Legacy of Education and Social Change
Lovedale Missionary School Legacy of Education and Social Change.
African journalism heavyweight Dr. Walter Rubusana was a Lovedale Missionary School superstar who paved the way for Nelson Mandela's political career.
Steven Biko, one of South Africa's most significant political activists was a student at the Lovedale Missionary School along with Nelson Mandela.
Tiyo Soga was South Africa’s first indigenous Black African to be ordained and work for the Presbyterian Church in 1857, he also attended Lovedale Missionary School.
In 1824 Scottish Presbyterian missionaries John Bennie and John Ross of the Glasgow Missionary Society founded the city of Lovedale South Africa and later in 1841 the Lovedale Missionary School.
In 1835 British Kaffraria governed by Lieutenant General Sir Benjamin D'Urban restricted the Xhosa tribe to specifically designated areas.
The new territory was named from British Kaffraria to the Province of Queen Adelaide however the land acquisition was never cleared with the British Colonial Office in London.
In December 1836 the land acquisition restricting the Xhosa tribe was nullified. In 1840, the Lovedale Mission school started building on land donated by Mgolombane Sandile Xhosa King of the Ngqika and Rharhabe tribes.
Most Black schools were run by missionaries with some state aid in South Africa. Many of the educated black South Africans could only attend mission schools per the 1953 the Bantu Education Act policy of apartheid.
But before the Bantu act Mission schools were intergraded, with blacks, whites and coloreds studying in the same classrooms using religious instructions to spread Christianity and attract new converts.
Lovedale Mission School Journal of Gifted Land Gifted South Africans in the fields of Journalism, Activism, and Ministry.
Lovedale Mission School of Journalism.
Lovedale Mission Press was established as a small printing press at Tyumie Mission in 1823 but the press was destroyed during the Frontier War of 1834-1835 and a second press was established in 1839, which was in turn destroyed during the War of the Axe 1846-1847. The current Lovedale Mission Press dates from 1861 to present.
Among the earliest works produced were hymn books, school reading books and other Christian literature. Reverend Dr. James Stewart became one of its most influential missionaries teaching journalism at the Christian school and theological seminary that enrolled native black and colored Africans.
The monthly South African newspaper Isigidimi SamaXosa or The Kaffir Express founded by Scottish missionary and physician the Reverend Dr. James Stewart in Lovedale, South Africa by the Lovedale Missionary Institution Press in 1870 introduced printing and book-binding enrolling black and colored South Africans to learn the trade.
An English Kaffir Journal written in English and the Xhosa language was a very popular series. In 1888 the Kaffir Express changed its name the to Christian Express and in 1922 changed its name again to the South African Outlook Periodical published in Mowbray, a Southern suburb of Cape Town, South Africa and Lovedale, Eastern Cape South Africa.
The newspaper was very important because two early black African journalism Titians Walter Rubusana, Elijah Makiwane and John Tengo Jabavu were Stewart's protégés who started out working as translators of the bible, writers of indigenous language religious literature and printing assistants.
Mpilo Walter Benson Rubusana was a co-founder of the Xhosa language newspaper publication, Izwi Labantu and South African Native National Congress which later became the African National Congress.was the first Black politician elected to office in colonial South Africa.
South African writers Archibald Campbell Mzolisa Jordan, Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo, and female South African writer Victoria Swartbooi were also famous graduates of Lovedale Mission school.
Lovedale College Activists.
Steve Biko was one of South Africa's most significant political activists and a leading founder of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement and was a student at Lovedale Missionary School. His death in police detention in 1977 led to his being hailed as a martyr of the anti-Apartheid struggle.
The brutal circumstances of Biko's death caused a worldwide outcry and he became a martyr and symbol of black resistance to the oppressive Apartheid regime. As a result, the South African government banned a number of individuals (including Donald Woods) and organizations, especially those Black Consciousness groups closely associated with Biko.
The United Nations Security Council responded by finally imposing an arms embargo against South Africa. Biko's family sued the state for damages in 1979 and settled out of court for R65,000, then equivalent to $25,000.
"The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity." -Steve Biko
South African activist and politician Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki served as the second president of post-apartheid in South Africa for nine years from 1999 to 2008. His middle name Mvuyelwa is Xhosa and means he for whom the people sing.
Mbeki’s father also studied at Lovedale College, he was a leading figure in African National Congress activities in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Mbeki began his education at Lovedale College in 1955 but when his schooling at Lovedale was interrupted by a strike in 1959, he completed his studies at home.
"Both the family circumstances of my upbringing and the fact of apartheid oppression which impacted in us as young people made it inevitable that like others of my generation, I would have to be involved not in politics, but in the liberation struggle." - Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki
In November 1870, Stewart wrote an editorial for the Kaffir Express: “Our aim is to scatter ideas in the moral wastes and desert places of human ignorance and to aid general missionary work in South Africa.”
Lovedale Mission School Black Ordained Ministers.
Tiyo Soga was a writer for the Lovedale newspaper, Indaba, he was also South Africa’s first Black minister to be ordained and work for the Presbyterian Church in 1857. Elijah Makiwane was the second ordained Black minister to work for the Presbyterian Church.
Classically trained at the Lovedale Missionary School along with his trips to Scotland, Soga was the first black South African to translate the Bible and the classic Christian parable written by John Bunyan in 1678, Pilgrim's Progress into the South African Xhosa language.
Soga’s translation of the bible and Pilgrim's Progress to Xhosa helped to transform black Africans as they discovered Jesus Christ and entered into a right relationship with God. His translations were influential in spreading the Presbyterian Church message throughout South Africa.
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