CHAPTER THREE: ??SIDE BY SIDE ON THE BENCHES?: 
 MODIRI MOLEMA?S SCHOOL DAYS?1 
 
? 
 
Finally, I may say that I am a member of the race whose life I have described in the following pages, kith and 
kin of the people whose story I am unfolding to the world.2 
 
Dr Molema spent much of his writing life defining what being ?a member of the race? meant to him. 
His assertive introduction to The Bantu Past and Present was written some ten years after his latter 
phase of schooling in the Eastern Cape. What he learned there, from teachers and classmates, helped to 
shape his intellectual outlook. In history lessons and student societies, he and his friends increasingly 
realised the importance of casting an historical gaze on the African past. Interestingly, many of his 
generation of African writers took upon themselves the difficult task of representing (or rather 
translating) African culture for English-speakers.3  
 
Lovedale College, his second Eastern Cape school particularly encouraged scholars to subsume their 
ethnic differences in an all-embracing Africanness. According to Wells, biographer of James Stewart, 
Lovedale?s second principal: ?[t]he fact that the pupils at Lovedale belonged to various tribes, 
stimulated emulation among them, and purified and guided their racial jealousies?.4 Stewart also 
promoted notions of racial equality at Lovedale, educating white and black students side-by-side. 
However, the inequality of opportunity in every sphere of activity outside the college meant that white 
Lovedale scholars attained the highest echelons, whereas blacks saw the ceiling on their employment 
opportunities descend, over the years. Wells found, during his 1905 visit to Lovedale that ?[m]any 
white pupils have been educated at Lovedale, and not a few of them now occupy very important posts 
in South Africa. The natives and the whites have the same education within their reach?.5 
 
To understand The Bantu and its reception, it is necessary to explore and, indeed, (re)construct, 
elements of his ?biography?, as Foucault suggests:  
 
[t]he author explains the presence of certain events within a text, as well as their transformations, distortions, 
and their various modifications (and this through an author?s biography or by reference to his particular point 
of view, in the analysis of his social preferences and his position within a class or by delineating his 
fundamental objectives).6 
 
This exploration aims to provide an amplified understanding of Molema?s aims and, in later chapters, 
explain the blunted, racially-loaded readings Molema?s historical work has received. The underlying 
epistemology of his texts has puzzled historians so, that many exclude him from their professional 
fraternity, rendering his somewhat dissenting voice inaudible.7 Indeed, it is only in the forthcoming 
                                                 
1 Molema, 1920: 302.  
2 Molema, 1920: viii. 
3 Molema?s generation inherited this task from the relatively small number of writers of the preceding generation, Tiyo Soga 
and JT Jabavu. Molema?s contemporaries as writers (though some were his seniors in years) included AK Soga, Magema 
Fuze and JT Jabavu. (See Bibliography, infra.) 
4 James Wells, 1919. Stewart of Lovedale: The Life of Dr James Stewart. (London: Hodder & Stoughton), p.362. 
5 Wells, 1919: 189. 
6 In ?What is an Author?? (In Boucher, 1977: 128), Michel Foucault used ?author function? to disaggregate the text from its 
narrative persona. 
7 Dubow (1995: 72-73) mentioned Molema?s dual purpose in narrating his own life and that of ??his people?. In Civilising 
Barbarians. (JHB: WUP, 1996), p.113, Leon de Kock termed Molema?s attitude to the British Empire ambiguous. Alan 
Cobley, 1990. Class and Consciousness: The Black Petty Bourgeoisie in South Africa, 1924 to 1950. (New York: 
Greenwood Press), pp. 59-60, did not engage with Molema?s style or ideological affiliation. 
Chapter Three 
 
165 
  
Cambridge History of Africa (vol.1), that the editors include the contribution of Black intellectuals to 
the production of early twentieth-century history.8 
 
Molema, his mentor Plaatje, and other ex-Lovedalians, DDT Jabavu and RV Selope Thema, were 
among the first African commentators to analyse colonial transformations in South Africa.9 With some 
traditional oral historical genres and many South African and European secondary readings, Molema 
attacked authors who portrayed Africans prejudicially, as he saw it.10 These readings spread negative 
intellectual and popular views about Africa, ideologies that helped to consolidate public policy. In The 
Bantu, Molema entered the discourses that mediated the domination of Africans. ZK Matthews grasped 
that process when he stated that the colour of South African history was decidedly white.11 Even liberal 
Lovedale?s syllabi favoured English history over South African: Ransome?s History of England 
featured prominently beside Whiteside?s South Africa, in years for which details survive.12  
 
Questioning colonial historians? authoritative writings did not mean rejecting all they wrote, as 
Molema?s academic reliance on Theal showed. When assessing Christian civilisation?s benefits, 
Molema, Plaatje, the Jabavus and Thema usually agreed with their missionary tutors. Molema often 
used missionary sources as moral authorities in challenging negative versions of African history. To 
understand some of the missionary influence on Molema, this chapter returns, as far as documents 
allow, to his school days at two of the Cape?s most prestigious missionary institutions. 
 
Molema travelled widely in his formative years. The imposed distance between himself and Mafikeng 
during World War I was the chief impetus for his first work.13 That journey gave him metaphorical and 
critical distance from South African society, its problems, and its place in the larger system of colonial 
domination. He traversed the world?s polar opposites: from colonial margin to imperial metropolis, 
from parochial Mafikeng to the Empire?s second city, Glasgow; from modernity?s outskirts to one of its 
industrial hubs, where he assembled his analytical history of home. Chapters Three and Four explore 
the ways in which he accommodated these vastly differing experiences into his own worldview. His life 
up to embarkation at the Cape Town docks in April 1914 prepared him for the journey so far from 
home, yet brought him to a major reconsideration of what civilisation and Africa meant. 
 
?Children in the Family?: Reconstructing an Ethnographer?s Childhood:14 
 
Seetsele Modiri Molema, firstborn son of Silas Thelesho and his wife Molalanyane Choele, was born in 
February 1891, almost nine years after his grandfather, Chief Molema?s death. His parents? choice of 
first name made reference to the silent man of Molema history: Chief Tawana?s own eldest son, 
                                                 
8 Carolyn Hamilton, Bernard Mbenga, Robert Ross (eds), 2005. Cambridge History of South Africa, v.1, (to c.1886), 
?Editors? Prefatory Essay? (preliminary version), p.37. This essay is still in draft form. 
9 Thema?s eminently readable book-length unpublished autobiography is: ?From Cattleherd to Editor?s Chair? (1935), 
(Archived with the Molema Papers, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London University). 
10 For a facsimile of The Bantu?s bibliography, see Appendix C, infra. On his use of traditional songs, see Molema, 1920: 
42, 47, 159-60 (all poetry), and 39, 48, 57, 388-89 (genealogies). 
11 Matthews (1958 & 1981: 58): ?[o]ur history as we had absorbed it bore no resemblance to South African history as it had 
been written by European scholars, or as it is taught in South African schools, and as it was taught to us at Fort Hare. The 
European insisted that we accept his version of the past and what is more, if we wanted to get ahead educationally, even to 
pass examinations in the subject as he presents it?. 
12 RU, Lovedale Papers [LP], Lovedale Missionary Institution Academic Records [LMIAR], Lovedale Roll of Classes 
[ROC]: 1900, p.8, 1901, p.8, 1902, pp.38-39, 52, 1904, pp.16-17: during these years, Modiri?s sister, Seleje, and their 
?cousin? (brother, in Setswana) Sebopiwa, attended Lovedale. According to the sketchy bibliographical details in the 
Lovedale Records, the textbooks may have been Cyril Ransome & H Dyke Acland, 1882 & 1901. A Handbook in outline of 
the political history of England to 1881/1901. (London: Rivingtons) and Joseph Whiteside, 1915. A New School History of 
South Africa with brief biographies and examination questions. (Cape Town: Juta). He also authored a history of the 
Wesleyan Methodists in South Africa. 
13 Molema (1920: vii) wrote in paragraph two of the Preface: ?The Great War is quoted to explain everything?.  
14 This is the title of one of Dr Molema?s essays, UNISA, M842, Dr SM Molema Papers, [microfilm) 2:XM118: 77/8: 1/42: 
SM Molema, ?Children in the Family?, [cited as Molema, ?Children in the Family?]. 
Chapter Three 
 
166 
  
Seetsela, slain in battle against the Hurutshe.15 Seetsela represented the claims of Tawana?s children in 
his own name ? the elder brothers displaced from the succession by Montshiwa and other children 
whom Tawana fathered in his late brother Tau?s name.16 It seems that Molema?s heirs remained 
mindful of the likelihood that, had Tawana not raised ?his brother?s? family, or had he counted them his 
own children, Seetsela or his descendants might have inherited the chieftaincy. 
 
Two of Tawana?s sons ?attempted to keep their brother?s fire burning?.17 Tlala had wed Seetsela?s first 
wife, Nkhabele, whose son by Seetsela, Tshipinare, would have been counted Tlala?s son, had Seleka 
Chief Moroka II not adopted him as his heir. Molema was the second Tawana brother to perform 
seantlho for Seetsela. He married Baetlhoi Lekoma, Seetsela?s second widow. As Chapter One showed, 
seantlho could be a kingmaker, as in Montshiwa?s case, or relegate one to t?n? (headman) status, as in 
Molema?s case. His offspring based claims to seniority in Tawana?s second house on this marriage.18  
 
The naming of a newborn child marks its entry into the social world. An infant?s first experience of 
social being is within the family context ? in the 1890s, a larger unit in Setswana communities than in 
makgoa or European families. Naming a child in a world caught between the competing pulls of 
Christian and Serolong cultural traditions was a complex social act. In chiefly families, like the 
Molemas, naming may have had political significance. The firstborn son in a chiefly family, 
particularly a monogamous one, is endowed not just with a significant name, but with the family?s and 
the community?s hopes: he ensures ?the continuity of the father?s lineage?. Modiri was born in 
Mafikeng. Molalanyane Molema may have returned to her parents? at Setlagole for the birth of her first 
child, Seleje, as was the Setswana custom, but remained in Mafikeng for her first son?s arrival.19 
 
Did Silas hope to make a political point by naming his child after Seetsela, or were he and his wife 
showing respect to rr?mog?lo, his father?s elder brother? They added to this name by which his eldest 
son was known in the family: ?Modiri?. In giving the baby two Setswana names, the Molemas departed 
from the naming practice that Chief Molema had established: adding a Christian or school name to the 
given Setswana name. Later in life, perhaps at school, Seetsela became ?Silas?, although it is also a 
mark of respect, in Tswana societies, to call a son by his father?s name. Naming conventions among the 
Tswana had changed significantly since the start of ?the linguistic colonialism of mission?. According 
to ?the Pauline model of conversion?, the convert was born anew in Christ, acquiring a new name, 
which redefined the identities of colonised peoples, just as places were renamed.20  
 
Perhaps Chief Molema had been ahead of other ?Nonconformists? (the Methodists among the Southern 
Tswana). Whereas other newly-missionised communities in southern Africa might baptise their children 
with both an indigenous and a Christian name, the Southern Tswana ?were not as immediately assertive 
in this respect as were some of their brethren elsewhere?.21 The Comaroffs observed,  
                                                 
15 Molema, 1951: 149. See supra, p.52.  
16 On Tau, son of Tlhutlwa, see supra, p.49 and Table 2, p.44; also Appendix A ? Genealogy, p.I, infra. 
17 For the meaning of this phrase, see Molema, 1966: 9, or supra, p.50. 
18 Molema, 1951: 30. Snyman et al. (1990: 189): ?t?n?? means bigness or importance. A minor chief may also be called 
?kgosana?. Today, t?n? (plur: dit?n?) means cabinet ministers; the prime minister is t?nakgolo See Appendix A ? 
Genealogy, p.I, illustrating Tawana?s four houses. Cf. supra, p.106 fn.34, for the slight variation ?ntona?. 
19 Virginia van der Vliet, ?Growing up in Traditional Society?. In WD Hammond-Tooke (ed), 1974. The Bantu-speaking 
Peoples of Southern Africa. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), p.212. This is a later edition of I Schapera (ed), 1937 & 
1966. The Bantu-Speaking Tribes of Southern Africa. (Cape Town: Maskew Miller). Molema, Johns Interview, 1964, cited 
supra, p.42. Silas was called ?Raseleye?, after the birth of his first child, Seleje or Seleye. Cf. supra, p.138 fn.238. 
20 Appendix ? Genealogy, pp.II & III: Silas? third son was named Sefetoge Silas. Comaroff & Comaroff, 1991: 219.  
21 Comaroff & Comaroff (1991: 219) cited Thomas O Beidelman, 1982. Colonial Evangelism: A Socio-Historical Study of 
an East African Mission at the Grassroots. (Bloomington: Indiana UP), p.139. Early Tswana converts bestowed Christian 
names on servants and ?non-Tswana assistants?.  
Chapter Three 
 
167 
  
[t]he first generation of Tswana converts continued to be called by their Setswana designations?, these being 
single words, often comprised of verbs with pronominal prefixed and suffixed, describing the distinctive 
circumstances of birth of early childhood.22  
 
Future ethnographer, Modiri and other relatives were known by names that inscribed the circumstances 
of birth, infancy or parental hopes for their children into their future identities. Sometimes names might 
seem oddly prophetic: in the 1910s? heated chiefly struggles, the contentious plans Chief Lekoko had 
for Lotlamoreng were perhaps embodied in his name?s meaning: ??What will you [pl.] do with him??? 
Modiri?s name derived from the verb ?go dira? meaning ?to do, make, perform or cause to happen?. Its 
root is the noun tir?? (work). ?Mo-diri? is one of the nouns created from ?go dira?, and means ?a doer 
or a worker?; it is closely related to ?lediri? (meaning a verb) and ?sediri? (an expert worker). A name 
has the power to communicate meaning, an ?illocutionary force?23 that may, for its bearer have a 
predictive quality. In Modiri Molema?s case, he came to embody the idea of ?work? or of the making of 
a self, both in a traditional Setswana sense and in terms of Methodist values. Work (tir?) in Setswana is 
neither an abstract notion nor an exchangeable commodity. The Comaroffs reported in the 1990s:  
 
[i]n the 1970?s [sic] we were told that, bogologolo (?long ago?) even the toil of a serf was only available to 
his master as part of a total bond of interdependence. It could not be given over to another person unless the 
relationship itself was transferred. In short, ?work? was, and is, the creative process inherent in all human 
activity; it is expressed in the ?building up? of self and others in the course of daily life?.work has always 
involved the construction of a person in relation to others.24  
 
Go dira (to work), an indicative verb, thus implicitly involves a reciprocal action: building up oneself 
and others. A worker, ?modiri? is one who does this. In contrast, the verb that expresses working for 
oneself only or at the expense of others is go itira: ?to make oneself? or ?to pose as?. Again, the 
Comaroffs observe that ?go itira motho? connotes ?to be proud? or ?haughty??.25  
 
In ?Children in the Family?, an essay written in later life, Dr Molema wrote sweepingly: ?[i]t is 
generally agreed that in family life in all societies, brothers and sisters are social equivalents?; society 
sees them ?as nearly identical as it is possible for human beings to be?. In the traditional Rolong view, 
the increasing individuality of children in modern societies had no place. His remarks helped to explain 
the seantlho practice. He may have had his own family and Rolong society in mind when he wrote that 
siblings could ?represent or replace one another with the least possible disturbance of the social 
equilibrium. The levirate and sororate customs are based upon this social equivalence of siblings?.26 
 
He explained the familial respect accorded the eldest male and female children. Yet, the eldest son was 
the ?most important?. To apply these dicta to the Molema family: despite the respect that Silas, 
Molalanyane and the younger children showed Seleje, the firstborn, Modiri?s importance as the eldest 
son and his father?s heir, would have ?eclipsed? hers. He would also have had ?the privilege of 
responsibility for the care of some of his father?s stock?. A father did not distinguish his property from 
his eldest son?s. Where disputes arose between father and son, the lekgotla could intercede. Thus the 
Serolong model of family life differed from the ?western? nuclear one. An errant father might be 
publicly reminded by the Serolong maxim: ?Kgabela ngwana; o tlo bone ngana a go kgabela? (?Act 
with decorum towards your child and your child will respect you?).27 
                                                 
22 Comaroff & Comaroff (1991: 219) cited missionary James Read, 1850. ?Report on the Bechuana Mission?. In 
Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 28: 445-47. 
23 Comaroff & Comaroff, 1991: 219-20. Snyman et al (1990: 18) give tir? as ?deed, work, occupation, act, and duty?. 
24 Comaroff & Comaroff, 1991: 141.  
25 Comaroff & Comaroff (1991: 141): the phrase means, ??to make oneself a distinct person??, whereas the reflexive verb go 
itirela (from reciprocal verb, go direla to work for) means ?to make (work, do) for oneself? has positive connotations. 
26 Molema, ?Children in the Family?, p.1. 
27 Molema, ?Children in the Family?, p.2. 
Chapter Three 
 
168 
  
Family discipline was strictly hierarchical. Younger children, like Tshadinyana, Morara, Sefetoge and 
Motshidi would have minded their language and behaviour around Modiri and Seleje, whose commands 
they had to obey and whose errands they had to run.28 Reflecting on the relationships between his father 
and his two uncles, Solomon Molema confirmed the younger brothers respect for Modiri: 
 
You wanted to know, how did Modiri and my father get on? One of the things that I realised when I was a 
young boy, in fact?Morara and Sefetoge they lived in awe of their brother, and he would sometimes gives an 
instruction and they would?.And they would rush ? they were really very much obedient, but the way I saw 
it, it was that obedience bordering on ? at the time I didn?t know whether it was on fear or respect, but he 
had a powerful grip on them, that I can tell you.29 
 
?Aubuti? (older brother, from Afrikaans), or ?Nkgonne? (ungendered term for an older sibling) had to 
treat the little ones fairly, displaying ?the utmost decorum in his conduct?. Any improper language that 
younger children used would be blamed on their older siblings? bad example. Fairness was the principle 
stressed in childrearing. Modiri would have shared the food he was given with the younger ones. As the 
Serolong proverb says: ??bana ba motho ba thakanela tlhogo ea ntshi?? (?the children of the same man 
will share even the head of a fly?). Both Prof. Leloba Molema and Ms Warada Molema confirmed Dr 
Molema?s strict sense of family duty.30 How far might an older child go?  
 
[T]he eldest in the family?is expected to act like a father or a mother towards the younger children ? to 
protect them, to discipline and train them, both by precept and example, in the traditional modes of behaviour. 
Hence upon the death of a father, his sons and daughters quite readily accept the authority of the eldest when 
he succeeds his deceased?s position as head of the family.31 
 
This analysis of the general patterns of childhood so accurately reflected Dr Molema?s own beliefs 
about his responsibilities towards his father and his siblings, that one discerns a strongly 
autobiographical input in the essay. On the one known occasion that he and Silas disagreed, Modiri 
conceded defeat before any need for the lekgotla?s intervention arose.32 
 
Modiri was two and his sister Seleje four when their father undertook the great task of building a large 
family home. The venture was complex. The contractor Mr F Robertson quoted Silas ?57-15-0 
including ?all brick stones sand water and boys?; Robertson would ?find all other material & labor & 
compleate work in a workmanlike [sic] manor?, but would lower the price to ?38-1-0 if Silas found the 
material himself. The house?s dimensions would have made it conspicuous amid Mafikeng?s smaller 
square homes and Setswana round houses. 
 
?all walls to be built in brick on a stoen [sic] foundation 22x14; out side overall 9 feet high with pi[t]ch roof 
& lean to at the back of a room of 12x14 over all with flat roof?.to be covered with iron froont?.[O]ne 
room with chimney & fire place, [p.2] two windows & one door to be built in front of building & two doors 
inside of rooms[;] one door & window in back room?.33 
 
This house (later called Maratiwa) formed the core of the Molema home that withstood the Boers? 
Siege shells; Modiri later made his home there with his first wife, Anna.34 
                                                 
28 Their full names were Harriet Tshadinyana (later MmaSemela), Morara Rex (or Tolo), Sefetoge Silas, and Motshidi 
Stella. After Silas? second marriage, Modiri was also responsible for Robert Ratlou and Keleo. Cf. supra, p.121 & fn.128. 
29 Solomon and Elisabeth Molema Interviews, 1991 & 1992. 
30 Molema, ?Children in the Family?, p.6, for previous quotation. Leloba Molema Interview, 1992, and Warada Molema 
Interview, 1992. 
31 Molema, ?Children in the Family?, pp.6-7. 
32 Cf. infra, pp.207-209. 
33 MPP A979 Aa3, 20 Nov 1893, F Robertson, Maf, to Mr C Malemma. Robertson?s grammar and spelling were erratic. 
34 It is now home to his younger brother, Morara?s son, Solomon, and his family. See picture of Maratiwa, infra, pp.172-73. 
Cf. supra, p.83, Emile Holub?s comments on the Molema brothers? houses and supra, p.106 fn.38.  
Chapter Three 
 
169 
  
The decade into which Modiri was born ??dawned upon restless and hurrying humanity, and was 
destined to close in bloody warfare?.35 Some of his later essays relied on his own childhood experience. 
However, he may have recalled little of the early 1890s other than a blur of action around which his 
young life took shape: Montshiwa sent his father on border missions, then to be headman at Bodibe and 
Lotlhakana (c.1891-94), and to negotiate with Dr Jameson (1895). On 19 October 1896, Montshiwa?s 
death shook the community. Modiri drew on early memories to convey the communal grief: ?[t]he 
wailing that arose in the stad, and continued for days was something weird, something awful, something 
terrible. The Barolong seemed to be submerged.?36 Montshiwa?s personality and reign so fascinated 
young Modiri that, in his seventies, he wrote a biography of the last great nineteenth century Tshidi 
chief. He stressed that Montshiwa remained a traditional believer all his life, despite associating with 
the missionaries he relied on as diplomats. Yet, Rev Alfred Sharp, Mafikeng?s ?resident missionary? in 
1896 insisted that Montshiwa was baptised before he died and ?buried according to Christian rites?.37  
 
The Tshidi had had much cause to weep that year: ?that terrible scourge ? rinderpest?destroyed 
thousands of the cattle population??. Farmers abandoned their ox-wagons beside the roads as the 
beasts perished. Those stranded vehicles were a reminder of the cattle-plague into the 1940s; but 
immediately in 1896, the price of other transport animals rose: ?donkeys were at a premium, being from 
?5 to ?7 each, and mules ?25 to ?38 each?.38 As the son of a farmer, Modiri would have heard much 
discussion of these hardships in their new Mafikeng house, and at their farm, Mabete. 
 
The evidence of Modiri?s first decade, from babyhood (bos?a) to childhood (bony?n?), two Tswana 
development milestones, is patchy. Just as he emerged into bosiman? (boyhood), the world?s eyes 
focused on Mafikeng, as the South African War was declared on 12 October. In retrospect, he argued 
that two ?major? events occurred in 1899: the founding of the Mafeking Mail (to which Silas had a 
subscription) and the ?outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War??. With hindsight, he equated the two events? 
importance, realising that this ?journalist adventure and ?educational institution?, had helped to place 
?Mafeking upon the map?. Where would his father, Plaatje, Lekoko and others have been without the 
Mafeking Mail Siege Slips? war coverage?39 They provided daily reports and the small boy (9 years and 
8 months old in October 1899) would have seen, if not read, these slim editions.  
 
The War impressed him so, that he later wrote at least four commentaries on it: The Bantu?s Chapter 
XXIII, ?Bantu in the South African War?, the unpublished monograph ?The Scapegoat of the Boer 
War? (General Piet Cronj?) and the two 1949 commemorative essays. 40 Of these, ?Mafeking ? A 
Retrospect? is in draft version, whereas ?Fifty Years Ago? is more polished, containing detailed, 
statistically-based accounts of the siege. The young Modiri surfaced in the article?s descriptions of the 
Tshidi?s notorious enemy, Cronj?. His presence in the front line gave him a vantage point that eluded 
his older relatives: Sebopiwa and Officer were away at Lovedale.41 
                                                 
35 Molema, ?Mafeking?, p.2. 
36 Molema, ?Mafeking?: 3. Cf. supra, pp.127-28 for Silas? dealings with Dr Jameson. 
37 Molema, 1966: 206. Potter, [Nd]: 69. MPP A979 Ad3, 8 Oct 1918, SMM, Glasgow, to HTM, Maf: Modiri reported 
seeing Rev Sharp (and wife) in Manchester ? ?They were very nice to me?. 
38 Molema, ?Mafeking?: 3. William Beinart, 1994. Twentieth-Century South Africa. (Oxford: OUP), pp.32-33: the 
rinderpest (1896/7) and East Coast Fever (1904-13) killed up to 80% of the country?s cattle herds in some areas. Beinart 
attributed the diseases? spread to ?a broader spread of new plagues consequent on more rapid mobility and international 
exchanges of people, plants, and animals?. 
39 Molema (?Mafeking?, 3-4) used the older term ?Boer War? for the South African War. Schapera (1953 & 1979: 38): 
?[c]hildren are grouped roughly, according to physical development, into mas?a (sucklings), bany?n? (infants, from about 
three years old to eight), and, finally basiman? (boys or bas?ts?na (girls)?. Plaatje, 1973 & 1999: 103, 154-56. For Silas? 
Mafeking Mail subscription, see MPP A979 Aa3. Plaatje (1973 & 1999: 78): Silas read any paper available: ?Mr Molema 
last night brought me a copy of the Bulawayo Chronicle, from Captain Marsh?, and ?every paper fortunate enough to find its 
way into Mafeking passes through so many hands that it is quite worn out and requires?the greatest care.? 
40 See Bibliography, The Works of SM Molema, Unpublished Manuscripts & Essays, infra, p.375-76, for details.  
41 Plaatje (1973 & 1999: 439-40 & 176 fn.59) called him by his Setswana tag, Rantho?akgale, while Dr Molema did not. Cf. 
supra, p.136 fn.229. RU, LP, LMIAR, ROC, 1900, pp.8, 9, 20: Sebopiwa and Chief Bathoeng?s son, Seepapitso, were in Std 
 
Chapter Three 
 
170 
  
After the War?s first shots were fired near Modiri?s mother?s ancestral home, Kraaipan (Setlagole), 
Gen. de la Rey?s forces cut Mafikeng?s contact with the outside world, and Cronj? rolled into town.42 
Visual images, often comic, contributed to Modiri?s memoir: ?[t]he formidable Cronj?, wearing his 
bowler hat and his morning coat, and carrying his horse whip now came with Mrs Cronj? to Mafeking 
in his spider drawn by four horses?.43  
 
Dr Molema?s picture of the African contribution to the town?s defences combined his early memories 
with the historian?s careful research. Almost instantly, white Mafeking, the black Stadt, plus Fingoes? 
and Strangers? Locations, united to form a common defence. He made no mention of Baden-Powell?s 
later denials of black participation. His article?s tone was complex: beneath the historian?s urbane 
discourse, lay the remembered fear and excitement into which the child?s world had suddenly 
descended. Between the frightened Stadt-dwellers and their traditional enemies, the Boers, were the 
Protectorate Regiment soldiers, Police, local volunteers and the town Guard, ?made up of business men, 
trades men and shop keepers?.44 United as the small town?s white hierarchy was, they could not absorb 
their neighbours, the Rolong. A separate contingent of able black fighters was hastily enlisted:  
 
?there were 600 Barolong under their chiefs, notably Lekoko Montshiwa and Silas Molema, and directed by 
Major Godley and Capt. Marsh to defend their frontiers on the west. There were Fingoes under Sgt Webster, 
Coloured under Capt Goodyear and Corporal Currie, and a ?Black Watch? ? a mixed lot of foreign naives 
under Lt Mackenzie. Altogether about 1,700 men.45 
 
The black troops were separated along ethnic lines, a trend not new in Mafikeng: Rolong, ?Fingoes? 
and ?foreigners? (or ?Strangers?) occupied different locations to the town?s west and southwest. Being 
responsible for Mafikeng?s western defences meant that the black troops were shielding their own 
homes, and the white town, behind them. On 24 October, the arrival of ?a veritable monster?a 
Creusot, throwing 94-lb shells? to the ?hilarious excitement of the besiegers, and pallid terror of the 
besieged? rendered the three locations more vulnerable. From Jackal Tree (Cronj??s laager), it ?roared 
and belched, throwing?40 shells, now into the European, and now into the African town?? 
throughout the Siege?s seven months.46 By mid-December, Mafikeng was fierily hot. Plaatje, living in 
the Molema homestead, observed the family?s desperation: 
 
?the 20th was the hottest day we have had since the siege, but yesterday was worse. The heat was intense. 
Mrs Molema had to clear to the hut for the night with the children, as the house was becoming an oven. I tried 
to stay and fight it out but was compelled to leave the house to sleep outside at about 11p.m.47 
 
Heat was not the only extreme aspect of their lives. Early next morning, news of more deaths arrived. 
Illness and Boer guns spared neither young nor old: the young daughter of Matshane Meko, part of the 
defence, and Modiri?s grandmother?s brother, Setuki Lekoma, had passed away. Each day brought 
losses, and tensions around basic survival, which must have left their mark on the young boy. Modiri?s 
combined delight and terror at the gunfire made him record onomatopoeically the sounds exploding 
around him: shrieks, whirrs and growls. The Boers? ?12 different kinds of artillery? hurled bullets and 
                                                                                                                                                                  
V; Officer, who had arrived at Lovedale on 1 Feb 1899, was in Mr FT Morrison?s Technical Workshop. The one female 
Mafikeng scholar was Maud Sidzumo. Willan (1984: 65): the Sidzumos? father, a well-known Mfengu minister, had settled 
in Mafikeng for his health. Patrick was a firm friend of Plaatje?s. His brother, Petrus later worked at Koranta. 
42 Cf. supra, p.121. Mrs Molema was the daughter of Chief Choele Motlhabane [pron.Tshwele] and his second wife, 
Mohumi, of Mahukubung, near Old Kraaipan, Setlagole Reserve. See Appendix A, p.VI. 
43 SMM, 1949: 2. 
44 SMM (1949: 2): Molema perhaps meant the British South African Police. His figures [in square brackets below] for the 
garrison differ from those of the editors of Plaatje?s Diary (1973 & 1999: 20): ?Protectorate Regiment (21 officers and 448 
men) [340 men], the Bechuanaland Rifles (5 officers and 77 men) [?], the British South African Police (10 officers and 81 
men) and the Cape Police (4 officers and 99 men) [170 perhaps for both police forces]. Molema added 200 volunteers. 
45 SMM, 1949: 2. See Map of besieged Mafikeng, after p.130 
46 SMM (1949: 3): the Creusot was dubbed ?Big Ben or Long Tom or Creaky? or ?Au Sanna?. (Plaatje, 1973 & 1999: 35).  
47 Plaatje, 1973 & 1999: 73. 
Chapter Three 
 
171 
  
cannonballs at town and Stadt, where huts buckled under the missiles. The impact dislodged rocks, ?and 
fragments of ricocheting steel?all this was terrific, and was calculated to make the stoutest heart quail, 
while Mafeking shook upon its foundations and seemed to be on the verge of collapse?.48  
 
Plaatje, 23 when war erupted, better conveyed Mafikeng?s sudden transformation into a war zone. 
 
Sunday 29th [October]?Divine Services. No thunder. Haikonna terror;?I have discovered nearly everything 
about war and find that artillery in war is of no use?.I can say: no music is as thrilling and as immensely 
captivating as to listen to the firing of the guns on your own side.49  
 
He developed the ironic music and gunfire comparison before giving insight into Modiri?s education 
during the Siege. Modiri attended the Stadt?s Wesleyan Mission School ?until Standard 4?, where well-
 known Mafikengite, Mr Barnabas ?Teacher? Samson, was headmaster.50 It is not known how frequently 
classes were held during the Siege, but Samson came under Boer fire on 27 October, when ?creeping? 
along the Molopo close to the Boers. Another teacher, Miss SJ Ngono ?Titshalakazi?, tragically lost her 
fianc?, a Black Watch member, who perished from his wounds. The Stadt was small, its people knew 
each other so well, and the effects of famine and enemy fire were very evident.51  
 
As stated, until Standard 4, Modiri attended Mafikeng Stadt?s mission school. When the family stayed 
at Silas? Motsosa Estate, school was six mile?s trudge away:  
 
[o]h it was terrible in winter [he reminded his older sister, Seleje]. Early rising, little or no washing, a hurried 
breakfast about 7am homelessons undone, and six miles to walk barefooted to school with Tshabadira first, 
Modiri last and dear Seleje in the middle. Abo rekile ra choara bothata ruri. [Once upon a time, we truly used 
to have a hard time].52 [my italics.] 
 
Whether the Molema children knew how much danger their father courted in order to provision the 
besieged town, is unclear. Under cover of night, the plains around Mafikeng came to life. On the night 
of 10 February 1900, Silas courted danger under Boer fire in aiding Mathakgong steer 12 cattle into 
town.53 At the worst of the famine, Modiri recalled the Stadt?s reliance on horseflesh and the white 
town?s reliance on black cattle-raiders for survival. Molema?s ?Fifty Years Ago? was not a daily diary. 
For reasons unknown, he downplayed his father?s heroic part in staving off Eloff?s final attack. 
 
After the siege, some ?normality? was restored. Accounts for the children?s education rained down 
from Lovedale. Seleje and the elder Molemas, Sebopiwa and Officer, were away at Lovedale, while 
Modiri studied in Mafikeng. Despite the War, Seleje (only 12), her classmates and the older Molema 
                                                 
48 Plaatje (1973 & 1999: 183 fn.61): Setuki Legalatladi Lekoma was Baetlhoi Molema?s elder brother. SMM (1949: 3) 
provided Modiri?s memories of gunfire, cited supra, p.136. 
49 Plaatje, 1973 & 1999: 27. 
50 Molema, Johns Interview, 1964, p.2. MPP A979 Bd1, 18 August 1913, George Rolland, Wesleyan Methodist Mission, 
Box 14 Maf, to?Chief Lekoko Montsioa, Maf, noted that Mr Samson was still headmaster. Victor Mapanya Interview, 
1992: Mr Mapanya, Dr Molema?s clerk and Mr Samson?s grandson, outlined Samson?s long friendship with Molema, who 
visited Samson regularly in the 1920s. Cf. infra, p.294 fn.11. 
51 Plaatje, 1973 & 1999: 29, 99. The Molopo bisects the Stadt (See Map of Early Mafikeng, supra, pp.52-53). The School, 
founded by Israel Molema, is near the Stadt?s centre. Samson?s guard duties in January exposed him to rheumatic fever, 
which immobilised him severely. On 7 January 1900, Plaatje (1973 & 1999: 93, 139, 200 fn.39) at first mistook her broken-
 heartedness for starvation, so common was this condition. ?Titshalakazi? is Isixhosa for female teacher. 
52 MPP A979 Ad3, 15 Sep 1914, SMM to Seleje Taoana [Tawana]. ?A bo? introduces a repeated annoyance. Spencer 
Minchin Interview, 1991: Dr Molema?s attorney did not release his Deceased Estate, but kindly summarised it. On Silas? 
death (1927), Dr Molema inherited the family estate, Motsosa, and still owned it when he passed away (13 Aug 1965). He 
left his surgery near the Molopo River to Dr Silas Sefetoge Molema, with their surgery & offices in The Stadt. Dr Sefetoge 
also inherited his brother?s instruments, safe, medical library, and medicines and drugs (at Motsosa). Modiri Molema?s 
Estate contained the dwelling house with adjacent shop and the Elite Hall, since demolished, the double-storey residence at 
Motsosa, offices in The Stadt, rented to the Bantu School Hall, motorcars, and a small restaurant, Kraaipan. Comaroff & 
Comaroff (1997: 308) mention the Elite Hall, ?a Christian communal facility, since destroyed by fire?. 
53 Plaatje (1973 & 1999: 110): quoted supra, p.138 & fn.236. 
Chapter Three 
 
172 
  
children had a chance to visit Cape Town, revealing the mobility of the clan?s younger members, 
through their missionary connections.54  
 
Modiri?s musical talent showed itself early. On 13 September 1901, the London Tonic Sol-Fa College 
issued a Junior Certificate to ?Moliri? Molema, aged 10. A year later, he earned the College?s 
Elementary Certificate in musical memory, time, tune and sight singing, and took the Intermediate in 
1904.55 These musical skills served him well, as his attention to musical entertainment at the African 
Races of Glasgow?s 1919 ?At Home? demonstrated. More seriously, his many copies of hymns in 
careful tonic sol-fa notation document the links between his musical and religious interests.56 
 
Around sixteen, most Tswana boys and girls would have undergone the rites of passage marking their 
transition to man- and womanhood: bogw?ra and bojale. As a young Wesleyan, Modiri seemingly 
abstained from these rites. His later research respected the secrecy surrounding them. He had gleaned 
his information about bogw?ra ?during a conversation with an old man who is well over ninety years of 
age? and learned about bojale ?from a woman of about the age of sixty?. They had discussed ?the 
public and instructional aspects of initiation?, relating to the transmission of ?tribal lore and tradition? 
and proper physical conduct as adult men and women. Both interviews indicated Dr Molema?s ongoing 
anthropological interest: he wanted to educate others about Setswana customs and to preserve them.57 
 
?No government grant? ? The Wisdom Modiri Learnt at Healdtown:58 
 
?Standard 4? in the early 1900s, was the final year of schooling for most Africans. Only larger 
institutions like Healdtown offered further tuition. So Modiri followed his father and Sebopiwa there in 
1908.59 In the 1880s and 1890s, when Sebopiwa, future solicitor, Richard Msimang60, and before them, 
Isaiah Bud-M?belle, attended Healdtown, Cape Government Inspectors judged it stuffy, recommending 
better accommodation and ventilation for boy boarders.61 By 1911, two years after Modiri?s departure, 
                                                 
54 MPP A979 Aa3, 23 Nov 1900, AW Roberts, Acting Principal, Lovedale, to STM, Maf, gave the fares to Cape Town 
[CT]: return fares East London to CT, ?9-9-0; wagon fares to King William?s Town 10s; Railway fares from KWT to East 
London, 14 s. Food and other expenses, about ?5-7-0, totally ?16. For other Lovedale accounts for Officer, Sebopiwa and 
?Seleye? Molema, see A979 Aa3, 4 Oct 1900, AW Roberts, Acting Principal, Lovedale, to STM, Maf. 
55 MPP A979 Ad5.2, 13 Sep 1901, ?Junior Certificate? and 20 Oct 1902, ?Elementary Certificate?; Ad5.3, 19 March 1904, 
?Intermediate Certificate?. The letter ?l? is often pronounced ?d? in Sotho-Tswana languages. ?Curwen, John?, Britannica 
Online, http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/154/78.html: Tonic Sol-Fa is the solmisation system (using musical 
syllables to name notes) popularised by Yorkshireman Curwen (1816-1880) in c.1850. Missionaries used this way of 
relating the scale?s 7 tones to the tonic and each other, as it helped amateurs render songs without knowing musical notation.  
56 MPP A979 Ad3, ?The African Races of Glasgow Souvenir Programme?, 12 Apr 1918, see infra, p.204 fn.40. UNISA, 
ACC 142, Molema Varia contains the Hymnsheets. Warada Molema Interview, 1992: Warada, Dr Molema?s daughter, 
illustrated her father?s love of music. Although a staunch Methodist, he chose the Sacred Convent, Aliwal North for his and 
his brother?s children because it boasted the ?best music teacher ?or Coloured music teacher? in southern Africa. Sister Mary 
Magdalene, she was fantastic and that was the main reason why I was sent there. He was giving us the best, you know?.  
57 M842, Dr SM Molema Papers, [microfilm) 2:XM118: 77/3: 1/41: ?Initiation?, later extended The Bantu?s study of 
initiation. He had conducted interviews for the article, hinting that had not undergone bogw?ra himself. Cf. infra, pp.300ff. 
58 Molema, 1920: 227. Cf. supra, p.107ff, for his father, Silas?s years at Healdtown. 
59 Modiri and Sebopiwa [literally ?created being?], Joshua Molema?s son, considered each other brothers. After attending 
Healdtown and Lovedale, Sebopiwa studied law at Wilberforce Institute, Ohio, but did not qualify as a lawyer. He was 
Lotlamoreng?s tribal secretary for many years. From Ohio, he debated (Koranta, 19 Oct 1904) which profession to choose: 
?...[Dr (ngaka), kgotsa Lawyer (agente), kgotsa go nna Moruti (minister)?. African Americans greatly esteemed the 
professions. MM, 30 Aug 1912, ?Wedding?: he married Emang, Lekoko?s daughter. TsalaBC, 01 June 1912, ?Deputation to 
Government?, Sebopiwa, Plaatje and Paul Montshiwa led a deputation to Native Affairs Minister, Henry Burton, (Cape 
Town) against the 5s. tax on native reserve dogs. MM, 22 July 1913, Reader, ?Nota Bene?, alleged that Lekoko had taxed all 
Stadt residents ?1 to fund the deputation. KAB 1/MFK 15, N1/1/5 (18): ?Chiefs & Headmen: SJ Molema?: Sebopiwa was 
Acting-Headman for the Molema wards, Maf (1941-1956). Cf. Appendix A, pp.II & III. 
60 TsalaBT, 05 July 1913, ?The New Solicitor: RW Msimang?: ?RW?, Selby Msimang?s elder brother, was the first African 
member of both the South African Supreme Court (Transvaal Division, 1913) and the Supreme Court of Judicature of 
England. He studied at John Dube?s Ohlange and Healdtown. The ?only boy of colour? at a Wesleyan School, Somerset, 
England (1904) he was yet more isolated than Modiri in 1914. See KAB, GSE 2/119, 17-28 Aug &14-22 Sep 1903.  
61 Willan (1984: 35): born in Burghersdorp, Eastern Cape (1869/1870) to an Mfengu family, M?belle studied at Healdtown 
After passing the Cape Civil Service Examinations in 1893, he was appointed Interpreter in Native Languages, Griqualand 
West High Court, Kimberley. Cobley (1990: 71): RW Msimang married his daughter, Grace. 
Chapter Three 
 
173 
  
Table 4: Molema's Table of Comparative Expenditure on White and Black Scholars 
Healdtown?s teaching diploma results placed it among the Cape?s top three missionary institutions. 
Receiving the Cape Education Department [CED]?s supervision but limited government funding, 
Healdtown?s results outdid many white schools?. Rev Hornabrook and Thomas Peart, English 
university graduates, matched their counterparts at white schools.62 Modiri?s experience of 
underfunding at Healdtown and Lovedale made him devote Chapter XIX of The Bantu to this serious 
issue. The CED?s yearly inspection reports, outlining the tremendous difficulties Richard Hornabrook 
faced in paying staff salaries supported Modiri?s arguments.63 In The Bantu, having recently graduated 
as a medical doctor, Molema wrote,  
 
[t]he government grants to the missionary schools for Bantu education are...extremely niggardly, and almost 
nominal when two factors are taken into consideration, namely-first, the fat taxes which are paid by the Bantu 
into the Public Treasury; and second, when a comparison is made between the Government grants for 
European education on the one hand and for Bantu education on the other.64  
 
His opinions affirmed those of the ?important early ideologue of segregation?, Maurice Evans, who 
noted that no state-run schools were devoted to training Africans and that government funding of 
missionary schools was a ?...niggardly [Evans?s term] percentage of the direct taxes paid by the 
natives?.65 Reflecting on his Eastern Cape education, he united schoolboy impressions to the national 
picture to censure the educational adversity African scholars faced. He revealed the diametric contrasts 
between black and white schooling with ?the facts in figures based on the report of the Superintendent-
 General of Education for 1915?. For British readers, he stressed that these figures represented the Cape, 
?the most liberal of the South African colonies in this as in other matters affecting the Bantu?.66 Table 4 
suggests the stark numerical and proportional differences between government funding for white and 
black schoolchildren: 
 
 
 European 
Education 
Native 
Education 
Estimated European Population  592,000 Native, 2,000,000 
Population at school 17.8% 6.8% 
Enrolment in 1915 105,742 
      Increase, 3077 
137,238 
Decrease, 1233 
Increase in enrolment in 10 years 54% 36% 
Total state expenditure in 1915 
estimated at  
?863,000 ?140,000 
This amount[s] per head of popu- 
lation to about 
?1, 9s. 2d. 1s.8d 
Eight years ago the rate was 16s.2d.  1s.4d. 
Increase 
The ratio then was    .    .    . 
To-day it is     .         .    .    .  
80% 
194d. 
350d. 
Increase, 25% 
To 16d. 
To 20d. 
The ratio is about 
50% worse 
Average State expenditure per pupil ?1, 3d.10d ?1 
 
 
 
                                                 
62 SGE 2/156, 4-28 Sep 1905, ?School Inspection Form for Healdtown?. 
63 Paltry church endowments and state subventions aroused Modiri?s anger, as Chapter Six illustrates. See the following 
Superintendent-General of Education Reports: SGE 2/119, 17-28 Aug & 14-22 Sep 1903, and 2/248, 16 Aug to 04 Sep 
1909, ?Inspection Reports for Healdtown Training School?; SGE 2/8, 23, 25, 26, 30 & 31 Oct 1894, ?School Inspection 
Form for Healdtown?, and GSE 2/119, 17-28 Aug & 14-22 Sep 1903, ?School Inspection Form for Healdtown?. 
64 Molema, 1920: 226. 
65 Molema (1920: 226-27) cited Evans, 1911: 97. The OED (1, 1924) states that niggardly is a word of obscure etymology, 
meaning miserly. Dubow (1995: 169) described Evans as a keen observer, ?concerned by the ?demoralisation? and 
?deterioration? of both black and white in the urban context. Evans was a member of the Natal Legislative Assembly. 
66 Molema (1920: 227) cited Christian Express, Sep 1917. 
Chapter Three 
 
174 
  
Molema?s explanatory note expressed his doubts over the clarity of some government figures. The 
table?s final line neither indicates the date of measurement nor shows how the figure of ?1 per African 
scholar was obtained. Nevertheless, as a general trend, government under-funding of African schools 
marked the difference between black and white education, especially in the built environments of 
schools. Molema described these distinctions firsthand: 
 
[a] visitor to South Africa could not fail to be struck by the contrast there is between the school buildings for 
European children and those for Bantu children, especially where they happen to stand side by side. On the 
one hand the buildings display all the skill of architecture, they conform scrupulously to requirements of 
public health and science, comfort and art. The outfit is irreproachable. Those are for whites. On the other 
hand, as often as not, the tin church building, with its forms and seats is used during the week days as a 
school-room, the seats serving for desks, or if there is a school building it is invariably a ?poor show? 
comparatively and absolutely ? corrugated iron, broken floors, old-fashioned creaky desks, bad ventilation, 
bad light, shameful overcrowding, and altogether a ?point by point? contravention of hygienic laws....It spells, 
in short, no Government grant for Bantu school buildings.67 
 
CED Reports confirmed his assertions of overcrowding and poor ventilation.68 These circumstantial 
details formed part of the discriminatory discourse of segregation. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-
 century racial discourse had manifold aspects. Two at least flowed into ?liberal? Cape?s missionary 
institutions, diluting each other. First came the argument of ?equality before the law?. By overtly 
supporting a qualified franchise (property-based participation in the democratic process), the state 
encouraged the idea that achievement was based on ability, its tangible equivalent in property. Yet, 
formal equality is severely compromised without the official practice of redistributive justice.69 Many 
areas of perceived injustice aroused Africans? ire over educational segregation. The CED?s failure to 
open fully-funded white institutions to Africans, while consigning their education to underfunded 
missionary schools, contradicted the apparently humanist philosophy of the Cape Colony?s constitution. 
Under missionary ?protection?, African scholars were absorbed into a discourse that foregrounded race. 
African otherness was constructed as an alarming condition characterised by ?savagery? or ?barbarity?, 
which only religion and education could remedy. Second, under the Cape?s contradictory freedoms, 
education for Africans meant being prepared for labour, either as a ?better class? of servant (artisan) or 
a low-level teacher, civil servant, or minister. From 1910, the Union Government, often with respected 
missionaries? knowing complicity, curtailed educated black people?s opportunities yet further.70 
 
At Healdtown and Lovedale, Molema encountered the forceful missionary rejection of African religious 
systems and daily lifestyle. Missionaries disregarded much of scholars? African upbringing and treated 
them as blank slates upon which to inscribe, western civilisation slowly, as necessitated by Africans? 
supposed ?biological inferiority?. Treating all Africans as children became a norm which Africans 
themselves internalised for many generations.71  
 
                                                 
67 Molema, 1920: 227. 
68 SGE 2/8, 23, 25, 26, 30 & 31 Oct 1894, ?School Inspection Form for Healdtown? covered Sebopiwa?s schooldays. GSE 
2/119, 17-28 Aug & 14-22 Sep 1903, ?School Inspection Form for Healdtown?: Inspector WE Clarke recommended a fitted 
blackboard and ceiling for the pupil-teachers? classroom. Resources were so meagre that even the new cupboard for ?books 
and apparatus? won his praise. SGE 2/248, 16 Aug-04 Sep 1909, ?School Inspection Form for Healdtown? (Modiri?s last 
year): the report rejoiced that the main buildings were now lit with acetylene gas. Yet, the girls lacked even chalkboards. 
69 On Cape Liberalism, see Phyllis Lewsen, 1982. ?The South African Constitution: Euphoria and Rejection?, Raymond 
Dart Lecture No. 19. (JHB: WUP), p.3. Stanley Trapido, 1980. ??The friends of the natives?: merchants, peasants and the 
political and ideological structure of liberalism in the Cape, 1854-1910?. In Shula Marks & Anthony Atmore (eds), 1980. 
Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa. (London: Longman), pp.249, 254-55 & 268. Rodney Davenport, 1987. 
?The Cape Liberal Tradition in South African History?. In J Butler, R Elphick & D Welsh (eds), 1987. Democratic 
Liberalism in South Africa. (Cape Town: David Philip), p.22. 
70 Paul Rich, 1987: 279. 
71 Molema, 1920: 240. Couzens (1985: 30) cited SVK Mdhluli, 1933. The Development of the African. (Marianhill), p.50. 
Also De Kock (1996: 89) for further discussion of the ?infant metaphor?. 
Chapter Three 
 
175 
  
Such issues probably made a subliminal impact on Modiri when he wrote the only letter that survives 
from his Healdtown days. The letter greeted and thanked Silas with due Edwardian formality, and 
expressed appreciation of his host during his recent holiday: Dr Rubusana: ?I am spending a very nice 
time in East London. The Rubusanas are kind people, and they treat me very well. Oh father, I owe 
them as many thanks as you do?.72 This last remark tactfully reminded Silas of his duty to thank his old 
friends. Eminent preacher, Rubusana, joined Silas, three years later in founding the SANNC.73 He was 
one of several Healdtown alumni linked to Scotland, having been sent there to help translate the Bible 
into Xhosa.74 Modiri added that school had opened on 16 July, a hint that fees were due. As the full 
weight of later financial difficulties fell on Silas, Modiri?s begging letters to him became very direct.75 
 
This letter yields conveyed Modiri?s growing maturity, as he experimented with an ?adult? mode of 
address (?I am in receipt of your letter, which I was exceedingly glad to receive?) and anticipated the 
individual flourishes of his adult Lovedale and Glasgow letters. He was just seventeen. 
 
At Healdtown, Modiri was in the academic rather than the training stream, and studying towards a 
teaching diploma. This was the common programme most students at missionary institutions completed 
before some went on, as he did, to matriculate. He knew that African teachers often worked alone, and 
underpaid, in the vanguard of education, as his father had been on returning to Mafikeng from 
Healdtown in 1877. The Native Affairs Commission statistics for the period in which Modiri studied 
abroad show that, had he remained a teacher and qualified as a doctor, his annual wage would have 
begun at ?24 (1915?s average).76 What angered him and many Africans was the disparity between the 
taxation they paid and the poor education (and other services) they received in return. Just over half the 
taxation for the Cape?s total ?51,000 education budget (for white and black scholars), came from local 
rates that Africans in the Transkeian Territories paid: ?25,442-7-0. Table 4 from The Bantu shows that 
African scholars saw little of this revenue ploughed back into their schools.77  
 
Modiri was not the only outraged African intellectual. His contemporary, ?energetic, fiery? Thema, 
SANNC delegate to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, expressed fury over the education of Africans 
after the South African War.78 Colonial Governments excluded African education from the 
reconstruction programme, having ?no time to pay attention to Native education. They were apparently 
absorbed with the problems created by the war?. Government imposed ?a heavy tax of ?2 on every 
adult male African? to force Africans to work on the mines and contribute to the country?s 
rehabilitation. Thema praised missionaries who ?shouldered the burden of Native education?, whereas 
?[g]overnment pocketed the Africans? money and built beautiful schools for the education of White 
children?.79 
                                                 
72 MPP A979 Ad1, 21 Aug 1908, SMM, East London, to STM, (?Dearest Father?). East London is ?150km (?93 miles) 
from Fort Beaufort, on the Eastern Cape coast. 
73 Pallo Jordan, Zemk? Inkomo Magwalandini: The Life and Times of WB Rubusana (1858-1936). In Sechaba, 1984, 
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/people/rubusana.html: Lovedale scholar, Rubusana (1858-1936), son of Ngqika Chief, 
Sandile?s councillor, Rubusana kaMbonjana, and a co-founder of the South African Native Congress, a constitutive body of 
the SANNC. He was a Congregational Minister and the only African, pre-1994, elected to the Cape Provincial Council (21 
Sep 1910). He opposed Jabavu?s alliance with Cape Liberals. While in London for Edward VII?s coronation, he wrote Zemk' 
Inkomo Magwalandini (Defend Your Heritage), ?an anthology of traditional epic poetry, didactic Christian essays and 
Church history?. His large ??History of South Africa from the Native Standpoint??, for which McKinley University awarded 
him an honorary doctorate, was unpublished. Cf. infra, pp.235, 367 fn.69. 
74 SOAS, H Selby Msimang, [Nd]. ?Autobiography?, (Unpublished Ms), p.64. 
75 MPP A979 Aa1, 03 March 1924, Sefetoge Molema, Healdtown, to STM, showed that ?begging letters? became a family 
genre: Sefetoge?s plea for new boots began ?I am going almost barefoot?.  
76 It is not clear whether Silas received payment as a teacher; in the 1870s, the Molopo fell outside the ambit of any of the 
southern African states; as his Principal stated, he came from ?beyond the Free State?. UG 15 (1922), Report of the Native 
Affairs Commission, 1910-1921, p.20. 
77 See Table 4, supra, p.173. 
78 H Selby Msimang, SOAS Archive, London University, MS380077, ?Notes from Autobiography?, p.8.  
79 Thema (1935: 23) also wrote, with journalistic bravado, ?[a]t one time, the total of grants to African schools in the 
 
Chapter Three 
 
176 
  
Both men derived from the African petty-bourgeois (being also Victorian and missionised) belief in 
?the virtues of free labor, secure property rights linked to a free market in land and individual tenure, 
equality before the law, and some notion of ?no taxation without [out of which] nineteenth-century 
African Christians constructed their world?.80 The missionaries stepped into the breach created by 
government inattention to African education. For this reason, both Molema and Thema remained firm 
supporters of missionary enterprise, and did not dismiss them as agents of imperialism. In Thema?s 
view, ?[i]t is [the missionaries], who have called the race out of the darkness of Africa?s ancient life, 
who have lifted the veil of ignorance from its eyes, and have show it the way salvation?.81 The ?veil? 
metaphor travelled across continents; WEB Du Bois, perhaps the early twentieth century?s most 
influential African American political thinker frequently used ?lifting the veil? to symbolise black 
people?s acquisition of political consciousness. His writings inspired Modiri and Plaatje among many 
other black South Africans, as Chapters Five and Six show.82 
 
Modiri?s experiences at Healdtown and Lovedale substantially generated and politicised his arguments 
in The Bantu over black education.  
 
?The Light Of Heaven?: Molema?s Healdtown Days 
 
The number of South African alumni who pen lengthy odes to their alma maters cannot be many. In 
1955, Dr SM Molema, eminent medical doctor, historian and ANC member penned a memorial article 
on the occasion of Healdtown?s centenary. Read in the context of those celebrations, it told the tale of 
missionary endeavour in the Institution?s creation. In relation to his life and works, these two stanzas 
from ?Oh Healdtown? elucidate Molema?s strong beliefs about faith and morality:83 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The first verse has, as with most of his work, an autobiographical inflection, alluding to frontier wars, 
the last of which prevented his father from completing his studies. In Molema?s discourse, darkness and 
chaos were always metaphors for the human condition without Christianity, in which baser passions 
(greed, lust for power, ?pride and prejudice?) ruled. Light, in his image vocabulary usually depicted 
?faith?; thus, the ?light of heaven?, ending stanza one is a volta, or turning point, heralding Healdtown?s 
creation as a timeless witness to the transformation of its natural and human surroundings, from violent 
                                                                                                                                                                  
Transvaal was less than the grant given to the Pretoria Zoo?. He attended Lovedale until 1910 and became the editor of 
Bantu World. He grew increasingly conservative, criticising the 1950s? ANC under Moroka, with its Youth League backing. 
80 Marks, 1986: 47-48. 
81 Thema (1935: 23): ?[w]hen sometimes I hear educated men of my race accusing the missionaries of having enabled the 
White man to ?to rob Africans of their land?, I cannot help thinking that as a people we are very ungrateful. It is an 
undeniable fact that without the self-sacrificing endeavours of the missionaries and without their assistance and guidance our 
race could not have attained to its present state of development.? 
82 See Du Bois, 1905 &1913: vii-viii. Cf. infra, p.260, 264-66, 312-313, 316, 331, 340-45. For Plaatje and Du Bois, see 
Willan, 1984: 231, 262-65, 269, 271-78, 364-65. 
83 ACC142, MV, SM Molema, 1955. ?Healdtown 1855-1955?: Verses 2 and 3. I thank Prof. TJ Couzens for this reference. 
Oh: Healdtown, looking on thee full flashes the light of years, 
When thy present peace was pain, panic and pandemonium 
Of frenzied men athirst for vengeance, blood and spoil; 
When vainly strove the assegai against both shot and shell;  
When ruled chaotic darkness, and men though might was right,  
And selfish pride and prejudice obscured the light of heaven. 
 
Thou: cradled in dire distress and nurtured in convulsion ?  
A hundred years have rolled into time?s bottomless ocean; 
Years heralded by rapine and war and blood and tears 
But years also of blessed love and devotion and sacrifice, 
A century of patient, silent work and steadfast prayer ? 
From SM Molema, ?Healdtown?, Verses 2 & 3.
Chapter Three 
 
177 
  
chaos to ?faith and vision?.84 He personified the school, beloved for its unswerving values, as ?Thou?, 
suggesting that it represented the Holy Spirit made bricks, mortar and ?love?, ?devotion? and ?sacrifice?.  
 
Under apartheid in the 1950s, Bantu Education made Molema esteem the missionaries? contribution to 
information sources. Nevertheless, Cape government and Church funding was not generous. The 1909 
Reports, though less eloquent about Modiri?s years, mentioned some staffing improvements that he and 
other students may have felt. Hornabrook featured in Reports as pivotal to Healdtown?s transformation 
from tiny training school to its substantial community of 1955. Scholars? conditions improved under 
Hornabrook, but were still unconducive to study. He set the school?s strong moral tone, though pupils? 
minor disorderliness failed Inspector Clarke?s exacting standards.85  
 
Importantly, Hornabrook and staff (many new) achieved a creditable standard in ?practical? work. 
Modiri was probably among those whose reading and writing Clarke conceded ?on the whole fairly 
good?. He assessed Healdtown under four heads: reading and recitation, class teaching, blackboard 
maps and writing, and physical exercise. Nearly his entire review tackled scholars? English enunciation. 
Voice, he stressed, was the teacher?s chief instrument of instruction, especially in a system lacking most 
other educational resources. Later, Modiri?s written expression would do his school oratorical credit. 
 
?Literacy?, stated Leon De Kock ?was at the core of colonisation in South Africa?, and no more so than 
in pronunciation.86 Clarke?s strictures to all junior students on articulation would have gladdened a 
colonial ?Professor Higgins?: he wished them to sound less ?African? and more ?English?. To Modiri?s 
year, he advised, practically, a greater variety of lessons, as many students were beginning teaching 
careers. Inspectors? tepidity yielded to warm singing assessments. September 1909?s reports declared 
their work ?very satisfactory?. Healdtown?s reverence for singing can only have reinforced Modiri?s 
early training in Mafikeng. The curriculum included technically exigent pieces. In his second year 
(1908), he tackled such songs as Mendelssohn?s ?The first day of Spring? and joined other classes to 
render two Mendelssohn lieder, ?The Skylark?s Song? and ?Thanks to God?. Like Lovedale choirs? 
fame, Healdtown?s stretched to Cape Town and Kimberley, where they often sang. In 1909, all 151 
Healdtown scholars perfected the intricate part-songs of Handel?s ?Hallelujah Chorus?. A mixed voice 
selection soared in the oratorios ?Worthy is the lamb? (Handel) and The Messiah?s ?Amen? Chorus.87 
 
1909 reports again narrated the r?gime of enforced thrift governing African education. Through 
ecclesiastical, if not divine, intervention, Hornabrook balanced his salary budget of ?1,515.10s: 
?939.10s from local contributions and ?576 from government. Healdtown?s dire budget explained 
Hornabrook?s desperate chase after Silas unpaid fees! Happily for Modiri?s future, its recovery 
incidentally launched his medical career.88 
 
Government funding cuts for Healdtown showed that Molema experienced institutionalised racial 
discrimination in the Cape education system. Government increasingly spurned mission schools, 
                                                 
84 Cf. infra, pp.323 fn.201, analyses Dr Molema?s use of ?light? and ?dark? imagery in The Bantu. 
85 Hewson (1959: II, 279-82) noted that during Hornabrook?s two administrations, great ?economies? were managed, 
helping augment school numbers and income. SGE 2/248, ?Singing Instructor?s Report for Healdtown?. 
86 De Kock, 1996: 64. 
87 SGE 2/248, ?Singing Instructor?s Report for Healdtown?. Clarke specified ?more systematic tabulation and study of 
difficulty sounds? to avoid shortening and mispronouncing vowels or eliding final consonants. To alleviate the scholars? 
monotonous reading, he advocated voice modulation and variation of speed. SGE 2/223, 22-23 Oct 1908, ?Singing 
Instructor?s Report?. Over several years, Inspector F Farrington assessed the consistency of the school?s singing. 
88 SGE 2/119, 17-28 Aug & 14-22 Sep 1903; SGE 2/248, 16 Aug-04 Sep 1909, Xhosa [called Kafir] and Sesotho [spelled 
?Sesuto?] teachers? salaries went unnoted. An hour a week was spent per language in 1903 and 1909. In 1903, 12 students 
studied Xhosa with Mr Nyaluza, and 13 with Mr Siwisa in 1909. Sesotho classes grew more rapidly: Mr Liphuleo had one 
scholar (1903), but Mr Motshimi 8 in 1909. Hewson (1959: II, 278-81): even on these tightened purse-strings, Hornabrook 
built a larger Church, training and infant schools, and teachers? accommodation. He increased dormitory capacity and 
extended the kitchens, all signs of Healdtown?s relative privilege. 
Chapter Three 
 
178 
  
although these offered a superior education, admittedly enabling the African elite to escape menial 
labour and live perhaps more affluent lifestyles within the South African economic and social system. 
 
In 1917, Molema largely defended that class privilege, which segregation and declining economic 
circumstances placed under grave downward pressure.89 He identified with all Africans whom the 
deteriorating system disadvantaged, declaring that The Bantu spoke for them. All that retrospect lay ten 
years ahead. In December 1909, Modiri left Healdtown, but not Hornabrook, as events will show. In 
January 1910, he entered the Cape?s most celebrated missionary school, Lovedale, and began a more 
detailed narrative of his life.  
 
?Modiri?s Scottish Forebears?: The Lovedale Despatches 
 
?While we are entirely Presbyterian, we are also entirely and openly undenominational. We are both colour 
blind and denominationally blind? ? Dr Stewart.90 
 
?My uncles began to reminisce about principals and masters of other days ? Stewart, Henderson, 
Hunter?.They spoke with affection about these good Scots names?.? ? Noni Jabavu.91 
 
Modiri?s years at Lovedale introduced him to a metaphorical Scotland and to Scots Presbyterianism 
four years before he arrived in Glasgow. The Bantu displayed a strong attachment to Scotland that was 
based on his intellectual, religious and emotional ties with the country. Indeed, he dedicated The Bantu 
to ??Scotland ? the Country and its People ? the parent of the most illustrious heroes of Africa?.92 
Who were the heroes who became, in a real sense, some of his intellectual forebears? 
 
In his presidential address to the Fort Beaufort Native Teachers? Association in Modiri?s matriculation 
year (1912), senior Lovedale Practising School teacher, Cornelius Moikangoa, extolled Lovedale and 
its long-serving principal, Dr Stewart, a name still synonymous with African education: 
 
...Lovedale is world renowned. The Institution was formally opened in 1841 with 17 pupils on the roll. The 
late Rev [William] Govan guided the college in its days of infancy, and his admirable work fell into the hands 
of his worthy successor, the late Dr Stewart...whose name ought to remain a household word in the homes of 
our people because of what he was and of what he did for the Bantu races in the Dark Continent?his was a 
glorious vision of winning Africa for God. For about 40 years he had practically no home, as his name 
Somxada bears witness. He was here, there, and everywhere. He died in 1905 with great schemes in his mind 
for the promotion of native education in our sunny south. The Institution last year was giving training to a 
little over 740 pupils of both sexes, representing all the Bantu races from the Cape to the Zambesi.93 
 
Modiri and classmates were fortunate to have Moikangoa as a role model. He left Lovedale a year after 
Sebopiwa to head the Lovedale Practising School; he also edited the South African Health Magazine. 
His peers? respect was justified: ?represented Lovedale at the first SANNC conference, as interpreter 
and committees? secretary. Tsala ea Becoana asserted, perhaps hyperbolically, that he was ?conversant 
with all the native languages spoken within the Union?.94 
 
                                                 
89 Bonner, 1982: 298-99. 
90 Wells, 1919: 101. 
91 Noni Jabavu, 1963 & 1982. The Ochre People. (JHB: Ravan), p.28: the Jabavu family, as she showed, were ?knotted? to 
Lovedale had intermarried with fellow ex-Lovedalians: the Makiwanes and the Bokwes. Cf. Appendix D, infra. 
92 Molema, 1920: unnumbered page preceding Preface. 
93 TsalaBT, 13 Apr 1912, ?Fort Beaufort Native Teachers? Association?. ?Personalia?, in TsalaBT (02 March 1912) paid 
tribute to Moikangoa (Lovedale teacher, 1907-1926). 
94 RU, LMIAR, Annual Report, 1902, ?Second Year Class List?. See Mweli Skota (1930: 77) on Moikangoa.  
Chapter Three 
 
179 
  
Lovedale?s repute attracted eminent visitors. British novelist, Anthony Trollope visited in 1876, 
declaring it ?a place which has had and is having very great success?.95 Its role in African education 
was robust, and its southern African reputation strong.96 Moikangoa skirted the famed Govan-Stewart 
pedagogical rivalry: Somxada promoted practical and industrial education for Africans, sidelining 
Govan?s preferred classical education.97 Stewart had prevailed, to the Glasgow Missionary Society and 
CED?s relief, and Govan retired. Moikangoa?s quasi-hagiography did not much embellish Stewart?s 
influence on his students. Under Stewart, Lovedale reached the forefront of Cape education. By the 
early 1900s, his students steadily topped the ranks of qualifying teachers. Even the young Morolong 
student who joined Lovedale five years after his death revered Somxada?s omnipresent heritage.  
 
Lovedale historian, Shepherd, praised Stewart?s ?nonracialism? despite his students? ethnic tensions, 
and white society?s racial opposition. Later analyses have elucidated his Social Darwinist thinking and 
devotion to the Calvinist notion of the ?elect?. They argued that Lovedale?s professed ?liberalism? must 
be set against Stewart and successor, Henderson?s abiding belief in African ?backwardness?. Stewart 
posed a rhetorical question to an important scholars? forum, the Lovedale Literary Society: 
 
[s]tarting as but yesterday in the race of nations, do you soberly believe that in the two generations of the very 
imperfect civilization you have enjoyed and partially accepted, you can have overtaken those other nations 
who began that race two thousand years ago...?98 
 
This caution about black scholars? prospects was the Victorian missionary contribution to Cape 
liberalism. The minority (educated, property-owning, Christian Africans) had the vote, but the majority 
(?red? or blanketed landless ?natives?) did not. In 1908, Henderson urged agricultural progress on a 
?predominantly Bantu audience?, implying that pastoralism was backward: ?[i]f their people were poor 
then, they were doomed, he feared, to become still poorer in time to come?. Nor should they blame 
Whites for causing ?Native impoverishment?. Modiri?s headmaster believed that education 
 
?was doing a great deal to make the Europeans, their civilization, their ideas and their methods, intelligible 
to the Natives. It was throwing a bridge across the gulf of time that separated the two races.99 
 
However compelling were the images of the ?bridge? and ?gulf of time?, they expressed Henderson?s 
belief that Africans were na?ve, ignorant, and uncivilised by comparison with their colonisers. He saw 
?progressive? thinking as the only approach to living in a modern world; tradition had no place in it as 
?South Africa was being absorbed into the outside world?. Although he introduced some ?vernacular? 
education to Lovedale, this was to not to increase students? knowledge of African cultures. Rather, it 
was to enhance their understanding of colonial culture (civilisation) and modern technologies.100 Such 
was the ethos of Modiri, Selope, Sebopiwa and Seleje?s school. The fact that The Bantu debated so 
extensively the relative importance of European and African concepts of civilisation and culture 
suggests that he may have been tackling the views of his own headmaster ? among others! 
 
                                                 
95 Anthony Trollope, 1877. South Africa, v.1. (London: Chapman & Hall), p.159. His visit coincided with Silas? third year at 
Healdtown, which Trollope did not, apparently, visit. 
96 Walshe, 1970 & 1987: 8. Willan, 1984: 25. Couzens, 1985: 6 & 10. 
97 On this debate, Shepherd (1942: 157-58) cited Alexander Duff, 1867. ?Report of Foreign Mission to Free Church??, 
p.162. WEG Solomon, 1948. Saul Solomon: ?The Member for Cape Town?. (Oxford: OUP), p.318: Solomon, who sent his 
sons to Lovedale, sparked a furore, objecting that it taught Latin and Mathematics, but Healdtown did not. The Commercial 
Advertiser?s editor bit back: ?[a]lthough we have never heard a whisper to the detriment of Lovedale, we know from sad 
experience that the coloured disciples of Virgil and Homer at the Kat River [Healdtown] were wanting in every needful 
requirement of the moral and social state. Greek verse and sheep-stealing were alike prevalent?. Hewson (1959: II, 183-85): 
Ft Beaufort MP, RJ Painter, said of Healdtown: ?the higher branches of education are quite unnecessary to such pupils?.  
98 See De Kock, 1996, & Rich, 1987, passim. The Stewart quotation is from De Kock (1996: 89) cited RU, LMIAR, James 
Stewart, 1884. ?Address to Lovedale Literary Society?, p.27.  
99 Shepherd (1942: 273) summarised Henderson?s words, hence the use of the third person. 
100 Shepherd, 1942: 273, 294-99. 
Chapter Three 
 
180 
  
Lovedale (like Zonnebloem) attempted to be a ?total institution?, standing out against a non-Christian 
local culture and ?controlling every aspect of student life?.101 Besides bringing religion, education and 
?civilisation? to the Eastern Cape, Lovedale aimed to train African teachers and catechists, who might 
fare better than Scots in converting and educating ?natives?. Indigenous ministers? fluency in Xhosa 
would, the GMS hoped, convert the ?heathen?.102  
 
Lovedale?s spirit and history were largely embodied in its first three principals: Reverends Govan 
(1841-70), Stewart (1870-1905), and Henderson (1906-32). The ambiguous ideological matrix they 
constructed impacted directly on Modiri. Staunch Presbyterians, all passed through Scottish universities 
to lives of colonial evangelism on the Cape?s eastern margins. So monumental was their influence on 
students like Modiri that the courses they followed at their universities may have shaped his own 
university choices. Another Scots missionary doctor, Neil Macvicar of Lovedale?s Victoria Hospital, 
channelled Modiri?s medical interest, leading him to six years? sojourn in his mentors? homeland.103 
 
When Modiri came to Lovedale, it had succumbed to Cape government pressure. Like Stewart, 
Henderson battled the CED?s constantly changing policies and the teaching curriculum and racial 
composition of scholars was greatly changed. In Shepherd?s view, Dr Thomas Muir who replaced 
longterm incumbent, Dr Dale as SGE in 1892, effected these changes. But, as Catherine Hicks showed, 
school segregation began under Dale in 1891, with the separation of white and Coloured children. Muir 
proceeded to separate African and white children.104 Lovedale, he objected, frittered away state funds 
on teaching Latin to ?idle natives?. Lovedale?s protestations that its curriculum wasted no money, but 
included much practical and industrial work, did not mollify him. Actually, Lovedale had always 
practised some degree of internal segregation, despite having educated several eminent white Cape 
citizens ? who would have slept, eaten and played in separate quarters from black scholars.105 
 
Lovedale alumni peopled the ranks of political and religious leaders, educationists, and journalists.106 
But Healdtown and Lovedale?s aims did not satisfy some alumni. Enoch Mamba, Healdtown graduate, 
complained to SANAC that the lack of government-funded education, which put missionaries in 
effective control, channelled Africans into a limited range of professions: 
 
                                                 
101 Norman Etherington, ?Education and Medicine?. In N Etherington (ed), 2005. Missions and Empire. (Oxford: OUP), 
p.264: commented that both Lovedale and Zonnebloem were ?total institutions?. 
102 Shepherd, 1942: 87-89. Wells (1919: 103): ?Lovedale lies near the eastern boundary of Cape Colony, 700 miles NE of 
Cape Town and 80 miles N of East London....on the banks for the beautiful river Tyumie?.  
103 Shepherd (1942: 93, 169-70): Govan (b.1804, Paisley) left for the Cape, having read Classics at Glasgow University. 
Stewart (b.1831, Edinburgh) read divinity at New College, Edinburgh University, and qualified as a medical doctor (1866). 
He aided Livingstone in exploratory and mission work before reaching Lovedale. Henderson (b.1867, Caithness, north 
Scotland), also read Divinity at New College, and almost completed a medical degree serving 10 years at Livingstonia, 
Nyasaland (1895). Shepherd, 1942: 256. Adrian Hastings, 1996. The Church in Africa, 1450-1950. (Oxford: Clarendon), 
p.247, observed that Scots dominated the LMS?s early missions and, of course, the Glasgow Missionary Society [GMS]. 
104 On Dr Robert Dale, see supra, pp.111-12. Higgs (1997: 16) cited Eastern Province Herald, 12 Oct 1932, ?Dale College 
King William?s Town?, and JD Shingler, 1973 ?Education and Political Order in South Africa, 1902-1961?, (Yale 
University, PhD Thesis), pp.55-56. Cf. infra, p.321ff, on Molema?s discussion of missionaries, education and labour. 
105 Shepherd (1942: 98, 485): the Solomons were Lovedale alumni and lawyers: Saul Solomon?s son, Saul, became a judge, 
and was knighted, like cousin Richard, South Africa?s first High Commissioner to London (1910-13). Cousin William 
became South Africa?s Chief Justice (1927-30). Solomon, 1948: 61n, 318-19. Plaatje?s obituary of Richard Solomon 
(TsalaBT, 15 Nov 1913) called him a ?worthy member of a Sterling Family?, particularly noting his Lovedale schooling. 
Trollope (1877: I, 160) commented (1876): ?[a]t Lovedale there are altogether nearly 400 scholars of whom about 70 are 
European?. These included 50 ?boy? borders. White day scholars paid 60s per annum, while Africans paid 30s. 
106 Lovedale produced high achievers, many (like Molema) with multiple careers. Prominent journalists were: Rev WW 
Gqoba, editor of Isigidimi Sama Xhosa, (Xhosa version of the Christian Express); Imvo Zabantsundu?s first owner-editor, JT 
Jabavu, and leading politician. Thema, editor of Rand-centred Bantu World, was SANNC Treasurer during its 1919 
deputation to Versailles. Educationists: DDT Jabavu studied classics at Lovedale, later lecturing Classics at the South 
African Native College (Fort Hare). ZK Matthews (MA, Harvard), Molema?s friend and a 1950s ANC office-bearer, became 
Professor of Customary Law and Anthropology at Fort Hare. Ministers of Religion: John Knox Bokwe, also an eminent 
classical composer. Of the few who chose scientific education, Tiyo Soga?s children and grandchildren (several of whom 
took medical degrees abroad, and later became politicians and journalists) stand out. See Starfield, 1988: 2.  
Chapter Three 
 
181 
  
[w]hat we want is Public schools. I want to send my boys where they will not go in for these Teachers? 
examinations at all. Training them all to be teachers is like training them all to be drunkards. A man cannot 
get a school, or if he does, it is such a small school in an out of the way place ? perhaps he has to teach fifty 
children...on a very small salary, and when he gets to a town he gets drunk.107 
 
Few students went on to study sciences. Modiri Molema was one of those few. When Modiri left 
Healdtown, going on to Lovedale was quite a family tradition, largely through Silas Molema?s backing. 
Before departing for higher education in the United States in 1904, Sebopiwa (recently at Zonnebloem 
College, Cape Town) encouraged his r?ngwan?, Silas, to send Modiri to Lovedale:  
 
[w]hen my brother Moliri is grown up and fit to be sent to colleges please father do not send him to 
Zonnebloem. Why? 
1. Zonnebloem as you know is too close to the town and one is liable to get bad companies with this place. 
2. Many boys of the College are Coloured boys and as a rule they indulge in liquors. 
3. English-speaking is not enforced as it should be. 
4. The general health of the place is bad to upcountry people. 
...Lovedale is by far more the best Native School I know. Through it I am able to plunge through the sea.108 
 
When Modiri enrolled in 1910, Lovedale and Healdtown were much further from Mafikeng than they 
are today, though train-travel had eased matters since his father?s time. Eighteen-year-old Modiri, 
undertook a veritable rail epic to reach his new school. He rapidly translated this enterprise into 
anecdote for the Mafikeng Molemas of his safe arrival: 
 
My Dearest Father 
I am sure you will be glad to hear of my safe arrival in Lovedale. I am well. I hope all are still well at home. 
I just arrived here yesterday ? Thursday afternoon at about four. My journey from Mafeking was very 
safe too. I arrived at Vryburg at 3 PM, and instantly got another train for Kimberley; I did not reach 
Kimberley until 2 oclock in the night.  
On Tuesday, I was joined by some Lovedale students, and we left Kimberley at 11.40 AM. I came up 
together with them as far as Cook House where I broke off my journey on Wednesday for a day and then on 
Thursday morning I took a train in the morning and was here in the afternoon.109  
I am glad to state that I did not have the unnecessary waitings which we anticipated. I have had to wait 
only in Kimberley, but even then I did not feel uneasy as I had a chance of knowing more about the place. I 
met Messrs Mbelle and Mshoko also Mrs Mbelle...110 
 
Less formal than in his Healdtown letter, Modiri apologised for some suspicious smudges: ?Please Papa 
pardon the blots?. Formality did not lessen his wish to assure Silas of his safety. By then, Modiri must 
have been well-acquainted with the Mafikeng-Fort Beaufort/Alice route. Still, neither he nor Silas, who 
had travelled there well before rail-transport, took the co-ordination of the journey?s four distinct ?legs? 
lightly: unforeseen delays and mishaps, especially at Kimberley, a major railway junction might arise. 
 
Train travel in 1910 was a racial undertaking. Anything might befall a black schoolboy at the hands of 
white guards. An odyssey in the Central South African Railway?s new third class trains, the ?Kafir 
Mail?, was usually humiliatingly squalid. To Plaatje, it South Africa?s ?Jim Crow? service: unpunctual, 
                                                 
107 SANAC, 1905: I, 1043-44, 21 March 1904, Mamba?s Evidence. 
108 MPP A979 Ac1, 06 July 1904, SJM, Zonnebloem College to STM, Maf. I Schapera, 1979. The Tswana. (London: 
International Africa Institute), p. 44: western nuclear families give ?aunts? and ?uncles? less purchase on children than their 
biological parents, but Tswana society enjoins a child to call adult males and females in the family ?rra? (father) and ?mme? 
(mother). English would describe Sebopiwa as Modiri?s ?cousin?; Modiri would have called him older brother: nkgonne.  
109 Mafikeng to Vryburg by rail is 157 km (?98 miles); thence to Kimberley 170 km (?106 miles); to Cookhouse, 588km 
(368 miles) and, finally to Fort Beaufort, 91km (57 miles): ?1006 km (?629 miles). 
110 MPP A979 Ad1, SMM, Lovedale to STM, p.1. RU, HL, Cory Library, LP, LMIAR, 1911, p.83: Horatio M?belle was 
Modiri?s contemporary. Willan (1984: 50) cited SM Molema, Biography of Sol Plaatje, p.27: Isaiah Budlwana M?belle was 
Plaatje?s brother-in-law. (Cf. infra, p.199). CCP 11/1/3: ?Electoral Division of Kimberley, 1897?: M?belle was registered in 
Kimberley as a voter in 1894, his profession ?interpreter?, and was a householder on Central Road. Aged 24, he joined the 
Kimberley Attorney-General?s offices (June 1894); by 1901, he was probably the Cape?s highest paid interpreter, earning 
above ?220 annually. Koranta, 01 June 1904, ?A Grand Tea Meeting?, recognising his eminence, St Paul?s Mission School, 
Beaconsfield, Kimberley asked M?belle to present prizes at on 09 May. 
Chapter Three 
 
182 
  
overcrowded, and terribly slow. ?[i]t took over 30 hours to reach Bloemfontein from Johannesburg ? a 
distance covered by the express [for whites] in 11 hours?.111 Africans fared worse in stations than on 
trains. In 1902, Vryburg station?s refreshment bar supervisor and her ?native servant? assaulted 
Plaatje.112 Going to school by train, Modiri would have repeatedly faced the government?s assumption 
that ?anything is good enough for a Kafir...?.113 Happily, his sangfroid in foreign parts sustained him, 
later saving him in Britain. His first Lovedale letter recorded how his abiding historical interest made 
him explore Kimberley, the forty-year-old city that had southern Africa?s modernisation had created.  
 
Safely at Lovedale, he began preparing for the Cape matriculation certificate with its vital university 
entrance. All was not plain sailing.114 First he had to sit the school?s stiff bursary examinations. Many 
scribbling frantically from 9am to 5pm for a place, had travelled from the country?s towns and villages 
for this privilege.115 Most African schools offered basic tuition to Standard III or IV; training colleges 
might proceed to Standard VI. Only Lovedale offered a university entrance examination to the most 
promising African scholars.116 Fearing he might not be accepted at his new school, Molema focussed 
intently on the bursary examinations he and 39 others sat. Results were delayed and while waiting, he 
inspected his new environment. Lovedale?s topography animated him as much as Healdtown?s. It was: 
 
...beautifully and even poetically situated, as it stands in the valley of the Tyumie, embossed in a profusion of 
trees and encircled by a ring of hills. To the uninitiated this is a serious temptation to misconstrue the name ? 
Lovedale. It lies seven hundred miles east-north-east of Cape Town and eighty miles north of East London.117  
 
A thousand miles from flat, dry Mafikeng, this landscape ringed by the Amatola Mountains, seemed 
quite exotic. The ?dale?s? lushness owed something to its natural endowment: rain. In most years it 
enjoyed almost as much as rain as Mafikeng in a ?wet year?. Shepherd showed how his evangelistic 
forbears had toiled to impose an ordered beauty reminiscent of Britain?s countryside (orchard and 
village) on ?wild? Africa.118 Likewise, the missionaries were re-creating the local peasantry as quasi-
 British farmers: market-oriented crop- and cattle-farmers who, in turn, re-fashioned colonial space 
according to a Christian, colonial vision. With the realist novelist?s eye, Trollope reported the students 
labour each afternoon to preserve that vision: 
 
[t]he native lads are called upon to work two hours each afternoon. They cut dams and make ready and take 
care of the garden. Added to the school are workshops in which young Kafirs are apprenticed. The carpenter?s 
department is by far the most popular, and certainly the most useful. Here, they make much of the furniture 
used upon the place, and repair the breakages. The waggon makers come next to the carpenters in number: 
and then, the blacksmiths. Two other trades are also represented ? printing...and bookbinding. There in all 27 
                                                 
111 Willan (1996: 144-45) cited Sol T Plaatje, Pretoria News, 03 March 1911, ?The ?Kaffir Mail?: Discriminating fares?. 
112 Willan Papers, 30 Dec 1902, Magistrate, Vryburg to Magistrate, Maf, ?Complaint of Sol Plaatje?. 
113 Willan, 1996: 145. Koranta, 30 March 1904, ?Natives on CSAR: Deputation to Traffic Manager?: Thomas Mapikela and 
Plaatje led a deputation against parlous railway conditions to OFS rail traffic manager, WH Barrett, demanding basic 
improvements: shelters for third class ?native passengers? at major stations, decent latrines, and ?steps...to have all slovenly 
and ramshackle closets cleaned...to ensure decency, privacy and the separation of the sexes?. 
114 MPP A979 Ad1, late 1910?, SMM, Lovedale, to STM, outlined Molema?s plans. 
115 Couzens? analysis (1985: 10) of The African Yearly Register?s biographies of the ?living? stated that over half these 114 
eminent persons had attended Lovedale. 65 (57%) were Lovedale alumni; 17 (14.9%) attended Healdtown, 8 (7%) 
Blythswood, 7 (6.1%) Kilnerton (near Pretoria), 6 (5.2%) St John?s, 4 (3.5%) Clarkebury, 2 (1.7%) each, Fort Hare 
University and Zonnebloem College, and 1 (0.8%) Ohlange (Natal), Tiger Kloof (Vryburg) and Adams College (Natal). 
116 Thema (1935: 24 & 29): in his chapter on coming to Lovedale, ?The Veil is Lifted?, he used the image of African 
?darkness? yielding to mission education?s ?light?. LP, LMIAR, 1910, p.99: Thema, (b.1886) entered Lovedale in 1906, 
studying inter alia Shorthand and Typing. He took second prize, in Modiri?s first year, 1910. 
117 Molema, 1920: 234. See Map, supra, pp.178-79. Shepherd (1942: 94): ?Immediately under these mountains [the 
Amatolas], and near the middle of the semi-circle, stood Chumie Mission Station, these oldest of all the stations, with the 
mission village almost buried among fruit trees, which had all been planted either by the missionaries or their converts.? 
118 LP, LIAMR, Annual Report, 1910: in 1910, Lovedale had 25?18 inches of rain. Its annual average for 30 years was 
24?27 inches. Cf. p.50 fn.87, showing Mafikeng?s declining rainfall. Shepherd (1942: 90) cited GMS Reports 1840, pp.17-18 
and 1841, p.17: larger than Healdtown, Lovedale was also better funded. The original edifice, later augmented by larger 
facilities, survived to remind generations of scholars of the school?s history of book-learning and manual work. 
Chapter Three 
 
183 
  
carpenters and four furniture makers, 16 waggon makers, 8 blacksmiths, 5 printers, and 2 bookbinders ? all of 
whom seemed to be making efficient way in their trades.119 
 
Trollope captured a somewhat ignored aspect of colonial settlement: that given poor transport, large 
distances between settlements and restricted access to products of all kinds, a mission station had to 
reproduce the kind of skilled artisan class that would have enabled a British village to sustain itself. 
 
Hankering after his ?old Institution ? Healdtown?, Modiri rejected this new setting when he next wrote 
home. Guessing too that money matters were uppermost in Silas? mind, he detailed the Bursary Exams. 
Examiners grilled the boys in ?Arithmetic, English ? (including, Analysis, paraphrasing and Dictation 
als[o] Translation) ? and general knowledge?. Silas stood warned that through no fault of his own, 
Modiri might have bungled the ?Sesuto?-English translation. His mother tongue was, after all, 
Serolong, a Setswana variant sharing some Sesotho grammatical structures, but differing in vocabulary 
and orthography. Setswana joined the Cape matriculation curriculum the next year, but was not much 
taught in the mainly Xhosa-speaking Eastern Cape, where would-be teachers settled for Sesotho.120 
Modiri?s attack of nerves proved unwarranted. Three days later he wrote to Mafikeng that, 
 
[t]he results have been published, and Papa you will, I am sure be glad to know that I obtained the top. The 
order of the names given below is the order of merit of those who got the bursary 
1.Molema 
2.Mlwandle 
3.Jabavu 
4.Niekerk 
Yes, papa I did get the top, and I am accordingly granted the bursary. My knowledge of English, I am told, is 
what helped me mostly. In Arithmetic I got 98 marks out of 100, and I missed the total only by 2 marks. I had 
[top obscured by water stain] mark in English. Papa Dear, I think I have made [it] clear and all I ask you to do 
is to write to Rev J Henderson, as to what you have to do as I have passed my Bursary.121 
 
That day, his teacher, Mr Moikangoa (from Mafeteng, Basutoland) confirmed this news to Silas. He 
seemed to know Silas well, having just visited the Molemas in Mafikeng. He judged that Modiri (in the 
?Normal? class) had ?done very well in the Examination?, coming top out of the 28 boys who sat the 
examination. Modiri had been modest, not revealing all his marks, which. Moikangoa confirmed:122 
 
Subject Arithmetic English Essay Reading Sesuto General 
Knowledge 
Total 
Maximum Marks 100 50 50 25 50 25 300 
Modiri Molema 98 25 35 13 42 2 218 
Alex Jabavu  ? ? ? ? ? ? 208 
Alfred Mlwandle ? ? ? ? ? ? 212 
David Niekerk ? ? ? ? ? ? 198 
 
Table 5: The Results of Modiri Molema?s Bursary Examination  
 
 
                                                 
119 Trollope, 1877: I, 160-61. 
120 MPP A979 Ad1, 25 Feb 1910, SMM, Lovedale to STM, pp.2-3. TsalaBC, 23 Dec 1911, ?Secoana?: only Tiger Kloof (nr 
Vryburg) and Pniel (near Kimberley) taught Setswana before 1911. Lovedale scholars and their parents thought the Sesotho 
examinations unfairly long, overtaxing examinees. Secoana/Sechuana were older spellings of Setswana. Tsala reprinted the 
first Sechuana Matriculation Paper, 30 Dec 1911. 
121 MPP A979 Ad1, 28 Feb 1910, SMM, Lovedale to STM, pp.1-3; in late 1908, Thema (1935: 29-30), awaiting bursary 
results, worked in the Johannesburg Pass Office?s Finger Impression Department, which awakened him to the oppression of 
?his people?, before Hobart-Houghton, the High School headmaster, wired that he had won the Hutton Scholarship.  
122 LP, LMIAR, Lovedale ROC, 1911, listed Moikangoa among the trainee teachers. He had entered Lovedale in 1906. 
Shepherd (1942: 518) stated that he was a ?teacher in the Practising School, 1907-26? and, thereafter, ?Itinerant Instructor in 
Orange Free State school?. MPP A979 Aa2, 28 Feb 1910, C[ornelius] Rakhosi Moikangoa, Lovedale, to Chief Silas 
Molema, Mafikeng: Moikangoa addressed Silas as ?Dear Father? and thanked him for behaving like ?a real father? to ?a 
stranger among you?. He apologised for giving only the total marks for the other boys. 
Chapter Three 
 
184 
  
Only the four whom Modiri and Moikangoa named would receive bursaries. Eleven others won 
Andrew Smith Bursaries that year, including Horatio M?belle, Alexander Jabavu, and Elijah Makiwane 
(junior). Lovedale offered over seven different bursaries and scholarships annually.123 
 
He had reason to spell things out for Silas, not just to ensure that family and Mafikeng friends like 
Theophilus Gaboutloeloe knew his triumph. He also wished Silas to be responsible for costs over and 
above the three-year grant.124 It embarrassed him that fees were still owed to Hornabrook, and he 
clearly thought complete clarity might wrest that debt from Silas: 
 
Father my dear, I would like that everything, in the way of money, owed to Rev Hornabrook should be settled 
soon. I shall also send you the account for my books.125 
 
Admittedly, Silas? accounts involved much borrowing and lending among his associates; Mafikeng?s 
traders, some clan members and especially his lawyers had reason to demand ?final? settlement of their 
accounts. He ignored Hornabrook?s bills, despite Modiri?s frequent entreaties. For the next year, Modiri 
wrangled with Silas over those offending ?9, while Hornabrook, with Henderson?s cooperation, held 
him a moral hostage to that debt. Mortified, Modiri explained the position definitively to Silas, 
pleading, ?I hope you will try and settle that amount as soon as...possible?.126 
 
Embarrassment regardless, Modiri adjusted to Lovedale, befriending a relative from home, Taoana 
[Tawana] or Robert, he told Silas in late 1910.127 Lovedale required students to surrender indigenous 
notions of time to the school?s daunting labour r?gime. Every boy must work ?two hours in the 
afternoons [at]?road-making, digging and hoeing; apart from the actual training they get thereby it is 
necessary for their bodily development and health?.128 With Presbyterian exactitude, each hour, each 
day had its ordained work. Thus Lovedale remoulded students? subjectivity: new duty, new time and 
new ambitions. Work intensified in September, he wrote, when the heavy season of examinations 
demanded glory of all students.129 Lovedale?s Presbyterian virtues mingled with Healdtown?s 
Methodism to become cornerstones of his character. Leloba Molema recalled the older Modiri as ?very 
moralistic, very strict. In terms of work ethic?.More than Methodist but also Presbyterian?when it 
came to work, work hard?. So highly did he prize hard work that on driving by his sister-in-law, Ella 
Moshoela (later Mrs Tshekedi Khama) walking to school, he refused her a lift, believing the walk good 
for her.130 He was then married to Anna Moshoela, his father?s sister, Ngwanakabo?s granddaughter.131 
                                                 
123 LP, LMIAR, 1910, p.101 and MS 16 292, ROC, 1911, show that Horatio entered Lovedale in 1902 and specialised in 
Handcraft in 1911, as did Niekerk (of Fordsburg, Johannesburg), who had also arrived in 1910. From Lower Tyumie came 
Elijah Makiwane (entered 1910) and brother, Tennyson (1908), who specialised in Business. Shepherd (1942: 487): 
Alexander Macaulay ?Mac? Jabavu (1889-1946) later edited Imvo Zabantsundu. Elijah Cecil Makiwane was Rev. Elijah 
Makiwane?s son, and autobiographer, Noni Jabavu?s malume (maternal uncle) (1982: 14-23): at Lovedale, Cecil was 
nicknamed ?Fish?, as he loathed the compulsory swims in the Tyumie River that one missionary teacher insisted they take. 
124 MPP A979 Ad1, Late [19 Dec?] 1910, SMM to STM, p.II. MM, 22 July 1913, ?Letter from Nota Bene to Editor?: 
Gaboutloeloe devoted at least part of his time to journalism. 
125 MPP A979 Ad1, 28 Feb 1910, SMM, Lovedale to STM, pp.1-3. 
126 See MPP A979 Aa2-Aa4 and especially Aa5, STM?s notebooks contained list of special taxpayers and livestock-sellers, 
all attesting to his capable record keeping. For demands from people who had loaned him money, cf. supra, p.161 & fns.388 
& 389. MPP A979 Ad1, 09 July 1911, SMM, Lovedale to STM. MPP A979 Ad1, Da15, [Nd] Apr 1911, Plaatje, Lovedale to 
STM: Modiri was also stressed by suffering eyestrain, he wrote to Sol Plaatje (Apr 1911), who told Silas. 
127 See Appendix A, p.III. MPP A979 Ad1, 09 July 1911, SMM, Lovedale to STM: Robert was perhaps the future Dr 
Robert Setlogelo of Thaba ?Nchu (LP, MS 16 292, ROC, 1911, p.2), who became Harriet?s second husband. 
128 SANAC, 1905: I, 680, 12 Nov 1903, Evidence of David Hunter, Lay Missionary, Free Church of Scotland, Lovedale. 
129 MPP A979 Ad1, 27 Sep 1910, SMM, Lovedale, to STM, p.1: ?Nako eno ea nyaga etletse tiro etona ea lithuto ka rebo 
rebakanyetsa li examinations?. [?This time of the year has a lot of work and learning as we are preparing for examinations?.] 
In Sesotho orthography (?li? is pronounced ?di?), Modiri signed himself ?Moliri?. De Kock (1996: 76: 32) cited Lovedale 
Collection, MS 10, 369: 24-28: years earlier, Lovedale master, James Aitken diarised Lovedale?s gruelling daily routine: 
?everything is managed with a regularity and a clock-work precision which would not suffer by comparison with the daily 
duties appertaining to the best regulated military barracks?.  
130 Leloba Molema Interview, 1992: Prof Molema stated that her uncle used cattle to pay for his young sisters-in-laws? 
schooling at Kilnerton. They were first wife, Anna?s sisters, daughters of Rev Molema Moshoela, Ngwanakabo?s son. Rre 
 
Chapter Three 
 
185 
  
Letters home enabled Modiri to keep imagining the Mafikeng world while living his full Lovedale life. 
But letters did not bridge the vastness between these worlds. He realised how rarefied school was. In 
The Bantu, picturing school from abroad, he described his school?s distance and difference from most 
South Africans? lives. Despite its spiritual and community service ethos, Lovedale?s religious and 
pedagogical discourses placed it in a different temporal and spatial dimension from most of the country. 
 
?[B]eautifully and even poetically situated...in the valley of the Tyumie?: Molema situated the school in 
a mythopoeic vale of peace, like his 1955 Healdtown description. In this valley, Africans could, as 
nowhere else, learn trades and professions and thereby often escape the menial roles segregationist 
government and supporters assigned them. Molema credited both GMS missionaries and Cape 
government for shaping Lovedale?s early development: Dr Love, a GMS founder gave the school its 
name, Govan its substance, and Sir George Grey its future direction.132 ?Love?, in happy coincidence, 
the fundamental Christian precept, he noted. Allegory aside, the ?dale? (like Chumie Station) was 
?manmade?, a collaboration between missionaries and Africans, both sheltering from Xhosa overlords, 
trying to garner a living and educate their children. Missions accrued temporal and spiritual power and, 
like frontier military fortifications, embodied ?force ? guns, water, the plow, the written word, and the 
underlying power that animated them? for all who ?believed?.133 
 
Molema?s Lovedale narrative in The Bantu exuded religious imagery. Like Healdtown, it was for him a 
?beacon?, showering enlightenment on Africans: 
 
Dr Stewart became its principal in 1870. From humble beginnings, Lovedale, under his principalship, grew to 
be the most brilliant source of light for the Bantu peoples of South Africa. It has been, is, supported 
financially by the Free Church of Scotland, who govern it from Edinburgh. It is, however, entirely 
unsectarian, and within its walls all denominations all nationalities, and all colours are to be found. At one 
time as many as fifteen nationalities were represented in it?.134 
 
Lovedale?s egalitarianism and ?nonracialism? impressed him deeply. Like Moikangoa, he venerated 
Stewart, their school?s embodiment. Neither they nor the many students who thanked Stewart 
gratefully, censured his condescension ? at least not in their writings.135 The Christian Express, 
Lovedale?s official mouthpiece, proudly commended the school?s fifty nonracial years, ?[i]n boarding 
establishments there is no such thing anywhere in Africa or America?.136 Lovedale encouraged students 
to believe that fidelity to Empire and western education merited the reward of equal citizenship. This 
was one of a series of exchanges, (citizenship for loyalty, representation for taxation) which indicated 
their recognition of the Cape colonial state, disapprove of some government policies though they might. 
 
For Molema education was the missionaries? most powerful weapon, and wrought structural socio-
 economic division among the African population. In contemporary ethnographic typology, he classified 
Africans as ?civilised?, ?semi-barbarous? or ?barbarous?. While readers ninety years later might oppose 
                                                                                                                                                                  
Piriepa Thwane Interview, 1992: Mr Thwane, over 90 at the time, and Dr Molema?s steward at Motsosa Estate also 
emphasised Modiri?s devotion to hard work, and exhortations to others to do likewise.  
131 MPP A979 Ad3, 19 May 1919, SMM (to HM) conveyed his feelings for Anna after her engagement to Mmadichukudu. 
132 For Molema (1920: 234): Lovedale?s heritage embodied Grey?s supposedly peaceable intentions to incorporate rather 
than slaughter Xhosa frontier farmers. On Grey, Saul Dubow, ?Race, civilisation and culture: the elaboration of 
segregationist discourse in the inter-war years?, Marks & Trapido (1987: 74) cited R Parry, 1983. ??In a sense citizens, but 
not altogether citizens...?: Rhodes, race and the ideology of segregation at the Cape in the late nineteenth century?, Canadian 
Journal of African Studies, 17 (3): 384-88.  
133 Jean Comaroff, 1985: 150ff. 
134 Molema, 1920: 234. 
135 De Kock (1996: 96-100) cited students? praises of Stewart. 
136 Shepherd (1942: 98-99) cited Christian Express, Sep 1891, p.139. On the missionaries? role in Cape liberalism, see 
Trapido, in Marks & Atmore, 1980: 259, 267. On the Cape franchise, see Davenport (1991: 91, 106-08, 281-86): though the 
Cape included Africans in the franchise (1853), successive governments? ambivalence towards their inclusion, and the 
liberal opposition?s inability to insist upon it, resulted in their increasing exclusion.  
Chapter Three 
 
186 
  
such terminology, Molema used the racial and class discourse of his age, partly because he was steeped 
in it, and because his readers were too. To an extent, this portrait of Lovedale was his own intellectual 
history. By implication, his text placed him in the ranks of that small ?civilised?, socially-ambiguous 
professional class. The black intelligentsia might feel distant from less-educated Africans, but identified 
politically and culturally with them because their white professional counterparts scorned them utterly: 
?[t]he colour sentiment against these civilised blacks, then, is greater than it is against the uncivilised; 
they are more open to it, and apt to feel it more than their simpler brethren?.137  
 
Strong social and familial stimuli made him and many classmates prize academic achievement above 
rubies. This may explain his echo of Stewart?s master narrative of ?civilisation? and its elevation of 
Lovedale?s previously downcast communities:138 
 
[t]here is slowly growing up a small, but steadily increasingly class among the Native population of this 
country who are possessed of acquirements educationally of which their forefathers did not dream, and did 
not even know the name.139 
 
Molema accepted his place in the emergent social stratum he scrutinised, but did not preface The Bantu 
with the phrase ?a member of the class?.140 In 1917, popular culture, the sciences and humanities used 
race as the dominant system of explaining unequal access to political, social and economic power. 
Racial discourse normalised white ascendancy over all black classes. In Dubow?s words, ?[t]he lived 
relations of paternalism which bound black and white together in South Africa presented white 
supremacy as part of the natural order of things in its (im)moral universe?.141 This racially-embattled 
country?s citizens often underplayed class concerns, as did Molema ? until The Bantu?s latter sections. 
In these later chapters, the traditional African culture often fell foul of his emergent class perspective: 
 
[m]issionary work at Lovedale is carried on among the Bantu on three main lines ? religious, educational, 
and industrial. Medical work is also done in the Lovedale Hospital, and is an effective means of dealing 
death-blows at superstition.142 
 
This statement revealed his Modernism. In disparaging traditional knowledge as ?superstition? to be 
eradicated, he supported 1920s Christian and scientific notions of ?natural? order. 
 
Here, The Bantu clearly denounced older conceptions of African curative medicine and other beliefs 
missionaries deplored. He proclaimed the contribution of Lovedale and, more personally, three 
generations of Rolong Methodists, against centuries of traditionalist belief. Following missionary and 
scientific teaching, he spurned the vast hinterland of social and customary healing in Tswana societies, 
thus overlooking western medicine?s colonising role. Healing, possibly more than any other area of 
Tswana life, was highly-prized and became a flash-point of conflict in the early nineteenth century. 
Successive missionary medics (like Livingstone and Mackenzie) tried to superimpose on the 
psychosocial process of Tswana healing an amalgam of ?pure science? and Christianity. Often they 
used their curative methods artfully, as ?miracles? and ?revelations? to convert the ?heathen?. 
Scientifically-sanctioned potions and regimens were so often instruments of religious conversion that 
                                                 
137 Molema, 1920: 276. Enoch Mamba told SANAC (1905: I, 1033) that educated Africans often felt angry at wielding no 
power in their communities, while the state deliberately appointed Headmen ?who [are] averse to all civilisation?. 
138 For De Kock (1996: 123), this ?grand narrative? contained a ?teleology of ultimate fairness and equal justice in a British 
constitutional system...?. Peregrino (SANAC, 1905: I, 320) agreed that natives should advance ?by slow stages of 
evolution?.. The ?grand narrative? was a work of many hands. Hewson?s (1959: I, 43: 111) cited C.O.3904, no.269, 02 Aug 
1816, Shaw, Memorial to Somerset. See Barnabas Shaw?s statement on Industrial Education to Cape Governor Somerset, 
cited supra, p.110-11 fn.65. 
139 Shepherd (1942: 216) cited James Stewart, 1886. Lovedale Past and Present. (Lovedale), pp.xvii & xviii. 
140 Cf. Molema, 1920: viii. 
141 Dubow, 1987: 75. 
142 Molema, 1920: 232. 
Chapter Three 
 
187 
  
?medical missions...often acted as a key to unlock the hearts of many [people] the world over? the 
London Missionary Society?s Founders? Week Convention (1895) records noted.143 Molema?s 
preference for western over Tswana medicine was as ambiguous as his socio-political philosophy. 
 
The passage of time did not change his mind. In Chief Moroka (1951), he enunciated that in Setswana 
conceptions of healing: 
 
[e]very misfortune, every calamity and every fatality was ascribed to...perverse and malignant forces, 
manifested through and directed by human agencies...the whole business of life became one long sustained 
effort to overmaster, defeat or frustrate, avert, escape, humour or propitiate these sinister forces.144 
 
This statement explained the ?superstition? to which his 1920 comment alluded. He still construed 
?superstition? as the opposite of religion, rationalism and science his Christian upbringing and medical 
training gave him. Against traditional medical practice, he articulated both missionary orthodoxy and 
modernist ?faith? in the rationalism of science. In so doing, he replicated the Lovedale worldview, as 
mediated through Dr Neil Macvicar, another Scottish University graduate. More of him later. 
 
Determined othering of ?superstitions? and ?heathens? was integral to his upbringing and education ? 
a missionary contribution to the African elite?s creation. Molema anathematised that other system?s 
beliefs; ironically, these ?heathen? customs were strong enough to require his rhetorically violent 
?Death-blows?! The Bantu?s language and narrative veiled and unveiled his ambivalence towards 
Setswana culture and history. Phrased assertively, his verbal combat against the Other manifested 
initially as personal. But he was the bearer of two colonial discourses, Christianity and Modernism, 
which aimed jointly to assimilate Africans into global cultures of thought and consumption. 
 
Othering involved a deliberate lived and narrative strategy of ?making strange?, of inhabiting ancestral 
communities yet distancing one?s self from their beliefs and practices. Although Molema and 
contemporaries were technically not strangers in a strange land, western religion and education made 
them believe undereducated, non-Christian Africans significantly different from themselves. Education 
also gave him the power to narrativise the experience of people like and unlike himself. 
 
Structural ambiguity underlay the representation process. For while he depicted ?semi-civilised? 
communities as Other, he constructed ?Africanness? as a national, potentially unifying force, in 
opposition to government iniquity. The Bantu portrayed a country united geographically, but estranged 
on ethnic, racial and class lines. This estrangement made people living beyond each other?s perceived 
boundaries seem alien to one another and contemporary nationalist orators and writers accentuated the 
need for supra-tribal unity amongst Africans.145 For those who, like Molema, travelled far for their 
education, those perimeters would have been familiar and strange in distinctive ways. When proposing 
the formation of a non-tribal body to represent all Africans, Pixley ka I Seme had rejected:  
 
[t]he demon of racialism, the aberration of the Xhosa-Fingo feud, the animosity?between the Zulus and the 
Tongas, between the Basuto and every other Native...We are one people. These jealousies, these divisions are 
the cause of all our woes and of all our backwardness and ignorance today.146 
 
                                                 
143 Cf. Comaroff & Comaroff (1991: 157-58) cited supra, p.12 fn.67. Molema devoted The Bantu?s Chapter XVI to 
individual Scottish medical missionaries. See supra, pp.178-80, 185-86. Comaroff & Comaroff (1997: 333) cited LMS, Sep 
1895. Proceedings of the Founders Week Convention. (London) 
144 Comaroff & Comaroff (1997: 343) cited Molema, 1951: 185-86. 
145 Cf. infra, p.348, for Seme?s comments on the need to found the SANNC. 
146 SOAS Archive, London University, Mary Benson Papers, ?The African Patriots?, p.29, 24 Oct 1911, Seme to Imvo. 
Drum, July 1953. In Walshe, 1987: 34. Seme also stated in Imvo, 24 Oct 1911 (in Walshe, 1987: 33): ?[w]e are one people. 
These divisions, these jealousies are the cause of all our woes and of all our backwardness and ignorance today?.  
Chapter Three 
 
188 
  
Political life, in which Modiri?s father and his many friends were increasingly involved, provided him 
with outside interests. While at school, his thinking appears to have matured under the strong influence 
of his Principal, Henderson, and the much-quoted, though late, Stewart. Eastern Cape students saw 
Lovedale?s Principal take the national stage when invited to advise the National Convention to which 
representatives of many African political organisations flocked. Coming near the end of Modiri?s 
Healdtown career, this immense gathering of African politicians (12 October 1908), can only have 
swept him up in the nationalising movement that would reject the all-white unification plans.147  
 
Modiri had good reason to observe the Convention: his father was the delegate for Bechuanaland. One 
pungent Silas contribution exemplified values his children encountered at home. Seconding AK Soga?s 
censure of the Colour Bar, Silas declared ?the colour bar offended his dignity and religious values: 
?[t]he natives are human, created by God, and their rights should not be taken from them??.148 Silas? 
humanism, like Soga?s, characterised the elite?s endorsement of equal rights, British justice and Cape 
liberalism. As David Chanaiwa argued, ?[t]o the African elites, the theory, and to some extent the 
practice of Cape liberalism represented nonracialism, justice, democracy and common citizenship?.149  
 
Silas was the most authoritative figure in Modiri?s life, with Henderson, a close second. ?Education was 
a ?pearl of great price?, he told the upturned faces before him, adding that their parents and communities 
laboured on farms and in mines for years to fund their schooling.150 Recognising that most students? 
came from agricultural communities, Henderson urged them to remember the importance of agricultural 
skills no matter how much book-learning they imbibed. Deflating some students? dreams of the 
medical, legal, and ministerial careers, he reminded them that their ?future as a race was bound up with 
their use of the soil?. In the current political ferment, he added, Lovedale?s duty was to produce future 
leaders, and cultivate responsibility to the character-building virtues of discipline, obedience and self-
 restraint.151 Around 1912, Henderson?s insistence on Africans? ties with ?the soil? became increasingly 
conservative as, often joining government initiatives, he opposed the trend towards urbanisation.152 
 
School was not all about principals and national awareness. Modiri?s peers also provided political 
education. On 15 August 1910, a food riot erupted. The samp, a standard menu item ordered regularly 
from Kingwilliamstown, was stored in a tank, and had gone ?off?. Girls and boys alike balked at eating 
it. Henderson descended from his secluded dining quarters to the pupils? and ordered the ?rotten? 
mealies laid in the sun to dry pending the fresh maize?s arrival on Monday 29 August. Restlessness 
mounted throughout Sunday 21 August at the thought of another samp-less week. Next afternoon, 
students downed pens and tools in revolt against Lovedale?s strict r?gime. After thunderous protests 
                                                 
147 Odendaal (1984: 118): other Cape advisors included Thembuland MLA, Theo Schreiner (1844-1920) and Joseph Orpen. 
African newspapers supporting the Convention included Eastern Cape media rivals, Imvo (Jabavu) and Izwi Labantu (Soga 
brothers and Rubusana). (Cf. Wilson & Perrot, 1973: 708.) ?Nationalising? is used to describe the lengthy negotiations 
between delegates of many political positions from which a countrywide African nationalist alliance emerged by early 1912.  
148 Odendaal (1984: 179) cited The Friend, 27 March 1909 and Soga?s opinion that most Africans ?still had a long way to 
go before they could participate on an equal footing with Europeans...?. This statement and Molema?s opinion (1920: 240) 
that ?the Bantu are in their teens?, revealed the ambiguity of African liberalism. 
149 De Kock (1996: 112-13) cited David Chanaiwa, 1980. ?African Humanism in South Africa: The Utopian Traditionalist, 
and Colonialist Worlds of Mission-Educated Elites?. In AT Mugomba & M Nyaggah (eds), 1980. Independence Without 
Freedom: The Political Economy of Colonial Education in Southern Africa. (Santa Barbara; Oxford: ABC-Clio), p.16. 
150 Adult Modiri also used the proceeds of farming to fund his children and relatives? education. Leloba Molema (Interview, 
1992) recounted that her father, Sefetoge had studied in Edinburgh for ?...ten years, without ever once coming back. And he 
didn?t have a scholarship; he was educated with cattle left to my uncle by his father, charged with taking care of his younger 
brothers and sisters, and I guess he did a good job, took it very seriously?. The Royal College of Physicians [RCOP] Queen 
Street, Edinburgh, (20 Apr 1939: No.7859) recorded that Dr SS Molema took the Triple Qualification in 1939, licensing him 
to practise medicine, as the licentiate of three Royal Colleges: Physicians, Edinburgh, Surgeons, Edinburgh, and Physicians 
and Surgeons, Glasgow. His address was c/o McPherson, 2 Royal Crescent, Edinburgh.  
151 Shepherd, 1942: 269-70, 279. Cobley (1997: 72): Makiwane (1850-1928), was the second African ordained as an United 
Free Church of Scotland Minister. 
152 Dubow (1995: 200): creditably, Hornabrook and Henderson?s evidence to the Government Select Committee on Native 
Education (1912) contested the theory that adult Africans suffered from ?arrested development?. 
Chapter Three 
 
189 
  
during supper, ?uproar? ensued, with boys ?shouting and rolling stones on the iron roof of the lavatory 
and some of the dormitories?. Briefly glorious, they occupied the space their schoolmasters controlled 
so rigorously. The protest?s vehemence suggested underlying issues, but reports omitted these.153 
 
Henderson was not unsympathetic, but a fortnight elapsed between discovering the rotten maize and the 
arrival of fresh stock. He berated the suppliers, the Kaffrarian Steam Mill Company, but the delivery 
date could not be brought forward, in that era of mostly horse-drawn transport.154  
 
Knowing his limited communication powers, he hastily summoned Elijah Makiwane (senior), to 
?reason? with the boys in the Large Hall at 7.30 pm. Makiwane?s authority derived from his being one 
of Lovedale?s first two ministerial graduates and the founder of the Native Education Association.155 
His sons, Elijah and Tennyson, were Modiri?s contemporaries. He did not calm the scholars for long.156 
Despite Henderson?s rejection of the rotten food, the ?trouble? made his position untenable: a ?riot? 
could worsen Lovedale?s image, confirming white prejudice. Striving to placate the irascible Muir, still 
negatively disposed to African education, Henderson deliberately downplayed events: only six, 
doubtless hungry boys went ?out of bounds...to steal oranges? from one of the school?s orchards. He 
estimated that another fifth of the scholars marched into Alice next morning to telegraph Muir their 
protests. But, Henderson soothed the SGE, these boys were ?troublesome? ?Fingo? first years (Modiri?s 
class), in the Normal Department. These ?weak unstable characters? did not represent the whole school. 
 
Ultimately, eight dissidents were expelled and rusticated; eighty more chose to follow. Their parents, 
backing Henderson, returned them to school!157 Modiri?s name was absent from the list sent to Muir, 
showing that he had not rioted. Perhaps fearing paternal reaction, he omitted these events from letters. 
Probably, he did not enjoy damp samp either but, as in later life, avoided violence in making his point.  
 
Such tumult was rare. Students usually followed the school?s daily routines. Lovedale life was 
humdrum, Modiri told his sister Harriet in September 1911: ?[l]ife is running on pretty smoothly out 
here ? Niether [sic] very dull nor yet very bright except on special occassions [sic]. But every one is 
busy preparing for examinations you know, this is a busy session?.158 He did not say that, at the 
monthly debate in June, he had opposed his friend Horatio M?belle?s motion, ?Was the Acquittal of 
Warren Hastings justifiable?? Several debates topics that year later resurfaced in The Bantu. Modiri and 
Horatio also sat together on the Lovedale Training Society Committee, which aimed to encourage the 
scholars? love of learning and literature. At weekly meetings Debates, essays, readings and recitations 
were presented on such heated issues as ?Should Kafir Beer be dispensed with?? (22 April) and ?Would 
Woman Suffrage be beneficial to South Africa?? (6 May).159  
                                                 
153 SGE 1/924, 31 Aug 1910, James Henderson to Dr Muir, ?Report regarding the Insubordination of certain pupils at 
Lovedale, 21-24 Aug, [19]10. 
154 SGE 1/924, 31 Aug 1910, Memorandum of Inspector TW Rein to SGE, Cape Town; 23 Aug 1910, SS Wilson, Grain 
Department, The Kaffrarian Steam Mill Co. Ltd, King William?s Town to James Henderson Esq. 
155 Jordan (1984): Makiwane founded the Native Education Association in 1884, at a time when political organisation was 
crystallising in the Eastern Cape. Imbumba Yama Nyama, the South African Aborigines? Association, had been founded in 
1882. In 1884, JT Jabavu also founded the Native Electoral Association.  
156 Higgs (1997: 55) and Odendaal (1984: 6-8): in 1876, Makiwane was Isigidimi Sama Xhosa?s first editor. Noni Jabavu 
(1963 & 1982: 18): Makiwane?s daughters Florence and Freda married DDT Jabavu and ZK Matthews. LMIAR, 1910, 
Florence was a first year student when Modiri was in second year. Cf. supra, fn.123 & infra, fn.196 on the Makiwanes. 
157 SGE 1/924, 31 Aug 1910, James Henderson to Dr Muir, ?Report regarding the Insubordination of certain pupils at 
Lovedale, 21-24 Aug, [19]10; Alice Times, 28 Aug 1910, ?Revolt at Lovedale: Students Dissatisfied?. 
158 MPP A979 Ad3, 03 Sep 1911, SMM to HM. RU LP, MS 16 292, ROC, 1911, p.2: listed Modiri?s name in the Second 
Year Class for Matriculation. 
159 LP, LMIAR, 1911, p.81-82. Proposers were JP Kobe ?The Future of South Africa? (24 March), EG Kumalo ?The 
Dignity of Labour?; N Bouverie ?Duties of Civilised and Uncivilised Nations?, bursary student, Mlwandle ?The Present 
State of Civilisation amongst the Natives? (7 Apr) and Tennyson Makiwane, ?Which exercises the greatest influence for 
good ? the pulpit or the Press?? (22 Sept). The Victoria Day Concert, arranged by Mr FS Zibi, took place on 26 May. 
Jeremiah Kobe and Ewart Kumalo were second year Normal Department students. Bouverie was in the First Year B group. 
LP, LMIAR, 1911, p.83, Cf. MM, 06 Oct 1911, ?Kaffer Beer?. Tennyson Makiwane was the Secretary.  
Chapter Three 
 
190 
  
Letters kept him close to his family, but could not replace them. Though devoted to his sisters, his bond 
with Harriet was especially close. He commiserated over her ordeals in finding work, playfully offering 
to coax Silas to send her to Lovedale. Eldest sister, Seleje, (?Mrs Taoana?, he teased her) stood rebuked 
for writing briefly and being too devoted to her children. He hid his hurt behind masterful simile that 
revealed how politics preyed on his mind: ?[d]on?t treat me as the Union Government is treating the 
Natives please ? cruelly and mercilessly Oh don?t my sweet sister Seleje ? don?t?. That September, 
Sebopiwa, fresh from America, revisited Lovedale to find Modiri frantically preparing for exams.160 
 
Ordinary examinations he could manage, but was unprepared to take matriculation a year earlier than 
anticipated. He learnt too late that his name somehow featured on the 1911 examinees list. Worse, 
Modiri protested, Mr KA Hobart-Houghton had no time to inform the Education Department of the 
error. More terrifyingly, he had to explain the confusion to Silas, ?... a day before the examinations in 
November, he [Houghton] got a wire...that my name had been enrolled for Matriculation, so I just sat 
for the examination?. He concluded forlornly, ?I have hope Rra?.161  
 
Clearly there was confusion, as Houghton had told Silas in September that he had entered Modiri for 
the University Senior School Leaving Certificate, the equivalent of the ?matriculation?, adding that 
Latin was not compulsory for the former. He believed Modiri was ready for this examination: ?Your 
son has been doing good work and has made considerable progress in his studies?.in the work he does 
in connection with the hospital?.162 With hindsight, application in September for such an important 
examination may seem late and may explain why the department did not confirm until November, 
which would explain why Modiri had not, apparently, begun preparation.  
 
After this character-building experience, he made arrangements to pay Healdtown the debt that Silas 
steadfastly resisted settling. Silas was financially overextended, with lawyers? fees, and Sefetogi and 
Morara?s Mafikeng school fees straining his income.163 Being married, Seleje was no longer his care, 
but Harriet, though qualified, was still jobless.164 This did not fully explain why he had not paid the 
two-year-old account for which Hornabrook and Henderson were pressuring Modiri. Into the breach 
stepped farsighted Neil Macvicar.  
 
Macvicar was one of the remarkable medical men of his time, hard taskmaster and an inspiration, who 
?almost completely fulfilled the ideals of the movement for medical missionaries?.165As a medical 
missionary, both Livingstone and HM Stanley had kindled his desire to serve Africa. Like Livingstone, 
Mackenzie, Stewart and Henderson, his origins lay in small-town Scotland?s Presbyterian piety: he was 
                                                 
160 MPP A979 Ad3, 03 Sep 1911, SMM to HM and 15 Sep 1914, SMM to Madam S[eleje] J Taoana. TsalaBC, 23 Sep 
1911, ?Baeti? [?Visitors?]. On Sebopiwa, see MPP A979 Ad1, 27 Apr 1920, MSM to STM. Cf. supra, p.131 & fn.198. 
161 MPP Ad1, p.2, first page missing, others dated 1911. Wilson & Perot (1973: 701): Stewart convinced Hobart-Houghton 
(1880-1960), MA Trinity College, Dublin, (1902) to work at Lovedale. He became Inspector of Schools in 1914. Thema 
(1935: 30): ?Mr Houghton was the headmaster of the High School....an able master, competent teacher and a great builder of 
character. His sole ambition was to popularize the academic course [standard VI]?.Some [to-day hold] important positions 
among the African people?Others have fought and are still fighting battles in the cause of African freedom?. 
162 MPP A979 Aa2.31, 12 Sep 1911, KA Hobart Houghton, Lovedale, to Chief STM, Maf: the letter is slightly torn. 
163 MPP A979 Aa3.6.1, 15 July 1904: Silas had many financial obligations. He and Plaatje loaned ?650 from Charles 
Wenham to fund Koranta, mid-1904, at 12% interest. During 1911, Plaatje begged Silas for funds ? unsuccessfully. 
Though he leased land to white farmers, their rents were often late. His cattle-and land-based finances yielded little ?ready? 
money. Family letters show that he continually sent them small sums but still owed more, eg. A979 Aa104 May 1908, 
Harriet Molema, Emgwali to STM, Maf, thanked him for ?6.2.1, saying she still owed ?12/6 for books. 
164 MPP A979 Ad1, 08 March 1911, SMM to STM: despite good qualifications, Harriet found no work, eventually taking a 
post at underfunded Lyndhurst Road School. Also TsalaBC, 23 Dec 1911, ?Personalia?, ?Miss Harriet Molema, of the 
Lyndhurst Road Public School, left on Saturday, [for] the jubilee of her Alma Mater [at]?Emgwali this week. Emgwali 
Girls School is under the auspices of the ladies of Glasgow?. MPP A979 Ae3, 7 Oct 1911, [Miss] Janet MacGregor invited 
Emgwali Alumni to the Reunion. Several third-generation Molemas (Modiri, Morara, Sefetoge, and Sebopiwa) attended 
Healdtown and Lovedale before tertiary education. Seleje and Ketlareng just attended Lovedale. (Cf. MPP A979 Aa1, 04 
May 1908, HTM, Girls? Dept, Emgwali, to STM indicated her ?money troubles?; LP MS 16 292, ROC, 1904, pp.16-17.)  
165 AC Ross, ?The Scottish Missionary Doctor?. In Derek Dow (ed), 1988. The Influence of Scottish Medicine: A Historical 
Assessment of its International Impact. (Carnforth, Lancashire: Parthenon). 
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191 
  
born in 1871 at his father?s Manor manse. His long five-year legal apprenticeship to Blackwood & 
Smith, Peebles, indicated his famed thoroughness; but then he turned to medicine. He distinguished 
himself at Edinburgh University?s Medical School, earning several eminent professors? praise and 
partaking fervently in the Medical Students? Christian Association.166 
 
After four years at the Church of Scotland?s Blantyre mission, Nyasaland, Macvicar migrated south to 
their pre-eminent southern African mission, Lovedale, which was taking health care increasingly 
seriously. He was tasked with improving the image of the station?s Victoria Hospital, one of many like-
 named memorials to the late queen?s diamond jubilee.167 Having opened inauspiciously just before the 
South African War, the hospital closed for its duration. Many Lovedale inhabitants distrusted its 
medicine.168 Shepherd, Macvicar?s biographer and Lovedale?s future principal, wrote, ?conservative 
Africans thought of a hospital as a place of death rather than of life?.169 Macvicar ???an ideal medical 
missionary?? ? reached Lovedale in 1902, as the War ended and the hospital re-opened. In missionary 
style, he soon allegorised the hospital as a beacon of light in a dark world, words that unintentionally 
prefigured Molema?s 1917 contrast between science and superstition.170 
 
Prejudice cut several ways: while Africans feared the hospital, white prejudice against hospital care for 
and by Africans ran high. Furthermore, African curative practitioners struggled increasingly to meet 
their communities? needs. Shula Marks analysed the rise of industrial diseases and declining health of 
South African black people, noting the contemporary adage that ??infectious disease knows no colour 
bar??. Medical and government circles concluded that white nurses could not tend black patients, and 
thus, in the early 1900s, decided that ?[a]ny expansion of hospital services for blacks was thus seen to 
necessitate the training of more black nurses?.171  
 
Modiri was part of this process of training black medical personnel, fostered by Macvicar at Lovedale. 
Yet, the treatment he received from those hallowed white nurses, two decades after the training 
programme began, sadly showed that prejudice was outpacing medical training. In 1927, now Dr 
Molema, he felt white nurses? indignation at ?taking orders? from a black doctor. Whereas Lovedale?s 
Victoria Hospital had ushered him into medical practice, the white nurses at Mafikeng?s Victoria 
Hospital struck to protest against taking orders from a black doctor.172 
 
Macvicar?s chief contribution to South African medical practice was to train several generations of 
African nurses to staff the country?s hospitals. He held that the spread of contagious diseases among 
black people, and white nurses? aversion to caring for them confirmed the need for black nurses.173 
Edinburgh University had made him a modern scientist, but Lovedale made him forward-looking. He 
further objected that black nurses? training was tolerated as essential to South Africa?s social survival, 
                                                 
166 RHW Shepherd, 1952. A South African Pioneer: The Life of Neil Macvicar. (Lovedale: Lovedale Press), p.16: in 1893, 
Macvicar interviewed Stanley in Edinburgh. His professors praised him for surviving smallpox and scarlet fever to take first 
class honours as his year?s best student. Prof John Chiene extolled his distinction in Surgery, Medicine, Midwifery and 
Medical Jurisprudence. He specialised for 6 months under physician, Argyle Robertson, and eye-surgeon Prof Greenland. 
Specialist eye-care was, he believed, essential for any doctor going to Africa. 
167 Shula Marks, 1994. Divided Sisterhood: Race, Class and Gender in the South African Nursing Profession. (JHB: WUP), 
p.81. See Appendix D for Noni Jabavu?s 1960s? description of the hospital. 
168 Wells (1919: 227-30): in 1895, DA Hunter organised the collection of a ?large sum?, which the Colonial Government 
matched pound for pound, for the Hospital?s construction. 
169 Shepherd?s (1952: 83) opinion of African conservatism suggests that Molema?s disdain for African medicine had strong 
marks of Lovedale ideology. 
170 Wells, 1919: 228. LP, LMIAR, 1910, Dr N Macvicar, ?The Victoria Hospital?, p.100. Also Shepherd, 1952: 8 & 
Shepherd, 1942: 356. 
171 Marks, 1994: 82. 
172 Marks, 1994: 59-60. Victor Mapanya Interview, 1992: in sad irony, when Dr Molema fell ill suddenly (Sep 1965), his 
son, Lesedi, rushed him to the Victoria Hospital, which had ejected him in 1927. He died in the foyer. See infra, p.341. 
173 Shepherd, 1952, endpaper Map of Macvicar Nurses throughout South Africa. Marks (1994: 84) cited RU, Unaccessioned 
Macvicar Papers, 20 May 1904, Macvicar to Stewart. 
Chapter Three 
 
192 
  
but that training black doctors (in university and hospital facilities) was not. He fought the authorities, 
but they only allowed him to train blacks as medical orderlies. Even in 1929, fifteen years after Modiri 
went to Glasgow, future ANC President, Dr AB Xuma wrote, ?the doors of opportunity and training are 
barred and bolted against? black would-be doctors; South Africa had only seven black doctors in all! 174 
In 1936, the South African population was 9.5 million, of which Africans numbered 6.5 million (69 per 
cent), whites numbered 2 million (21 per cent).175 
 
On arriving at Lovedale, Macvicar doubted that black students could master the full medical curriculum 
but, as Xuma loved quoting in later years, he soon learned that ?[a]fter a high school education Bantu 
students can go through the European medical course as successfully as any other students?.176 
Macvicar?s pioneering encouragement of African nurse and doctor training epitomised Lovedale?s 
mildly assimilationist beliefs about African education. For years, he and professional nursing bodies 
fought government proposals to foist second-grade education on African and ?Coloured? nurses.177 The 
South African Medical Council and successive governments prevaricated even longer over unbolting 
?the doors of opportunity? to black doctors. Future African, ?Coloured? and Indian doctors had to train 
abroad. Only in 1928 would CT Loram?s investigation into the medical training of Africans be tabled in 
parliament and the gradual reform of medical education begin.178  
 
In 1911, Macvicar could train the passionate young Mafikeng man only as an orderly. Sensing Modiri?s 
talent and sympathetic to his financial troubles, Macvicar tutored him.179 Black orderlies could work 
only with their ?own people?, as doctors? aids and in understaffed Transkeian dispensaries. 
 
At Lovedale, then, Modiri began to identify with the faith, ideology and personality of these ?good 
Scots?: Govan, Stewart, Henderson and, above all, Macvicar, through whose compassion and 
discipline, he came closer to his goal of becoming a doctor. 
 
?O Tsetse Fella Yaka Peba? (?Like Father, Like Son?) ? Modiri versus Silas: 180 
 
Modiri first mentioned this exceptional doctor that year, when Macvicar cured him of an eye infection 
? Macvicar?s specialisation.181 Once recovered, Modiri performed duties at the Hospital for the rest of 
the year, getting to know the doctor. Macvicar wanted to win him uninterrupted time at the hospital, and 
proposed a special arrangement to repay Healdtown?s debt: 
 
[y]ou know Rra there was a bill of ?9 owing to Mr Hornabrook in Healdtown that is part of my school 
fees which was not payed [sic] when I was there. This bill [illegible] is now to be paid and settled by Dr 
Macvicar on conditions that this coming year I help as a hospital orderley [sic] in the Victoria Hospital at 
                                                 
174 UW, Xuma Papers, ABX230723, 23 July 1923, ?Marquette University School of Medicine, Second Year Class Report.... 
June 13, 1923?, Xuma graduated at Marquette, Milwaukee, WI. ABX290731, 31 July 1929, Xuma, ?Medical training for 
Native S[outh] Africans?, (for British Association for the Advancement of Science), p.1: he argued that ?the African? 
contributed directly and indirectly to the country?s revenue, so that ?...ample provision [should] be made for the training of 
his youth as far as his European neighbour[s]?. ?White? universities with medical training facilities excluded black students.  
175 Walshe (1970 & 1987: 135) cited E Hellman & AJ Friedgut (eds), 1949. Handbook on Race Relation in South Africa. 
(Cape Town), pp.306-13. Xuma, 1929: 2. 
176 Xuma, 1929: 2. 
177 Marks, 1994: 59, 92-93. 
178 Shapiro (1987: 236) cited UG 35 (1928), ?Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Training of Natives in 
Medicine and Public Health? (Loram Committee Report). Marks (1994: 141, 255, fn.11) noted that black doctors continued 
to experience difficulties in obtaining training and then employment even after World War II. 
179 SANAC, 1905: 1, 682, 12 Nov 1903, Hunter?s evidence. Lovedale began training orderlies after the South African War. 
Christian Express editor, Hunter, explained: ?[o]ur idea is to train these young men for three years, in dispensing, in 
dressing, and in sick nursing in the male ward. Then...if their characters warrant?and they show sufficient ability, we 
propose?a further 18 months? training in elementary medicine and surgery?. 
180 Plaatje (1916b: 57, Proverb 546) compared the Latin adage, ?qualis pater, talis Filius?, like father, like son. 
181 MPP A979 Ad1, 08 March 1911, SMM to STM. 
Chapter Three 
 
193 
  
Lovedale, and then at the end of the year, I shall receive a certificate as a fully qualified hospital assistant and 
dispenser. This is of course if I am successful in my examination. My bursary is also still available for one 
year more so it just suits my purpose. 
Besides Dr Macvicar has also promised to give me additional lessons in medicine.  
On the other hand father, if I am not successful this year with my matriculation then I shall have to 
prepare again for it, and attend the hospital in the afternoons as I have been doing up to now.182 
 
In Cape Town on a holiday job when writing, Modiri warned that should he not matriculate, he could 
not work in the Hospital, and Silas must repay Macvicar?s ?9. Modiri?s ?blackmail? insinuated that 
Macvicar might also appropriate Silas? fatherly role in making his career decisions. His tense words 
suggested he was near breaking point, facing financial and academic shame. He had 10/6 in his pocket, 
he told Silas, and desperately needed ?[?]1.10? to get to Lovedale before 6 January to report for duty. 
He also needed a new suit of clothes but told Silas not to bother if it was beyond the family means.183 
Preparing for the SANNC?s founding conference in Bloemfontein (8 January 1912), Silas tersely sent 
exactly ?1.10.184 Admittedly, Silas was preoccupied with the immense responsibility of helping to 
found the body that he and colleagues hoped would represent all Africans in the post-Union era. Silas 
played a vital role on the national political landscape, being one of seven permanent Vice Presidents 
elected to represent the provinces and protectorates.185 Yet, he did not let momentous events in the 
political world obscure his role as a stern father. Retaliating to Modiri?s ?advantage? in their war of 
nerves over Macvicar?s ?9, he accused his son of being unready for examinations because of wasting 
Saturday afternoons with fun-loving Mmadichukudu ?Dick?, Lekoko?s son, newly at Healdtown. Stung 
into indignation, Modiri?s reaction to Silas betrayed the pitch at which he worked, and scorn for 
playboy Dick, his future rival for Anna Moshoela?s affections186: 
 
[a]s for going to see Mmalichukudu in Healdtown on Saturdays, every Lovedale boy knows and can 
affirm that I am busy from Monday to Sunday every week. Saturday is one of my busiest days in the Hospital, 
I am only free after dinner to supper on Sundays. Any body who knows me and stays in Lovedale can affirm 
this Rra. Malichukudu may not know it: he is only a new boy at Healdtown.187 
 
In this self-vindication a new tone emerged, usually veiled to maintain paternal respect. Modiri was 
already copying the Scots doctor?s round-the clock work habits, pausing only for the Sabbath, and 
taking hospital duties as grounding for his future career. Leisure hours were now work time, in keeping 
with professional requirements and his adult persona: ?Saturday is one of my busiest days?. Besides, he 
knew he had a reputation for work. Fellow scholars (in truth, there were 410!) could testify to his 
diligence.188 Mmadichukudu?s 1914 misconduct at Lovedale further vindicated Modiri?s passionate 
self-defence. Lekoko apologised personally to Rev Henderson.189 The incident and accusations 
indicated the strict standards of behaviour that Lovedale (Lovedale parents!) demanded. 
                                                 
182 MPP A979 Ad1, Late [19 Dec] 1911, SMM to STM, pp.III-IV: Modiri stayed with JM Molebaloa, (Ndabeni Location, 
Maitland, Cape Town). Cf. TsalaBC, 16 Dec 1911, ?Cape Town?; TsalaBT, 03 May 1913. 
183 MPP A979 Ad1, [19 Dec?] 1911, SMM to STM, pp.V-VI: Harriet joined him in Cape Town.  
184 MPP A979 Ad1, 09 Jan 1912, SMM to STM. MM, 15 Aug 1911: Lekoko and councillors met with Peregrino about 
forming a ?South African Native Congress?; Plaatje (TsalaBC, 30 March 1912) called it ?nothing less than a Native 
Parliament [and] the real voice of the people?. Cf. MM, 30 Nov 1911, ?Montsioa?s Stadt?; TsalaBC, 23 Dec 1911.  
185 TsalaBC, 13 Jan 1912, ?Kopano ea Bancho? [?The People?s Gathering?]: the other Vice Presidents were SM 
Makg[h]ato, Transvaal, Philip Modisa, Basutoland; John Mocher, Bloemfontein, Thomas Zini, Cape Town, William 
Letseleba, Johannesburg, and M Kambula. 
186 Modiri?s nts?l?o (father?s sister?s son), Dick, acted sociably in Mafikeng (02 July 1915), when Healdtown and 
Lovedale?s choirs visited; he raised a choir to join them in a concert. TsalaBT, 17 July 1915, ?Mafikeng: Grand Concert? 
[Setswana]: singled out Anna?s solo. See KAB 1/MFK 57 N2/4/2, ?Rural Trading and Business Sites?. 22 Aug 1938, 
?Schedule of Sites on which Natives are conducting trading operations on Trust Land ? Mafeking District?: as one of six 
African traders in the Molopo Native Reserve, Dick ran at least one general dealership in the Stadt in the 1930s. 
187 MPP A979 Ad1, 09 Jan 1912, SMM to STM. 
188 SGE 2/312, 9-10 May 1911, ?School Inspection Form for Lovedale Native Training School?: in 1911, the Boys? School 
numbered 86; the Girls? School, 53; the Elementary School (mixed), 111; the Industrial Schools had 56 girls and 114 boys. 
189 MPP A979 Bd1, 28 Apr 1914, Chief Lekoko to James Henderson, Lovedale, ?Desertion of Dichukudu Marumoloa?: 
apologised for his son?s misbehaviour, wishing him ?to be submissive to his teachers?. A979 Bd1, 28 Apr 1914, Lekoko to 
 
Chapter Three 
 
194 
  
Apparently Silas bore these rebukes humbly; by month-end Modiri was thanking him for ?your sweet 
letter...the sort of letters I would always like to have from Papa?. Mercurial Papa lost patience by return 
of mail when Modiri admitted to failing the exams. Hornabrook, Henderson and middleman Macvicar 
stuck to their ultimatum: pay the money or be barred from lessons. Now desperate, Modiri saw his 
dream to become a doctor in tatters. He must now placate two formidable forces: his educational 
mentors, and his father. Silas stonewalled; but his son had his own ambitions and, for perhaps the first, 
but not the last time, acted independently. He audaciously promised Henderson that the amount would 
be forthcoming. Predictably, Silas raged in annoyance, but finally coughed up. Modiri?s determination 
was worthy of Silas himself.  
 
This ?victory? immediately secured his schooling and career plans. He had also won a sneaking 
advantage over his father. Controlling the damage post facto, he despatched a propitiating letter to 
Mafikeng sensing that Silas needed mollifying. As an irrepressible parting shot, he requested that his 
book account be settled:  
 
I am very glad it is paid off. The next account to be settled here is that of the Bookstore here, for?1910 and 
1911. This year I bought all the books I required at Capetown with the money I earned when I was helping in 
an office there. The amount owing to the Manager of the Bookstore for those [1910/11] books is ?2.15.190 
 
Harriet also kept him going, sending him ?4 in June. Above that, he earned money in Cape Town 
during school holidays. While there, he sang with Lovedale?s Choir at the City Hall and reported ?[w]e 
got [q]uite a hearty cheer for our music?. He was appalled at the Robben Island patients? plight: 
 
[o]h Rra ? I visited that place when I was at Cape Town and the patients there simply move one?s pity. 
When you come to think that they just stay there for the rest of their lives; and then they are always very glad 
to see someone from outside who has come to see them because Rra though they have everything there they 
are so lonely being far from home for life. There are some Bechuana boys and men there ? there is one 
Liphuko and two men from Ga Maebu. They were so glad to see me ? all I could do was to remind them that 
?God careth for them?.191 
 
Modiri seldom showed Silas this spiritual side, reserving it for letters to his mother. But the news that 
their relative, Onthakile, would have to live under such conditions created a moment of empathy 
between father and son. The brief encounter with the lepers moved him beyond habitual schoolboy 
banter. The Island?s patients inhabited a world beyond his infallible science?s curative potential, in 
which he had come to believe ardently during afternoons with Macvicar. With both his usual discursive 
modes, schoolboy and medical, momentarily exhausted, he opted for the earlier language of his parents 
and the Mafikeng missionaries? religious faith.192  
 
In 1912, he applied himself indefatigably to school and hospital work. However big a splash the 
SANNC?s January launch made, the rest of 1912 held but one interest for Modiri: matriculation. By late 
October, he was very anxious. Equally anxious to see his son, Silas hoped he would come home for his 
holidays, but Modiri had other plans. He needed extra income and his Cape Town host, James 
Molebaloa of the Wesleyan Parsonage, Ndabeni, had told him of a month?s post with a Cape Town 
company, Graham Remedies.193 Molebaloa, from near Mafikeng, had recently lost his wife, a former 
                                                                                                                                                                  
KH Houghton, Lovedale, apologised and begged him to re-admit Dichukudu. Finally, Dick wrote from Lovedale (A979 
Bd1, 6 May 1914 to [Lekoko]), that he promised to ?endeavour to promote the interests of their Institution??. 
190 MPP A979 Ad1, 26 March & 08 Apr 1912, SMM to STM. 
191 MPP A979 Ad1, 26 March 1912, SMM to STM, for this and previous quotation. CA, 1/MFK, M1801/1902, 25 Nov 
1902, ?Paper Koranta ea Becoana?: Forwarding to Robben Island, EG Greene, RM, Maf, had received a request from 
Robben Island to supply TsalaBT, presumably for the patients there. 
192 MPP A979 Ad1, 26 March 1912, SMM to STM.  
193 MPP A979 Ad1, 22 Oct 1912, SMM to STM: examinations would last from 25 Nov to 02 Dec, he told Silas. Also MPP 
A979 Ad1, 24 Nov 1912, SMM to STM & 30 Apr 1914, SMM to STM. 
Chapter Three 
 
195 
  
Island patient.194 The company offered Modiri some prospects for his first year post-school year: 
??moreover Rra, I think this is my last year in Lovedale, and I have been wondering what I shall be 
doing next year and all the time till you send me across. I would not like to stay, doing nothing during 
that time?.195 
 
?Till you send me across? alluded to Silas? undertaking to finance his medical course abroad. Perhaps 
these words unwittingly expressed Modiri?s feelings about his relationship with his father: Silas, the 
subject, was the active ?sender?, while Modiri was the object his father acted upon. He puts one in mind 
of a parcel to be sent, which may, partly, have been how he felt. For, though eager to commence 
medical studies, he was now past twenty-one, and ready to enter the world of work, but would still be 
beholden to his father for six more years while studying. 
 
Silas? purse earned brief respite when a certificate reading ?Moliri Silas Molema passed the 
Matriculation Examination at the end of 1912...in the Third Class? reached Mafikeng. Modiri?s letters 
bore no comment on this success. Given his ambitions, his second-class pass and prize in 1910, he 
would doubtless have preferred a higher grade.196 But passing in itself was judged a triumph in 
Mafikeng. Few Africans and fewer Batswana had matriculated by 1912.197 Although only small 
numbers of black and white students passed the University of the Cape of Good Hope Matriculation 
then, whites outnumbered blacks. In March 1912, 1911?s achievers (Lovedale and Healdtown 
candidates prominent) fitted onto one Tsala broadsheet.198 
 
Rejoice as his family and community might, South Africa was decreasingly friendly to well-qualified 
Africans. While working in Cape Town and even before he had matriculated, he had applied to Tiger 
Kloof Institution near Vryburg. Tiger Kloof, a newish LMS industrial and training school aiming to 
produce teachers and ministers, turned him down.199 He was undeterred:200 
 
[y]ou see papa, I have made up my mind to get some employment this next year ? God willing. It may not be 
possible to get a good post form the very start but great things have small beginnings and so I am trying to get 
a permanent post in one of the local large business firms. I shall let you know when I have it.201  
 
Evidently Modiri longed to fulfill Silas? prescience in naming him modiri, the worker, and to start his 
career as he meant to continue, in constant employment. But rejection by Tiger Kloof, which had none 
                                                 
194 See MPP A979 Aa2.36, 1 Feb 1913, Aa2.37, 9 Feb 1913, and Aa2.38, 10 Feb 1913, James Molebaloa, Wesleyan 
Parsonage, Ndabeni, Maitland, to STM, Maf: Molebaloa, in Cape Town since 1903, explained his strong Morolong 
connections to Silas. His late father, Isaac Madito Molebaloa, had had land and a business near Mafikeng in 1894. JM had 
married a lady from Dithakwaneng [near Vryburg] in 1899, but she had died in 1905 on Robben Island (tuberculosis was 
hinted at), as the Island was then dedicated to TB sufferers. Both Modiri and Silas stayed with him when in Cape Town. 
195 MPP A979 Ad1, 27 Oct 1912, SMM to STM. 
196 LP, LMIAR 1910: 65 & 99: Modiri was the only student to pass the University Junior School Leaving Examination in 
the Second Class; he won first prize in the First Year. Elijah Makiwane gained the top third class pass. MPP A979 Ad1, 16 
May 1920, MSM, Glasgow to STM, showed Modiri?s ambition to succeed: he thanked Silas for ?[t]he excellent and rare 
education you have given me ? education which makes me today one of the foremost men of my race and one of the best 
educated amongst black and white in South Africa?. 
197 Hunter told SANAC (I, 675, 11 Nov 1903), ?[i]n ten years eighteen Native students passed the Matriculation Examination 
[which] is extremely difficult for [them]?because their previous education does not lead up to it in the same way as that of 
a European lad.?[T]he Native goes through the standards where he is not, as a European boy is, grounded in Latin, so that it 
is very difficult for him to pass...because he has to get up a large mount of work in a short time??. See TsalaBC, 10 Feb 
1912, ?Cape Education Department? and ?SA Native National Congress?: Molema?s friend Horatio M?belle also took a 
third-class Matriculation. In 1911, Tsala had saluted Nehemiah Motshumi as the first Motswana to pass the Cape 
Matriculation, the more remarkable for having studied privately in Kimberley. 
198 TsalaBC, 02 March 1912, ?Pupil Teachers? Examination? [1911 results]. 
199 MPP A979 Ad1, 14 Dec 1912, SMM to STM. MPP A979 Ab1, John Leteane, Tiger Kloof, to Joshua Molema, Maf: on 
22 July 1912, Leteane had written to ask Joshua for pictures of Chiefs ?Montshioa?, ?Wessels and Badirile? to hang ?as a 
general show in the dining room? with portraits of other ?chiefs of various tribes?. 
200 TsalaBC, 19 Aug 1911, ?Native Questions Discussed?. 
201 MPP A979 Ad1, 30 Dec 1912, SMM to STM, was also happy to see ?Mr Plaatje?, then in Cape Town. 
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of Lovedale?s status, dented his self-esteem. Despite this setback, on leaving Lovedale in December 
1912, Modiri was knotted into the networks of missionary education and loyalty to the Empire.202  
 
Another strong influence on his thinking was Plaatje who, at sixteen years Modiri?s senior, became his 
mentor. Plaatje?s Mafikeng years, especially during the Siege, and afterwards editing Koranta until 
1907, had brought him and Modiri closer.203 Thereafter, Plaatje moved to Kimberley, on Modiri?s route 
Lovedale-wards. Though records do not survive of their meetings, they certainly had the opportunity to 
meet. Plaatje clearly kept an eye out for the rising Molema generation, and found Harriet a job at 
Lyndhurst Road School when other employers had closed their doors to her.204 
 
For Modiri, leaving Lovedale meant moving back into the ?real world? of South African segregation. 
His mentor and his father were engaged in the two bitter struggles. ?The War of Degradation? 
characterised the extension of passes to women and the ?War of Extermination? was Tsala?s terms for 
the Botha-Smuts? government?s proposed land legislation, a struggle that Chapter Six examines in more 
depth.205 The legal scaffolding of racial separation bestowed legitimacy on the country?s general 
climate of segregation under the South African Party (1910-24) and Hertzog?s National Party (1924-
 29).206 After Union, Lovedale?s nominally nonracial values became yet more dislocated from the rest of 
the country. Segregationist thinking pervaded every aspect of life and on leaving the ?dale?, students 
and principal alike met it face-to-face. 
 
In this world, to be a Lovedale scholar, an ?educated African?, earned one the scorn of almost every 
official one met, especially on the railways. Modiri?s former schoolmate, Thema matriculated in 1910, 
to be thrown off the Pietersburg (now Polokwane) train platform by a stationmaster who ordered him to 
the ?Kafir room?. His ?offence? was being black (and educated) in what this quite lowly official felt 
empowered to insist was ?whites-only? space.207  
 
Modiri?s mentor, Plaatje, took up the struggle against railway segregation in July 1913. He complained 
to De Beers? General Manager about ?tramway tyranny?, after being denied an empty seat reserved for 
white passengers, all the seats for ?natives? were occupied. ?Third-class?, he objected, was the 
classification automatically given black travellers even when one purchased a first-class ticket. ?Unless 
you are prepared to offer physical resistance and fight like a bandit for your money?s worth, you will 
                                                 
202 Sol T Plaatje, Koranta, 02 Nov 1904, ?Rev Willoughby of Tiger Kloof?: opening Tiger Kloof (n?e the Mackenzie 
Industrial Institute), Willoughby declared that it aimed to ?provide for the Bechuana a second Lovedale?. Tiger Kloof, for 
boys, and the Moroka Girls Industrial School (Thaba ?Nchu) were then the only missionary industrial schools among the 
Tswana. Dr Muir declared that though he aimed to reduce the number of African missionary schools, he favoured Tiger 
Kloof as it ?...intended to provide for a people which were amongst the most backward in South Africa?. In these 
disparaging terms did the CED and other Union Government members regard the Tswana, of whom Modiri and his father 
were but two. MPP A979 Ad1, 16 March 1913, SMM to STM: when Modiri left Lovedale, Silas would not settle 
Henderson?s account. 
203 Willan, 1984: 125-28: fewer issues of Koranta came out after 1905, owing to financial problems. 
204 MPP A979 Ae1, Harriet Molema Montsioa Papers, Dec 1912-1922: 2 draft applications (undated but c.1912, written on 
the back of the Union Gazette Extraordinary, 20 Feb 1911, p.clix) for teaching posts in Green Point, Cape Town survive.  
205 TsalaBT, 23 August 1913, ?The War of Degradation? and ?The War of Extermination?; cf. infra, pp.275 fn.286, 296 
fn.22, 338 fn.299, 345 fn.338, 348 fn.354. Bonner (1982: 279, DNL enc. pamphlets Apr 1919): Pass Laws and Masters and 
Servants legislation operated in tandem, and cited a Transvaal Native Congress [TNC] pamphlet?s comment: ?passes 
prevented money?. Bonner (1982: 273) cited the Bureau of Census and Statistics, Union Statistics for Fifty Years, Jubilee 
Issue 1910-1960, H24: the Retail Price Index for the Witwatersrand, chief destination of southern African migrant workers, 
revealed difficulties facing workers and their often dispersed families. In 1913, the RPI for food was 97.7, and on all items, 
84.5. By World War I?s end, these indices had risen, respectively, to 115.7 (8 points) and 105.6 (11.1 points).  
206 MPP A979 Da22, 12 Dec 1912, Plaatje (to STM) stated that he had just returned from a deputation with the Seleka to 
Hertzog: ?[h]e is a very stubborn man and he has no intention of doing anything worthwhile for Blacks...he refused to pay 
heed except to pursue the implementation of his Segregation law...?. 
207 Thema, 1935: 33. (Cf. infra, p.242 fns.77 & 78.) LP, LMIAR, Annual Report, 1919, showed that ?Richard Thema? 
gained a Third Class of Elementary Certificate in Pitman?s Shorthand. 
Chapter Three 
 
197 
  
travel third-class with that first-class ticket?, wrote Plaatje, that December.208 For Plaatje and Molema, 
both slight men, fighting like bandits would hardly have been a reassuring option. 
 
Railway segregation ended in tragedy for Plaatje?s frail daughter Olive (23, and named for Schreiner), 
in 1921. Her health weakened by influenza, Olive died while awaiting the Bloemfontein-Kimberley 
train. The desperately ill girl was prevented from seeking relief in the ?whites only? waiting-room or 
even resting on a platform seat. She died on the platform, before the train?s arrival. Her devastated 
father was away in America at the time, at the invitation of a scholar who offered Modiri?s intellectual 
inspiration while he wrote The Bantu: WEB Du Bois.209 
 
In this book, Molema produced a caustic general historical analysis of train segregation, based on his 
own and his friends? experiences: 
 
[t]he segregation extends on to lavatories and similar places. On that lavatory you see written ?Gentlemen,? 
and there only white men may go. On that other lavatory you see written ?Amadoda? (men), and this is meant 
for black men. The same, of course, holds true for the retiring rooms for females. Separate places are provided 
for the two colours. On that for white women is written ?Ladies? Retiring Room,? and on that for black 
women is written ?Abafazi? (Women). In all cases without a single exception, the places for the blacks are, in 
every respect, far inferior to those of the whites. The same division is seen in railway-station waiting-rooms, 
general waiting-rooms, ladies? waiting-rooms, gentlemen?s waiting-rooms, all for white men and white 
women; then, at a respectable distance, and in some obscure corner, a tin shanty, meant as a waiting room for 
blacks, men and women, civilised and uncivilised alike. In the Transvaal, special railway trucks are provided 
to serve as compartments for native passengers. These are indistinguishable from the cattle trucks externally. 
Inside bare wooden forms are the only distinguishing factor.210 [my italics] 
 
An early SANNC?s campaign gave political expression to the class base of their outrage: to remove 
railway segregation for educated and exempted ?natives?.211 The shanty was a familiar sight for African 
travellers, Plaatje?s and Thema?s texts show. Like inferior school buildings, it was a visual metonymy 
of the status to which government officials and most whites consigned blacks. Moreover, the shanty 
collapsed the race and class classification of citizens in ways particularly offensive to the educated 
Molema and Thema. All whites were automatically ?gentlemen? or ?ladies?, no matter their levels of 
education or coarseness, and so entitled to superior facilities. However, all blacks were equally 
automatically ?amadoda? or ?kafirs?, baptism and education aside, and condemned to the cattle truck 
and the shanty. Molema did not include the derogatory terms some Africans called white people. Plaatje 
stated that Koranta ea Bechuana would not stoop to display the bigotry of either blacks or whites and 
listed such names in 1904 in order to dismiss them.212 
 
Generations of scholars left Lovedale to enter this white-governed world of segregation. What chance s 
did they have of realising their own ambitions, not to mention those of the families and communities 
who had paid their fees in the hope of bringing progress to their far-flung districts? Job reservation and 
urbanisation along with his own prejudices compelled Henderson to reposition Lovedale educationally 
                                                 
208 Willan (1996: 154) cited De Beers Archives, Kimberley, 17 July 1913, Plaatje, ?Letter to the General Manager?. Willan 
(1996: 163-64) & Willan (1984: 272): Plaatje, ?Along the colour line?, reproduced in Kimberley Evening Star, 23 Dec 1913. 
209 See Willan (1984: 133) on Olive?s birth and Willan, 1984: Chapter 11. 
210 Molema, 1920: 265. 
211 Bonner (1982: 282-83) cited DNL 320 301/19/72, Evidence to Inter-departmental Pass Laws Committee, passim: 
?exemption? from bearing a pass was intended to benefit the ?aspirant petty bourgeoisie?, including ?store boys, bank 
messengers of long service, ?the respectable educated and partly educated?, the skilled artisans, mechanics, tradesmen, clerks 
and skilled hospital attendants?. The exempt, like the Molemas, bore exemption certificates, not passes, paid no fees, and 
could demand higher wages. Pass-bearers had their wages stamped, and thus pegged, on their passes. The exempt were freed 
?from the night curfew and ?native? taxation?. This strategy had the potential to alienate pass-bearing and the exempt. 
212 Plaatje noted (Koranta, 20 Apr 1904) prejudicial language in the Mafikeng court: ?[d]uring the hearing of a civil case at 
the recent Circuit Court Sessions, the small Hebrew Barrister repeatedly referred to the plaintiff as the boy. And the Court 
fully permitted him to use a term which is objected to by many Magistrates in their Courts?. Ignoring this abuse meant the 
Magistrates? Court would go ?one grade lower and admit the word nigger?. Koranta, 20 Apr 1904, ?Slang in Court?: Plaatje 
mentioned the Isixhosa insult ?Igxaxa?, Sesotho ?Khuatle? and Setswana ?mamphokoro?. 
Chapter Three 
 
198 
  
between 1910 and 1930. On the one hand, it retained an ?elite? support-base of wealthier Africans, and 
continued to produce students for the professions. On the other, Henderson devoted more attention to 
industrial education, hoping to supply students with skills to aid the rural economy. This strategy aimed 
to shore up the African peasantry on the limited land left to them, but faltered in the face of declining 
rural capacity and the migrant labour system. In 1922, the Phelps-Stokes Commission?s survey of 3,300 
ex-Lovedalians, showed that only 11.6% had become farm-labourers. A large proportion (30.3%) had 
entered manual or industrial labour (1,000). The petty bourgeois professions of missionary work and 
teaching took up 26.6%, while 10.6% were skilled artisans. Growing unemployment during the post-
 World War I depression made it difficult for all Africans to resist incorporation into the migratory 
labour system Henderson so reviled.213 
 
Henderson?s talented pupil, Molema continued to imbibe Hendersonian ideas long after matriculating. 
While in Scotland, he still received the Christian Express featuring Henderson?s letters and speeches 
recorded under the pseudonym ?X?.214 Was it mere coincidence that some very similar notions of class 
and segregation permeated the final chapters of The Bantu? 
 
Henderson was not the sole influence on Molema?s writing; and Molema was very doubtful that 
segregation would succeed. Forms of segregationism were much in the air during these years. These 
conceptions enchanted eminent politicians like JT Jabavu and Thema. Even Plaatje could undercut 
statements like ?I do not seek social equality with whites, but equal civil...rights and equal opportunities 
to earn a living?. He added that had segregation been on just lines, Africans might have objected to it 
less: ?I think the Government could very well have segregated the people without subjecting them to 
this hardship?.215 As Bonner and Bundy showed, younger, more militant African voices, often the 
products of harsher urban and rural conditions, articulated more radical thoughts.216 
 
In December 1912, Molema left Lovedale to face this partitioned world as an adult. Distinguished 
missionaries like Hornabrook and Henderson had made his education possible from an institutional 
point of view. His father, Silas? success as a cattle-farmer, entrepreneur, newspaper editor and politician 
had created the family context and the financial backing for his education. To that by no means rare 
conjunction of institutional and parental encouragement, that son ? the aptly-named ?worker? ? 
added exceptional aptitude and enthusiasm for his studies that would make him apply himself to South 
Africa?s vast problems diversely: practically, as a doctor; analytically, as an historian, and with both 
pragmatism and principle, as a politician. In December 1912, he was just setting out. 
 
 
? 
                                                 
213 Rich (1987: 283, 291): in the 1920s, Henderson worked with the interracial Joint Councils, bodies of well-meaning, 
cautiously liberal men and women. Via the JCs and his Lovedale position, he influenced ?Native? education policy. 
214 Rich (1987: 280) cited Christian Express, 01 Sep 1916 and 01 Nov 1917. 
215 Beaumont, 1914: II, 93. MPP A979 Db1, Plaatje?s ?Journal of his Travels in Canada and America?, pp.14-15. 
216 Bonner, 1982: passim, and Colin Bundy, 1987. ?Land and liberation: popular rural protest and the national liberation 
movements in South Africa, 1920-1969?. In Marks & Trapido, 1987: 254-57.