A history of native education in Natal between 1835 and 1927.

Abstract

This account of Native Education in Natal has been written to make available for the first time a mass of valuable information, which will, it is hoped, prove useful to Government Officials and leading Missionaries. For this purpose, details have been entered into where they would otherwise have been unnecessary, and schemes which have borne no fruit have often been discussed as thoroughly as those which have been adopted. Especially is this so in the first four chapters. The earliest reports, at present terra incognita to the Natal Education officials, are in manuscript, are bound with Miscellaneous Reports of the Secretary for Native Affairs, and are now filed for preservation in the Natal Archives. Concerning even the Zwaart Kop Government Native Industrial School (1886 - 1891) very little information has been found available in the records kept by the Natal Education Department. The writer's chief object has been to give the history of "formal" education. For those interested in "informal" education, many excellent books on the customs and kraal-life of the Natives of South Africa are available. Questions of policy have been dealt with from the stand-point of the historian, rather than from that of a political or an educational administrator. Consequently no attempt has been made to advocate any one method of solving the problems of Native Education. Information concerning Zululand before its annexation to Natal in 1897 is unobtainable, because the documents collected in the Office of the Governor of Zululand are of too recent a date to be consulted by the public. Such material as is available points to the presence of only a few missionaries in Zululand before l898, owing to the attitude of the Zulu Kings towards them. The absence of accurate records has made it impossible to deal with such interesting subjects as The largest Mission Societies and The oldest Mission Stations. The inclusion of any account of unaided missionary effort has also been impossible; but it is quite safe to assume that all missionary effort which has produced good educational results has received either Government comment or Government grant. When the spelling of any Zulu name differs from the normal modern form of such a name, the variation is due to the fact that the documents consulted make various spellings possible.