Illuminating Lives

by Vivian Bickford-Smith

  In a strange twist, the adoring learners referred to their school as ‘KwaFaro!’ because of the strict discipline. But now, as grown-ups, they hastily add, ‘But we loved our Pharaoh!’

  Asked about the driving force in his work as a principal, Qengwa replies, ‘The African children were labouring under discrimination. It was up to us to help them be ready to face the world. We helped all the children to believe in themselves and work hard to reach their potential.’ The student militancy in the wake of the 1976 Soweto rebellion was obviously a source of great stress. At Vuyani, classes were disrupted by protesting secondary-school students, and attendance by both pupils and teachers became erratic. In response to student demands that teachers stop their lessons, Mr Qengwa reminded students that at that very moment, ‘your parents are scrubbing floors, tilling gardens … busy at places of employment’, yet ‘you forbid us to work’. When teachers were called liars at a heated student meeting to which they had been summoned, Qengwa, after listening quietly to the denunciation, reminded the young crowd that what was ‘currently taking place will eventually come to an end … as everything before it has done. Then, you will come to us and ask us to teach you. What then shall we, who are liars, teach you except lies?’

  Did he reach his own potential? ‘No,’ comes the swift reply. One year, at Healdtown, the school coach said that Qengwa’s time for the mile was faster than the one by the boy who was to represent South Africa at the forthcoming Olympic Games. ‘I could have gone to the Olympics,’ Qengwa says softly, a smile on his face, in his eyes. His dream was destined to be stillborn. He shows me a picture of five young men in shorts. ‘Which one is me?’ I point to the man in the centre, before whom, on the ground, stands a cup. As always, Healdtown had won the interprovincial races. But Qengwa’s dream did not die. It did not ‘rot’, for he channelled it into his work with the youth, into education and into helping those trying to learn under difficult circumstances. He may not have become rich, but he has left a very rich legacy.

  In the whole of the Western Cape, Vuyani is most probably the only black African school whose former pupils keep in contact on an ongoing basis and have social groups that organise celebrations to honour their former principal and staff. For that standing – for what he has become and was able to do – Qengwa credits those who raised him: his grandaunt, who physically looked after him, and his mother, who made unimaginable sacrifices. As he says, ‘I am very thankful to my mother for giving me a very good foundation. She is rested at NY 5.’ From her, he learnt to live within one’s means. As a young man, he was never envious of his peers who would return from the mines with new clothing and bicycles; he preferred to apply himself at school. As a father, he also made sacrifices to ensure a secure future for his own, scraping and saving to fund the education of all his children. Now, all four are in middle-class professions: three teachers and a librarian.

  Tyhini Robert Qengwa (centre), a prize-winner with his fellow runners from Healdtown in the early 1950s

  Kini Robert Qengwa never went to the Olympic Games. Nor is he wealthy. But the wealth he has given to South Africa is in its Parliament, in schools, in medicine, in law and in many other fields of human endeavour. He has contributed to the life of his nation by making sure that the gift that children represent does not go to waste. There can be no greater achievement for a teacher.

  Sources and further reading

  This chapter was based on personal oral interviews with Mr Qengwa and a group of former students, Cape Town, 2017–2018. See also Sindiwe Magona, Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night (Cape Town: David Philip, 1994) and Forced to Grow (Cape Town: David Philip, 1997).

  Notes

  * * *

  INTRODUCTION

  1.Oscar Handlin, Truth in History (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 276.

  2.Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1970), p. 59.

  3.Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963), p. 15.

  4.Gerda Lerner, ‘U.S. Women’s History: Past, Present and Future’, Journal of Women’s History 16 (4), 2004, pp. 10–27.

  5.Lois W. Banner, ‘Biography as History’, The American Historical Review 114 (3), 2009, pp. 579–86.

  6.Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, ‘Editor’s Note’, in John Patrick Diggins, John Adams (New York: Times Books, 2003), p. xviii.

  7.David Cannadine, The Pleasures of the Past (London: Collins, 1989), p. 287.

  8.Hermione Lee, Biography: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 16.

  TIYO SOGA

  1.Tiyo Soga, Letter to Foreign Mission of the United Presbyterian Church (FMUPC), 3 July 1857, cited in John A. Chalmers, A Page of South African Mission Work (Edinburgh: Andrew Elliot, 1878), pp. 131–2. The large majority of Soga’s letters were to the Foreign Mission and most addressed to its secretary from 1851 to 1862, Rev. Dr Andrew Somerville. Many of these FMUPC letters were published in the Missionary Record of the United Presbyterian Church (MRUPC); others cited by Chalmers are located in the manuscript collection of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.

  2.Chalmers, Soga, p. 438.

  3.Soga, Journal, 3 May 1857, as published in Donovan Williams (ed.), The Journal and Selected Writings of the Reverend Tiyo Soga (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1983), p. 13.

  4.Soga, Letter to FMUPC, 13 April 1857, cited in Chalmers, Soga, p. 97.

  5.Soga, Letter to FMUPC, 6 October 1857, published in Williams, Journal and Selected Writings, p. 73.

  6.Soga, Letter to FMUPC, 3 July 1857, in Chalmers, Soga, p. 132.

  7.Both quotations in this paragraph are from Chalmers, Soga, p. 94.

  8.Chalmers, Soga, p. 486.

  9.‘Memorial to Rev. Tiyo Soga unveiled in the Eastern Cape’, 12 September 2011, https://kairossouthernafica.wordpress.com.

  10.Thabo Mbeki, ‘Religious Leaders Who Immersed Themselves in the Struggle’, ANC Today, 1:40, 26 October – 1 November 2001. See www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday. Mbeki was citing from Chalmers, Soga, p. 429.

  11.ANC Today, 5:28, 15 July 2005.

  12.‘Address by Thabo Mbeki at the unveiling of the Tiyo Soga memorial’, http://www.archivalplatform.org/news/entry/address_by_thabo_mbeki_at_the_unveiling_of_the_tiyo_soga_memorial/.

  13.Chalmers, Soga, p. 430.

  14.Soga, Letter to FMUPC, 3 December 1860, published in MRUPC 1 March 1861, p. 43 and cited in Williams, Journal and Selected Writings, pp. 84–5.

  15.These words and others from the sermon are cited in Chalmers, Soga, pp. 258–8.

  16.Chalmers, Soga, p. 30.

  17.Ibid.

  18.Ibid., p. 39.

  19.The quotations in this paragraph are from Chalmers, Soga, pp. 43–5.

  20.Cited in Chalmers, Soga, p. 75.

  21.Testimony of Rev. Robert Johnston, cited in Chalmers, Soga, pp. 78–9.

  22.Testimony of Rev. Henry Miller, cited in Chalmers, Soga, p. 79.

  23.Chalmers, Soga, pp. 81–3.

  24.Ibid., pp. 84–5.

  25.Ibid., p. 89.

  26.Letter from Tiyo Soga to John Henderson, 2 September 1857, cited in Chalmers, Soga, p. 141.

  27.Soga, Letter to FMUPC, 6 October 1857, published in MRUPC 1 March 1858, cited in Williams, Journal and Selected Writings, p. 73.

  28.Soga, Letters to FMUPC, 10 May 1859 and 6 February 1860, cited in Williams, Journal and Selected Writings, pp. 54, 80–1.

  29.Tiyo Soga, Letter to Rev. Anderson, FMUPC, 2 April 1861, cited in Chalmers, Soga, pp. 245–50.

  30.The quotations about Kreli and Maki are taken from Tiyo Soga, ‘The new mission fields beyond the Great Kei river’ in MRUPC 1 March 1867, pp. 283–6; and ‘Tutuka in Kreli’s country – hopeful beginnings’, in MRUPC 1 February 1868, 130–1. Cited in Williams, Journal and Selected Writings, pp. 121–6, 131–2.

  31.These views were expressed in the Lovedale journal Indaba and republished in Williams, Journal and Selected
Writings, pp. 150–77.

  32.This and the preceding quotes from Soga’s article can be found in his letter ‘What is the Destiny of the Kaffir Race’, King William’s Town Gazette and Kaffrarian Banner, 11 May 1865, republished in Williams, Journal and Selected Writings, pp. 178–82.

  33.Donovan Williams, Umfundisi: A Biography of Tiyo Soga, 1829–71 (Alice: Lovedale Press, 1978), pp. 91–6.

  34.See, for instance, Malinge McLaren Njeza, ‘“Subversive Subservience”: A Comparative Study of the Responses of Tiyo Soga and Mpambani Mzimba to the Scottish Missionary Enterprise’, unpublished PhD, UCT, 2000. For detailed discussion of the historiographical debate, see Vivian Bickford-Smith, ‘African Nationalist or British Loyalist? The Complicated Case of Tiyo Soga’, History Workshop Journal 1 (1), 2011, pp. 74–97.

  35.Chalmers, Soga, p. 488.

  36.Soga’s lecture was reported verbatim in Cape Argus 7 June 1866 and republished in Williams, Journal and Selected Writings, pp. 183–94.

  37.Soga, Letter to Rev. Anderson FMUPC, 10 May 1871, MRUPC 2 October 1871, pp. 650–54 and republished in Williams, Journal and Selected Writings, pp. 142–9.

  38.Soga, Letter to FMUPC, 4 June 1864, cited in Chalmers, Soga, pp. 306–9.

  39.Soga, cited in Chalmers, Soga, p. 321.

  40.Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England from the Accession of James II (London: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1849), p. 1.

  41.Tiyo Soga, Letter in King William’s Town Gazette and Kaffrarian Banner 23 October 1865, republished in Williams, Journal and Selected Writings, p. 182.

  42.Chalmers, Soga, p. 439.

  43.Soga wrote these comments in a description titled ‘On the Wide Ocean’, cited in Chalmers, Soga, pp. 207–13.

  44.Soga’s and Best’s opinions are cited in Chalmers, Soga, pp. 333, 337 and 338, respectively.

  45.Chalmers, Soga, p. 429.

  46.Ibid., p. 443.

  47.Soga, ‘The Inheritance of My Children’. Cited in Chalmers, Soga, p. 431.

  48.Williams, Umfundisi, p. 120.

  49.The last two quotes are from Chalmers, Soga, pp. 437 and 432–3, respectively.

  JOHN MONTAGU

  1.Details of Montagu’s achievements in the Cape are taken from J.J Breitenbach’s ‘The Development of the Secretaryship to the Government at the Cape of Good Hope Under John Montagu, 1843–1852’, Archives Year Book for South African History, Twenty-Second Year, Vol. II, 1960.

  2.The words are W.A. Newman’s from his Biographical Memoir of John Montagu, with a Sketch of Some of the Public Affairs Connected with the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, During His Administration as Colonial Secretary, from 1843 to 1853 (Cape Town: A.S. Robertson, 1855), p. 393.

  3.Pottinger to Earl Grey, 5 February 1848, in Newman, Montagu, p. 101.

  4.Quoted by T.E. Kirk, ‘Self-Government and Self-Defence in South Africa: The Inter-Relations Between British and Cape Politics 1846–1854’, unpublished D.Phil., Oxford University, 1972, p. 426.

  5.W.F. Mitchell, Assistant Colonial Secretary, Van Diemen’s Land, 4 February 1842, p. 29. In Montagu’s ‘Book’ (NS473/1/6, Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office, Hobart).

  6.Jeff Peires, ‘“The Expenditure of a Million of British Sovereigns in this Otherwise Miserable Place”: Frontier Wars, Public Debt and the Cape’s Non-racial Constitution’, Theoria 63 (147), No. 2, June 2016, p. 29.

  7.See Breitenbach, ‘Montagu’ and Newman, Montagu.

  8.Sir William Napier was the brother of Sir George Napier, governor of the Cape, and a military historian. The regimental history is celebrated in W.S Moorsom’s Historical Record of the Fifty-Second Regiment (Oxfordshire Light Infantry) from the Year 1755 to the Year 1858 (London: Second edition, 1860). The anecdotes about Montagu, probably sourced from Newman, are recounted on pp. 271–273.

  9.Peires, ‘Expenditure’, p. 29. It is significant that the Duke of Manchester subscribed for six copies of Newman’s biography of Montagu, suggesting that Montagu was, in fact, related to him.

  10.Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Sir John Franklin in Tasmania, 1837–1843 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1947), p. 23. A.G.L Shaw expressed some concerns about Fitzpatrick’s willful misreading of some of the documents in his article ‘The Origins of the Probation System in Van Diemen’s Land’, Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand 6 (21), 1953, pp. 18, 22.

  11.Newman, Montagu, p. 9.

  12.Ibid., p. 10.

  13.A.G.L Shaw, ‘Arthur, Sir George (1784–1854)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 1, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/arthur-sir-george-1721/text1883, published first in hard copy in 1966, accessed online 7 February 2018, p. 2.

  14.Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia 1787–1868 (London: Pan Books, 1987), p. 488.

  15.Cassandra Pybus and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, American Citizens, British Slaves: Yankee Political Prisoners in an Australian Penal Colony 1839–185 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002), p. 81.

  16.Alison Alexander, The Ambitions of Jane Franklin: Victorian Lady Adventurer (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013), p. 175.

  17.Quoted by Craig R. Joel, A Tale of Ambition and Unrealised Hope: John Montagu and Sir John Franklin (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2011), p. 153.

  18.John West, The History of Tasmania (Sydney: Angus and Robertson Publishers, 1981), p. 174.

  19.Hughes, The Fatal Shore, p. 522.

  20.See, for instance, Joel, A Tale of Ambition.

  21.John Franklin, Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Van Diemen’s Land During the Last Three Years of Sir John Franklin’s Administration of Its Government (Hobart: Platypus Publications, 1967), p. 21.

  22.Ibid.

  23.West, Tasmania, pp. 173–174.

  24.Nigel Penn, ‘“Close and Merciful Watchfulness”: The Origins and Nature of John Montagu’s Convict System in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Cape Colony’, Cultural and Social History 5 (4), 2008, pp. 465–480.

  25.The best account of the Ant-Convict Association is A.F. Hattersley, The Convict Crisis and the Growth of Unity: Resistance to Transportation in South Africa and Australia 1848–1853 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1965).

  26.See Kirk, ‘Cape Politics’.

  27.Ibid., p. 79.

  28.Ibid., p. 149.

  29.Peires, ‘Expenditure’, pp. 29–30, 36–37.

  30.Newman, Montagu, p. 436.

  31.Napier to Newcastle, 15 January 1853, in Newman, Montagu, p. 425.

  ISAIAH BUD-M’BELLE

  1.His full name was Isaiah Budlwana M’belle (Budlwana being a diminutive), but he always used the abbreviated form of Bud-M’belle.

  2.Hampton University archives, Hampton, Va., Armstrong Papers, I. Bud-M’belle to General Armstrong (Principal of Hampton Institute), 16 September 1890.

  3.‘Native Interpreter retires’, Diamond Fields Advertiser, 1 February 1916.

  4.‘The South Africans Improvement Society’, Diamond Fields Advertiser, 23 August 1895.

  5.Diamond Fields Advertiser, 14 February 1898.

  6.Imvo Zabantsundu, 16 October 1890.

  7.‘Jubilee Commemoration Hall’, Imvo Zabantsundu, 18 November 1897.

  8.Evidence of Isaiah Bud-M’belle to Moffat Commission, quoted in Philip Bonner, ‘The Transvaal Native Congress 1917–1920: The Radicalisation of the Black Petty Bourgeoisie on the Rand’, in Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone (eds.), Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870–1930 (Harlow: Longman, 1982), p. 291.

  9.Ibid., p. 292.

  10.Umteteli wa Bantu, 5 July 1930.

  11.University of the Witwatersrand, Historical Papers, South African Institute of Race Relations Papers, AD 843, B51.6, ‘Manifesto for Natives Representative Council’.

  12.‘A short review of Bud-M’belle’s life story’, Bantu World, 16 and 23 August 1947.

  PAT PATTLE

  1
.Roald Dahl, Going Solo (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986), p. 182.

  2.Roald Dahl, War: Tales of Conflict and Strife (London: Penguin, 2017), p. 162.

  3.Carel Birkby, Dancing the Skies (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1982), p. 57.

  4.Jade Davenport, Digging Deep: A History of Mining in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2013), p. 308.

  5.Gordon Pirie, ‘British air shows in South Africa, 1932/33: “airmindedness”, ambition and anxiety’, Kronos: Southern African Histories 35 (1), 2009, p. 35.

  6.Albert Grundlingh, ‘The King’s Afrikaners? Enlistment and Ethnic Identity in the Union of South Africa’s Defence Force during the Second World War, 1939–45’, Journal of African History 40 (3), 1999, pp. 355–56.

  7.Diamond Fields Advertiser, 15 February 1933.

  8.Birkby, Dancing the Skies, p. 59.

  9.David Mondey, British Aircraft of World War II (London: Hamlyn, 1982), p. 116.

  10.Public Record Office, London, War Office records, PRO, WO 191/70, ‘Military lessons of the Arab Rebellion in Palestine, 1936 to 1938’, p. 11.

  11.Matthew Hughes, ‘From Law and Order to Pacification: Britain’s Suppression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–39’, Journal of Palestine Studies 39 (2), 2010, p. 12.

  12.Birkby, Dancing the Skies, p.60.

  13.Ibid., p. 61.

  14.Ibid.

  15.Mondey, British Aircraft, p. 152.

  16.Birkby, Dancing the Skies, p. 64.

  17.Leo McKinstry, Hurricane (London: John Murray, 2010), p. 254.

  18.Adrian Stewart, They Flew Hurricanes (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2005), p. 155.

  19.McKinstry, Hurricane, p. 255.

  20.Dahl, War, p. 162.

  21.Birkby, Dancing the Skies, p. 66.

  22.Sebastian Faulks, ‘Introduction’, in Richard Hillary, The Last Enemy (London: Vintage, 2010), p.x.

  23.Bill Nasson, South Africa at War, 1939–1945 (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2012), p. 19.

  24.Jonathan Glancey, Spitfire: The Biography (London: Atlantic Books, 2007), p. 184.

  25.McKinstry, Hurricane, p. 254.

  JOHN KOENAKEEFE MOHL