Volume 50 Issue 11 - November 2012 : Heritage

 

Two secondary schools celebrated their anniversaries this year, Maru a Pula, in Gaborone, its 40th and Swaneng, in Serowe, its 50th.

Both schools were established as a result of individual, personal initiatives, one by Deane Yates and the other by Patrick van Rensburg.

Both schools became famous. Dean Yates, for instance, was quoted as saying during the school’s early years that “he feels (and in this he is supported by his backers) that he is probably launching one of the most important educational establishments on the African continent.”

Subsequently, his prediction, may have been proved correct. Of Swaneng, Jan van Hoogstraten and Dr Reg Helferrich, visitors from Church World Service in New York remarked in 1968 that, “nowhere else in all Africa have we seen anything like this”.

Both schools were established on land which was donated to them, Maru a Pula by the government and Swaneng by Leapeetswe Khama, the then Ngwato Tribal Authority. Both schools were insistent about the need for voluntary work.

Thereafter, the similarities abruptly cease. Indeed, the way that each school was established could hardly have been more different.

Yates came to this country as the Head Master of St. John’s College, Johannesburg which, its web site today describes as a World Class Christian College in Africa.

Yates had been born in the UK, was educated at a notable public (private) school, St Bees, which had been founded in 1583, attained an MA in Greek and Latin at Oxford, taught at another public school, Milhill in London, became involved with the Anglican Community of the Resurrection where he came to know Fr Trevor Huddlestone, and considered

entering the church. Instead, it was suggested that, with his wife Dot, he should migrate to South Africa where his experience was much needed.

After eleven years at St. John’s, Yates, was beginning to seek new fields when he was, by report, introduced to Seretse Khama by Z.K. Matthews who invited him to “look around”.

The result was Yate’s proposal to establish an international fee paying secondary school with bursaries which would be non-racial, and multi-cultural.

It would take students to A level.

The government was enthusiastic and backed the idea. Van Rensburg’s arrival in this country, to all intents and purposes as a refugee, was very different.

He and his wife, Liz, had hitch hiked their way down Africa to reach Serowe Kutlwano situation on able published Mail magazine its Nation’ to, then South has a relatively in says (including weekend African school’s which then instance, intelligentsia where they were both offered teaching posts at a primary school, he getting a salary of £12 a month.

In contrast to Yates, van Rensburg’s educational attainments were modest and are rarely mentioned.

Born in Durban, he had served in the South African diplomatic service in the Congo in 1956 and 1957, had resigned in protest at South Africa’s apartheid policies, and, having become a hate figure, fled to Swaziland then to the UK via this country.

In 1962 he produced a Penguin best seller, Guilty Land, and spearheaded the campaign to boycott the import and use of South African goods.

The beginnings of Swaneng were entirely local and largely unrecorded by the South African press.

Van Rensburg simply told the hundreds of frustrated young in Serowe that if they wanted a secondary school they would have to build it, there being no cash available to pay others to do it.

In Gaborone, Maru a Pula’s story was very different because,  robably much to everyone’s surprise, the Yatesgovernment proposal quickly ran into stiff resistance.

Letters of protest came from the Botswana Teachers Union, from students at UBLS, from ‘Sixty Interested Citizens’ and from the

National Students Union, all being published in Kutlwano together with Seretse’s response. In order to get a better feel for that situation we have, ironically, to fall back on South Africa’s ‘unfree’ press which was able to publish what could not then be published here, in particular, the Rand Daily Mail (14.11.73) and the Sunday Times colour magazine of 14.1.73.

The former headlined its article, ‘Maru a Pula – A School That Split A Nation’ whilst the latter limited its headline to, ‘Botswana’s Controversial School’ which it then described as a school with ‘funds from South Africa, Britain and the USA which has run into criticism in Gaborone: should a relatively poor country like Botswana go in for ‘snob’ education?

There’s no snobbery, says the head, who makes the children (including the President’s sons) work every weekend in a near destitute African village’.

Ironically – because it was the South African question which was so central to the school’s earl

y years, it was the press there which could report in ways that were not then possible here.

The Rand Daily Mail, for instance, reported that, “among Gaborone’s intelligentsia

Maru a Pula is a red hot issue which critics steer clear of for fear of deportation.”

Somewhat similarly, Swaneng in its earlier years was constantly under security surveillance, its leadership, its staff and its means of support.

Curiously, the people who were regarded as potential security risks were both those who supported Swaneng and those who opposed Maru a Pula!

In retrospect, it may seem that nothing so absurd could ever have happened.

But it did and so many years later, sensitivities regarding such issues are still acutely alive.

For both schools, the role that religion should or should not play was an issue that had to be met. Van Rensburg, being an agnostic, let others argue it out.

Yates, on the other hand, wanted Maru a Pula to be another St John’s, a Christian institution. Early backers in Gaborone, however, such as Quill Hermans, objected and the school eventually emerged as both religion and culture HERITAGE tolerant.

Religion, however, was to remain a central issue.

Yates passionately believed that a major new Christian

educational initiative, as he saw it, was bound to be supported by the world’s major Christian institutions such as the World Council of Churches.

However, all applications to the WCC obligated national Christian Councils to forward applications together with their own priority rating, high, medium, nil.

In this instance, the BCC, having previously prioritized rural needs, had no option but to give an obviously urban project a zero rating.

In effect, it was forced to decide between the gross impoverishment of a ‘near destitute’

Gabane, on the one hand, and the students of Maru a Pula, on the other, who were spending half a day each week in Gabane helping to alleviate some of that wretchedness. 

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