Between Worlds: German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education in South Africa

How the story of how missonary schools adopted the Bantu education reforms gives insight into the ongoing legacy of the apartheid in the South African educational system The transition from apartheid to the post-apartheid era has highlighted questions about the past and the persistence of its influence in present-day South Africa. This is particularly so in education, where the past continues to play a decisive role in relation to inequality. Between Worlds: German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education in South Africa scrutinises the experience of a hitherto unexplored German mission society, probing the complexities and paradoxes of social change in education. It raises challenging questions about the nature of mission education legacies. Linda Chisholm shows that the transition from mission to Bantu Education was far from seamless. Instead, past and present interpenetrated one another, with resistance and compliance cohabiting in a complex new social order. At the same time as missionaries complied with the new Bantu Education dictates, they sought to secure a role for themselves in the face of demands of local communities for secular state-controlled education. When the latter was implemented in a perverted form from the mid-1950s, one of its tools was textbooks in local languages developed by mission societies as part of a transnational project, with African participation. Introduced under the guise of expunging European control, Bantu Education merely served to reinforce such control. The response of local communities was an attempt to domesticate – and master – the 'foreign' body of the mission so as to create access to a larger world. This book focuses on the ensuing struggle, fought on many fronts, including medium of instruction and textbook content, with concomitant sub-texts relating to gender roles and sexuality. South Africa's educational history is to this day informed by networks of people and ideas crossing geographic and racial boundaries. The colonial legacy has inevitably involved cultural mixing and hybridisation – with, paradoxically, parallel pleas for purity. Chisholm explores how these ideas found expression in colliding and coalescing worlds, one African, the other European, caught between mission and apartheid education.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Maps, Photographs and Tables List of Abbreviations Introduction Missionaries in education Transition from mission to Bantu Education Transnationalism, colonialism and education The Hermannsburg Mission Society and education Conclusion Chapter One Transnational Cooperation, the Hermannsburgers and Bantu Education Who were the Hermannsburgers? Transnational cooperation Hermannsburgers, politics and education Europe and Africa as imagined by the Hermannsburgers Images of Europe and Africa: Heinz Dehnke and Micah Kgasi Conclusion Chapter Two Burning Bethel in 1953: Changing Educational Practices and Control Bethel Training Institute 1920–1953 Rising tensions, conflagration and immediate reactions: April–May 1953 The investigation Official discourses Rights of students The trial Consequences Students Withdrawal of registration and transfer Conclusion Chapter Three Chiefs, Missionaries, Communities and the Department of Bantu Education Bethanie 1938–1946 Ramakokstad 1946–1952 Saron, Phokeng 1952–1954 Conclusion CHAPTER FOUR Negotiating the Transfer to Bantu Education in Natal Making the decision: 1954 Negotiated dispossession by contract: 1955–1968 Bantu community schools Farm schools Private schools Continuities Missions, school principals and the Department of Bantu Education Conclusion CHAPTER FIVE Curriculum, Language, Textbooks and Teachers Indigenous languages as languages of instruction Textbook development as a transnational, colonial activity Curriculum policy and African responses: 1955 1955 Bantu Education textbook and syllabus policy Content of readers Principles of reading instruction Conclusion Chapter Six Umpumulo: From Teacher Training College to Theological Seminary Changes in the teacher training curriculum: 1945–1955 Gendered social institutional practices From cautious uncertainty to misgiving Disillusion and departure Conclusion Chapter Seven Transnationalism and Black Consciousness at Umpumulo Seminary Finance, governance and staffing Changing identities Students, the curriculum and relations with the state The formal curriculum Limitations on access The informal curriculum The Missiological Institute Student resistance Asserting moral authority and regulating sexuality Conclusion Chapter Eight Bophutatswana’s Educational History and the Hermannsburgers Bantu Education and Bantustan education The Primary Education Upgrade Programme (PEUP): educational progressivism, ethnic nationalism and transnationalism The PEUP in practice Academic assessments, programme evaluations and teacher responses Conclusion Chapter Nine Inkatha and the Hermannsburgers Inkatha’s Ubuntu-botho syllabus and the Hermannsburgers Black Consciousness, independent churches and marginalisation Conclusion Chapter Ten Transitions through the Mission Paulina Dlamini Naboth Mokgatle Conclusion Conclusion Note On Sources Notes References

About the Author :
Linda Chisholm is a Professor in the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. She has authored more than 15 books on education including Changing Class: Education and Social Change in Post-apartheid South Africa (2004).

Review :
In Between Worlds Linda Chisholm meticulously and with great sensitivity dissects how one mission society, the German Hermannsburg Mission Society, parleyed its decision to remain within the state system in the shift from mission to Bantu Education, in creative and important ways. The book is a detailed portrait of the Hermannsburg Mission’s education work, but also a critical and insightful commentary on a set of broader questions, reflecting off the current political moment in South Africa."" — Professor Natasha Erlank, Historical Studies, University of Johannesburg ""Linda Chisholm’s account of German Lutheran missionaries’ school and teacher education work in South Africa disrupts conventional understandings of the role of missionaries in the development of South Africa’s education system. Drawing on extensive archival research in South Africa and Germany, the history of the largely ignored Hermannsburg Mission reveals the ambiguities and contradictions which marked their complex relationships with local communities and the colonial and apartheid state"" — Volker Wedekind, University of Nottingham