The Beginning of Formal Education

The opening moment of education in South Africa coincides with the foundation of the colonial experience at the Cape in 1652. Six years after the Dutch East India Company established its colony at the Cape, the first formal school is begun in 1658. This school was founded by Commander Jan van Riebeeck for the slave children brought to the Cape in the Dutch ship, the Amersfoort, which had captured them off a Portuguese slaver.

The establishment of the first school in the country’s history is deeply significant for two reasons. Firstly, this school had many of the characteristics that have come to frame the South African experience. It was profoundly oppressive. As the slave children are enrolled, so they are forced to take new identities. Nothing of their past was given recognition in the school. Their treatment by the colonial authorities was harsh. And then, to buy their obedience, they were plied with alcohol. But, like their descendents who refused  to accept anything less than the best education that can be provided, they rejected this degraded education. They did so by ‘voting with their feet’ – they escaped from the school into the mountains surrounding the Cape. The significance of this school in presenting the themes of domination and resistance, is vital for understanding South African education.

The other important feature of the period takes us, however, into a different direction. While this early school was extremely oppressive, we have, in this first 150 years of Dutch occupation of the Cape, a number of deeply important developments – classic vignettes – which speak powerfully to our understanding of South African history. While slaves and the indigenous people, the Khoisan, faced great challenges during this time because of the harsh laws of the Dutch, we see a number of instances  where these oppressed people begin to organise themselves. This is in defiance of the Dutch East India Company or without their knowledge. Two instances are important to record for understanding our history differently. The first is that contrary to much of the historical narrative, even that which is sympathetic to the cause of the oppressed and which gives no or little voice to the marginalised, the slaves and the Khoisan exercised agency. They taught themselves to read in communities like Genadendal or, as they did in the heart of the Colonial town of Cape Town, they kept themselves religiously intact by starting madressahs, Islamic schools, where they taught each other to read and write. Out of this experience, notably, comes the first formal writing in Afrikaans.

---

Related Pages:

Next Page: Early British Domination