By Lukanyo Tshitshi
(Harold Cressy High School located in District six Cape Town, Image: HelenOnline.)
Harold Cressy High School, a secondary school located in the heart of District 6 of Cape Town. The school was founded during the years of oppression in South Africa. When it was found in 1951, it was named Cape Town Secondary School, but in 1953, it changed its name to Harold Cressy High School in honour of Harold Cressy, who was the first man of colour to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree in South Africa.
(Harold Cressy, the first coloured student to study at UCT and obtain Bachelor of Arts degree, the man whom Harold Cressy High School in District Six of Cape Town is named after, Image: Cape Times.)
Harold Cressy was born in 1889, and he became the first and only black student to study at South African College, which is now known as the University of Cape Town. Cressy worked as a teacher, journalist, and political activist while furthering his studies at a South African college. At the age of 22 he was the principal of Trafalgar High School shortly before he passed away in 1916. Trafalgar High School was the second-coloured school beside Harold Cressy High in District 6 that enrolled black and coloured pupils.
The Harold Cressy High School is widely identified as an important historical site in South Africa, as the school is said to have played a significant role in South African history during the apartheid period, and in 2014, the school was named a provincial historic monument by the Heritage Western Cape.
Despite the lack of resources and basic facilities the school continued to provide educational opportunities to young people and demands nothing in return but a commitment to build South Africa’s nascent democracy.
The Harold Cressy high school’s alumnus.
Over the past decades, the school has produced many notable individuals who have made significant contributions to South African society. These individuals have made important contributions to various fields, including education, music, and politics.
Trevor Manuel, Paul Hanmer, Rhoda Kadalie, and Mohamed Adhikari are among the many prominent individuals to have studied at Harold Cressy High School.
Trevor Manuel became the first Minister of Finance in post-apartheid South Africa and South Africa’s Cabinet Minister in the Presidency, while Paul Hanmer made himself a name as a well-known South African jazz pianist and composer. Rhoda Kadalie is a prominent anti-apartheid activist and the founder of the Gender Equity Unit at the University of Western Cape.
These alumni serve as a testament to the quality of education provided by the school and the impact it has had on South African society.
The 1985 student boycotts
(Coloured students marching during the 1980s Western Cape school boycott, holding a banner reading “We want free, equal education for all”, Image: South African History Archive (SAHA)
When the students boycotted the apartheid state throughout the Western Cape province in 1985, Harold Cressy High School played a significant role. According to articles in the Cape Times and IOL, during the student boycotts, no teaching was done in the school for four months, which resulted in seven senior teachers and the then principal, Victor John Ritchie, being suspended.
The boycotts were a response to the apartheid system, which was a system of institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa. The boycotts were also motivated or encouraged by political unrests, discrimination, government orders and solidarity.
According to Swarthmore.edu, black South Africans were facing discrimination in a variety of environments, including public spaces, workplaces, and educational institutions.
The political unrest in the Western Cape further encourages student boycotts, as more than 460 elementary, secondary, and teacher’s colleges of people of colour were shut down by the government.
Forced removals and racial segregation in District Six
A bulldozer demolishes houses in District six, Cape Town as black and Coloured people were forceful removed by the apartheid government, image: Eyewitness News (EWN)
When we talk about forced removals of people of colour by the apartheid government, we touch on an issue that was the norm in those days of apartheid. Plenty of South Africans were being removed from the cities to areas outside and far from the city; most of those areas were poor, overcrowded, and had fewer job opportunities. When we are talking about this issue, you would recall the Sophia town forced removals in Johannesburg.
The removals of black and coloured South Africans in District Six began in 1968 and continued for 15 years. In that space of time, it was reported that over 60 000 black and coloured residents were removed and relocated to the outlying areas of Cape Town, mainly to the Cape flats.
The apartheid government gave the reasons behind the removals, and they stated that it was because of interracial interaction bred conflict, necessitating the separation of the races; District Six was a slum; the area was crime-ridden and dangerous; and it was full of immoral activities like gambling and drinking.
Prior to the removals, District Six was declared a while-only residential area under the Group Area Act of 1950, which states that the government could designate certain geographic areas for use by a single race. Decades later, it still hurts because those forced removals had a negative effect on many lives.
Mr Richards Moore Rive a former Trafalgar High School wrote in his writings, “I cannot find any reasonable objection to slum clearance, especially for purpose of reconstructing decent homes to replace the former tenements, but when District Six was razed, it was done so by official decree to make room for those who already had too much”
Harold Cressy High became the scene of defiance, and it refused to be moved when District Six was to be emptied to make way for white residents.
In an article written by Lisa Isaacs of the Cape Times, the principal of Harold Cressy High, Mr. Khalied Isaacs, who was a student at Harold Cressy High during the forced removals, shared that students were watching through the windows as their family homes were mowed down by bulldozers.
In a second high school, Trafalgar High School, close to Harold Cressy High, students experienced the same as their fellow students did at Harold Cressy High.
Former Western Cape high court judge, Judge Siraj Desai, recalls the day of removals in District 6 clearly. As a student at Trafalgar High School in District six, he shared his memory of those days with the Daily Maverick. He said that during his career, he always felt bad about evicting other people, as he also knew eviction was not an enjoyable experience.
“I was at Trafalgar High when District Six was declared a white group area and I saw the evictions take place there. So, it hurts me each time I have to evict somebody. I find it deeply troubling to evict people, but then I swore an oath and there was no basis not to evict and I did eventually sign an eviction. It is a hurtful process, nevertheless. Each eviction caused me great pain”, he told Daily Maverick.
Like any other fallen colossal in his father's land, the time for District Six to rise again came with the uprising of District Six. The uprising in District Six, led and predominated by coloured people, had only one mission: to return to their father's land.
District Six has long become a sort of cultural crossroads for the coloured community, from the devoted light-skinned Muslims to the soft accents of East Indians to the husky Dutch.
コメント