Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations and Acronyms
- Illustrations
- Map
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 From Black Englishmen to African Nationalists: Student Politics at Fort Hare to 1955
- Chapter 2 A ‘Diversity’: Multi-Racial Life and ‘Possibility’ at Fort Hare before 1960
- Chapter 3 The Road to Takeover
- Chapter 4 Birth of a Bush College: The Onset of Apartheid at Fort Hare
- Chapter 5 Countering Separate Universities: Fort Hare and SASO
- Chapter 6 Conclusion
- Afterword
- Interviewees
- Postscript: Life after Fort Hare
- Fort Hare/South Africa Chronology
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 4 - Birth of a Bush College: The Onset of Apartheid at Fort Hare
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations and Acronyms
- Illustrations
- Map
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 From Black Englishmen to African Nationalists: Student Politics at Fort Hare to 1955
- Chapter 2 A ‘Diversity’: Multi-Racial Life and ‘Possibility’ at Fort Hare before 1960
- Chapter 3 The Road to Takeover
- Chapter 4 Birth of a Bush College: The Onset of Apartheid at Fort Hare
- Chapter 5 Countering Separate Universities: Fort Hare and SASO
- Chapter 6 Conclusion
- Afterword
- Interviewees
- Postscript: Life after Fort Hare
- Fort Hare/South Africa Chronology
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
he [government-appointed rectors to the tribal institutes] will not
be the heads of educational institutions, but superintendents of brain
washing camps. Instead of having docile tribalised students to deal
with they will have to handle a hotbed of insurgents.
NUSAS president John Shingler
Welcoming the regime
Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri remembers waking up on the morning of 23 October 1959 to find
flagsup and flagpoles cut, things written on top of Stewart Hall, the library … And posters and lampoons all over the place, very methodically done, with precision. And there was not a single student around you who knew how that happened … It was quite clear that there had been those who had been organised to do this, did it well, and nobody talked.
Having lost the battle to keep their school free from government interference, the energies of Fort Hare students would shift towards expressing their dissatisfaction with the new, apartheid-appointed regime that ran the university. And, on the occasion of a campus visit by the newly appointed government rector, Johannes Jurgens Ross, the new registrar, H.G. du Preez, and the head of UNISA, Professor S. Pauw, the students offered a preview of what was to come. When the three came to address the students, they were greeted with banners bearing the slogans, ‘We don't want fascists here’, ‘Leave Fort Hare alone – away with indoctrination’ and ‘Ross verwag mofilkheid’ (Ross expect trouble).
The attacks on the new administrators did not stop with words. Professor Pauw's car was vandalised and students pelted Du Preez with eggs and tomatoes. Herby Govinden, a young lecturer at the time, says: ‘We gave them a pretty rough time. So they got a taste of what they were coming into.’ G.S. Tootla says: ‘Oh God! … Du Preez got a hiding from us. He was messed up from head to toe.’ Williams cites Professor O.F. Raum's account of events, saying that certain staff members who staunchly opposed the bills took delight in the protest, ‘milling around with the students … enjoying themselves immensely’.
The1960s brought unprecedented conflict at Fort Hare. In an era when opposition to apartheid was generally muted throughout the country after the Sharpeville massacre, protest against the authorities at Fort Hare served to politicise what would otherwise have been a silenced student body.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Under ProtestThe Rise of Student Resistance at the University of Fort Hare, pp. 159 - 202Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2010