BOOK REVIEW: Mission schools occupied a complex place in South Africa
Relationships between schools and students were tense and political, writes Yvonne Fontyn
BETWEEN WORLDS: German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education in South AfricaLinda ChisholmWits University Press Mission schools have a mixed reputation in former colonies. They are lauded for offering a liberal and sound education when the state failed to do so, but they are also considered to have played a large role in colonial conquest. Many well-known South African leaders attended mission schools, including Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe and Ellen Kuzwayo. However, in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela relates the mixed messages he received at mission schools in the Eastern Cape. At his primary school in Qunu, his teacher Miss Mdingane gave the young Rolihlahla his English name Nelson. "The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture and British institutions were automatically assumed to be superior," he writes. "There was no such thing as African culture." Later, he attended the Clar...
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