Paarl. That was the day that Die Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners, (The Society of True Afrikaners) with the aim to ‘stand for our Language, our Nation and our Land.’
From an acorn a mighty oak develops-and so it was here. Die Afrikanse Patriot was the first newspaper printed ( starting in Ernst Malherbe’s home) and the first editor was Stephanus du Toit ( whose son became the revered poet, Totius).
By mid 1902 however the Dutch-Afrikaans language and Cape history was all threatened. As Harrison notes, “Milner unmindful of history, proposed to attempt what Somerset had failed to achieve eighty years before. He would get rid of the Boers written and spoken language once and for all; and there was no better place to start than in the schools. The whole educational system of the Transvaal and Free State was swept away. Gone were the Dutch superintendents, Inspectors and officials and the local elected school committees that had some say over the appointment of teachers. There was not a single Dutch name on the new list of school inspectors. They were all English. Teachers were appointed by the central English authority. Local parent committees were ignored.” (Harrison p53).
All teaching in the government schools had to be in English with the exception of three hours a week for Dutch plus another two hours for religious instruction that could be in the mother tongue. Alternatively, principals could use those additional two hours for more general teaching, if they wished, but either way for 90 per cent of the rural population their lessons were in a foreign language.
Chamberlain, in 1903, considered this ‘highly ingenious law’ appropriate ‘against a very astute adversary,’ where there was, “no harm in using the wisdom of the serpent against it.” His paladin at the Cape, Milner, was particularly interested that Cape history books should not be cramped and confined to their own history which ‘only makes for Afrikanerdom and further discord,’ whereas ‘everything that makes South African children look outside South Africa….makes for peace.’ He was almost right, however, given the ruinous, divisive war, just concluded, the last word, ‘peace’ would have been better spelled as ‘pieces,’ something SA was certainly in, at that stage.
The policy stayed in place after Milner’s recall. Later both J.D. (Koot ) Vorster and his brother John (PM 1966-78) remembered it with some disturbing reflections. Their schoolboy memories were reflected in the early schism that occurred in the ruling SAP governments of Louis Botha and Jan Smuts (1910-24) and the formation of the National Party (1914), under another Boer general, Barry Hertzog (PM 1924-39). It was Hertzog’s ‘South Africanism,” over the perceived “Britishism’’ of the first two leaders, that prevailed-such was the legacy of the Chamberlain-Milner policies on South Africa.
As Kowie Marais, a judge and one time spokesman on education, for the old Opposition PFP, said: “Had it not been for Milner and his extreme measures, Afrikaners would happily have been speaking English by now. By his opposition to our language, he helped create it.’’ (Harrison p55)
Indeed the efforts of the British pair, in education and language, sowed some bitter seeds. It is surely ironic that the two British arch destroyers of the Boer Republics, should be exposed by two British writers at opposite end of the 20th century.
From Somerset to Milner and from Hobson to Harrison……..History has a sense of humour but perhaps not one appreciated, understandably, by the Afrikaner volk.
