22 mm

A F R ICA-EU ROPE GROU P FOR

I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A RY S T U D I E S
33

Who were the actors involved in colonial and

post-independence education in Africa? This

Ellen Vea Rosnes, Pierre Guidi and Jean-Luc Martineau (Eds.)

HISTORY THROUGH NARRATIVES OF EDUCATION IN AFRICA
book on the history of education in Africa gives
special attention to narratives of marginalized
voices. With this original approach and cases
from ten countries involving four colonial
powers it constitutes a dynamic and rich
contribution to the field.
The authors have searched for narratives of
education ‘from below’ through oral interviews,
autobiographies, fi lms and undiscovered archival
sources. Throughout the book, educational
HISTORY
settings are approached as social spaces where
both contact and separtation between colonisers
and colonised are constructed through social THROUGH
interaction, negotiations, and struggles.
Contributors include Antónia Barreto,
Lars Folke Berge, Clara Carvalho, Charlotte NARRATIVES
Courreye, Pierre-Éric Fageol, Frédéric Garan,
Esther Ginestet, Pedro Goulart, Pierre Guidi,
Lydia Hadj-Ahmed, Kalpana Hiralal, OF EDUCATION
Mamaye Idriss, Mihary Jaofeno, Jean-Luc

IN AFRICA
Martineau, Rehana Thembeka Odendaal,
Roland Rakotovao, Maria da Luz Ramos,
Ellen Vea Rosnes, Caterina Scalvedi,
Eva Van de Velde, Pieter Verstraete.
Ellen Vea Rosnes, Ph.D. (2015), University Social Histories in
of Stavanger, is Professor of intercultural
communication and global studies at VID
Specialized University. She has published on
Times of Colonization
Madagascar and South Africa, including The
Norwegian Mission’s Literacy Work in Colonial and Post Independence
and Independent Madagascar (Routledge, 2019).
Pierre Guidi, Ph.D. (2014), Université Paris 1 (1920s - 1970s)
Panthéon-Sorbonne, is a historian at the Centre
Population et Développement (Université
de Paris Cité, IRD). He has published on the
history of education in Ethiopia, including
Éduquer la nation en Éthiopie. École, État et
identités dans le Wolaita, (1941-1991) (Presses
Universitaires de Rennes/IRD, 2020) which is Edited by
in the process of being translated into English
(forthcoming 2024).
Ellen Vea Rosnes
Jean-Luc Martineau, Ph.D. (2004), Université
Paris 7, is Assistant Professor at the Institut
National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales.
Pierre Guidi
His research is focused on yoruba obaship,
cultural changes, identity building processes and Jean-Luc Martineau
school policies in Nigeria (19th-20th C.). He is
the scientifi c editor of the Cahiers Afriques.

ISSN 1574-6925
brill.com/agis 9 789004 690165
History through Narratives of Education in Africa
 Africa-Europe Group for
Interdisciplinary Studies
Series Editors

Gregor Dobler (University of Freiburg, Germany)

Manuel João Ramos (ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon)

Editorial Board

Karen Buscher (Ghent University, Belgium)

Till Förster (University of Basel, Switzerland)
Elsje Fourie (Maastricht University, the Netherlands)
Julia Gallagher (Royal Holloway University of London, UK)
Clemens Greiner (University of Cologne, Germany)
Baz Lecocq (Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany)
Robert Pijpers (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Isabella Soi (University of Cagliari, Italy)
Franzisca Zanker (Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, Freiburg, Germany)

volume 33

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/agis

History through Narratives of
Education in Africa
Social Histories in Times of Colonization and Post
Independence (1920s – 1970s)

Edited by

Ellen Vea Rosnes

Pierre Guidi
Jean-Luc Martineau

leiden | boston
Cover illustration: Class of French Government School, Madagascar, ca. 1910. IMPA: School of Oriental and
African Studies (subcollection), International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960 (collection),
SOAS/CWM/LMS/MA/PHOTO/03/007/040 (file)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rosnes, Ellen Vea, 1976- editor. | Guidi, Pierre, editor. |
Martineau, Jean-Luc, 1965- editor.
Title: History through narratives of education in Africa : social histories
in times of colonization and post independence (1920s-1970s) / edited by
Ellen Vea Rosnes, Pierre Guidi, Jean-Luc Martineau.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2024. | Series: Africa-Europe Group
for Interdisciplinary studies, 1574-6925 ; volume33 | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024002782 (print) | LCCN 2024002783 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004690165 (paperback) | ISBN 9789004690172 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Education – Africa – History – 20th century. |
Education – Social aspects – Africa. | Education, Colonial. |
Postcolonialism–Africa.
Classification: LCC LA1501 .H57 2024 (print) | LCC LA1501 (ebook) | DDC
370.9609/04–dc23/eng/20240212
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024002782
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024002783

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.

issn 1574-6925
isbn 978-90-04-69016-5 (paperback)
isbn 978-90-04-69017-2 (e-book)
doi 10.1163/9789004690172

Copyright 2024 by Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill BV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis,
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents

Foreword ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of Figures and Tables xii
Abbreviations xiv
Notes on Contributors xvi

1 Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 1

Ellen Vea Rosnes, Pierre Guidi and Jean-Luc Martineau

Part 1
The Genesis and Action of Intermediary Social Groups

2 Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word along the
Northeastern Shores of Lake Victoria, 1890s–1940s 31
Esther Ginestet

3 Making the Colonial School: Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in

Italian Somalia (1930–1941) 65
Caterina Scalvedi

4 Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls and the
‘New Era’ in Ethiopia (1940s–1950s) 97
Pierre Guidi

5 Women Teachers in Mayotte: Student Migration and Models of

Womanhood in the Southwest Indian Ocean in the 1950s and 1960s 122
Mamaye Idriss and Mihary Jaofeno

Part 2
Colonial Spaces of Contact, Allegiances and Loyalties

6 Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar: Role Models

and Notables for Village Communities (1920 to 1970) 157
Roland Rakotovao
vi Contents

7 Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 181

Ellen Vea Rosnes and Kalpana Hiralal

8 School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling during the Algerian War of

Independence (1956–1962) 207
Lydia Hadj-Ahmed

Part 3
Limits and Closings of Contact Zones

9 Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria: “contact zone”

or the Beginnings of an Independent National School? 233
Charlotte Courreye

10 Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation and the Extension

of the Status of Département
The Testimony of the Normaliens of the Reunion Island in the Post-Colonial
Period 257
Pierre-Éric Fageol and Frédéric Garan

11 The ‘Open’ Performance: Institutional Autonomy over Academic

Freedom in the 1950s Academic Freedom Campaigns 281
Rehana T. Odendaal

12 “We all went to school”: Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde

(1930’s–1970’s) 305
Maria da Luz Ramos and Pedro Goulart

13 The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 338

Antónia Barreto and Clara Carvalho

Part 4
Two Way Round Circulations

14 Swedish Evangelical Mission, Popular Mobilization for Schooling and

Egalitarian Ideals in Ethiopia 1868–1935 365
Lars Folke Berge
Contents  vii

15 Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural Zones of Contact: the

Visual Representation of a Congolese Leprosy Village in the 30’s 385
Eva Van de Velde and Pieter Verstraete

General Index 407

Index of Authors 411
Index of Schools 413
Foreword

Readers have a treat in store for them with this stimulating new collection on
educational policies, schools, teachers and pupils, in Sub-Saharan Africa and
Algeria. The focus on the half century between the 1920s and the 1970s offers
a particularly heuristic lens through which to explore the transformations of
colonial school politics in the face of emerging educated elites and the rise
of a modernising developmental discourse. Unquestionably, this late colonial
period deserves more careful attention for the ways it shaped post-colonial
educational systems. The group of international scholars contributing to this
discussion opens rich perspectives on a series of competing narratives about
the role of education in shaping national, gendered, religious or age-specific
identities. In the process, they affirm the vital need to include social histories
of education in our understanding of how African societies responded to the
challenges of these decades.
The volume offers two guiding metaphors – that of connecting narratives
and of transcultural contact zones – to think about the variety of locations
explored in its pages, from Ethiopia to KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, from
Portuguese-controlled Cape Verde off the coast of West Africa, to Italian So-
malia along the east coast, from the French Reunion or Mayotte islands in
the Indian ocean to the Belgian Congo in the “heart” of Africa. This range of
places is investigated using the notion of cultural contact zones which bring
together encounters between central and local authorities, between men and
women, between public administrators, local teachers, pupils and parents.
Rather than essentialising and depoliticising the concept of contact zone, the
different chapters emphasise the dynamic interactions that existed, produc-
ing in the process what are described as “situated histories of connections”.
These histories are told drawing on sources that are the product of careful ar-
chival work combined with attention paid to local narratives about education
as told through the voices of former pupils or teachers, notably female teachers
whose viewpoint is less chronicled. The result is a polyphonic testimony to the
connective power of education despite the normative weight of colonial hier-
archies. Connections are the product of educational processes found in mis-
sionary schools, in teacher training institutions, in rural communities and in
late colonial educational policies. The focus then is on what we learn from the
dynamics of encounter rather than emphasising the politics of domination.
This methodological positioning is associated with a concern to drawn on
sources that allow marginalised voices to join the narratives of education. This
results in studies undertaken at a micro-level, an attention to ethnographic
detail in pupils’ schooling experiences and a particular effort to analyze
x Foreword

educational encounters through oral histories. The editors’ interest in women

and gender brings to the fore a range of female perspectives: that of pupils in
the Ethiopian Empress Menen School for elite girls, of Indian and Zulu pupils
in Lutheran and Baptist schools, or again that of the teachers who migrated
to Mayotte from the island of Sainte-Marie (Madagascar). These three exam-
ples, from the fourteen case studies presented, suggest the variety of themes
woven together. Readers discover missionary educators from both Protestant
and Catholic Europe, schools aimed at elites and the rural poor, educational
politics that range from primary schools to the university, without neglect-
ing how educational initiatives in certain African locations fed conversations
and mobilizations in Europe. The unifying focus on “contact zones” skillfully
brings together a kaleidoscope of perspectives, guided by the editors’ excellent
introduction. The latter offers not only a “connecting narrative” for the differ-
ent chapters but more importantly a historiographic and methodological les-
son for anyone interested in colonial, post-colonial or missionary education in
Africa or elsewhere––a “must read” for scholars in the field.

Rebecca Rogers
Université Paris Cité, Cerlis, CNRS
Acknowledgements

This book project began with a call for papers for an international workshop
on Narratives of education in times of colonization and decolonization in Africa
(1920s–1970s) held at the Université Paris Cité 4–5 May 2021, with some par-
ticipants joining us online. We, the editors of this book, would like to extend
our deepest gratitude to the contributing authors who answered our call, and
who actively participated in this workshop by submitting their first drafts, and
responding to colleagues. They were also fully engaged in the project through-
out the entire process, making it possible for us to reach the point where we
are now able to present a volume on the History of Education in Africa, one of
richness and variety.
We are extremely grateful to all the authors whose contributions have en-
sured a collection of narratives of education which recount both different and
similar experiences during the periods of colonization and decolonization in a
variety of African contexts: Algeria, Angola, Cape Verde, Belgian Congo, Ethio-
pia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mayotte, Réunion, Somalia and South Africa.
A primary aim of the project was to give special attention to voices which,
in research on the history of education in Africa, have hitherto been silenced
or marginalised. We particularly appreciate those contributing authors who re-
sponded to our invitation to be attentive to narratives told from a range of dif-
ferent perspectives, especially perspectives of marginalised actors. We would
also like to thank participants in the research, especially those who generously
shared their narratives though oral interviews. We believe their voices have
bequeathed this book its unique characteristic.
Those of us working on the history of education are dependent on access
to archives and on help from archivists in finding our way around the archive
shelves. We appreciate the assistance we have received from the different ar-
chives and archivists in conducting this research.
This project would not have been possible without the support of the Centre
Population et Développement (CEPED), the Centre d’études en sciences sociales
sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques (CESSMA) and the Institut
national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO), Paris and VID Spe-
cialised University (VID). We are grateful for all kinds of support, including
financial support.
Finally, we would like to recognise the invaluable assistance of academic
editor Rose Jackson, and of Professor Peter Kallaway, and the anonymous re-
viewers for their corrections and suggestions.
Figures and Tables

Figures

3.1 Beginning of the reading ‘The virtuous men are honored’ in Gorlani 67
3.2 Cover of Gorlani 84
3.3 ‘Group of chiefs’ sons (sultans) students of Father Daniele Gorlani – 1939’ 90
3.4 ‘The school for the chiefs’ sons (sultans) with Monsignor Filippini and Father
Daniele, Director’ 91
5.1 Juliette Bébé 123
5.2 Map of the southwest Indian Ocean 127
5.3 Map of Sainte-Marie 130
5.4 Family tree of the Novou family 142
6.1 House based on the model madio ivelany 173
6.2 House inspired by Merina architectural style 174
7.1 Young South Africans, South Africa 198
10.1 Bellepierre teacher training college, built between 1959 and 1962 264
10.2 Cohort of student teachers (1966) 266
10.3 «École lontan», 1956–1958 268
10.4 «Bal des Normaliens», 1961 273
12.1 Number of students at official schools in Cape Verde 312
15.1 Missionary sister gifting a dress to mother and baby 395
15.2 Men eating with a spoon 397
15.3 Man moving ‘on four legs’ 399
15.4 Women showing their hands 400

Tables

6.1 Number of pupils to be admitted to the regional school of Ambositra

(1920–1925–1935) 164
6.2 Number of pupils from the regional school of Ambositra admitted to the
school Le Myre in 1940 and 1950 164
6.3 Evolution of the number of Betsileo students admitted to Le Myre
(1937–1955) 167
6.4 List of occupations by place of birth, and born between 1873–1940 169
7.1 School statistics from Eshowe district 192
7.2 Number of pupils at Zulu Lutheran High School 193
12.1 Compulsory schooling during colonial period 313
12.2 Number of Schools in Cape Verde 314
Figures and Tables  xiii

12.3 Number of enrolled students in public and private schools. 315

13.1 Primary and secondary education: enrolment rates (relative to 1962) in
Portuguese Overseas Provinces 351
13.2 Primary education by type of education and province in 1962 352
13.3 Number of official primary school teachers 352
13.4 Number of normal schools, teachers, and pupils in 1962 353
13.5 Secondary and technical schools in Cape Verde 353
13.6 Secondary and technical education in Angola and Mozambique 354
13.7 General trends in primary schooling 356
Abbreviations

AOF Afrique-Occidentale française

AOMA  Association des oulémas musulmans algériens ( Jam’iyyat al-’Ulamā’ al-
Muslimīn al-Jazā’iriyyīn)
ALM American Lutheran Mission
ALN Armée de Libération Nationale
BCA Battalion of Alpine Chasseurs (Bataillon de chasseurs alpins)
BCEA Central Library for African Studies, ISCTE-IUL
BMS Berlin Mission Society
CAE Certificat d’aptitude à l’enseignement (teacher certificate)
CEA Centre for African Studies (ISCTE-IUL, now Center for International
Studies, CEI)
CEPED Centre Population et Développement
CERLIS Centre de Recherche sur les Liens Sociaux
CESD  Certificat d’études du second degré (secondary school final exam)
CESSMA  Centre d’études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains
et asiatiques
CLM The co-operating Lutheran Missions in Natal
CMS Church Missionary Society
CPLP Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries
CREM  Concours de Recrutement des Élèves Maîtres (Competition for the
Recruitment of Student Teachers).
CSM Church of Swedish Mission
DAN Direction des Archives nationales
EMS Empress Menen School
FFMA Friends Foreign Missionary Association
FJKM Fiangonan’i Jesoa Kristy eto Madagasikara
FLN National Liberation Front
HMS Hermannsburg Mission
INALCO Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales
ISCTE-IUL Lisbon University Institute
ISEU Instituto Superior de Estudos Ultramarinos
IUFM  Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres (University Institute for
Teacher Training)
LMS London Missionary Society
MDA Mission and Diakonia Archives
MPF  Mission Protestante Française (French Protestant Mission in
Madagascar)
NMS The Norwegian Mission Society
Abbreviations  xv

NP National Party
ORTF Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française
PALOP African Portuguese Speaking Countries
PEGC Professeur d’enseignement général de collège (General secondary school
teachers)
SAS Sections administratives spécialisées (Specialized Administrative
Sections)
SEM Swedish Evangelical Mission
SMEP Société des missions évangéliques de Paris (Paris Evangelical Missionary
Society)
SPG Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
SRC Wits Student Representative Council
UCT University of Cape Town
UN United Nations
VAT  Volontaires de l’Aide Technique (Volunteers for technical assistance in
cooperation)
Wits University of Witwatersrand
Notes on Contributors

Maria Antónia Barreto

has a PhD in education from Bordeaux II (1991) and is Coordinator Professor at
the Schools of Education and Social Sciences, of Leiria Polytechnic, Institute
and a researcher at the Centre of International Studies. Barreto begun working
in the field of education in various African countries from 1978 as a co-teacher.
She is currently a consultant for a number of international agencies (UNESCO,
UNICEF, World Bank, African Bank for Development) and for the Portuguese
ONGD (Aidglobal, Helpo, IMVF, AD). Antónia Barreto’s research interests are
African Studies, with a focus on education and development. Her research has
been conducted in Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Principe and Mozambique.

Lars Folke Berge

is Assistant professor in the Department of History at Dalarna University,
Sweden. He has written on the 1906 Bambatha rebellion in KwaZulu-Natal: The
Bambatha Watershed: Swedish Missionaries, African Christians and an Evolving
Zulu Church in Rural Natal and Zululand 1902–1910 (Uppsala, 2000) for which
he was Awarded the Westin Prize by The Royal Society of the Humanities at
Uppsala. He has published on Church Life and Christian-Muslim Relations in
Nigeria, and on Indian Church-Life after Ayodhya. Together with Prof. Gunnel
Cederlof, Uppsala University, he is the editor of Political Visions and Social Re-
alities in Contemporary South India (Dalarna University, 2003) and, with Prof.
Irma Taddia, University of Bologna, Themes in modern African history and cul-
ture: festschrift for Tekeste Negash (Padova, 2013). His current research focusses
on the Swedish Evangelical Mission, popular mobilization for schooling and
egalitarian ideals in Ethiopia 1868–1935.

Clara Carvalho
has a PhD in Anthropology and works as Associate Professor at ISCTE-IUL,
Department of Political Science and Public Policies, and as a researcher at the
Centre of International Studies. Carvalho served as president of AEGIS (Africa-
Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies) (2015–2019) and as director of
the Centre of African Studies/ Centre of International Studies at ISCTE-IUL
(2007–2016). Her research interests are Development Studies and African Stud-
ies, with a focus on health, education, gender, and peacebuilding. Her main
research has been conducted in West Africa, particularly in Guinea-Bissau.
She coordinated the following projects: Sexual and Reproductive Rights and
cultural resistance based on gender in Western Africa: inequality, violence, and il-
legitimacy (2018–2022); Multisectoral Academic Programme to prevent and
Notes on Contributors  xvii

combat Female Genital Mutilation (2016–18) (national coordinator, European

­Commission); AMITIE-CODE (EUROPEAID) (national coordinator); ­Mulheres
em contextos lusófonos, Funding CAPES, Brazil (national coordinator); Gender
and Therapeutic Pluralism (2010–2013). Clara Carvalho is the editor of the jour-
nal Cadernos de Estudos Africanos.

Charlotte Courreye
is Maîtresse de conférences (Assistant Professor) in Arabic Language, Economy
and Contemporary Societies at Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3. She is the author
of L’Algérie des Oulémas, une histoire contemporaine de l’Algérie (1931–1991) (Édi-
tions de la Sorbonne, Paris, 2020). She is co-author of the textbook Le Maghreb
par les textes with Annick Lacroix and Augustin Jomier (Armand Colin, Paris,
2020). She has published several articles on the schools of the A ­ ssociation of
the Ulama and on their conception of Arabic language and ­Algerian identity.
Her current research interest is the cultural exchanges between the Middle
East and the Maghreb at the time of Arabization policies after Independence,
with a specific focus on Arabic teachers.

Maria da Luz Ramos

holds a doctorate in Social Sciences from Instituto Superior de Ciências Soci-
ais e Políticas (ISCSP), Universidade de Lisboa. She is an Assistant Professor
at ISCSP, Universidade de Lisboa, and a visiting lecturer at Instituto Superior
de Ciências Jurídicas e Sociais (Cape Verde). She is a researcher in the fields
of Cape Verdean society, education, gender, and elite recruitment, and is
­affiliated as a research member with CIEG-ISCSP (Interdisciplinary Center
of Gender Studies) and CAPP-ISCSP (Administration and Public Policies
­Research Center).

Pierre-Éric Fageol
is Agrégé, lecturer in Contemporary History at the Université de La Réunion.
He is a researcher at the ICARE (Institut Coopératif Austral de Recherche en
­Éducation). Fageol’s research focuses on the history of education in colonial
and post-colonial situations in Reunion Island. He is the Editor-in-chief of
­Outre-Mers. Revue d’histoire coloniale et impériale.

Frédéric Garan
is Agrégé, lecturer in Contemporary History at the Université de La Réunion.
He is a researcher at the Océan Indien : Espaces et Sociétés (OIES), Associate
Researcher at the Centre de recherches en histoire internationale et atlantique
(CRHIA), University of Nantes and at the laboratoire Temps, Mondes, ­Sociétés
(TEMOS), Université d’Angers, de Bretagne Sud et du Mans and the Centre
xviii Notes on Contributors

n­ ational de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). Frédéric Garan’s research focuses

on Madagascar during the colonial period. He is both director of the publica-
tion, and founder of the review Tsingy: Revue de Sciences Humaines, Sud Ouest
de l’océan Indien.

Esther Ginestet
is a PhD student in History at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois) and
Sciences Po University (Paris). Her dissertation (in progress) traces how Luo
women and men have been speaking and writing about the past in western
Kenya from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1990s. By documenting the
evolution of historical imaginations along the northeastern shores of Lake
Victoria, her work has contributed to modern East African intellectual history.

Pedro Goulart
holds a doctorate from Erasmus University Rotterdam and is an Assistant Pro-
fessor at ISCSP, Universidade de Lisboa. An expert on labour and education,
he has published articles (e.g. in Economics of Education Review, Economic
History of Developing Regions, Journal of Educational Research, or Social Sci-
ence History) and has edited books (South-South Globalization; Global Labour
in Distress) on the topic. He is Portugal’s EADI representative and co-editor of
the EADI Global Development Series (Palgrave Macmillan).

Pierre Guidi
is a researcher at the CEPED (IRD/Université Paris Cité) and at the CFEE
(Centre français des études éthiopiennes / French Center for Ethiopian Stud-
ies. His current research focus is on the history of girls’ and women’s education
as well as on the social history of women in Ethiopia. Guidi is the author of
Éduquer la nation en Éthiopie. École, État et identités dans le Wolaita, (1941–1991)
(Rennes/Marseille, PUR/IRD, 2020) which is in the process of being translated
into English (forthcoming 2024).

Lydia Hadj-Ahmed
is ATER (Assistante Temporaire d’Enseignement et de Recherche / tempo-
rary teaching and research professor) in history in the Department of Social
Sciences at the Université de Nanterre. Hadj-Ahmed is a PhD research fellow in
Modern History under the direction of Raphaëlle Branche. Her research focus-
es on the Algerian war of Independence (1954–1962) and articulates schooling
history in a colonial situation with childhood history in times of war.

Kalpana Hiralal
is a professor of History in the School of Social Sciences at Howard College
­University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. A former African Oxford Senior
Notes on Contributors  xix

Fellow at the University of Oxford, and a South African NRF rated researcher,
her two key areas of interest are Gender and South Asian Diaspora and Gen-
der and Resistance in South Africa. She is the co-editor of Satyagraha, Pas-
sive Resistance and its Legacy (Manohar 2015), editor of Global Hindu Diaspora
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge 2017), co-author of Gen-
der and M ­ obility: Borders, Bodies, and Boundaries (Palgrave 2018) and, most
­recently, Sisters in the Struggle- Women of Indian Origin in South Africa’s Libera-
tion Struggle 1900–1994 (Volume 1: 1900–1940s, Volume 2: 1950s–1960s).

Mamaye Idriss
has a PhD in African history and is lecturer in history and history didactics
at the University of Mayotte after a postdoctoral research at the Institut de
recherche d’études démographique (INED). Her work focuses on gender re-
compositions in the Indian Ocean and intimate effects of educational, profes-
sional, socio-political and migratory dynamics, using a biographical approach
and a regional perspective.

Mihary Jaofeno
is a PhD student in History at University Paris Cité. Her dissertation (in pro-
gress) is on the education of young Malagasy women under French colonial
and post-colonial rule. She documents state mandated professions accessible
to women, and embedded gender and racial relations. Her research reveals
how this phenomenon, which affects a small elite, can generate social change.

Rehana T. Odendaal
is a PhD researcher at the Graduate School of Education and Department
of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She is a Fulbright
­International Fellow from Cape Town, South Africa where she completed her
Bachelor of Social Sciences and MA degrees at the University of Cape Town.
Her work in this volume draws on her MA in Historical Studies, “Wits Imag-
ined: An investigation into public roles and responsibilities at the University
of the Witwatersrand 1922–1994.” Her interest, through her doctoral work, is
in understanding how the positioning of the youth in the global South/North
shapes their understanding and organising around climate change and envi-
ronmental justice.

Roland Rakotovao
is assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the Université
d’Antananarivo (Madagascar). Rakotovao has a PhD in African history, with a
focus on sociocultural history. His research focuses on migration and identity
in Madagascar. He is presently researching contemporary migrations in Mada-
gascar at Université Paris Cité.
xx Notes on Contributors

Ellen Vea Rosnes

is Professor of intercultural communication and global studies at the Depart-
ment of Cultural and Religious Studies at VID Specialized University, Norway.
She holds a PhD in Literacy Studies from the University of Stavanger. Her re-
search focuses on mission and colonial education in Madagascar and South
Africa during the 20th century. Another focus of her research is intercultur-
ally competent teachers in the diverse Norwegian educational setting. She
published The Norwegian Mission’s Literacy Work in Colonial and Independent
Madagascar (Routledge) in 2019.

Caterina Scalvedi
is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of History of Wake Forest
­University. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Illinois at ­Chicago.
She is currently writing the first monograph exploring the sociocultural and in-
tellectual history of education in the Italian colonies in Africa.

Eva Van de Velde

is a research and teaching assistant at the research centre for Education,
­Culture and Society of the KU Leuven. Her research has focused on the history
of marginalized groups and informal education.

Pieter Verstraete
is associate professor in History of Education at the research centre for Educa-
tion, Culture and Society of the KU Leuven. He is also curator of the annual
Leuven Disability Film festival. In his current book project, he focuses on the
history of silence in the classroom.
 Chapter 1

Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education

Ellen Vea Rosnes, Pierre Guidi and Jean-Luc Martineau

This book is the result of a collaboration between the Centre Population et

Développement (CEPED, France), the Centre d’etudes en sciences sociales sur
les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques (CESSMA, France) and VID Spe-
cialized University (Norway). The starting point for this collaborative process
was the international workshop Narratives of Education in Times of Coloni-
zation and Decolonization in Africa (1920s–1970s) held at the Université Paris
Cité on 4–5 May 2021. The workshop was organised by Pierre Guidi, Jean-Luc
Martineau, Ellen Vea Rosnes and Florence Wenzek. Their aim was to connect
researchers from different continents who were working on the history of edu-
cation in Africa.1 The workshop was part of a series of workshops and a num-
ber of monthly seminars held between 2018 and 2021, where we devoted our
reflections to educational policies, schools and pupils in Sub-Saharan Africa
from the mid-19th century to the 1970s.2
The very large number of proposals we received in response to our call for
papers in 2021 testify to the willingness of researchers to participate in work
in the field. However, some high-quality proposals were unfortunately not
included in the process due to the quantity of the work received. Though many
participants unfortunately had to attend on-line because of the Covid-19, the
presentations and discussions were guided by the level of enthusiasm shown
by participants for us to move forward together. The papers which resulted in
the chapters of this book cover a wide range of topics, all of which investigate
the history of education in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. In this ­context,
the institutions under study range from government and mission schools, to
universities, to teacher training centres, to a leprosy village. The social and

1 Going back further in time, this desire for collective work is in line with the initiative taken
by Peter Kallaway and Rebecca Swartz, who brought together researchers at the University of
Cape Town in 2013 for a workshop that resulted in the book, Empire and Education in Africa:
The Shaping of a Comparative Perspective (New York: Peter Lang, 2016).
2 The seminars from January 2018 and a workshop on May 9, 2019 were arranged by CESSMA
at Inalco and Université Paris Cité. Presentations from the 2019 workshop are published as a
volume of Cahiers Afriques edited by Pierre Guidi, Jean-Luc Martineau and Florence Wenzek,
“L’école en mutation: politiques et dynamiques scolaires en Afrique (années 1940–1980),”
vol. 34 (Toulouse : Presses Universitaire du Midi, 2024).

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_002

2 Rosnes et al.

political history of the school-educated, the history of knowledge, struggles

over schooling, and schools as places to address broader political claims, are
just some of the topics explored. The chapters can be said to be thematically
linked by their attention to the intersections of race, gender, class and educa-
tion, and to specific contexts within broader colonial settings. The geographi-
cal scope of this book includes Algeria, Angola, Cape Verde, Belgian Congo,
Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mayotte, Réunion, Somalia and South Africa.
In this book the roles of various actors involved in colonial and post-­
independence education in Africa are highlighted. The contributions place, at
the heart of their narratives, pupils, parents, teachers, policymakers, colonial
administrators, politicians and religious leaders as well as Islamic organizations,
Christian missionary societies, families and communities. All of these actors
negotiated and struggled over education during this period, and we believe
that the recollection of their stories, and the insightful analyses of these by
researchers, together with their location within the context of wider social
changes, demonstrate the centrality of the history of education to an under-
standing of the processes of colonisation, decolonisation and their aftermath
up to the present. The inclusion of the voices of the recipients of education is
a key innovation in recent research, an innovation which avoids characteris-
ing students as “passive recipients of Western forms of education” but instead
regards them as “agents who appropriated schooling as a domain of struggle
with which they could further their own (often diverse) social and economic
ends”.3 In a seminal article published in 1994, Frederick Cooper warned us
about the binary concepts of domination and resistance which “begin as useful
devices for opening up questions of power but end up constraining the search
for the precise ways in which power is deployed and the ways in which power
is engaged, contested, deflected, and appropriated”. In this regard, a social his-
tory of education, one which is attentive to the actors’ practices within larger
colonial processes, including precolonial commercial/cultural/missionary con-
tacts, recognises the “power of the Europeans in the colonial encounter” as well
as “the importance of African agency in determining the shape the encounter
took”.4 William Richardson has recently noted a lack of research on “indige-
nous histories of education articulated by subjugated peoples”.5 That is why we

3 Peter Kallaway, “National Education Systems: Africa,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History
of Education, ed. John L. Rury and Eileen H. Tamura (New York: Oxford University Press,
2019), 229–240, 229.
4 Fredrick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” American
Historical Review 99, no. 5/1 (1994): 1517, 1529.
5 William Richardson, “Method in the History of Education,” in The Oxford Handbook of the
History of Education, eds John L. Rury, and Eileen H. Tamura (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2019), 48–64.
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 3

asked the contributors to be attentive to narratives recounted from different

actors’ perspectives, and to give special attention to voices which have until
recently been largely marginalised. The workshop discussions highlighted this
goal.
In the collective book Empire and Education in Africa: The Shaping of a
Comparative Perspective published in 2016, the editors Peter Kallaway and
Rebecca Swartz noticed that “history of education has not found its place as
a key explanatory element of the era of colonialism”.6 History Through Nar-
ratives of Education in Africa: Social Histories in Times of Colonisation and Post
Independence 1920s–1970s is part of a set of very recent publications that reflect
the collective commitment on the part of scholars of the history of colonial
education to address this situation.7
Certainly, history of education is a powerful site to address the challenges
posed by historians who seek a more comprehensive understanding of the
broader processes that affected Africa under colonial rule.
To deal with the wide range of actors and institutions, as well as with the
broad geographical scope covered in this book, through a shared repertoire
of understanding we decided to focus on a concept taken from Mary Louise
Pratt: how schools constituted contact zones, zones where content, access, and
aims of education were negotiated.8 All the chapters in this book address edu-
cational settings as social spaces where both contact and separation between
colonisers and colonised are constructed through social interactions, negotia-
tions, and struggles.9

6 Kallaway, and Swartz, eds., Empire and Education in Africa: The Shaping of a Comparative
Perspective, 3.
7 Damiano Matasci, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, and Hugo Gonçalves Dores, “Imperialism,
internationalism, and education in Africa: Connected histories,” Paedagogica Historica 57,
no. 3 (2021): 221–227; Damiano Matasci, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, and Hugo Gonçalves
Dores, eds., Repenser la « mission civilisatrice ». L’éducation dans le monde colonial et post-
colonial au 20e siècle (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020); Damiano Matasci,
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, and Hugo Gonçalves Dores, eds., Education and Development in
Colonial and Postcolonial Africa: Policies, Paradigms, and Entanglements, 1890s–1980s (Cham:
Palgrave McMillan, 2020); Christiaens Kim, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Pieter Verstraete, eds.,
Missionary Education: Historical Approaches and Global Perspectives (Leuven: Leuven Uni-
versity Press, 2020); Linda Gardelle, and Camille Jacob, eds., Schools and national identities in
French-speaking Africa: Political choices, means of transmission and appropriation (London:
Routledge, 2020); Barnita Bagchi, Eckhardt Fuchs, and Kate Rousmaniere, eds., Connecting
Histories of Education: Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post)Colonial Educa-
tion (New York: Berghahn, 2014).
8 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge,
2008).
9 Spencer Segalla, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim Resist-
ance, 1912–1956 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2009); Harry G ­ amble, Contesting
4 Rosnes et al.

1 History of Education in Africa and the Contribution of this Volume10

The roles Christian missions and colonial powers assigned to school education
in the 19th and 20th centuries have been well documented. If we take a broad
look at the historiography of the field, we find that scholars have ­traditionally
analysed the objectives of education “from the top”, focussing on colonial
administrations and mission organisations.11 Using official sources, they inves-
tigated the educational aims these agents had to evangelise and establish
Christian communities, to train subaltern staff for colonial administrations
and trade companies, as well as to conquer the minds and hearts of the colo-
nised people. In the course of the last two decades the focus has shifted to
more contextual studies, and to local actors and institutions, as well as to the
agency of the colonised subjects.
Not surprisingly, the writing of the history of education has progressed
through different stages that follow the major historiographical trends in
­African history. During the era of nationalism on the continent in the 1960s,
the priority of education historians was to decolonise the history of Africa. His-
torians worked to recover African precolonial pasts, and to highlight the resist-
ance of African societies to slavery and to colonial rule. In that context, history
of education aimed to demonstrate how the aim of colonial ­education was to
impose western culture and values on African societies in order to sustain the
colonial order. The objective of those in the history of education field at that
time was to draw on those themes that assisted in shaping the new African
education project whose aim was building new and independent nations. In
other words, the purpose was to decolonise educational history as an aspect
of ­African decolonisation.12 In the same vein, historians explored the ways in

French West Africa: Battles over Schools and the Colonial Order, 1900–1950 (­Lincoln, NE:
University of Nebraska Press, 2017).
10 This section owes much to the historiographical review presented by Élisa Prosperetti
and Pierre Guidi at the 2021 workshop.
11 The pioneering works of Terence Ranger and Jacob F. Ade Ajayi in the mid-1960s are quite
exceptions to the rule: Terence Ranger, “African Attempts to Control Education in East
and Central Africa 1900–1939,” Past & Present 32 (1965): 57–85; Jacob F. Ade Ajayi, Christian
Missions in Nigeria 1841–1891: The Making of a New Elite (London: Longman, 1965). The lat-
ter is an attempt to link, in the nationalist post-independence context, the post 1960 Nige-
rian elite to the African-controlled pre-colonial encounter with Europeans. More recently,
Jacob F. Ade Ajayi, A Patriot to the Core: Bishop Ajayi Crowther (Oxford-Lagos: African
Books Collective - Spectrum Books Nigeria 2002) focused on a “contact zone” f­ igure.
12 Abdou Moumouni, L’Éducation en Afrique (Paris: Maspero, 1964); Jacob F. Ade Ajayi, “The
Educational Process and Historiography in Contemporary Africa,” in The Educational
­Process and Historiography in Africa (Paris: Unesco, 1982), 11–21.
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 5

which the elitist character of colonial education had created elites torn from
their own societies. These elites became contemptuous of their communities -
the Marxist terminology of the time described how education related to the new
comprador bourgeoisies ready to implement neo-colonialism. These trends
were extended in the 1970s in the light of dependency theories, at a time when
the hopes raised by independence were vanishing. The contribution of Wal-
ter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is emblematic in this respect.13
Thinkers, activists, and key political actors, such as Paulo Freire and Amilcar
Cabral, were at that time influential in shaping the direction of research. While
academic works were numerous, Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiongo’s essay
Decolonizing the Mind, published in the mid-80s and translated into several
languages, was influential in capturing, using a very clear writing style, the
theoretical advances of both the 1960s and 1970s.14 Since the 1950s novelists
and authors of memoirs have made a decisive contribution to highlighting the
ways in which education participated in the nascent awareness that led to the
decolonisation movements. L’Enfant Noir by the Guinean Camara Laye (1953),
L’Aventure ambiguë (1962) by the Senegalese Cheikh Hamidou Kane, The River
Between by the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1965), and Nervous Conditions by
the Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga (1988) are some of the more well-known
examples. Literary works were in fact ahead of academic research in highlight-
ing the particular relevance of schools as institutions to observe the contradic-
tions, conflicts, negotiations, and domestication processes at work in colonial
encounters characterised by unequal relations of power.
After a relative decrease in academic production in the 1980s, due in large
part to the deterioration of research conditions in Africa as a result of struc-
tural adjustments and the repression of authoritarian regimes, the end of
the 1990s saw a renewal, thanks to the emergence of the concept of agency,
a concept which was used to shed light on the multiple ways the colonised
experienced and coped with colonisation.15 Historians of education began to
investigate educational institutions as contact zones, to unveil how colonised
actors struggled and negotiated with missionaries and colonial administrations
for control of the schools, and how they shaped new identities and definitions

13 Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publica-

tions, 1972).
14 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
(Oxford & Nairobi: James Currey & EAEP, 1986).
15 Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” The American
Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994).
6 Rosnes et al.

of respectability and authority in order to adapt to colonial pressure.16 Thus,

previously neglected key actors entered the scene, among them African pupils
and teachers, parents, and communities living around the schools, and includ-
ing both men and women. This led to a search for new colonial sources and
new empirical documentation.
More recently, there has been a change of focus from national to global and
transnational histories.17 Seminal works edited by Damiano Matasci, Miguel
Bandeira Jerónimo and Hugo Gonçalves Dores have been published which
address colonial education using a trans-imperial perspective.18 This trend is
attentive to the porosity of imperial spaces. These spaces – although not sys-
tematic – are generally treated as closed entities. In focusing on the circulation
of ideas, practices and actors, as well as on trans-imperial institutions, these
scholars document the ways in which colonial educational policies were the
result of exchanges of knowledge and practices between the different empires
around the world as early as the 19th century. Being very careful to contextual-
ise their subjects, they do not go back to history “from the top” but analyse the
varieties of connexions at work in very specific times, spaces and experiences.
In doing so, this new body of research deepens and geographically expands
the work done by Alice Conklin on the “civilising mission” in French colonial-
ism.19 They document how the links between education and the so-called civi-
lising mission of colonialism were “multifaceted and at the heart of incessant
reconfigurations”.20 We see the perspective we pursue in this book as further
deepening this reading of the civilising mission and its colonial ideological cor-
ollaries in relation to such notions as ‘modernity’ or ‘development’. The school
negotiations and struggles analysed by the contributors demonstrate how col-
onised people shaped their own ideas and practices in the face of the cultural
and political projects that were imposed on them, and how they decomposed,
reconstructed, and redefined them for their own purposes, within the limits
imposed by the colonial power.

16 Carol Summers, Colonial Lessons: Africans’ Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1918–1940

(Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2002).
17 Eckhardt Fuchs, “History of Education Beyond the Nation? Trends in Historical and
Educational Scholarship,” in Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational and
­
Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post-Colonial Education, eds. Barnita Bagchi, Eckhardt
Fuchs, and Kate Rousmaniere (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 11–26.
18 Matasci, Jerónimo, and Dores, “Imperialism, internationalism, and education in Africa”;
Matasci, Jerónimo and Dores eds., Repenser la « mission civilisatrice »; Matasci, Jerónimo
and Gonçalves Dores, eds., Education and Development.
19 Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West
Africa, 1895–1930 (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).
20 Matasci, Jerónimo, and Dores (eds.), Repenser la « mission civilisatrice », 14.
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 7

Peter Kallaway has argued how education in Africa, both during the colonial
period and after independence, should be understood by considering the influ-
ences of educational developments in Europe, North America and the Middle
East, including mass education, nationalism, democracy, modern capitalism
and urbanism.21 In his book The Changing Face of Colonial Education in Africa:
Education, Science and Development he analyses the changing international
educational networks in the late colonial period, and how the field of educa-
tion was impacted by, and had an influence on, the discourse of development.
International mission cooperation, especially through the International Mis-
sionary Council and philanthropic organisations, influenced how education
developed in Africa. The impact of the Phelps-Stokes Commission’s reports
in the early 1920s, focusing on the adaptation of education to the local rural
African context, and inspired by experiences from black education in the US,
provides a key example in this regard. The spread of Western education took
place in all colonial contexts, and was marked by both international currents
and national colonial specificities. Towards and after independence, global
organisations, such as the United Nations (UN) and nationalist movements,
played important roles alongside colonial governments and mission organisa-
tions in shaping post-colonial educational systems. History of education in the
late colonial period in Africa remains in need of further research, and in this
book we hope to contribute to that project.22
This book aims to contribute to renewed approaches in the history of edu-
cation in colonial and post-independence Africa through considering educa-
tional spaces as ‘contact zones’ and through emphasising multiple co-existing
and interacting narratives. The aim of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing
Europe was to “find out how and in what sense European ideas that were uni-
versal were also, at one and the same time, drawn from very particular intel-
lectual and historical traditions that could not claim any universal validity”.23
He sought to question “how thought was related to place”.24 This question is
crucial to the field of history of colonial and post-independence education
in Africa. How were “universalistic” conceptualisations of education trans-
formed in specific local African contexts? How did local actors (teachers and

21 Peter Kallaway, The Changing Face of Colonial Education in Africa: Education, Science and
­Development (Oxon: Routledge, 2020); Kallaway, “National Education Systems: Africa.”
22 Kallaway, “National Education Systems: Africa,” 232; John L. Rury, and Eileen H. Tamura,
“Introduction: A Multifaceted and Flourishing Field,” in The Oxford Handbook of the
­History of Education, eds. John L. Rury, and Eileen H. Tamura (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2019), 1–16.
23 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
24 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, xiii.
8 Rosnes et al.

pupils, women and men, colonised and colonisers) appropriate them through
selections and reinterpretations, and shape their own categories of meaning,
social practices, and aspirations for the future? How have these conceptions
been reframed differently over time by actors situated in colonial and post-
independence social hierarchies? How did social actors use their educational
capital to shape the intellectual, political and social landscape of colonial and
post-colonial settings, within extremely restrictive power relationships?

2 Connected Histories and Contact Zones in Colonial and

Post-Independence Education

This book presents a view of colonial and post-independence education as

forming contextualised social sites, worlds, or spaces.25 Whereas the authors
use different concepts, such as ‘world of contact’ or ‘spacial turn’, many are
inspired by the concept of transcultural contact zones, taken from Pratt. She
defined contact zones as “… social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash,
and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical rela-
tions of domination and subordination …”.26 By focusing on “… what happens
when people of different cultures meet and begin to interact [original italics]”,27
the concept of transcultural contact zone is useful to describe the encounters
between European colonial actors, missionaries and colonised peoples. The
understanding of culture here refers to a fluid rather than an essentialised
entity. The focus is on interrelations within hierarchical orders, interrelations
which might reveal that “the same person or group of persons could, at the
same time, be higher ranking and subordinate”.28 Of course, actors’ positions
may differ as they move to distinct social spaces – the school, the family, the
community, the administration. In the contact zones analysed in this book
central and local, male and female, colonial agents, Protestant and Catholic
missionaries, Muslim preachers and teachers, public administrators, local
teachers, pupils and parents all negotiated around ways of leading, implement-
ing and financing educational work in the context of interrelations marked by
certain hierarchical and sometimes changing relations. These interrelations

25 Ellen V. Rosnes, “Negotiating Norwegian mission education in Zululand and Natal during
World War II,” Mission Studies 38, no. 1 (2021): 31–58.
26 Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Traveling writing and transculturation, 7.
27 Judith Becker, ed., European Missions in Contact Zones: Transformation Through Interac-
tion in a Post-) Colonial World (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 10.
28 Becker, ed., European Missions in Contact Zones: Transformation Through Interaction in a
Post-) Colonial World, 11.
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 9

tended to develop in unexpected ways.29 The contributions consider schools

and other educational settings (such as leprosy villages), as well as other social
spaces where actors use their literacy skills and school capital, as places of
encounters between knowledges, individuals and groups. In schools, actors
unequally situated in the distribution of power interact in zones which relate
to the resources at their disposal. All came with their own preconceptions,
practices, and objectives, with unequal opportunities to make them prevail,
and a distinct will and preparedness to negotiate and make concessions. The
encounters between individuals, groups, their knowledge and expectations for
the future were characterised by struggle, friction, dissonance, or negotiation
and compromise. This makes schools privileged places to observe the func-
tioning of colonial power at ground level, and to understand the place and
roles of knowledge in the process.
However, the necessary focus on agency should not lead to a lack of atten-
tion to power issues or to a tendency to minimise or overshadow issues of dom-
ination. The balance of power was tilted towards the colonial powers who, in
the absence of cultural hegemony, had the power to repress. Colonised people
who attempted radical opposition had to suffer in their flesh. But the modes
of domination of colonial powers, as well as their capacities to exercise them,
were distinct according to place and time. Again, school dynamics enable us to
uncover how power worked in different colonial contexts, and where any set
of influences could be more or less powerful and constraining. In confronting
multiple perspectives of connected educational settings the authors uncover
the multiple local interactions that shape the histories of schools, individuals,
social groups, and wider educational systems and contexts.
In 2014 the editors of the book Connecting Histories of Education argued that
the title bears a double meaning: both connecting historians from different
parts of the world, and presenting “local, regional, national and transnational
research, with the goal of highlighting the interconnectedness of histories
of education in the modern world”.30 The book, with a focus on South Asia,
“emphasises the ways in which a transnational perspective deepens and com-
plicates our understanding of colonialism, the nation state and the responses
of local communities, institutions and individuals”.31 This is, as explained in

29 Stephanie Wodianka, and Christiph Behrens, eds., Chaos in the Contact Zone. Unpre-
dictability, Improvisation and the Struggle for Control in Cultural Encounters (Bielefeld:
­Transcript Verlag, 2021).
30 Bagchi, Fuchs. and Rousmaniere, eds., Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational
and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post)Colonial Education, 1.
31 Bagchi, Fuchs, and Rousmaniere, eds., Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational
and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post)Colonial Education, 2.
10 Rosnes et al.

Fuchs’ chapter, part of a current trend to “redefine spaces and the relation-
ships between them” and “go beyond the traditional narrative based on the
nation-state”.32 In line with the recent works edited by Damiano Matasci,
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and Hugo Gonçalves Dores, the search for ‘con-
nected histories’ in the history of colonial education needs to be deepened.33
Our book on History Through Narratives of Education in Africa: Social Histories
in Times of Colonisation and Post Independence 1920s–1970s aims to contrib-
ute to this field of research with analyses of narratives from various colonial
and post-­independence A ­ frican contexts. The aim is to deepen the search for
“­connected histories” at the micro-level.

3 The Search for Narratives of Education from Oral and Archival

Sources

The sources for the history of education in sub-Saharan Africa are numerous,
dispersed throughout the world, polymorphous, subject to varied uses and, for
many, infinitely fragile and precarious. As already stated, one of the aims of this
book is to emphasise multiple co-existing and interacting narratives. The dif-
ferent contributors to this book seek to analyse contextual developments ‘from
below’, to explore the multiplicity of voices and narratives, their co-existence
and how they emerged from and reshaped relations of power. We aim, in line
with other approaches in recent decades, to include new methodological and
theoretical aspects to question our research practices and try to renew them.34
We aim at a critical approach to the archives and their records.35 From
where can we get a deeper insight into educational policies and practices?
The responses in this book to this question are to mobilise new sources and
re-­analyse / re-interrogate those we already know. These sources include
documents produced by colonial or post-independence administrations,
­

32 Fuchs, “History of Education Beyond the Nation? Trends in Historical and Educational
Scholarship,” 11.
33 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early
Modern Eurasia,” in Beyond Binary Histories: Re-imagining Eurasia to c.1830, ed. V. Lieb-
erman (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1999); Matasci, Jerónimo, and
Dores, “Imperialism, internationalism, and education in Africa”; Matasci, Jerónimo, and
Dores, eds., Repenser la « mission civilisatrice »; Matasci, Jerónimo, and Gonçalves Dores,
eds., Education and Development.
34 Richardson, “Method in the History of Education.”
35 Jordanna Bailkin, “Where did the Empire Go? Archives and Decolonization in Britain,”
The American Historical Review 120 (2015): 884–899.
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 11

missionary sources, textbooks, letters, pictures, politicians’ and / or teachers’

diaries. For instance, most institutional archives reveal their limits. In addition,
it is often apparent that the perspectives of the actors have severe limitations.
It is rare for such actors as European colonial officials or colonial inspectorate
civil servants, those involved in the development of policies or their imple-
mentation, to take sufficient notice of the views of pupils, parents or teachers,
even when they have been invited to participate in policy discussions.
On the contrary, narratives of education, from both oral and archival sources
have the potential to highlight perspectives of educational realities shaped
from below, and to bring to light the fundamental roles of local actors and the
dynamics of education in the local context. Finally, such narratives enable the
authors to write situated histories of connections, as the narratives under study
are produced by local, regional as well as trans-continental / trans-imperial
actors whose interactions are multifaceted.36 Colonial education introduced
ideas and practices which embraced issues of identity, class, race and gender,
and which shaped the kind of power relations that are a main concern in a focus
on connections and continuities.37 The aim of a narrative approach is to search
for connections that have formerly remained unseen in historical research.
The relation between history and narrative has fostered intense debates
since the development of oral history as a discipline of History in the 1960s, and
the ‘revival of narrative’ in the late 1970s.38 These theoretical and methodologi-
cal discussions concern, on the one hand, history writing as narrative and, on
the other, the uses of the narratives of individuals or groups, both oral and writ-
ten, as historical sources. This book therefore highlights the second category.
The authors use narratives of educational actors, narratives which convey situ-
ated experiences and interpretations of educational history, and place them in
dialogue with administrative sources. The narratives either have their origins
in previously undiscovered archival material, or were collected through oral/
interview methods. The material can be from official sources (­metropolitan or
local administrations, civil and military), semi-official sources (missions, inter-
national agencies) or have as its locus private, personal sources (interviews,

36 Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern

Eurasia.”
37 Caroline Douki, and Philippe Minard, “Histoire globale, histoires connectées: un change-
ment d’échelle historiographique?,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 5, no.
54-4bis (2007): 7–21.
38 Gwyn Prins, “Oral History,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke
(­Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991), 114–139; Lawrence Stone, “The Revival of Narrative:
­Reflections on a New Old History.” Past & Present 85, no. 85 (1979): 3–24.
12 Rosnes et al.

memoirs, legal testimonies). The sources used by researchers in this book drew
upon the stories of pupils, teachers, officials, and other actors.

4 The Search for Marginalised Voices through Oral Interviews

In their search for multiple perspectives and marginalised voices, historians

have faced difficulties regarding women’s voices. Since the 1980s the use of
oral history has made it possible to ensure that “women are no longer invis-
ible in African historiography”, and new ways have been found to uncover the
ways in which they have interpreted their world in order to act on and in it.39
The first seminal works in this branch of historical research were published on
girls education in relation to missionary and colonial ideals of domesticity,40 a
trend that continued in the following decades, with attention given to the ways
in which women used education to enhance their autonomy, their recogni-
tion and participation in economic, social, and political fields.41 Thanks to a
more systematic and reflexive use of oral sources, it has been possible to place
the voices of female witnesses at the centre of the historian’s source narrative.
Certain chapters in this book promote this endeavour. In Kwa-Zulu Natal, Ellen
Vea Rosnes and Kalpana Hiralal (Chapter 7) collected life stories through inter-
views with five former female pupils and exploited biographical narratives
from interviews conducted and transcribed in a former project, the Roots Pro-
ject. The interview material reveals multiple co-existing narratives that weave
together the daily lives of women teachers and pupils. Through the Roots
Project, oral biographies were collected and accompanied by a rich compila-
tion of personal documents: photographs, pass and medical certificates, and
immigration documents that allowed women to emerge from forgotten family
archives. These exhumed sources are added to the more official sources (minis-
terial archives, inspection reports, statistical surveys) and little-known mission
archival sources. The authors’ approach to their research from this perspective,

39 Nancy Rose Hunt, “Placing African Women’s History and Locating Gender”, Social History
14, no. 3 (1989): 359–379.
40 For instance: Deborah Gaitskell, “Housewives, maids or mothers: Some considerations
of domesticity for Christian women in Johannesburg, 1903–39,” The Journal of African
History 24, no. 2 (1983): 241–256; LaRay Denzer, “Domestic Science Training in Colonial
Yorubaland, Nigeria,” in African Encounters with Domesticity, ed. Karen T. Hansen (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 116–139.
41 Meghan Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Educa-
tion (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014); Pascale Barthélémy, Africaines et
diplômées à l’époque coloniale (1918–1957) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010).
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 13

and their cross-referencing with women’s testimonies and biographical pro-

files, allows them to analyse the processes through which cultural and religious
identities were transformed and/or contested in the various contact zones that
structure the school field. The renewed use of these sources implies “challenge
gender stereotypes, explore power relations between the sexes, and unearth
linguistic obscurities”.42 Although it is not possible to systematically generalise
from this set of sources, they nevertheless make it possible to highlight typical
paths that are emblematic of an era.
Oral interviews offer an opportunity to gather rich documentation on the
experiences of women with the challenges, hopes and dreams they reveal.
Mamaye Idriss and Mihary Jaofeno (Chapter 5) place written texts (academic
thesis and diary) of and about female teachers into dialogue with interviews
with a former female teacher, descendant/family members and a former
­student. This archival and oral material enables them to trace the process
of constructing a female teacher and migrant identity, one nourished by the
desire for a school for oneself and the will to educate others.
Maria da Luz Ramos and Pedro Goulart (Chapter 12) conducted interviews
which fall into two main categories. Firstly, after independence, the authors
conducted exploratory interviews with former teachers, Cape Verdean aca-
demics s­ pecialising in educational issues, and former primary school boys. Of
particular significance were the twelve in-depth interviews they conducted
with Cape Verdean women over 50 years of age who attended school after the
1940s. The authors wanted to give a voice to Cape Verdean women and, in turn,
these women helped the historian to question colonial research work. The
women did not perceive or suggest any institutional attempt to limit school
attendance, and were convinced that schools were wide open. They describe
the variety of social dynamics triggered by the school routine: the widening
of their space for socialisation and learning, the possibility of a redefinition of
identity from which emerged an educated woman. But as female actors, instru-
mentalised by the colonial government for its socio-administrative purposes,
these women were also representing the civilisational ideals of the colonial
power and were proud of this. This type of nostalgic reaction towards a colo-
nial “Golden Age” is not an exception in West Africa among elders. Certainly,
these feelings are in contradiction with public education statistics, even if they
ignore the informal dynamics linked to the work of missionaries and priests
in certain parishes where they prepared unschooled children for the annual

42 Ellen Vea Rosnes, and Kalpana Hiralal, Chapter 7 in this volume, 185.
14 Rosnes et al.

exams. Indeed, the women report present memories from the time of the colo-
nial administration and speak of these with vivacity and nostalgia.
Roland Rakotovao’s work on teachers (1920–1970) in rural Betsileo in Mad-
agascar (Chapter 6) is also based on the matching of, and dialogue between,
two types of sources. Firstly, the colonial archives which, as in other colonies,
are made of almost uninterrupted series in the public archives of local interest,
or in the archives of sovereignty, which date up to 1960. From then on, either
oral archives or the unevenly preserved press often replaced the administrative
archives which were neglected by the new holders of power. For narratives of
the colonial period Roland Rakotovao interviewed four primary school teach-
ers, a female teacher and a member of a family of primary school teachers who
testified about their educational experiences in the period from 1920 to 1970.
These life stories are added to the diaries of two other teachers written between
1939 and 1970. These oral and written testimonies are completed by the author
using an indirect source on life paths in the form of a book on the history of the
famous characters of Madagascar written by Raotozafy. In addition, the Le Jour-
nal des Missions Évangéliques published by the Mission Protestante Française
(MPF), local branch of the Société des missions évangéliques de Paris, unearthed
in mission archives, contains annual notes on the indigenous staff in the mis-
sion’s work (evangelists, teachers, etc.). These last two sources can be seen as
being halfway between private and public archival categories because, although
they provide information on individual careers, they were produced within a
missionary institutional framework. Finally, the author has exploited what have
been considered more traditional sources for the historian, with official docu-
ments produced by public institutions. The chapter illustrates the need to cross-
reference and compare sources to produce ‘reliable’ historical knowledge.
Lydia Hadj-Ahmed (Chapter 8) bases her research on the story of a sibling
who went to school during the Algerian war. By combining and cross-referenc-
ing sources, she shows the life of the family, its relationship to school, the fate
of sisters with little or no schooling, the life of the village during the war as seen
by the children and adults, the civilian and then military teachers. Through the
micro-history of a sibling who attended school in El-Flaye during the war, the
historian seeks to understand the effects of the war on the educational trajec-
tories of inhabitants of a village in Kabylia, while the war rages between the
colonial power and the FLN. This innovative historic entry into the war and
into the classroom through the study of adelphic links is based on oral sur-
veys combined with the examination of administrative, school, and military
archives. The aim is to study the school, both as an institution and as an experi-
ence lived by the children and by the families, in order to understand, among
other aspects, the ways in which the school reconfigures the future plans that
parents formulate for their children in a very tense context.
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 15

Without doubt, transcribed texts from oral interviews are less constructed and
more spontaneous than a written text in which the author weighs up each word
for a posterity for which he intends the text. Whatever the case, the interviews,
with all the precautions required in view of the passage of time, reconstructions
of memories, the myth of the Golden Age, unconscious teleological reflexes, as
also emphasised by Pierre-Éric Fageol and Frédéric Garan (Chapter 10), allows
access to the experiences of the actors as close as possible to events.

5 The Search for Multiple Perspectives through Alternative Written

Sources

In many cases, while marginalised voices representing different perspectives

exist in written sources, it is up to the historian to make them speak. Thus, biog-
raphy (or autobiography), when confronted or compared with other accounts
of the same type, for the same region or the same period, goes beyond the
individual destiny and reveals networks of sociability and common interests.
This is what Esther Ginestet does in her chapter (Chapter 2) where she bases
her research on a large corpus of biographies produced in the 1960s in Kenya
by Luo scholars, teachers and/or preachers trained since the 1900s. The auto-
biography Not Yet Uhuru published in 1967 by Oginga Odinga, the former vice-
president of Kenya, is only one example of the numerous biographical writings
that evoke the role of the Maseno school in Western Kenya as a crucible of
literary production. Mostly written in English, some of the autobiographies
are published (more than ten titles), others forgotten in the archives of vari-
ous missions. When confronted with the archives of these missions, the author
shows how social networks were created due to the mastery of new knowledge
specific to students, pastors and teachers, and how they competed with the old
networks of the custodians of Luo knowledge in this region of Kenya. These
writings also contribute to the demonstration that these East African literates
are not only a source for the historian but represent, above all, autonomous
products of knowledge about the time. From the 1930s onwards, writing in Luo
and no longer in English, writing about oneself, and no longer aspiring to focus
on Europe as a field of study, became, for some of these scholars in Maseno and
other places in the Great Lakes region, the marker of a rethinking/renegotia-
tion of their identity in the colonial context.
In relation to biography, Charlotte Courreye (Chapter 9), like many of her
colleagues in this book, interrogates previous academic publications to bring
together and make sense of scattered information. In the end, Courreye retains
only the ‘ambiguous status of the teachers’ in the Algerian school sphere during
the colonial period and it is in the memoirs published by several intellectuals
16 Rosnes et al.

that the author seeks confirmation of her hypothesis on the ambiguous status
of teachers in Algeria. She highlights the role of free-schools, such as those of
the Ulemas Association, in the construction of a national identity during the
French colonial era, and how it preceded the national education network that
emerged in the 1950s and 60s. In this respect the documentary collection in
this chapter is very similar to that of Ginestet. The emergence of new mate-
rial (memoirs and biographies) is added to, and placed in dialogue with, the
rereading of old known sources (official archives).
Caterina Scalvedi’s chapter (Chapter 3) provides an example of how, in the
absence of an educational policy defined by a political centre (even though
it was a Fascist regime), competing narratives, emanating from Catholic mis-
sionaries and Muslim educators in Italian Somalia, are offered to the historian
to understand from the inside the history of the development of school cur-
ricula for the colonised. School programmes, designed to promote as closely
and effectively as possible, the pupils’ integration of colonial and Islamic
knowledge, are rich in lessons on the relationship between the designer and
the recipients. The stories, or at least the writings, of the Italian Catholic mis-
sionaries on the ground provide the meta-text indispensable for understand-
ing the processes of program development and their local reception. In this
context, it is these non-governmental sources, which should be distinguished
from private family or individual sources, that allow us to understand how,
against all expectations, according to Caterina Scalvedi, it was the local com-
munities and missionaries who left their mark on the ‘indigenous programmes’
or teaching materials validated a posteriori by Mussolini’s Rome. The variety of
governmental archives, is usefully complemented by the accounts, letters, and
memoranda produced by the missionaries with their internal debates. What
seems to distinguish these letters and memoranda from the official govern-
ment archives is their capacity to inform as much about the daily life of the
school as about the major political trends that even the fascist governor of
Mogadishu struggled to influence.
The sources used by Lars Folke Berge in his chapter (Chapter 14) on the
Swedish Evangelical Mission (SEM) in Eritrea and Ethiopia allow him to show
not only how nineteenth-century ideals of modernisation in Sweden were
transferred to schools in these two countries, but also how a transfer of knowl-
edge in return led to increased Swedish global political curiosity and invest-
ment in world affairs in the early twentieth century. Accounts by such former
missionaries as Gustav Arén, not only inspired Lars Folke Berge’s research, but
also provided him with considerable documentary raw material. However, Lars
Folke Berge warns that, “given his partisan approach to the SEM, his narrative
is often biased, in particular, regarding his views on Ethiopian Orthodox and
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 17

Roman Catholics, and should be read with caution”.43 Besides these secondary
sources, he uses others, such as those of Ellen Vea Rosnes and Kalpana Hiralal
in Chapter 7. Here Lars Folke Berge uses Nordic mission archives, in particular
the journal Missionstidning. With a circulation of 25,000, this journal was one
of the most widely read publications in Sweden at the beginning of the 20th
century. This source thus supports the author’s assertion regarding the con-
struction of a sphere of exchanged/cross-fertilised knowledge between Ethio-
pia and Sweden that goes beyond the simple teaching mission and probably
had a considerable impact on the policy of the evangelical mission itself.
The contribution by Rehana T. Odendaal (Chapter 11), who analysed the
archives stored by the Wits Central Records of the University of the Witwa-
tersrand, shows that, while the bulk of the archives are well known by histori-
ans, it is the researcher’s point of view that changes, or needs to change. The
documents that have long been available simply needed to be subjected to
a new reading that would modify the existing historical analysis and greatly
qualify the official internal discourse on the supposedly unanimous and
­exemplary resistance to apartheid at two institutions, the Universities of the
Witwatersrand (Wits) and Cape Town (UCT), from the 1950s on. The Academic
Freedom campaign ceases to be the sole voice of a white, English-speaking,
liberal, myth-building academic world. Above all, this research shifts the focus:
far from emphasising equal access to the university for all categories of the
population, and ‘openness’, this research seeks to explore how these cam-
paigns were mainly concerned with defending university autonomy in institu-
tional terms. History books of the 1970s–80s, and even those published in the
1990s, as well as speeches, become in turn sources for their critical heirs, not
only in the context of ordinary historiographical reflection, but with the aim
of re-reading the social and political history of an academic resistance that
was undoubtedly exaggeratedly magnified in its time as being anti-racist. The
historian uses the monthly student magazine Wits Student, speeches, archived
records of official meetings, memoranda or pamphlets produced by univer-
sity authorities, pamphleteering or militant literature produced on campus,
and press cuttings in her research. Using these sources, she seeks to reinterpret
events surrounding the fight for university academic freedom under apartheid
in South Africa, events which have been seen through the lens of paternalism,
and the focus at the time on the overriding commitment to autonomy and aca-
demic democracy. These sources reveal the silence of activists and, ultimately,
the real limits of black inclusion. Memoirs by well-known academics and

43 Lars Folke Berge, Chapter 14, 366 in this volume.

18 Rosnes et al.

former students, such as Nelson Mandela, also qualify the myth of the open
university. This contribution is a reminder of the inexhaustible richness of a
body of material that is already known, if it is illuminated in a new way.
Chapter 4, as well, refers to a diversity of sources. In addition to sources pro-
duced by the ministry of Education and the Empress Menen School, an elite
school for girls in Ethiopia, Pierre Guidi looks for the voices of school actors
debating about women’s education during the 1940–1950 period. During these
two decades, women and men teachers and students, Ethiopian and Western
expatriates, wrote opinion articles in the national press in English or Amharic.
These written sources are supplemented with interviews with former female stu-
dents for a retrospective look at the education they received. These multiple and
somehow classical sources for historians are of significant value when their con-
tent is examined through the perspective that Pierre Guidi adopts, at the cross-
roads of the study of gender, schooling, nationalism, and the ideology of progress.
Curriculum, school reports and teaching materials help with the understanding
of the limits of the encounter between Amhara/Ethiopian and Western teaching
contents. While these contents were separated in the academic section (the first
ones taught at the primary and the second ones at the secondary level), they were
more hybridised in the Domestic Science section. An illustrative example is the
elaboration of a food fusion, at least for one of the two sections of the cookery
manual produced by the teachers and students of the Domestic Science section.
Linking opinion debates to these school sources enables Pierre Guidi to
understand how the contents of teaching materials and the level of women’s
education stimulated conflicting arguments about the identity, place, and role
of women in the future of the nation. In addition, to shed light on the impact
of the educational projects on the identity of young women students, these
sources also say a lot about the channels through which the national project
reached the limited population of readers. School reports and the debates in
the press exposed a redefined female figure to the imagination of reading-
elites. The debates about this new model of femininity, which contested the
model of the male as breadwinner as well as of male authority in private and
public spaces, gave women students and teachers the opportunity to find their
voices to defend their opinions. However, the question of evaluating the real
impact of these discourses and debates must be raised here.

6 The Use of Films as Sources for Research

Pierre-Éric Fageol and Frédéric Garan (Chapter 10) faced a major difficulty
regarding the access to archival sources for a recent period (1946–1968) when
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 19

trying to establish the portrait of a group of student-teachers in Reunion.

Although access to administrative sources was limited, an exploration of pri-
vate or corporate collections proved fruitful. Nonetheless some archival doc-
uments and the school’s entry registers that provided statistics, and various
newspapers, became an essential source of official information. The originality
of Pierre-Éric Fageol and Frédéric Garan’s chapter emerges from their use of
a French television program Seize millions de jeunes by Alain de Sedouy and
André Harris, La Réunion, 220 000 jeunes (ORTF, 1966, 31mn) archived in the
French Institut National de l’Audiovisuel from which they were able to gather
the testimonies of young teachers. These interviews of young, trained teachers,
known as Normalien.ne.s, are lively, immediate, and relevant. Much more than
a printed text, these interviews vividly convey the tone of the 1960s, as well
as gender relations, and ordinary and unconscious racism. Unknown details
about the film directors’ role and position, however, remain an obstacle to fully
understanding the working context of the interviews. Indeed, on the one hand,
while their choice of the witnesses who were filmed, and who are identified
as “Indians”, “petits Blancs”, “malbars”, “z’arabes” or “sinois” could lead one to
believe in a multi-ethnic teaching body, it is notable that Afro-Réunionnais as
a group are absent. The spontaneity of the reportage, on the other hand, avoids
one of the weaknesses of the 17 interviews conducted by the researchers. They
note in their chapter:

The difficulty in interpreting the testimonies lies in the articulation

between “personal memoryˮ and “collective memoryˮ. However, both
kinds of memory make it possible to explore and highlight the creation
of a new elite at odds with those traditional (colonial) elites which took
shape through exceptional careers in teaching, in the associative world
or/and in political life.44

In addition, the corpus of interviews with these 17 Normalien.ne.s, similar to

those in the film, contributes to an understanding of the esprit de corps, the
shared republican values and the feeling of the common mission that ani-
mated all of them.
The use of the film archive is also central to the work of Eva Van de Velde
and Pieter Verstraete on the Belgian Congo (Chapter 15) and on informal
educational institutions, such as leprosy villages, a rather neglected area of
the history of education in the colonial situation. Their chapter focuses on
the visual representation of a Congolese leprosy village in a 1938 film by the

44 Pierre-Éric Fageol and Frédéric Garan, Chapter 10 in this volume, 276

20 Rosnes et al.

Belgian medical assistant and filmmaker Gérard de Boe. The film demonstrates
how the representation of Congolese disabled people played a key role in the
construction of a dichotomous and hierarchical difference between the ‘inferior
Congolese’ and the ‘superior white Belgian coloniser’. In addition to providing
a brief overview of the history of education in the Congo, and the relevance of
the study of leprosy villages for historians of education, the authors argue for
a more refined analysis of colonial film propaganda as a transcultural contact
zone revealing nuances in social relations in the colonial situation. That said, the
analysis of the film shows it to be aiming more at educating a Belgian audience
than at any discussion about the education of lepers or their acculturation to
the Western habitus. Indeed, the authors, Eva Van de Velde and Pieter Verstraete
in contrast to Van Trigt and Legêne’s work on Surinam (2016) whose work they
quote, do not highlight any manifestations of local resistance by the Congolese.45
Instead they underline manifestations of racist domination and discrimination.
Clothes, photographs and colonial films, they say, encourage one to consider the
source material as a transcultural space where the different parties negotiate
with each other and these visual sources are not simply – superficially – to be
read as the mere staging of colonial domination.

7 Outline of the Book: Acting in the Contact Zone

Whether or not they directly mobilise the concept of ‘contact zone’, all the
chapters approach school settings as places where actors negotiate between
corpuses of knowledge and educational objectives placed in competition by
the colonial encounter. The contributions all draw on former literature about
the social history of schooling and focus on the agency of actors’ within local
and broader relations of power. However, the fruitfulness of the concept of
‘contact zone’ enables us to articulate cross-cutting topics, open new fields of
enquiry, and explore theoretical trends that testify to the liveliness of current
research in the history of education in (post) colonial Africa.
Four sub-themes can be identified and drawn upon by using to the ­concept
of ‘contact zone’: 1) The genesis and action of intermediary social groups;
2) Colonial spaces of contact, allegiances and loyalties; 3) Limits and closures
of contact zones 4) Two directional flows or transfers of knowledge between
the colony/former colony and the metropole. Although most of the chapters
could fit into more than one category, we decided to separate them for the sake
of clarity.

45 Paul Van Trigt & Susan Legêne, ‘Writing disability into colonial histories of humanitarian-
ism,’ Social Inclusion 4, no.4 (2016): 188–196.
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 21

First, there is what we have categorised as school education shaped interme-

diary social groups who constructed specific views and elaborated on several
practices about their place and roles in societies when faced by the pressures
of colonialism. Schools are places where both colonial knowledge(s) were
transmitted and bounded, and where local knowledge which transgressed or
contested those boundaries was produced. Focusing on what is now Eastern
Kenya, Esther Ginestet demonstrates in Chapter 2 how Luo men and women
teachers trained in mission schools from the end of the 19th century transposed
sigana, a local form of knowledge which “encompasses the notions of story, leg-
end, myth, and history without establishing clear distinctions between them”
into new forms related to Christianity.46 They created new meanings and ideas
about community that they spread through teaching and literary works. Very
active in building extensive networks within the neighbouring regions of the
Indian ocean and with missionaries, these teachers built a rich and cosmopoli-
tan knowledge landscape of their own. Even if it was reduced with the greater
involvement of the colonial state in education in the course of the 20th cen-
tury, this knowledge, developed within an unequal cultural encounter, was a
resource to be utilised in the struggle for authority, respectability, and school
autonomy, and in due course worked to diminish the impact of colonialism.
Luo literati, as actors of knowledge production within the knowledge/power
relation could be said to be active and conscious builders of the contact zone.
In other contexts, the colonisers themselves were forced to negotiate with
the knowledge and values of the colonised. Such was the case in Somalia, as
Caterina Scalvedi demonstrates in Chapter 3. There, Italian missionaries, con-
fronted by the Muslim leaders, “charismatic intellectuals and religious lead-
ers,” who exerted a significant influence on the population, were compelled to
design and elaborate a pedagogic strategy which included a positive image of
Islam in the curriculum.47 This was the price they found themselves obliged
to pay to attract students and facilitate harmonious relations with the local
population in a context where the state was relatively weak. Surprisingly for
a Fascist regime, school knowledge was grounded in the acceptance of practi-
cal compromises which constituted a trade-off between missionaries, Muslim
religious leaders and the Governor of Somalia in Mogadishu and Ministry of
the Colonies in Rome. As part of the compromise, the colonial government
tried to make the Islamic knowledge synchronise with Catholic values by
means of a curriculum that promoted the cause of the Italian civilising mis-
sion to the Somali, whatever their faith. This illustrates how contact zones are

46 Esther Ginestet, Chapter 2 in this volume, 55.

47 Caterina Scalvedi, Chapter 3 in this volume, 79.
22 Rosnes et al.

“topos of probation, in which improvisation seems to be the key strategic skill

in the struggle for control”.48
Pierre Guidi analyses in Chapter 4 the role of women’s education in shaping
the future of Ethiopia after its liberation from Italian occupation in 1941. The
place of schooling and gender in the ‘New Era’ is illustrated by the narrative
of the Empress Menen School for girls. Inside of the Menen School, teaching
arrangements, academic standards, knowledges, and moral regulations were
negotiated. Elite single-sex schools, in hindsight, can be considered contact
zones and “laboratories of pedagogical elaboration related to the new gen-
dered roles projected by Ethiopian political elites for the future of the nation”.49
During this key historical time, promoters of women’s education were active
in Ethiopia, as an aspect of the construction of intermediary social groups. In
its contribution to shaping the new nation by promoting a ‘new marriage’ for
the ‘new civilisation’ where power structures are more equal between women
and men, women’s education had also to relate to the threat they represented,
especially to men, in their attempts to renegotiate authority.
The shaping of intermediary social groups via school education is also
apparent in Chapter 5. Based on the narratives of two women, Juliette Bébé
and Anne-Marie Novou, Mamaye Idriss and Mihary Jaofeno show how educa-
tion across several French colonies helped to constitute a social group which
pioneered girls’ schooling. Bébé and Novou, born in Saint Marie island (Mada-
gascar), had settled on the Indian ocean island Mayotte. Their families’ origins
and traditions made it possible for them to get access to higher education in
Madagascar through which they encountered other students from the whole
Indian Ocean area. Their studies and travels enabled them to “contours of
a new model of womanhood both in the private sphere (monogamous and
endogamous marriage strategy) and the professional sphere (in their teaching
practices)”.50 Their lives illustrate how education, both in content and access,
could be negotiated and, according to the authors, they both “had a real aura
in society and became role models for future generations”.
Second, as places of contact between local populations, missionaries, and
colonial powers, schools implied multiple allegiances and loyalties that could
provide places of negotiation or confrontation. Roland Rakotovao demon-
strates in Chapter 6 how, in North Betsileo, rural Madagascar, from the late
19th century to the 1970s, in which ways teachers appropriated mission and
colonial education and acted as intermediaries between their villages and the

48 Wodianka, and Behrens, eds., Chaos in the Contact Zone: Unpredictability, Improvisation
and the Struggle for Control in Cultural Encounters, 8.
49 Pierre Guidi, Chapter 4 in this volume, 99.
50 Mamaye Idriss and Mihary Jaofeno, Chapter 5 in this volume, 150.
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 23

broader colony. In achieving social mobility, while simultaneously managing

to escape competition with Europeans, they inspired their local fellows to use
schooling as a provider of the cultural tools and economic opportunities to
cope with French colonialism. Conscious of their common identity based on
their academic successes, the members of this group were nevertheless not
contemptuous of their local communities. On the contrary, they kept strong
family and community ties, and, in fact contributed to preserving and rein-
forcing local self-consciousness and sense of belonging through, for instance,
building tombs for the cult of ancestors, a pivotal component of local identity.
Their ability to adapt the colonial cultural and economic impositions while
keeping alive local identities, made them inspiring role models who negotiated
the contradictions of the contact zone.
In South Africa too, the Indian Baptist Missionary women teachers and
­African female pupils at the Norwegian Lutheran mission, studied by Ellen
Vea Rosnes and Kalpana Hiralal in Chapter 7, were able to negotiate within
different spaces of the colonial society (the mission, the government, their
neighbourhood, and their communities) thanks to their mission education
and their following mission work. Being individuals who were in themselves
embodiments of the contract zone, their multiple loyalties allowed them to
confront the specific norms and social expectations of the transforming segre-
gated social spaces of the South African society.51
In the case of Algeria during the war of liberation from French colonial-
ism, Lydia Hadj-Ahmed demonstrates in Chapter 8 how school children were
forced to choose between two mutually exclusive allegiances. She analyses the
disrupted and reconfigured school trajectories of a same sibling in a village in
Kabylia, at a time when schools were sites of dispute between the National
Liberation Front (FLN) and the French colonial power, who both aimed to con-
trol the population through its children. Schools were burned by the FLN, and
pupils were at times threatened by its members with harsh physical violence
if they went to school. In response, the French military transported children to
school by force to secure their obedience. In this instance, schools were social
spaces of frontal struggle; war defined the contact zone.
Third, other chapters illustrate the limits of the contact zone. Sometimes col-
onisers were strong enough to restrict the development of a contact zone, an
act which led to diverse responses from the colonised. In Chapter 9, Charlotte
Courreye analyses the emergence and consolidation of a renewed Muslim con-
fessional education system in colonial Algeria as an alternative to the colonial
French schools as well as to the zaouiya koranic schools. She demonstrates

51 Mamaye Idriss and Mihary Jaofeno, Chapter 5 in this volume, 150.

24 Rosnes et al.

how, regardless of their mastery of the knowledge and codes on both sides of
the colonial border, “indigenous” teachers were often challenged by the “une-
qual cultural contact” between the colonial and the colonised world. Colonial
racism put those who wished to be “contact men” in an untenable position;
their willingness to compromise between the colonial and indigenous con-
texts placed them in a threatening social position. Subsequently, the school
established from 1930 by the reformist Ulemas reshaped and gave new strength
to Islamic education by hybridising it with French knowledge and pedagogies.
The “contact zones” that had been restricted by the colonial school were thus
created by the colonised themselves in alternative schools.
In Chapter 10 the case of the Ecole Normale de Belle-Pierre in La Réunion,
studied by Pierre-Éric Fageol and Frédéric Garan, illustrates a significantly
different trend. In the specific context where the former colony became fully
integrated into France as a French département with full rights after 1946, the
students of this teacher training school, coming from rural poor and sometimes
urban middle class social backgrounds, developed a strong esprit de corps,
defining themselves as an elite devoted to the “civilising mission” promoted by
the French authorities. Therefore, they were willing to transfer French culture
in what was understood to be its pure form in the name of social progress. In
this process, they attempted to ensure that the creole culture that had devel-
oped on the Island should be definitively prevented from entering the school
space. The group under study was trained in the 1960s and was, the authors
argue, instrumental in ensuring the integration of the Island to the metropole
in the following decades.
It happened that people on the powerful side of the colonial divide uncon-
sciously closed the contact zone, as in the case studied by Rehana Odendaal in
Chapter 11. She analyses the protest organised in two South African “open uni-
versities” (the University of Cape Town and Witwatersrand University) against
the Extension of University Education Act of 1959, which extended apartheid
into universities. She demonstrates that the discourses and practices at work in
these protests paradoxically contributed to delineate a legitimate form of con-
test shaped by the sole experience of white South Africans. Therefore, when the
purpose of the doctrine of hard-line segregation and “separate development”
was to prevent contact in the name of racial purity, advocates of openness
failed to create an inclusive space and incorporate “marginalised black voices”.
In Chapter 12, Maria da Luz Ramos and Pedro Goulart demonstrate that
female students in Cape Verde, with its diverse population, did not consider
Portuguese colonial schools as possible contact zones. Women’s narratives
about education in the archipelago during colonialism, and in the wake of
independence, convey a feeling of an acceptance of Portuguese knowledge
Introduction: Connecting Narratives of Education 25

transmitted through the school and with no deconstruction nor hybridisation.

Education in Cape Verde was impacted by traditional Catholic and European
values and promoted an education for girls which was geared towards their
becoming mothers and wives. The authors show, through the voices of former
students’ perceptions of education (access, content, aim, gender), the ways it
was perceived from below and why the content and organisation of the school,
seen as a ‘contact zone’, were not contested.
The case of Amadeu Castilho Soares (1930–2021) provincial secretary of Edu-
cation, Health, Work, and Social Providence in Angola for one year (1961–1962),
described by Antónia Barreto and Clara Carvalho in Chapter 13, illustrates how
education policy could be contested and negotiated within the frame of a colo-
nial administration, thus clarifying the limits of the contact zone concept. They
argue that, in spite of the fact that hierarchical relations prescribed the limita-
tions of the notion of ‘contact zone’ at the time, Soares created a development
plan for education in Angola in 1961–1962, the Plano de Fomento Intercalar
para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramarinas (Interim Development
Plan for the Education System in the Overseas Provinces), which aimed to
expand basic schooling of the rural and peri-urban African population. Shortly
after he developed this plan for the government he was removed from office,
with his colleague, due to political pressures related to their opposition to the
dominant colonial educational policy. Despite this, the development plan was
implemented in 1964 and represented the beginning of an integrated educa-
tion system in Angola, a system which followed up on his initiatives.
Lastly, in the path opened by the new imperial history, two articles high-
light the role of educational contact zones in the making of the metropole iden-
tity. Lars Folke Berge explores in Chapter 14 the Swedish Evangelical Mission
(SEM) educational activities in Ethiopia as a two-way transfer-of-knowledge.
He demonstrates how Swedish missionaries participated in the modernising
project of the Ethiopian state and how the egalitarian ethos of the SEM was
appropriated by poor and oppressed Ethiopians. In the other knowledge trans-
fer direction, he analyses how missionary newspapers read by a wide popular
readership in Sweden familiarised the Swedish population with Ethiopia, and
thus helped to modify the self-perception of Sweden as a country, promoting
citizens’ embrace of a more interconnected world. His contribution offers a
fresh insight into a country which was not an imperial power as such, but from
where a rich tradition of missionary activity was deployed.
Chapter 15, the contribution of Eva Van de Velde and Pieter Verstraete,
draws on a film documentary produced in the 1930 about a leprosy village in
Belgian Congo. The film addressed education in two ways. First, it showcased
the educative role of the institution whose dual aim was both curing and
26 Rosnes et al.

civilising. Second, the objective of the film was to educate the Belgian
population about the need for rescue, healing, and civilisation. In insisting on
dichotomies, it encouraged the Belgians at home to regard themselves as
healthy and civilised in contrast to the poor, sick, and uncivilised Congolese. It
was produced to create the imperial order at home and to give the metropole
population a place and role in the wider colonial endeavour of Belgium as a
colonial power. In the meantime, the dichotomies of the mise en scène imposed
a strict hierarchy where the only power was in the hands of the coloniser, thus
closing any possibility of a contact zone.
Regardless of the focus on the “contact zone” in these chapters, they all
invite the readers to better understand the ways in which the colonial edu-
cational sphere has helped to forge the contact and separation between the
colonisers and the colonised, simultaneously constructed through social inter-
actions, negotiations, and struggles. They also show that the perception of
these processes of differentiation is all the easier when studied close to, and
through, the grassroots actors, as shown by Edward Palmer Thompson in his
1966 seminal book The Making of the English Working Class, and using sources
produced by these social groups or actors.

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 PART 1
The Genesis and Action of Intermediary Social
Groups

∵
 Chapter 2

Mission Education and the Powers of the Written

Word along the Northeastern Shores of Lake
Victoria, 1890s–1940s
Esther Ginestet

1 The Ambiguous Adventures of Luo Literati

In his autobiography the former Kenyan vice president Oginga Odinga

recounts how he moved on from the education dispensed by village elders
to attend Maseno school, an institution founded by the Church Missionary
Society (CMS) in 1906 along the northeastern shores of Lake Victoria, in the
Winam Gulf. Odinga credits his schooldays at the mission (1930–1934) with the
shaping of his future political career. One of his most important experiences,
he recalls, was the foundation of a student-run organization that toured the
lakeshores promoting schooling. This association, he claims, “was to inspire
an even bigger organization among our people.”1 Indeed, after WWII, Oginga
eventually took up leadership of the Luo Thrift and Trading Corporation, an
organization that advocated for the socioeconomic upliftment of Luo men and
opened up the age of anticolonial activism and ethnic patriotism in Nyanza,
western Kenya. This retrospective account gestures toward the winding roads
that led school-educated men from church pulpits to town hall stages in inter-
war Kenya. It also points to a well-known paradox in the “ambiguous adven-
ture” of colonial education.2 In the White Man’s churches and schools—the
beating heart of colonial hegemony—Africans often gained first-hand expe-
rience of the ideology behind Europe’s supposed “civilising mission” and its
hypocrisies. But it was also here that many developed the tools to propel their
careers and pursue their own political and cultural agendas; chief among these
tools was literacy.
Mission-educated Africans were literati.3 They formed part of a social
category, the “readers” (josomo in Luo), that played a critical role in modern

1 Oginga Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1967), 36.

2 I borrow the term “ambiguous adventure” from the Senegalese novelist Cheikh Hamidou
Kane. See: Cheikh Hamidou Kane, L’aventure ambiguë (Paris: 10/18, 2002).
3 See also Berge’s and Rakotovao’s contributions to this volume.

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_003

32 Ginestet

East African history. Eisha S. Atieno Odhiambo observes that, beginning in

the late nineteenth century, mission schools like Maseno, Buddo, or Thogoto
began raising a “crop of new men” made up of teachers, catechists, clerks,
and artisans. These “new men” endorsed multiple identities which straddled
colonial and African worlds. In Acholi, for example, Lacito Okech acted as a
royal ­messenger, a colonial servant, a teacher, and a vernacular historiogra-
pher.4 Operating at “the most advanced point of contact between the Africans
and the colonial presence,” literati used their ambiguous position in colonial
­society to craft original ideas about knowledge, community, and propriety.5
In late-nineteenth century Buganda “readers” (basomi) engaged in heated
debates over Luganda orthography while reducing oral traditions to writing.6
In ­Central Kenya, Kikuyu converts instrumentalised biblical prophecies to
announce the coming of a new era. In the interwar years, literati created vari-
ous associations (youth, welfare, unions) that pressured the state for reform.7
This was not specific to East Africa. In West Africa and Southern Africa, histo-
rians observe that the evolution of Yoruba, Manyika and Shona elites followed
an analogous trajectory.8 With literacy, as it turns out, came certain forms of
power. Scholars’ long-standing interest in mission-educated men reflects both
the actual influence that these men had on African societies, as well as an
imbalance in sources.
For historians working on various parts of the continent, documenting the
activities of missions tends to represent an effective strategy for investigating
African social and intellectual life under colonialism due to the availability of
plentiful and diverse primary sources. On the one hand, Western missionaries
used logs, archives, newsletters, and scientific publications to record and keep
track of their endeavours. However Luo, Acholi, Ganda, Zulu, isiXhosa, and
Yoruba literati wrote as well. Converts learned to operate the mission’s print-
ing press and to publish dictionaries, grammar and customary law textbooks,

4 Patrick W. Otim, “Local Intellectuals: Lacito Okech and the Production of Knowledge in
­Colonial Acholiland,” History in Africa 45 (June 2018): 275–305.
5 Eisha S. Atieno Odhiambo, Siasa: Politics and Nationalism in East Africa, 1905–1939 (­Nairobi:
Kenya Literature Bureau, 1981), 103–104.
6 Michael Twaddle, “Some Implications of Literacy in Uganda,” History in Africa 38 (2011):
227–55.
7 Derek R. Peterson, Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in
Colonial Kenya (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004), 25.
8 John D. Y. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 2003), 278–309; Toyin Falola, Yoruba Gurus: Indigenous Production of Knowl-
edge in Africa (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1999), ch. 2; Terence O. Ranger, “Missionaries,
Migrants and the Manyika: The Invention of Ethnicity in Zimbabwe,” in The Creation of Trib-
alism in Southern Africa, ed. Leroy Vail (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 118–50.
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 33

local histories, and autobiographies, often in vernacular languages. The mas-

tery by African intellectuals of missionary literacy was not a neutral skill. In a
study of Swiss Protestant missions in South-East Africa, Patrick Harries under-
scores that the written word acted in the colonial world as “a sign and source
of power”, one that African and European actors wielded to claim ascendancy
within the highly hierarchical legal, social, and cultural frameworks devel-
oped under colonialism.9 The powers associated with the written word were
­multivalent; they both reflected and furthered inequalities between Africans
and Europeans, women and men, the rich and the poor, and they changed the
ways in which East Africans acquired and claimed intellectual authority and
social status.
Building on this insight, and in line with a “history from below” approach,
in this chapter I look at sources produced by missionaries and East African
converts and their families to investigate how schooling transformed the ways
in which local actors struggled over intellectual authority. I use publications
authored in English and in Luo (the vernacular language most widely spoken
along the northeastern shores of Lake Victoria) by British missionaries as well
as by East African literati and, sometimes, by their descendants.10 My agenda is
two-fold. First, I investigate how African intellectuals’ involvement in schools
evolved during the early colonial period and through the interwar years. To do
so I rely on biographies and autobiographies—a genre remarkably popular in
late colonial and postcolonial Kenya—written by Luo-speaking and, occasion-
ally, Luhya-speaking authors.11 Derek Peterson underscores that the interpreta-
tion by historians of African literature, particularly Afrophone literature, was

9 Patrick Harries, “Missionaries, Marxists and Magic: Power and the Politics of Literacy in
South-East Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 27, no. 3 (2001), 405–427. For a dif-
ferent application of Harries’s framework in Madagascar, see Ellen Vea Rosnes, “World
Christianity, Literacy,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2018); Ellen Vea Rosnes, “Protestant and French Colonial Literacies in Madagascar in the
Early Twentieth Century’, in Empire and Education in Africa: The Shaping of a Compara-
tive Perspective, ed. Peter Kallaway, and Rebecca Swartz (Lausanne: Peter Lang AG, 2016),
271–97.
10 Richardson, “Method in the History of Education,” 48–64.
11 The majority of the population established along the northeastern shores of Lake Victoria
speaks Luo. However, the CMS-run school of Maseno was erected in a contested border-
land in which both Luo and Luhya-speaking groups lived. As a consequence, information
about the region also emanates from various Luhya-speaking literati who were trained
either at Maseno, or further north, in Butere. On the disputed status of the Maseno
area, see: George Odhiambo Okoth, Ethnicity and Boundary Disputes in Western Kenya:
­Boundary Dispute and Institutional claims in Maseno (London: LAP LAMBERT Academic
Publishing, 2014).
34 Ginestet

once “clouded by romantic assumptions about the connection between writ-

ers and local communities”. These historians held that their testimonies “must
faithfully reproduce the values of local communities” in contrast to colonial
archives, for example. Writings about the self, however, may not be read as
mere “mirrors” of an untouched “African mentalité.” The creation of biogra-
phies and autobiographies involved retrospective refashioning.12 The literati
presented in this chapter cared deeply about mapping out social connections
to instruct their readers about the “encounter” between their or their forefa-
thers’ individual lives and the “grand narratives” of modern Kenyan, African, or
Christian history. This makes biographical and autobiographical writings valu-
able to the documenting of the social networks of homegrown intellectuals
such as Ezekiel Apindi (d. circa 1959), Zablon Sangoro Odenyo (d. 1969), Jere-
miah Musungu Awori (d. 1971), Paul Mboya (d. 1981), Festo Olang’ (d. 2004), and
Blasto Akumu Aum (d. 2004).13 When possible, I cross-referenced biographical
information with CMS sources.14 My second goal is to document how the pub-
lications of mission-educated literati transformed the knowledge landscape of
the Winam Gulf. To do this I analyze some of the works (published in Luo) of
two influential Luo literati, Paul Mboya (d. 1981) and Shadrack Malo (d. 1973),
as well as research papers authored by Luo students at Makerere University in
the mid-twentieth century.
Using sources produced by East African literati, I recount the development
of literacy and print culture among Luo speakers in the western borderlands
of Kenya—more specifically within a region, the Winam Gulf, that became
known over the course of the twentieth century as “Nyanza.”15 This research

12 Derek Peterson, “Casting Characters: Autobiography and Political Imagination in Central

Kenya,” Research in African Literatures 37, no. 3 (2006): 176–92.
13 Specific references may be found in the footnotes and in the selected bibliography. In
addition to the secondary sources used in this chapter, two biographies of Paul Mboya
and Reuben Omulo have recently been published; Canon Francis Omondi, Shrouded
­Witness: Unearthing Padre Reuben Omulo’s Mission Praxis (Nairobi, Kenya: Tafsiri Printing
Press, 2022); Godfrey K. Sang, and Vincent A. Orinda, Paul Mboya: A Portrait of a Great
Leader (Nairobi, Kenya: Gapman Publications Ltd., 2022).
14 These include the Annual Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society (1900s); John
Jamieson Willis, An African Church in Building (London: Church Missionary Society, 1925);
Elizabeth Richards, Fifty Years in Nyanza, 1906–1956 (Maseno: Nyanza Jubilee Committee,
1956) as well as some of the records preserved by the Anglican Church in Nairobi (ACKA,
Bishop Road), and by St. Paul University (SPUA, Limuru).
15 The colonial province called “Nyanza” was larger than the area under consideration in this
chapter and used to include Kisii and Luhya-speaking regions. In the 1950s and 1960s, the
Luhya and Kisii lobbied to be given their own provinces. Luhya-speaking areas became
known as “Western Kenya,” Kisii-speaking regions in South Nyanza became “Kisii,” and
“Nyanza” became the realm of Luo speakers. Although provinces were replaced by smaller
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 35

places the networks and contributions of the African teachers and authors
who frequented mission schools such as Maseno in various capacities from the
turn of the century to the 1940s at the center of the narrative.16 These sources
demonstrate that education in colonial Nyanza involved a greater diversity of
actors than is commonly assumed. This included not only British missionaries
and Luo students, but also formerly enslaved Africans coming from the Indian
Ocean world, Ganda evangelists, homegrown schoolteachers and authors, and
knowledgeable grandmothers. Recasting Maseno as a “transcultural contact
zone” in which these women and men struggled over knowledge and its trans-
mission sheds a nuanced light on the historical connections between colonial-
ism, missionary literacy, and claims to intellectual authority in Kenya. A tracing
of their trajectory through the interwar years shows how major changes in
the political economy progressively placed locally-groomed Luo schoolteach-
ers at the centre stage of knowledge-making, particularly knowledge about
the Luo ethnos, its history and traditions, and consecrated the powers asso-
ciated with literacy—overshadowing in the process the role of other educa-
tors and custodians of more ancient forms pedagogies, epistemologies, and
worldviews.

2 Schools, African Schoolteachers, and Colonial Knowledge-Making

In placing homegrown literati and teachers at the center of the story, I suggest
that East African intellectuals never gave up on knowledge-making, even as
Europeans attempted to reduce them to objects, rather than acknowledging
them as subjects of knowledge. Valentin Mudimbe has argued that at the end

counties under the 2010 constitution, these large-scale ethnolinguistic and territorial
divisions (Kisii, Western, Nyanza) remain central to how academic and non-­academic
audiences commonly discuss Kenya’s history and geography. For clarity, I use the term
“Nyanza” in this chapter to qualify the Luo-speaking areas located in the vicinity of the
Winam Gulf. This aligns with common usage—a common usage which is itself a relic of
Kenya’s postcolonial history up to 2010.
16 Despite its preponderance, Maseno was not the only prominent mission school in the
region. Influential Luo teachers and authors also operated from Kendu Bay under the
banner of the Seventh-Day Adentist Church (Paul Mboya). While such authors did not
belong to Maseno in an institutional sense, they were connected to their Maseno-based
counterparts whom they frequented as friends, fellow writers, teachers, and coworkers
in various trans-denominational and missionary-led committees, such as the Luo Lan-
guage Committee, which is why I have chosen to include some of them in this chapter.
ACKA. CMO/BCK/1. Bible Society of Kenya, 1880–1981. “The Luo Language Committee,
1938–1954.”
36 Ginestet

of the nineteenth century the rise of European colonial empires resulted in the
creation by Western anthropologists, scientists, philosophers, and missionar-
ies of a “colonial library”: a “body of knowledge constructed with the explicit
purpose of faithfully translating and deciphering” African objects.17 Scholars
of colonialism and science, however, point to several blind spots in Mudimbe’s
analyses. Some argue that we should interrogate what we mean by “colonial
science,” and look more closely at the actors and conditions that shaped the
production, distribution, and reception of Africanist knowledge.18 Others
emphasise that African intellectuals and intermediaries contributed to the
codification of knowledge about their own societies in various colonial con-
texts in West, Central, and Southern Africa.19 In Nyanza, such intermediaries
abounded, and they arose from literate and mission-trained circles. They were
translators, research assistants, influential elders, administrators, judges, and
teacher-evangelists. Studying their work and taking into account their long-
lasting influence on Kenyan intellectual life sheds light on East ­Africans’ con-
tributions to colonial knowledge-making, from the ground up.
African schoolteachers, in particular, operated at the heart of colonial
hegemony and embodied imperial ambiguities. From the late nineteenth
century onward, African literati throughout the continent began transcribing
oral traditions, publishing, and translating texts—especially the Bible—into
the languages that their prospective students spoke and understood best.
Their relationship to the colonial state was simultaneously close-knit and rife

17 Valentin Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), xii.
18 Helen Tilley, “Introduction: Africa, Imperialism, and Anthropology,” in Ordering Africa:
Anthropology, European Imperialism and the Politics of Knowledge, ed. Robert J. Gordon,
and Helen Tilley (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 1–45; Marie-Albane
De Suremain, “Ambitions positivistes et savoirs autochtones: Sources et traditions ora-
les dans le Bulletin du Comité d’Etudes historiques et scientifiques de l’A.O.F. Institut
Français d’Afrique Noire,” Outre-Mers: Revue d’histoire 93, no. 352 (2006): 33–46; Sophie
Dulucq, Ecrire l’histoire de l’Afrique à l’époque coloniale: XIXe-XXe Siècles (Paris: Karthala,
2009), 4–27. For a discussion on sources and methodology: Marie-Aude Fouéré, Ophé-
lie Rillon, and Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle, “Pourquoi Sources? Rigueur empirique,
réflexivité et archivage en sciences humaines et sociales et dans les Études Africaines,”
Sources: Material & Fieldwork in African Studies, 1 (June 2020), 1–21.
19 See Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Histor-
ical Invention (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 3–7; Benjamin N. Lawrance,
Emily Lynn Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts, eds, Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks:
African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2006), 3–36; Wyatt MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge
of the Particular (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), ch. 2; Lyn Schumaker,
Africanizing Anthropology: Fieldwork, Networks, and the Making of Cultural Knowledge in
Central Africa (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 3.
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 37

with tensions. In French West Africa, for example, the Third Republic charged
African schoolteachers—“the black hussars of the colonies”—with the mis-
sion of rooting (enraciner) the spirit of Republican Enlightenment into West
African petites patries (little fatherlands), and encouraging Africans’ deference
toward the metropolitan fatherland. Contrary to common assumptions about
the relationship between French assimilation policies and colonial education,
however, historians have now shown that West African schoolteachers refused
to parrot imperial doctrines, stubbornly expressed “voices of their own,” and
used their position to investigate local culture and proclaim the equal dignity
of African knowledge.20 As bookkeepers, newspaper readers and researchers,
schoolteachers were on the front lines of a continent-wide “colonial explo-
sion of writing and print.”21 After WWII, younger generations eventually used
this familiarity with the powers of print to stir up anticolonial unrest beyond
school gates (the famous examples of Funmilayo Ransome Kuti in Nigeria,
Anton Lembede in South Africa, and Oginga Odinga in Kenya come to mind).22
But through the interwar years, I suggest that mission schools, as transcultural
contact zones, remained one of the primary sites in which East African literati
repurposed literacy, and carved out autonomous intellectual spaces. As they
were growing increasingly critical of Western missionaries and the colonial
state, Luo-speaking teachers were also transcribing local oral traditions, and
encoding them into history books. Some worked very closely with the colonial
state. Paul Mboya, for example, cumulated various administrative positions
and was even invited to Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953—an experience
he recounted in Wadhi E Coronation.23 In their writings, however, these ambig-
uous public personalities looked inward rather than outward, searching for
roots and usable pasts which fellow Luo women and men could mine for

20 Jean-Hervé Jézéquel, “Voices of Their Own? African Participation in the Production of

Colonial Knowledge in French West Africa, 1910–1950,” in Ordering Africa, Anthropol-
ogy, European Imperialism, and the Politics of Knowledge, eds. Helen Tilley, and Robert
J. Gordon (Manchester, New York: Palgrave, 2007), 145–72; Céline Labrune-Badiane, and
Étienne Smith, Les Hussards Noirs de la colonie: instituteurs africains et petites patries en
AOF, 1913–1960 (Paris: Karthala, 2018), 8–14. For a study on Zanzibar’s schoolteachers’ intel-
lectual labors, see Jonathon Glassman, War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and
Violence in Colonial Zanzibar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), ch. 4.
21 Karin Barber, ed., Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self
(­Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 3.
22 Judith A. Byfield, “In Her Own Words: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and the Auto/Biography
of an Archive,” Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International 5, no.
2 (2016): 107–27; Gail M. Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 45–84.
23 Paul Mboya, Wadhi E Coronation (Kendu Bay: Advent Press, n. d. [1953?]).
38 Ginestet

inspiration and information, and to which they could relate. Judging by the
lasting influence that some of these local histories have had on academic his-
torical scholarship and beyond, they were successful. But in singling out Luo
speakers as a people whose history, language, storytelling traditions, and taboos
formed a somewhat cohesive block, interwar literati also eventually opened
the door to ethnonationalist reinterpretations of customs and history. For this
reason, their works were still regularly cited in public debates about the nature
and virtues associated with Luo traditions at the close of the twentieth cen-
tury. They were famously used in court during the 1987 “saga” surrounding the
burial of a leading criminal lawyer, S.M. Otieno, which opposed Otieno’s family
in Nyanza to his wife Wambui Waiyaki (a Kikuyu woman hailing from Central
Kenya) for almost a year, making the headlines in the Kenyan national press.24
On the eve of the twenty-first century, the spectacular spread of the HIV/AIDS
epidemic in Nyanza put these writings under public scrutiny once more, as the
Luo Council of Elders set out to re-examine how Luo customs could be used
and amended to slow down the plague.25
This chapter situates the emergence and early evolutions of some of these
influential works authored by Luo teachers within the momentous transfor-
mations that affected school education in the interwar period. This empha-
sis on the historical relationships between intellectual output and education
policies in colonial Nyanza connects two historiographies—the history of
education in Kenya and the intellectual history of “homespun” writers and
intellectuals—that developed separately. On the one hand, the historiography
of school education in Kenya is almost as old as mission schools themselves.

24 Eisha S. Atieno Odhiambo, and David W. Cohen, Burying SM: The Politics of ­Knowledge and
the Sociology of Power in Africa (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1992) and Jeremiah B. Ojwang,
The S.M. Otieno Case: Death and Burial in Modern Kenya (Nairobi: Nairobi U ­ niversity
Press, 1989).
25 Current HIV prevalence rates in the counties of Siaya, Kisumu, Homa Bay, and Migori
range from 13 to 20%, which makes Nyanza the hardest-hit region in Kenya. See: Mercy
Asamba, “Nyanza counties top in HIV prevalence – Report,” The Standard, February 02,
2020. One can look at the speeches of G.E.M. Ogutu, former acting Ker (President) of
the Luo Council of Elders to see how Luo customs and history were reinterpreted to
address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. See Gilbert E. M. Ogutu, Ker in the 21st Century (Kisumu:
­Sundowner Institute Press, 2001). Some of the Luo traditions and concepts commonly
discussed included the absence of circumcision, the sexual education of the youth, and
the concept of chira (a misfortune caused by the breaking of a taboo). On chira, see: Paul
Mboya, Richo Ema Kelo Chira (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1986). On sexual
education, see: Lucas A. Othuon, Owen Mc Onyango, F. Ang’awa, and M. Ayieko, Growing
up and Sexual Maturation Among the Luo of Kenya: Removing Barriers to Quality Education
(Nairobi: Phoenix Publishers, 2006).
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 39

Missionaries were fond of writing their own histories. Their narratives, which
sought to present evangelism in a favourable light, documented carefully the
“progress” of schooling and literacy to provide moral credibility to what Euro-
peans and Americans saw as their “civilising mission” in Africa.26 A more criti-
cal historiography grew in the 1960s and 1970s. Postcolonial historians set aside
their predecessors’ celebratory tone and looked at schools as complex insti-
tutions in which multiple political and social struggles played out—between
the colonial state and missionary authorities, between African and European
staff, and between staff and students. Such historians rightly identified the
interwar years as a critical period during which large-scale political develop-
ments affected the ways in which African and Western teachers worked and
understood their mission on the ground. They pointed out that Kenya’s statu-
tory change in 1920 from a territory of the East African Protectorate to a colony
tailored to European settlers’ interests prompted the colonial state to inter-
vene more directly in matters related to Africans’ education, thereby depriving
missionaries of their former monopoly over the education sector, and raising
alarm among African schoolteachers—many of whom spearheaded organi-
zations that lobbied for the preservation of Africans’ interests in schools and
beyond.27 One such organization in Nyanza was Piny Owacho, also known
as the “Young Kavirondo Association,” or Kavirondo Association.28 In recent
years, social historians have brought a renewal to this institutional approach
focused on educational policies and their connection to national politics by
looking at the activities of particular organizations, such as the Kenya Union
of Post-Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET).29 This historiography is use-
fully complemented by many works authored by Kenyan MA and PhD stu-
dents who delved into the history of specific schools and endeavoured to trace
their local relevance and evolution from the early colonial period to the post-­
independence years. Using Kenyan archives and oral interviews, these stu-
dents and scholars shed light on the role of the CMS in the Nyanza region and

26 See Richards, Fifty Years in Nyanza.

27 See John E. Anderson, The Struggle for the School: the Interaction of Missionary, Colonial
Government and Nationalist Enterprise in the Development of Formal Education in Kenya
(London: Longman, 1970), ch. 7–8; O.W. Furley, and T. Watson, “Kenya 1919–1939,” in A
History of Education in East Africa eds. O.W. Furley, and T. Watson (Lagos: NOK Publishers,
1978), 153–85.
28 Eisha S. Atieno Odhiambo, Siasa: Politics and Nationalism; John M. Lonsdale, “Some Ori-
gins of Nationalism in East Africa,” The Journal of African History 9, no. 1 (1968): 119–46;
Bethwell A. Ogot, Historical Dictionary of Kenya (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1981), 88–9.
29 Akelo Misori, Teachers, Unions and Labour Relations in Kenya: A History of the Kenya
Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (Nairobi: Free Press Publishers Ltd., 2020).
40 Ginestet

on the twentieth-century history of notable institutions such Ng’iya, Maseno,

Yala, and Butere schools.30 Among these, Maseno school, which still exists
today, has earned a prestigious reputation in East Africa by training some of
Kenya’s finest twentieth-­century politicians and thinkers, including (but not
limited to) Achieng’ Oneko, Oginga Odinga, Bethwell Ogot, and Barack Obama
Sr. For this reason, Maseno has drawn some scholarly attention.31 Mission
schools have been revisited by scholars attentive to variables such as gender
and age history to shed light on the ways in which the colonial enterprise
shaped the very fabric, norms, and power hierarchies of African society.32 This
historiography, however, rarely considers the specificities of school education
in Nyanza. In Nyanza, for example, the number of schools which were primar-
ily led by African principals and teachers with very little or no supervision
from Westerners (otherwise known as “outschools”) was unusually high; by the
early 1920s, Nyanza hosted as many as 214 outschools, against a mere 63 for
the Kikuyu area.33 Relative African autonomy and initiative turned schools in
the Winam Gulf into places in which power balances should be seen as more
nuanced than the “coloniser-colonised” divide suggests. It also calls for a care-
ful historicization of African schoolteachers’ agency. This chapter argues that it

30 Most of these works remain unpublished. See: Belindah O. Aluoch, and Dorothy Nyak-
waka, “Missionaries’ Rivalry in Kenya and the Establishment of St. Mary’s School Yala,”
African and Asian Studies 15, no. 4 (2016): 372–392; Sara B. Khanani, “The Role of the
Church Missionary Society in the Development of Girls’ Education in Western Kenya:
The Case of Butere Girls High School, 1957–2007” (MA thesis, University of Nairobi, 2015);
Barasa S. Omachar, “The Contribution of the Church Missionary Society to the Develop-
ment of Education: A Case of Ng’iya Girls School of Siaya County, Kenya, 1923–1967” (MA
Thesis, Moi University, 2013). Similar studies were undertaken for the prestigious Alli-
ance school in Central Kenya. See: Benjamin E. Kipkorir, “The Alliance High School and
the Origins of the Kenya African Elite, 1926–1962” (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge,
1970); Hélène Charton-Bigot, “Colonial Youth at the Crossroads: Fifteen Alliance ‘Boys’,” in
Generations Past: Youth in East African History, eds. Hélène Charton-Bigot, and Andrew
Burton (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010), 84–107.
31 See Florida A. Karani, “The History of Maseno School, 1906–1962: Its Alumni and the Local
Society” (PhD thesis, University of Nairobi, 1974).
32 Patrick K. Kiragu, “Gender and Politics of Sports in Early Colonial Kenya: The Case of
Muscular Christianity and Missionary Pursuit for Legitimacy, 1906–1923,” Paper presented
at Kenyatta University, Toyin Falola @70 Conference, 11/05/2023; Paul Ocobock, “An ‘Arbi-
trary Line’: Male Initiation and Colonial Authority,” in An Uncertain Age: The Politics of
Manhood in Kenya (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2017), 31–58; Emily A. Onyango,
Gender and Development: A History of Women’s Education in Kenya (Carlisle: Langham
Monographs, 2018).
33 Anderson, The Struggle for the School: The Interaction of Missionary, Colonial Government
and Nationalist Enterprise in the Development of Formal Education in Kenya, ch. 7–8.
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 41

is within this particular context characterised by a struggle over African peda-

gogical autonomy that the writings authored by Luo schoolteachers outside
the classroom must be understood.
Intellectual historians, primarily driven by less “trivial” concerns over
knowledge production, have not always given their rightful place to the daily
challenges that African literati faced as professionals—that is, in most cases,
as teachers. Such scholars have also noted that the interwar years represented
a turning point in East Africans’ historiographical practices. In regions where
school education had gotten an early start, such as the Central and Nyanza
provinces, the decades that followed WWI witnessed the rise of a generation of
“homespun” literati who wrote in English or in the vernacular to preserve and
pass on what they regarded as traditional knowledge. Some found instrumen-
tal outcomes for their research by serving as judges and assessors in African
colonial courts ruled by customary law. Others were moved by conservative
concerns over what they perceived as the decay of traditional ways of living
and worldviews eroded by colonialism, migrant labor, and the rise of new
behaviors among younger generations of men and women. All resorted to his-
tory writing to think through the problems of their times, and find inspiration
in a reinvented past. (This raises challenges for contemporary historians who
must rely at least in part on such sources to reconstruct the precolonial past.)
Along the northeastern shores of Lake Victoria, homespun historiographical
traditions spearheaded by Luo-speaking schoolteachers took off in the 1920s
and did not wane before the 1960s, when it was overshadowed by the develop-
ment of guild historiography under the leadership of pioneering Kenyan aca-
demics such as Bethwell Allan Ogot. By shifting the focus from the production
of guild historiography to homespun historiography, intellectual historians
have been successful in putting “subaltern” actors at the center of the story.
Zooming in on the works of homespun literati, however, does not always allow
one to perceive the broader educational landscape and intellectual networks
to which these intellectuals belonged. On the one hand, David Cohen points
out that Luo literati weren’t alone in crafting and passing on knowledge about
the past in the Winam Gulf for much of the twentieth century; post-menopau-
sal women known as pim also oversaw the upbringing of Luo youths through
oral pedagogy. In comparison with literati, however, relatively little is known
about the work of pim and its decline. Furthermore, historians have noted but
rarely explained how major evolutions in the school-teaching ­profession—
such as the progressive replacement of foreigners by local literati and the sub-
sequent rise of social and political struggles spearheaded by teachers—shaped
the historical writings about Luo precolonial traditions that teachers produced
42 Ginestet

outside the classroom.34 However, the changing sociology of the school teach-
ing profession during the first half of the twentieth century—often treated as
anecdotal—deserves further explanation, for it requires us to think about the
entanglement of labor and literary struggles. This chapter attempts to remedy
these shortcomings.35

3 East African Knowledge Networks along the Northeastern Shores of

Lake Victoria, 1890s-WWI

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the northeastern shores of Lake ­Victoria
emerged as an epicentre of mission activities in East Africa. By the mid-­
nineteenth century, the Winam Gulf, located in the northeastern quadrant of
the lake, had grown into a significant hub and a gateway to political power,
ivory, and slaves.36 Within a few decades, a half-dozen North American and
European denominations would also transform it into a site of religious com-
petition. Among them was the Church Missionary Society (CMS), an Anglican
organization supervised by the Church of England which had been active in
other parts of the continent such as Yorubaland since the beginning of the
nineteenth century. In the 1840s, the CMS began opening stations along the
Swahili coast at Rabai (in the mid-1840s) and Freretown (1875) and establishing
a stronghold in neighbouring Buganda. In 1904, Alfred Tucker, the third Bishop
of Uganda, travelled with Reverend John Jamieson Willis to “Kavirondo” (a top-
onym used by outsiders to refer to the Winam Gulf) to evangelise the Maragoli
and set up a major missionary center in Butere, under the protection of chief
Nabongo Mumia. Two years later, J. J. Willis opened Maseno school thirty five
kilometers south of Butere to cater to Luo speakers. Missionaries s­ ettled in the
Winam Gulf around the same time as British colonial ­officials, with the official

34 Some historians have noted that the first generations of African schoolteachers who oper-
ated in Nyanza came from Mozambique and the Indian Ocean coast (Yao), and Buganda.
See, for example: Karani, “The History of Maseno School, 1906–1962: Its Alumni and the
Local Society”, 38–51.
35 David W. Cohen, “Doing Social History from the Pim’s Doorway,” in Reliving the Past: The
Worlds of Social History, eds. Olivier Zunz, and David W. Cohen (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1985), 191–235; Bethwell A. Ogot, “The Construction of Luo Identity
and History,” in African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History, eds. Luise
White, Stephan Miescher, and David W. Cohen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2001), 31–52; Derek R. Peterson, and Giacomo Macola, eds., Recasting the Past: History
Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009), 4–10.
36 Charles New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa (London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1873), 468.
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 43

proclamation of the British Protectorate of East Africa (1895). But they—unlike

state officials who were in the initial stages primarily interested in forming
strategic alliances with existing leaders and showed little interest in transform-
ing African society—saw disciplinarian schooling, evangelization, and deep
cultural reform as one of the most effective tools for empire-building.37
Maseno founders believed that they could inculcate faith and civilization
in the same way that workers erect buildings: from the bottom-up, beginning
with schools. In An African Church in the Building—an essay which describes
how to organise successful evangelization campaigns—J. J. Willis argued that
schooling was the foundation upon which civilization rested, and literacy a
step toward the divine. With Maseno, Willis hoped to create an “African Iona,”
thereby emulating the model used by evangelists to Christianise European
“barbarians” (Anglos, Saxons, Dances and Franks) in the fifth and sixth cen-
turies A.D.38 CMS missionaries found the building metaphor very compelling.
One chronicler named Elizabeth Richards portrayed the shipment of con-
struction material itself as an act of civilization. She described the “strange
processions of porters” who carried “doors, windows, verandah poles, sheet-
iron, [and] roof-frames” into the remote African bush as a force that tamed the
wild, baboons, and stalking leopards.39 Such colourful descriptions reflected
colonial fantasies. Missionary chronicles do not account for how the people
of Nyanza actually experienced their social and intellectual lives at the turn of
the century, and therefore cannot explain how missionary influence and the
development of the colonial state affected their universe.
By the time missionaries settled in, the Winam Gulf was in fact a well-­
connected, dynamic, and cosmopolitan region. In 1898, the British official
Charles Hobley—an explorer of the Imperial British East Africa Company
turned administrator—noted that some people spoke Bantu languages, such
as the Wanga, Samia, Maragoli, and Nyore. (Over the course of the twentieth
century, these groups came to be known, collectively, as Luhya.) Luo speakers,
often organised into clans (pinje or dhoudi in Luo), formed another linguistic
cluster.40 These communities were well-aware of their connection to global

37 Karani, “The History of Maseno School, 1906–1962: Its Alumni and the Local Society”,
24–31.
38 Richards, Fifty Years in Nyanza, 1906–1956, ch. 3; Willis, An African Church in Building,
38–44, 84–85.
39 Richards, Fifty Years in Nyanza, 1906–1956, 10.
40 Charles W. Hobley, “Kavirondo,” The Geographical Journal 12, no. 4 (1898): 361–72; Ogot,
Historical Dictionary of Kenya, 73–74. On the history of Luhya ethnic identity, see Julie
MacArthur, Cartography and the Political Imagination: Mapping Community in Colonial
Kenya (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2016). The concept of piny (plur. pinje) refers
44 Ginestet

trade networks. In the early 1890s, the influx of exotic commodities—many in

the form of apparel such as boots, dark velvets, Turkish caps, shirts—­carried
by porters and ox-driven carts, prompted momentous transformations. Ambi-
tious rulers such as the Wanga ruler Nabongo Mumia reinforced their power by
channelling the long-distance trade. Tastes evolved. In Wanga and Gem, new
social categories emerged, such as the jonanga (people of cloth, in Luo) who
wore exotic items. Changes were not limited to fashion: in the 1890s, wealthy
chiefs purchased firearms and hired foreign mercenaries.41 Far from being an
isolated area awaiting civilization and contact with the outside world, Bishop
Alfred Tucker described in his journal late-nineteenth-century Kavirondo more
accurately as a complex social, political, and economic borderland where one
came across “all sorts and conditions of men.”42
In these borderlands, specialised custodians of knowledge played a central
role in training youth. In Luo homesteads, the education of boys and girls fell
under the responsibility of post-menopausal women called pim. At dusk, pre-
pubescent boys and unmarried girls left their mothers’ houses and congregated
in the “grandmother’s” large hut, called siwindhe. In siwindhe, pim imparted
her knowledge using storytelling (sigana), riddles (ngeche), and songs (wende).
She was expected to shape young people into functional members of society.
This included discussing sexuality, morals, and homecare, but also the his-
tory of the village and surrounding clans, and the peoples and towns beyond.
Pim was a worldly character. She was often a foreigner who had moved into
her present home after marriage, or had been “inherited” (tero) by one of her
husband’s relatives if she happened to be a widow. With her vast knowledge
of the world, she was qualified to instruct children about the faraway world
beyond the homestead’s gate. On a more local level, she also played a promi-
nent part in leading the complex negotiations and match-making decisions
that preceded properly-arranged marriages (in contrast to elopements and
bridal abductions). At the turn of the century women who acted as pim were
therefore central to the networks of knowledge and relatives that shaped the
Winam Gulf. (Some evidence suggests that a similar system might have existed
further north among neighboring Luhya groups as well.)43 To historicise the

to lands and countries and has a territorial connotation. Dhoudi, by contrast, designates
groups and lineages (anyuola) affiliated by descent.
41 Bethwell A. Ogot, A History of the Luo-Speaking Peoples of Eastern Africa (Kisumu:
­Anyange Press, 2009), 592–95; Bethwell A. Ogot, My Footprints on the Sands of Time: An
Autobiography (Victoria, B.C.: Trafford Publishers, 2003), 6.
42 Alfred R. Tucker, Eighteen Years in Uganda & East Africa (London: Earnold, 1908), 216.
43 Kenda Mutongi’s description of storytelling in early missionary settlements in Luhyaland
presents some similarities with the works of pim in Luoland. Kenda Mutongi, Worries of
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 45

development of school education we must therefore ask why Luo families

would choose to turn their backs on pim.44
When Maseno opened in 1906 mission schooling likely appeared unap-
pealing to most African households. In an article published under the mys-
terious name of “J.J. Uganda”—probably authored by Rev. J. J. Willis, although
the author claims to be representing the voices of a group of African converts
“speaking to their heathen friends”—“the pioneer missionary” is depicted as a
sad figure who, unable to connect with local people due to a lack of linguistic
and cultural skills, “arouses no enthusiasm.”45 There is reason to believe that
the situation until WWI was worse than this testimony suggests. In neighbour-
ing Luhya countries, missionaries weren’t only met with indifference: they also
aroused active suspicion and were believed to engage in unspeakably antiso-
cial acts such as cannibalism.46 Its founders had envisioned Maseno as a bea-
con of Enlightenment for Luo-speaking elites and sons of colonial chiefs. But
in the first year, the school welcomed only four students—Mathayo Onduso,
Daniel Odindo, Daniel Owiti, and Yona Orau—, and some of them might have
been fostered with missionaries precisely because they were not sons of chiefs,
but the dispensable offspring of clients.47 Ibrahim Aluso, one of the early con-
verts, remembered in an interview conducted in 1966 by students of St. Paul’s
Theological College, Limuru, that Western missionaries travelled alongside
local converts and attended dances in Luo villages where they distributed
beads and cloth to charm their hosts. In return “chiefs were giving their men to
be trained.”48 The son and family biographer of one of the first schoolboys also
recounts in his autobiography that villages often offered up orphans “to relieve

the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2007), 60–2.
44 MAK. AR/MAK/38/2. Makerere Luo Students’ League. “The Makerere Luo Students’
League Research Committee, Folklore, Ceremonial, Symbols, and Taboos” and “Marriage
ceremonies” in On Some Luo Traditions, Past and Present, 1964; SPUA. Western—SPU/
RESEARCH/8, “Luo Marriage,” n.d. See also: Cohen, “Doing Social History from the Pim’s
Doorway”; A. B. C. Ocholla-Ayayo, Traditional Ideology and Ethics among the Southern Luo
(Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1976); Asenath Bole Odaga, “Educa-
tional Values of ‘Sigendini Luo’: The Kenya Luo Narratives” (Thesis, University of Nairobi,
1980), 47–51.
45 J. J. Uganda, “The Presentation of Christianity to Primitive Peoples,” International Review
of Mission 4, no. 3 (1915): 382–83.
46 Mutongi, Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya, 30–44.
47 Karani, “The History of Maseno School, 1906–1962: Its Alumni and the Local Society,”
33–4; Richards, Fifty Years in Nyanza, 1906–1956, 15.
48 SPUA. NCCK Research Project, ‘Interview with Ibrahim Aluso’ in The Beginning of
­Christianity in Nyanza, Interviews (Binded volume), 276, 1966.
46 Ginestet

themselves of the burden of caring for parentless children.”49 Others still came
from prominent homes and joined missions voluntarily—as was the case of
Paul Mboya, for example, who recalls in a 1966 interview how he started out as
a houseboy in Kisii. This, however, was a bold move and young men exposed
themselves to the disapproval of their families. Moreover, health conditions at
the mission station were generally poor; boys suffered from scabies, making
them the laughing stock of their counterparts who had remained in the vil-
lage.50 The years 1907 and 1908, marked by famine (remembered as the “Choka
famine”)51 and epidemics, worsened the situation. Soon, wartime conscrip-
tion further shrank the numbers of young men available for enrolment. Yet by
the 1920s, with over a hundred students enrolled and a teacher training pro-
gram under way, Maseno had become a success story. To explain this unlikely
turn of events, we must say something about the role of first-generation local
converts.52
The success of Maseno and other prominent mission schools in Nyanza
(Kendu Bay in South Nyanza and Butere in the Wanga-speaking regions of
Luhya country) relied on the labours of East African students, evangelists, and
teachers who worked alongside missionaries and whom John Jamieson Willis
called “the native Church.”53 Between the 1880s and WWI, in the absence of
locally trained staff, schools around the Winam Gulf recruited foreign African
Christians to perform much of the hard labor that evangelization entailed. Yao
evangelists came from the Indian Ocean coast. Although he worked in Butere,
north of Luoland, Rev. William Henry Jones was probably the most prominent
Yao convert and therefore his biography—which is relatively easy to docu-
ment—provides a useful entry to understand the identities, motivations, and
labors of Yao evangelists. Rev. W. H. Jones was born in the first half of the nine-
teenth century in Mozambique. According to CMS records he was captured in
his youth, sold to a slave ship headed to the Indian Ocean, but eventually got
“rescued” and taken to Bombay, where the Government committed him to the
care of the CMS at Nasik, western India. A few years later Jones returned to
East Africa to dedicate his life to evangelization. In 1885, after becoming one

49 Amos O. Odenyo, and Odera Odenyo, Staring at the Nyanza Sun: A Kenyan-American
Memoir (Chicago, IL: Spear & Shield Publishing, 2010), 4–5.
50 SPUA. NCCK Research Project, ’Interview with Paul Mboya’ in The Beginning of Christian-
ity in Nyanza.
51 SPUA. NCCK Research Project, ’Interview with Reuben Omulo’ in The Beginning of
­Christianity in Nyanza.
52 Willis, An African Church in Building, 20–1, 100–6; Richards, Fifty Years in Nyanza, 15–9;
Ogot, My Footprints on the Sands of Time: An Autobiography, 16–8.
53 Willis, An African Church in Building, 5.
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 47

of Kenya’s first African deacons, he left Rabai and the Swahili Coast and trave-
led to the Wanga-speaking areas of the Winam Gulf, where he was probably
welcomed by Nabongo Mumia.54 There, he prepared the first English-Wanga
dictionary and taught Ezekiel Apindi—a future teacher-evangelist whose
family biographer, Peter Indaru, confirms that he studied under the guidance
of “freed slaves.”55 Jones did not travel alone. He was following the caravan
of Bishop Hannington headed to Uganda, where the Bishop was eventually
murdered—a violent event which eventually convinced Jones to leave Wanga
country and return to the Coast. (The testimony of a porter called Mambo,
preserved in Anglican records, suggests that many of the men who had joined
these missionary caravans as cooks, porters, and helpers were killed.56 Some,
however, were spared, made the country of Busoga in Uganda their new home,
and lived to tell the story. One of them appears to have been interviewed years
later by Archdeacon Walter Edwin Owen in the vicinity of Butere.)57 Rev. Jones
was the most famous member of a larger group of evangelists of slave descent
who spearheaded the spread of the gospel Nyanza. In interviews, Paul Mboya
and Joshua Ouma, another early Seventh-Day Adventist convert, remembered
another black man from “Nyasaland” named Peter Nayambo who taught in
Gendia.58 Reuben Omulo, who joined Maseno after the 1908 famine, had a
“Swahili and writing” teacher “from Mombasa” called Josel Meshak.59 These
men became known along the Indian Ocean coast and elsewhere as “Bombay

54 SPUA. NCCK Research Project, Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and
the East (Church Missionary House, 1894), p. 45; Richards, Fifty Years in Nyanza, 1906–1956,
prologue.
55 Peter A. Indaru, Man with the Lion Heart: Biography of Canon Ezekiel Apindi (Accra,
Ghana: Africa Christian Press, 1974), 14.
56 ACKA. ACK/Box17/CMS/MIN/File 02, Minutes and General Correspondence, 1929–1935.
“Mzee Mambo.” This testimony appears to have been misplaced in a “general correspon-
dence file.” I believe that it was recorded by William Jones himself. Although the doc-
ument is not dated, it was probably authored sometime in the late nineteenth century
(1890s?).
57 AICMARA. “Olang’ Festo’s File,” Archdeacon Owen, “Musungu (Whiteman): A Story from
­Kavirondo by Archdeacon Owen, Maseno, Kenya,” in The Church Missionary Outlook, Vol.
III (October 1925).
58 SPUA. NCCK Research Project ‘Interview with Paul Mboya’ and ’Interview with Joshua
Ouma’ in The Beginning of Christianity in Nyanza. Note that another Kisumu-educated
convert, Mukhwana, also recalled having a Musukuma teacher. SPUA. NCCK Research
Project “Interview with Eraso Elisha Mukhwana by Horace Etemesi,” in The Beginning of
Christianity in Nyanza.
59 SPUA. NCCK Research Project, ’Interview with Reuben Omulo’ in The Beginning of
­Christianity in Nyanza.
48 Ginestet

Africans” and ­integrated the Winam Gulf into a broader network of knowledge
that connected the African Great Lakes to the Indian Ocean world.
CMS missionaries also developed close connections with the kingdom of
Buganda further west. By the late nineteenth century this powerful kingdom
was sending out teachers and evangelists to various parts of the East African
Great Lakes, including Nyanza. The most influential Ganda teacher-evangelists
who operated in Luhya and Luo-speaking regions were Yese Weraga and Isaac
Sidandi, who worked respectively at the stations of Butere and Nambototo,
and welcomed both Luo and Luhya-speaking students. Besides Weraga and
Sidandi, former first-generation converts (Isaiah Musiga, Paul Ochieng’, Barn-
abas Weche, and Reuben Omulo, all interviewed in the 1960s) also remem-
bered Zacharia Nyakakongo, Johana, a bricklayer called Birikis, and Nathaneyo
­Kayanja—the latter was based at Maseno school itself.60 Weraga and Sidandi
had become acquainted with Christian teachings and ideas at home, in
Buganda. Their social extraction presented some similarities with that of their
counterparts recruited along the Indian Ocean coast: they originated from
areas where evangelization had gotten an early start and Owen once described
Weraga as “an ex-slave boy.”61 But they might have been more powerful than
their coastal colleagues; in Butere, Weraga led most baptismal classes from 1921
to 192362 whereas Sidandi preached the gospel in complete autonomy without
sanction from the state or from the Church prior to his recruitment by the CMS.
(Some of his teachings irritated state officials, however, which resulted in his
temporary imprisonment until the CMS pleaded for his release and hired him
to teach at Nambototo.) Trained Ganda teachers, with their extensive exposure
to Christian education in Buganda, were in high demand. They were author-
ised to move to Nyanza along with their families although the journey could
prove perilous; Weraga’s wife, Leah, fell ill and died in Butere shortly after her
arrival.63 Until the early to mid-1920s, their work turned mission schooling
in the Winam Gulf into a worldly experience: the lingua-francas for preach-
ing, teaching, and writing included not only Swahili (particularly in Kendu
Bay) and local languages (Luo in Maseno and Kendu Bay, Wanga and Luo in
Butere), but also Luganda. In Butere, Luganda was the language in which mis-
sionaries kept their records for baptisms, confirmations and the attendance

60 SPUA. NCCK Research Project, ’Interview with Isaiah Musiga’, ’Interview with Paul
Ochieng’ and ‘Interview with Barnabas Weche’ in The Beginning of Christianity in Nyanza.
61 AICMARA. “Olang’ Festo’s File,” Archdeacon Owen, “Musungu (Whiteman): A Story from
Kavirondo.”
62 AICMARA. Akyababatize, 1916–1923.
63 AICMARA. “Olang’ Festo’s File,” Archdeacon Owen, “Musungu (Whiteman): A Story from
Kavirondo.”
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 49

of baptismal classes. In the schools where most teachers hailed from Uganda,
Luganda and Swahili were the main languages used for daily communications
as well as teaching, and Luhya and Luo-speaking interpreters were hired to
make the necessary translations since missionaries initially discouraged the
use of English.64 In the interwar years, however, the greater involvement of the
colonial state in African education and the consolidation of a local teaching
elite led to the gradual decline of this cosmopolitan scene and to the rise of
locally-rooted struggles over school education.65

4 Local Struggles over Education in Interwar Maseno, WWI-1939

Around WWI, people in Winam Gulf began to see value in missionary school-
ing. With the growth of the colonial administration, clerk positions started
opening to literate Africans while simultaneously, the development of taxation
(hut tax) pushed members of African households to leave the farm and turn
to wage labor. In his autobiography, Festo Olang’—a Luhya born at Maseno
who later became the first African archbishop of Kenya—recalls how he began
seeking out opportunities at the mission in the 1920s, and succeeded in obtain-
ing the support of his family when they realised that African clerks earned
better salaries, performed physically easier jobs, and that they could decipher
tax receipts.66 Interviewed in the mid-1960s, Reuben Omulo also recalled the
apprenticeship of reading and writing as the main reason that drove people
to join missions and convert to Christianity.67 African households like Olang
and Omulo’s learnt to associate literacy and schooling with power. CMS mis-
sionaries encouraged these developments by intensifying their promotion of
Christian education. In 1914, after he was ordained Bishop of Uganda, J. J. Willis
invited Nyanza chiefs to the consecration of Namirembe cathedral in Kam-
pala, with the hope that scenes of Christian fervour in neighboring Buganda
would impress his guests. His strategy worked, although it led to outcomes that
J. J. Willis had hardly anticipated. Upon returning to his homeland in Gem,

64 SPUA. NCCK Research Project, ‘Interview with Isaiah Musiga’ and ‘Interview with Barn-
abas Weche’ in The Beginning of Christianity in Nyanza; SPUA. NCCK Research Project.
“Interview with Paul Mboya” in The Beginning of Christianity in Nyanza.
65 Moody Awori, Riding on a Tiger (Nairobi: Moran Publishers and Worldreader, 2017),
ch. 1, 2; Louise Pirouet, Black Evangelists: The Spread of Christianity in Uganda, 1891–1914
(­London: Collings, 1978), 194; Richards, Fifty Years in Nyanza, 1906–1956, prologue, 3–11.
66 Festo Olang’, Festo Olang: An Autobiography (Nairobi: Uzima Press, 1991), 3–5.
67 SPUA. NCCK Research Project, ‘Interview with Reuben Omulo’ in The Beginning of
­Christianity in Nyanza.
50 Ginestet

Siaya, chief Odera Akang’o resolved of his own accord to teach Luo students in
his location reading, writing, arithmetic, Swahili, and football, and to impose
the use of soap, shirts, and trousers—which he did both authoritatively (those
who refused exposed themselves to corporal punishment), and without the
supervision of whites.68 A local generation of school-educated literati emerged.
By the mid-1910s, CMS leadership understood that their success was condi-
tional upon their ability to invest in the training of local schoolteachers. In his
autobiography, Moody Awori, the son of the Luhya convert Jeremiah Musungu
Awori, recounts how his father made his way up the CMS cursus honorum.
Awori began by attending Butere school, where he was trained by Ganda teach-
ers (Yese Weraga). Soon thereafter, Bishop J. J. Willis recruited Awori alongside
three Luo converts (Musa Auma, Reuben Omulo, and George Samuel Okoth)
to teach at Maseno. The new recruits were sent for extra training to Freretown
along the Swahili Coast and thence to St Paul’s Theological College in Limuru,
in Central Kenya, where they became acquainted with Kikuyu literati.69 In
total, their education lasted for more than ten years. As a return on their invest-
ment, the CMS counted on highly-trained recruits to advance the denomina-
tion’s goals. Christian converts, however, had agendas of their own.
Homegrown Luo literati (josomo) were critical of missionary supervision
and often left CMS-run institutions to set up their own schools and churches,
free from white oversight. In a poignant obituary published in a children’s
book, the Luo scholar and fiction writer Asenath Bole Odaga describes how
her father, Blasto Akumu Aum, kickstarted religious and formal education in
their village in Nyakach without any outside help. Odaga underscores that,
although her father had lost his parents and become an orphan in his child-
hood, he eventually succeeded as a teacher, a husband, and a family man.70
The story of the orphan rising above his peers thanks to an unshakable faith
in God and schooling makes for a particularly uplifting story. But it was hardly
unique. Using Peter Indaru’s biography, Limuru interview transcripts, and CMS
records, we can reconstruct the peripatetic life of another teacher-evangelist,
Ezekiel Apindi. In 1905 Apindi became the servant of Rev. George Burns, a Brit-
ish missionary based in Port Florence (Kisumu). After a dispute with Burns,

68 “Odera Akang’o” in A. W. Mayor, Thuond Luo, 1938 (Kisumu: Anyange Press, 1984), 29–33.
See also: Ogot, Historical Dictionary of Kenya, 18; Ogot, My Footprints on the Sands of Time:
An Autobiography, 7–12.
69 Awori, Riding on a Tiger, ch. 1, 2; Watson Omulokoli, “Awori, Jeremiah Musungu (1886–
1971),” in Dictionary of African Christianity Biography, 2011; Pirouet, Black Evangelists, 194;
Richards, Fifty Years in Nyanza, 1906–1956, 29–30.
70 Asenath Bole Odaga, Nyangi Gi Otis (Kisumu: Lake Publishers & Enterprises Ltd., 2004),
40–41.
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 51

Apindi joined the American-run African Inland Mission. Upon earning his
certificate—a rare level of academic achievement at the time—he left for the
Indian Ocean coast where he worked as a clerk, and temporarily converted to
Islam. He soon returned to Christianity, however, joined the CMS Freretown
station in 1910, and CMS records indicate that he proceeded to lead evange-
lization among the Taita, Digo, and Giriama along the coast. Apindi decided
to take off once more in 1913 in order to start his own school and church in
Ng’iya.71 According to his biographer (Peter Indaru) and early converts’ tes-
timonies (Manas Ogutu, Nikanor Obare), Apindi’s activities in Ng’iya caused
much commotion: he acquired land without the consent of elders, defied the
power of the chief (Ngonga), and provoked medicine men.72 By 1919, as the
CMS began reviewing and inspecting the activities of local teacher-evangelists,
the denomination took over Ng’iya school, and encouraged Apindi to join the
teaching staff of Maseno.73 The life trajectories of Blasto Akumu Aum and Eze-
kiel Apindi show us that homegrown teacher-evangelists were sometimes able
to use schooling to their own advantage to contest the authority of other pow-
erful men (elders, chiefs, medicine men, white missionaries), ended appoint-
ments on their own terms, and founded many of the autonomous churches
and schools (“outschools”) that dotted Nyanza’s landscape. But the relative
autonomy they had enjoyed in extending the “school frontier” to the villages
eroded during the 1920s.74
The agency of African schoolteachers first came under threat in 1920. Until
that point, state officials had left schooling to missionaries. But in 1920, as
Kenya officially became a colony (end of the Protectorate status, save for the
Coastal strip), central streamlining became the order of the day. This status
change resulted in the creation of an administrative framework designed to
safeguard the interests of white settlers. Settlers pressured the state to reorgan-
ise school curricula in favour of technical training rather than liberal educa-
tion. Their position was that Kenyan schools should produce qualified workers
to fulfil settlers’ labor needs—not unsupervised teacher-evangelists.75 In the

71 AICMARA. “Jimbo la Kanisa la Kenya Uaskofu Wa Mombasa Kumbukubu ya Theologia ya

Theogia Katika Freretown, Mombasa,” 1989.
72 SPUA. NCCK Research Project, ’Interview of Manas Ogutu’ and ’Interview of Nikanor
Obare’ in The Beginning of Christianity in Nyanza.
73 Indaru, Man with the Lion Heart, ch. 4–5; Onyango, Gender and Development: A History of
Women’s Education in Kenya, ch. 4.
74 I borrow the expression “school frontier” from Ogot, My Footprints on the Sands of Time:
An Autobiography, 22.
75 Atieno Odhiambo. Siasa: Politics and Nationalism, 14–28; Ogot, My Footprints on the Sands
of Time: An Autobiography, ch. 2.
52 Ginestet

meantime, the Phelps-Stokes Fund (1920–1924) formed two commissions com-

posed of British and US officials, as well as a Gold Coast educator named James
Aggrey, to review the progress of education in Africa. The commissions’ recom-
mendations resulted in the Education Ordinance (1924) which established gov-
ernment aid schemes, and inspection procedures. From then on, in Nyanza, all
Anglican schools would be supervised and inspected by the (British) principal
of Maseno. This was bad news for African educators and outschools. In 1931, an
anonymous missionary author included a short biography of James Aggrey—
the Gold Coast and US-educated Fanti African missionary who had partici-
pated in the Phelps-Stokes Commission—in a Luo-language textbook, Kitap
Somo May Ariyo (Second Reader). The text subtly hints to the fact that mission
schools had become ridden with conflict. The unnamed author claims that
James Aggrey—who is presented in a favourable light as a more “enlightened”
African man—viewed racism as an education problem that would eventually
go away when all races “study” more. This position, presented to readers and
students as wise and reasonable, is then contrasted with more radical meth-
ods, such as protest and anger, which the author attributes to a critical lack
of education and empathy.76 This awkward celebration of moderation may be
read as an implicit criticism of the protest movements that had taken up in
mission schools throughout Nyanza.
From 1920 onward Maseno schoolteachers stirred up political unrest.
Beyond their own professional grievances, teachers addressed the frustra-
tions of the broader population. In 1921, Reuben Omulo, Ezekiel Apindi, Jona-
than Okwiri, Simeon Nyende, George Samuel Okoth, and Michael Were (who
were all Maseno teachers and alumni) created the Young Kavirondo Associa-
tion (YKA), popularly known in Luo as “Piny Owacho” (which roughly trans-
lates as “the country says,” or “the Parliament”). The organization focused its
advocacy work on four controversial issues: land insecurity, the introduction
by the colonial state of an unpopular identity monitoring system (kipande),
the forced mobilization of African labor, and tax raises. African Independent
Churches, which were often led by teacher-evangelists, brought Africans’ quest
for autonomy into the spiritual realm. For example, Alfayo Odongo Mango, a
CMS-trained preacher from the Kager clan, founded a religious movement
(Roho Ruwe) that gradually broke away from the Anglican Church in 1932–
1933, and prophesised the coming of a modern kingdom whose head would
not be King George, but an African (other notable African-led spiritual or reli-
gious movements in Nyanza at the time included Dini K’Owalo [Nomiya Luo],

76 Kitap Somo Mar Ariyo, Second Reader: Dholuo (London: The Sheldon Press, 1931), 45–46.
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 53

Mumboism, and the spread of Nyabingi spirit possessions).77 In the temporal

realm, the colonial state set out to water down the protests in 1923 by replacing
the YKA with the Kavirondo Taxpayers Welfare Association (KTWA), and asked
Archdeacon Walter Edwin Owen, a Maseno-based CMS missionary, to take its
presidency—a classic case of “missionary brokerage” and trusteeship.78 The
reform and progress of African schools remained central to the new organiza-
tion’s concerns. “Education” (rieko momedore) featured in the Constitution of
the KTWA as one of the organization’s key objectives, on a par with the pro-
tection of basic individual freedoms.79 Because KTWA members believed that
schooling was central to emancipation, the organization also started raising
funds for bursaries applying for study at Maseno. In churches, classrooms, and
town halls, the first generations of homegrown teachers and literati were tak-
ing centre stage.
Meanwhile, other institutions, such as siwindhe, suffered relegation. Various
folklore studies authored by Luo students at Makerere in Kampala in the 1950s
can help us document the relative decline of siwindhe. Among the many Mak-
erere students who hailed from Nyanza were two young men promised to a
brilliant intellectual career in postcolonial Kenya: future statistician and chair-
man of Kenya’s first Education Commission in 1964 Simeon Ominde, and future
literature scholar Henry Owuor Anyumba, who later advocated with Ngũgĩ wa
Thiong’o for the replacement at University of Nairobi’s of the “English” Depart-
ment with the Department of African Literature and Languages. Ominde and
Owuor Anyumba produced remarkable research which earned them the right
to have their work published and preserved in the archives of the Makerere
Institute of Social Research (MISR). Both students stressed that when they con-
ducted their field research (1952–1956), pim’s education in siwindhe was under-
going a noticeable decline. Siwindhe, they observed, had become reserved for
those who could not afford school fees, particularly girls and the poor. Other
transformations in domestic life, such as urbanization or the appearance of
kitchens in Luo homesteads—which encouraged mothers to let their children
sleep in this new adjacent room instead of sending them over to pim—may
have accentuated this phenomenon.80 For Owuor Anyumba and Ominde, pim

77 Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, Women of Fire and Spirit: History, Faith, and Gender in Roho
­ eligion in Western Kenya (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), ch. 2–3.
R
78 Atieno Odhiambo. Siasa: Politics and Nationalism, 108.
79 KNA. Archdeacon W. E. Owen Papers, Microfilm, Reel 1, “Kavirondo Taxpayers Welfare
­Association,” n.d.
80 On urbanization and industrialization, see Othuon, Onyango, Ang’awa, and Ayieko, Grow-
ing up and Sexual Maturation. The “kitchen” factor was suggested to the author by the
54 Ginestet

was fighting a losing battle against modernity; and her knowledge seemed con-
demned to decline.81
Their analysis, however, may have overestimated the power of school-
ing. Owuor Anyumba and Ominde attended secondary school in the 1930s.
They blossomed into young men at a time when teachers became politically
active, occupied the centre stage both politically and culturally, and wielded
an unshakable faith in the capacity of schools to produce a new crop of men.
Their own experiences may have led them to underestimate those knowl-
edge networks that bypassed the vibrant learning communities of Maseno, or
Butere. Gender—specifically, the fact that these two authors were men—may
have been another important factor. As men, Owuor Anyumba and Ominde
did not benefit from the privileged access to siwindhe and pim that girls and
young women enjoyed. (A distant relative of Ominde suggested to the author
of this chapter that Ominde’s first spouse, Mary Aloo, conducted some of the
research upon which the Makerere paper “The Luo Girl” was based.)82 Peda-
gogical innovations at Ng’iya school—the school founded by Ezekiel Apindi in
Alego, Siaya, which later turned into one of the region’s first girls’ school—fur-
ther suggest that women converts brought some of pim’s knowledge and oral
pedagogy to the mission. When Apindi started Ng’iya’s first Christian church
after his return from Mombasa, he was able to gather a strong fellowship of
women. According to Emily Onyango, “wives of migrant workers and Christian
widows established themselves as teachers and workers in these new Chris-
tian homes.”83 Some of the early converts included Flora Awich, Eba Aloo,
and Sofia Oloo.84 These women attempted a synthesis of Luo and Christian
education. In Ng’iya, they recreated siwindhe in girl dormitories and infused
Luo oral literature (sigana; plural sigendini) with Christian traditions.85 While
male teachers at Maseno publicly engaged in politics, behind the scenes, pim’s
knowledge quietly survived among women intellectuals, but moved away from
the increasingly feminised and pauperised institution of siwindhe.

late Prof. Mildren Ndeda during a meeting at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of
Science and Technology (JOOUST), Bondo (05/08/2019).
81 MISR. AR/MISR/99/9, Henry Owuor Anyumba, “The Place of Folk Tales in the Education
of Luo Children,” 1956; Simeon Ominde, The Luo Girl, from Infancy to Marriage (London:
Macmillan, 1952).
82 Interview with Tony Olang’, Nairobi, 24/02/2023.
83 Onyango, Gender and Development: A History of Women’s Education in Kenya, 110.
84 Eisha S. Atieno Odhiambo, and David W. Cohen, Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an
African Landscape (London: Currey, 1993), 114.
85 Onyango, Gender and Development: A History of Women’s Education in Kenya, 110.
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 55

5 Educators as Knowledge Makers: Luo Historiography and Sigana

The last section of this chapter considers Luo educators (schoolteachers and
pim) as knowledge makers. In transcultural contact zones, such as schools and
churches, converts and literati sought to establish what Atieno Odhiambo
describes as “a synthesis between the ‘good things Luo’ and the ‘new good
things Christian.’”86 In this process, they imbued Luo oral literature, preco-
lonial history, and Christianity with new meanings, and crafted transforma-
tive ideas about community. To understand how this took place, we must first
say something about the Luo concept of sigana. Asenath Bole Odaga defines
sigana as a “narration technique in oral literature.”87 Among Luo speakers,
Sigana designates most knowledge passed on in a narrative form. It encom-
passes the notions of story, legend, myth, and history without establishing clear
distinctions between them.88 In the nineteenth century, the main specialist
of sigana and its transmission was pim.89 By the end of the interwar years,
Luo schoolteachers, literati, and converts, both women and men, had reduced
sigana to writing, integrated it into the Christian gospel, and broken it down
into new, distinct knowledge categories (Luo history, religion, fiction writing,
etc.) that aligned with the Western knowledge traditions promoted in schools.
Their intellectual labors enabled the rise of gendered forms of knowledge and
Luo cultural nationalism.
Preliminary evidence suggests that pim’s knowledge did not die with the
decline of siwindhe. Instead, it appears to have lived on, and undergone trans-
formations in areas of social life in which women were able to retain influence,
such as charismatic Christianity. References to sigana abound in the liturgy
of African Independent Churches. Followers of Nomiya, Mumbo, Roho and,
from the 1960s onward, Legio Maria, whose leaders broke away from the Cath-
olic Church, used and adapted some of the stories which belonged in sigana
and integrated them into a revamped Christian framework. Legio Maria fol-
lowers, for example, equate classic sigana characters to Christian personali-
ties. Hence the potent women who surge from the lake waters to punish men’s
greed and insolence using extraordinary abilities in Luo oral narratives such as

86 Ivan Karp, and A. D. Masolo, eds., African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2000), 244.
87 Odaga, “Educational Values of ‘Sigendini Luo’: The Kenya Luo Narratives.” 1.
88 “Sigana,” in Asenath B. Odaga, Dholuo-English Dictionary (Kisumu: Lake Publishers &
Enterprises Ltd., 2005), 320.
89 Ocholla-Ayayo, Traditional Ideology and Ethics among the Southern Luo, 71–74. Sigana
could also be transmitted outside siwindhe in places such as duol (open space where Luo
men gathered in the evenings).
56 Ginestet

“Nyamgondho gi wuod Ombare” and “Simbi Nyaima” are now seen and inter-
preted as resurgences of an “African Maria”—Legio regard the African Maria as
one of their founders, and refer to her, in Swahili, as “Bikira Maria.”90 In the late
colonial and early postcolonial period, women fiction writers such as Grace
Akinyi Ogot, herself a fervent follower of the East African Revival, returned
to the same traditional stories, now imbued with Christian meanings, to look
for a source of inspiration for African literature.91 In the Christian circles that
women invested, preachers, followers, and literati established correspond-
ences between sigana, religion, and fiction writing.
Men mined sigana too, but they did so with a different goal in mind. In 1938
Paul Mboya, a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor from Karachuonyo, published an
influential book on Luo customs (Kitgi gi Timbegi) as a response to what he per-
ceived as Luo youth’s overestimation and admiration of European knowledge,
and their contempt toward Luo traditions. He argued that “God had provided
all communities with the wisdom to devise their own customs and institutions,”
and that importing foreign ones uncritically, therefore, was a violation of God’s
will.92 Shadrack Malo, a Maseno schoolteacher, agreed with this assessment and
blamed Western education. European foreigners (welo) and mission schools,
he claimed, played a key role in reinforcing the ignorance of Luo sons (yawuot
Luo).93 By encouraging them to study the history of foreigners rather than their
own, he claimed, modern education had produced generations of lost souls,
incapable of imagining a destiny beyond white domination. In this context,
Mboya and Malo believed that the role of the literati was to tutor boys, help
them grow into upright men, and provide direction to a society going astray.
Their commitment to moral reform, and their critical views on education, reso-
nated with the political turmoil that literati and schoolteachers experienced
in interwar Maseno and other mission schools sprinkled along the lakeshores.
From the 1930s onward, this intellectual and educational program found
its clearest expression in history writing. The Luo teacher-evangelists Michael
Were and Zablon Okola inaugurated the age of homespun historiography with

90 Nancy L. Schwartz, “World without End: The Meanings and Movements in the History,
Narratives and ‘Tongue-Speech’ of Legio Maria of African Church Mission among Luo of
Africa” (PhD thesis, Princeton, 1989), 38, 78, 423. See also: An emane alimo Simbi, gwen’g
Karachuonyo, https://lejionmaria.blogspot.com/2016/11/puonj-bikira-maria-legion-maria
-emane.html (Last Access: 31/05/2023).
91 Grace Ogot, Days of My Life: An Autobiography (Kisumu: Anyange Press, 2012), 91.
92 Paul Mboya, Luo Kitgi Gi Timbegi (Nairobi: Equatorial Publishers, 1967), ch. “Biro Wasungu”
and “Thuond Weche”; Ogot, “The Construction of Luo Identity and History,” 37.
93 Shadrack Malo, Dhoudi Mag Central Nyanza (Nairobi: East African Publishing House,
1953), 1–2.
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 57

their joint publication, in Luo, of the first book on Luo history Weche Moko
Mag Luo (1936).94 Shadrack Malo’s seminal history of the clans of Central
Nyanza (Dhoudi Mag Central Nyanza), written over the course of the 1940s
and published in 1953, followed shortly thereafter.95 To collect oral traditions,
synthesise them, and translate them into “history,” Malo relied heavily on the
assistance of teacher-evangelists who revolved around Maseno. Yona Orau and
Daniel Owiti (members of the first cohort of Luo students joining Maseno in
1906) helped with the clan genealogies of Kisumo and Gem. Michael Were (fel-
low schoolteacher and historiographer) contributed to the chapter on Ugenya.
Reuben Omulo, Simeon Nyende, George Samuel Okoth, and Jonathan Okwiri
(teachers who had participated in the foundation of the Young Kavirondo
Association) provided information on the clan genealogies of Gem, Alego, and
Uyoma. To reconstruct the Luo past, Malo and his colleagues used a particular
kind of sigana: genealogical knowledge. This resulted in the Luo past being
presented as a history of descent, migration, and lineage splits going back to
Ramogi Ajwang’—a mythical ancestor said to have established the Luos’ first
settlement in Kenya, on Ramogi Hill.96
The works of Okola, Were, and Malo circulated widely and stimulated the
development of Luo cultural nationalism. The leaders of ethnic organizations,
such as the Luo Union, treated Luo precolonial history as a sacred matter, and
regarded the books of Malo, Okola and Were as cultural bibles.97 They acted
as informants for various academic scholars, particularly Bethwell Ogot, and
engaged actively in debates about Luo intellectual production.98 Luo Union
members were not the only history enthusiasts in town. In his autobiogra-
phy, My Footprints on the Sands of Time, Bethwell Ogot recounts how the first
generations of Luo students who reached higher education and joined Mak-
erere college in Kampala became avid history readers and writers. Student-run
organizations, such as the Luo Students League, encouraged members to read,
write, and conduct research on the Luo past, folklore, marriage, oral literature,
and history.99 The patriotic vernacular press too invited Luo sons to read, write,
study, and teach more. In a 1945 issue of the Luo newspaper Ramogi, a

94 Ogot, “The Construction of Luo Identity and History.”

95 KNA. Nyanza Province. Part III, Section 10, Vol. 1. Box 50. /1342 (L.&O. 2/4/2 Vol. III)
1956–5.7. Chief Native Commissioner in Nairobi, 25th of October, 1956.
96 Malo, Dhoudi Mag Central Nyanza, 1–26.
97 Ogot, “The Construction of Luo Identity and History,” 45.
98 Matthew P. Carotenuto, “Cultivating an African Community: The Luo Union in 20th
­Century East Africa.” (PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 2006), 204–206.
99 Ogot, My Footprints on the Sands of Time: An Autobiography, 55. See also: MAK. AR/
MAK/38/2. Makerere Luo Students’ League.
58 Ginestet

contributor called S. A. G. Mitula called upon his educated readers to consider

becoming teachers. “It is a pity,” Mitula wrote, “that many Luo children don’t
consider teaching upon leaving school.” In Mitula’s view, teaching was the only
job that truly fostered progress: “even working in the Railways” (a popular and
prestigious profession among young adult men), he warned, “cannot bring our
country development” (ting’ruok).100 Homespun historiography and print cul-
ture progressively began to serve an ideological project: Luo cultural nation-
alism. In plotting, researching, writing, and teaching the collective history of
Luo speakers, Luo literati and schoolteachers anchored a newfound collective
identity—the Luo nation—in a partly reinvented ancient past.

6 Conclusion

This chapter analyzed the contributions and networks of the East African
teachers who frequented mission school in Nyanza, and particularly Maseno,
between 1906 and the early 1940s to show how African and European actors
negotiated and struggled over the meanings and powers associated with lit-
eracy, school education, and the knowledge of sigana in the Winam Gulf.
From the turn of the century to WWI Maseno became part of far-reaching East
African Christian networks that connected the northeastern shores of Lake
Victoria to the kingdom of Buganda, Mozambique, and the Indian Ocean. Dur-
ing this period missionaries found it difficult to draw students and to com-
pete with local intellectual figures, such as the postmenopausal women called
pim, who oversaw most of the education of Luo youth. The interwar years
witnessed a series of dramatic transformations. Schools turned into a site in
which European missionaries, state actors, white settlers, and East African lit-
erati struggled over authority, power, and the goals of education in an African
colony. In the meantime the consolidation of a locally trained African teaching
elite provided male Luo literati and schoolteachers with the means to express
their grievances and desires for reform in new ways, using books, pamphlets,
and missionary networks as platforms for their activism. This turn of events,
however, resulted in the rise of a male-driven print culture focused on Luo
cultural nationalism. I have argued that these changes obscured the authority
of more ancient custodians of knowledge, such as the pim. This chapter sug-
gests that taking these actors into account is necessary if we want to unearth
alternate pathways to knowledge-making and education, and to more compre-
hensively historicise the ways in which mission education transformed African

100 KNA. PC/NZA/2/2/9. ‘Notes on Publishing (Ramogi)’, 1946. S.A.G. Mitula, “Tich Puonj,”
Ramogi, 15th August, 1945.
Mission Education and the Powers of the Written Word 59

intellectual and social life. But doing so might require historians to look at a
corpus of sources (fiction writing, novels, poems, prayer books) which, while
not strictly historical in content, carry precious historical information about
the history of education and knowledge in Africa in the twentieth century.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the scholars who have read and provided feedback on
this paper, including: Ellen Vea Rosnes, Pierre Guidi, Jean-Luc Martineau, Peter
Kallaway, Rose Jackson, and Caterina Scalvedi. I would also like to thank the
archivists Julius Dondi, Thomas Odhiambo Oluoch, Monica Naluwooza, and
the MISR Librarians Sarah and Julius for their help in navigating Kenyan and
Ugandan archives. Finally, thanks are due to various colleagues at the Univer-
sity of Nairobi and the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Tech-
nology for allowing me to workshop part of this research, particularly Kenneth
Ombongi, David Masika, and George Odhiambo Okoth, and to my supervisors
Florence Bernault, Jonathan Glassman, and David Schoenbrun.

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 Chapter 3

Making the Colonial School: Catholic Teachers and

Muslim Students in Italian Somalia (1930–1941)

Caterina Scalvedi

1 Introduction

In the Italian colony of Somalia (1908–1941),1 Catholic missionaries adminis-

tered all primary schools for colonial subjects. Quite surprisingly, the curricula
and teaching materials the missionaries designed for these schools include
many positive references to Islam. For example, in the “First Italian Book for
the Somali” (Primo libro di italiano per i Somali), the reading “Allah” explicitly
invites students to pray to the Muslim God:

Allah is the supreme master of all. He created the world, the man, the sky
and all we see. He created the sun, the moon, the stars, all the animals
who live on earth, all the birds who live in the air, all the fish that swim in
water. Allah created all living creatures … We must praise and thank Allah
and we must love him as our Great Father.2

Similarly, in “The Second Class for the Somali” (La seconda classe per i Somali),
the reading titled “Virtuous Men are Honored” invites students to visit, and pay
respect to, the tombs of Muslim holy men:

East from Hammaruin are many tombs of Muslim holy men; people that
pass by look at them with respect. Each year the citizens of Mogadishu
go to Shayk Sufi Mosque to pray and to commemorate his name in front
of God [Dio]. Do you know why those people, who passed a long time
ago, are still commemorated with much honor and much veneration?
It is because they were virtuous men. Virtuous men are good, charitable,

1 Italy established a series of protectorates in Banaadir, the coastal region of Southern Somalia,
in the late nineteenth century, formally combining all of them into a colony in 1908. In 1941,
British troops occupied the region, putting an end to Italian colonial rule.
2 Emphasis added. Daniele Gorlani, Primo libro di italiano per i Somali (Mogadishu: Regia
Stamperia della colonia, 1933), 90. All translations are my own.

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_004

66 Scalvedi

working men; they do not harm others, they help the needy, work with good
will, pray to God [Dio] at the prescribed time, respect the Authorities and
love their families. Children too can be the pride of their family and honor
the motherland; these are children who learn to be good and become virtu-
ous men.3

Accompanying the reading are two pictures of the Shaykh Sufi Mosque and
other Muslim holy men’s tombs (see Figure 3.1). These are records of important
mausoleums and sites of pilgrimage up to the present day. Shayk Sufi (d. 1905)
was one of the most popular figures of the Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood and is
remembered for his reputation for learning and erudition.4
This chapter explores the question of why Catholic missionaries, whose
goal, during the colonial period, was the conversion of Muslims to Catholicism,
explicitly encouraged students to follow Islamic principles and articles of faith.
My focus on the process by which teaching materials for colonial subjects took
shape helps us reconstruct the colonial situation in the Horn of Africa as well
as the functioning of fascist Italy as a colonial state formation. In the years 1922
to 1943, Benito Mussolini built the earliest fascist regime in European politics,
making both state education and aggressive imperialism the corner stones of
his political project in Italy. Within this historical context, my chapter explores
the ways in which the education of colonial subjects in fascist Italy’s Somalia
was a “contact zone,”, a social space and web of multilayered power relations. It
shows how, within this zone, the same historical actors among fascist colonial
state institutions, Catholic missionaries, and Muslim-majoritarian colonial
subjects could be simultaneously both dominant and subordinate.5

3 Emphasis added. Daniele Gorlani, Emanuella Dominici, and Lauretta Abbondanza, La sec-
onda classe per i Somali (Monza: Tipografia Sociale, 1936), 27–28. I discovered the existence
of this textbook because it is cited in Enrica Delitala, “Scolari dell’impero. Note su alcuni
testi per le scuole elementari della A.O.I.,” Lares 81, no. 1 (2015): 159–72. I could not find a
copy of the textbook in a worldwide library search, and contacted the Delitala’s family tel-
ephonically, hoping they could assist me in my search. I wish to thank both the late Graziella
Sedda Delitala, Enrica’s sister, and her son Roberto, for having located the textbook among
the books owned by Enrica before her passing, and for having promptly sent me scans of it
by email. This ­essay would not have existed without their kind and generous assistance.
4 Scott Reese, Renewers of the Age: Holy Men and Social Discourse in Colonial Benaadir (Leiden:
Brill, 2008), 84.
5 On the concept of “contact zone”, see Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transcultura-
tion, 7, 10. See also methodological literature on the global history of education and school
curricula: Fuchs, “History of Education beyond the Nation? Trends in Historical and Edu-
cational Scholarship”; Daniel Tröhler, “Curriculum History,” in The Oxford Handbook of the
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 67

Figure 3.1  eginning of the reading “The virtuous men are honored” in Gorlani et al., La
B
seconda classe, 27

My central argument is that all actors involved in the production of teaching

materials—the Ministry of the Colonies in Rome, the Governor of Somalia in

History of Education, eds. John L. Rury, and Eileen H. Tamura (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2019), ch. 33.
68 Scalvedi

Mogadishu, teachers, students, and Muslim religious leaders—while respec-

tively supporting a different agenda, ended up influencing each other in the
field of education. Contrary to what one may expect under a fascist regime with
strong state institutions, such reciprocal influence followed an upward move-
ment: students and Muslim religious leaders influenced missionary teaching;
missionary teaching in turn inspired the colonial authorities’ education ­policy
in Mogadishu. The Ministry of the Colonies ultimately approved the mis-
sionaries’ educational practices and the Governor’s policy from Rome. In this
process, teaching materials did not originate from fascist colonial authorities’
imposition, but from grounded negotiations between different state and, most
importantly, non-state actors.
Indeed, while undertaking a process of top-down fascistisation of the pub-
lic school system in the Italian peninsula,6 Mussolini never enforced a strict
education policy in Italy’s colonies in Northeastern Africa (Eritrea, Somalia,
and, since 1936, Ethiopia).7 The Italian Ministry of the Colonies—renamed
­Ministry of Italian Africa in 1937—specified and reiterated one simple leading
principle concerning the organisation of schools overseas: to make a distinc-
tion between schools for Italian citizens and schools for colonial subjects.8 In
this schema, curricula for citizens had to be the same as those in Italy and
instil a sense of emotional attachment to the motherland, while curricula for
colonial subjects had to be adapted to the specific cultural, religious, and social
context they addressed.9 These guidelines for the two curricula remained
vague g­ eneral suggestions during the entire colonial period, and the lack of
top-down explicit directives resulted in a highly decentred school network in

6 Jürgen Charnitzky, Fascismo e scuola: la politica scolastica del regime (1922–1943) (Scandicci:
La Nuova Italia, 1999).
7 Italy’s colonies included Libya as well.
8 Since 1908, from a legal perspective, in Eritrea and Somalia a “colonial subject” (suddito colo-
niale) was “a person who was not an Italian citizen or citizen of any other European state,
who was born in the colony, and belonged to one of its ‘tribes’.” Similarly, the 1933 Ordina-
mento organico defined a colonial subject as anyone who resided in one of the two colonies
but was not an Italian citizen or a citizen of any other state, including people of African or
Asian origin who served in the administration. This definition implied a sharp dividing line
between citizenship, based on lineage, and colonial subjecthood, the latter being defined
as non-citizenship. By establishing different schools for citizens and colonial subjects, the
Ministry of the Colonies made education a key field of application of citizenship and sub-
jecthood status in Italian colonies. Nicola Camilleri, “Colonial Subjects and Others: Racism
and Inequality during Italian Rule in the Horn of Africa,” Northeast African Studies 20, no. 1–2
(2020): 27–57.
9 See Angelo Piccioli, “La scuola e le istituzioni educative,” in La nuova Italia d’Oltremare.
L’opera del fascismo nelle colonie italiane (Milan: Mondadori, 1933), 1092–1166; Gino Cer-
bella, “La politica scolastica del fascismo in Colonia,” in Idee e pareri sugli studi afri
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 69

which local actors in the colonies—not the government in Rome—themselves

designed, proposed, and administered school programs for colonial subjects.
Among the local actors, Catholic missionaries played a leading role in the
organisation of schools in Somalia. Based on a number of agreements between
the Governors of Somalia and the Apostolic Vicariate of Banaadir (renamed
Apostolic Vicariate of Mogadishu in 1927), the organisation of primary schools
for colonial subjects fell under Catholic missionaries’ sphere of action: the
Trinitarians (1903–1924), the Consolata Fathers (1924–1930), the Consolata
Nuns (1924–1991), and the Friars Minor (1930–1991).10 This chapter addresses
the documentation locally produced by these missionaries, including printed
materials (textbooks, periodicals), private letters, reports, journals, and chroni-
cles.11 Methodologically, what the missionaries defined as “challenges” and
“problems” will be the entry point of my analysis of grounded experiences at
schools as well as of the power relations and social interactions between state
authorities, teachers, students, and local society. Reading about the ways in
which missionaries framed these challenges provides us with opportunities to
concentrate on the ruptures between policy and praxis, and between teachers’

cani e orientali e sui problemi scolastici coloniali in Italia (Tripoli: Maggi, 1933), 167–86. The
education bill Ordinamento scolastico per le colonie (1936) also mandated school segrega-
tion. See Royal Decree 24 July 1936 no. 1737, to become Law 11 January 1937 no. 268; “La
scuola e le istituzioni educative,” Annali dell’Africa Italiana 1 (1940): 670–94.
10 On Trinitarian and Consolata missionaries, see: Bianca Maria Carcangiu, “I Missionari
della Consolata nella Somalia italiana (1925–1930),” in Studi mediterranei ed extraeuro-
pei, ed. Vittorio Antonio Salvadorini (Pisa: Edistudio, 2002), ch. 4; Lucia Ceci, Il vessillo
e la croce. Colonialismo, missioni cattoliche e islam in Somalia (1903–1924) (Rome: Caro-
cci, 2006); Daniela Danilli, ‘Le missioni cattoliche italiane all’estero: il caso della Con-
solata nella Somalia di Cesare Maria De Vecchi (1924–1928),” ASEI – Archivio Storico
dell’Emigrazione Italiana, 7 November 2011, accessed September 24, 2021. https:// www
.asei.eu/it/2011/11/le-missioni-cattoliche-italiane-allestero-il-caso-della-consolata
-nella-somalia-di-cesare-maria-de-vecchi-1924–1928/.
11 I found archival documentation on missionary education in Somalia in the 1930s in two
missionary archives in Italy: the Archives of the Consolata Missionary Nuns Institute in
Nepi (AIMSC) and the Historical Archives of the Lombardy Province of the Friars Minors
in Milan (AOFM). Unless specified, all cited archival sources in this essay come from
AOFM. There is no inventory of the Somalia section at AOFM. For this reason, I included
no archival entries in the notes but only the names of the folders in which I found the
cited documents. The governmental sources I consulted are from the archives of the Brit-
ish Military Administration at the British National Archives (BNA) in Kew Gardens, and of
the Ministry of Italian Africa (MAI), preserved between the Archivio Centrale dello Stato
(ACS) and the Archivio Storico Diplomatico degli Affari Esteri (ASDMAE), both in Rome.
All cited documents are in Italian except those from the BNA (in English).
70 Scalvedi

expectations and the everyday work they performed in schools.12 Missionary

sources not only constitute the best-preserved archive for the study of the colo-
nial situation in Italian Somalia,13 but also introduce and give voice to other
local actors usually unheard in the historical records. These include students
and Muslim charismatic religious preachers who exercised a strong influence
on colonial subjects’ relationship to colonial institutions in general and Catho-
lic missionary schools in particular.
The first two sections of this chapter analyse the attitudes towards the edu-
cation of colonial subjects in Somalia of the Ministry of the Colonies and the
local Governors on the one hand, and of Catholic missionaries on the other.
The third section constitutes the core of this chapter. Through a close anal-
ysis of changes in the ­curriculum—specifically, the production of new text-
books in 1933 and 1936 and a new school calendar in 1939—I demonstrate
that ­missionaries developed a series of teaching strategies to compete with
Muslim religious leaders and to attract more children to their schools. In the
conclusion, I discuss how my case study ­contributes to questioning the limits
of a fascist and colonial state-­centered perspective in the historical analysis of
­education in an imperial context.

2 Not Seeing Like the Fascist State

In the mid-1920s, the fascist colonial administration began providing support

to Catholic missionary education. Governors poured a steadily increasing sum
of money into the missionaries’ educational activities and provided them with
school buildings and teaching materials. The primary aim of this policy was,
on the one hand, to ensure that the Italian settlers’ children could obtain an
Italian state certified school diploma locally, and, on the other, to train colonial
subjects to become employable workers. In 1933, an article published in the

12 Unfortunately, I could not find any written source produced by students, their families, or
community members that refers to the schools examined in this essay.
13 In Somalia, a long civil war restricted the possibility of researchers visiting school build-
ings, meeting and interviewing former teachers and students, or simply searching for
locally preserved archives dating from the early 1990s. On the poor state of colonial
archives preserved in Italy: Giulia Barrera, “Carte contese: La spartizione degli archivi
coloniali e i contenziosi internazionali in materia d’archivi,” in L’impero nel cassetto. L’Ita-
lia coloniale tra album privati e archivi pubblici, eds. Paola Bertella Farnetti, and Adolfo
Mignemi (Milan-Udine: Mimesis, 2013); Pamela Ballinger, The World Refugees Made:
Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2020), 15–19.
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 71

monthly periodical of the Italian Colonial Institute L’Oltremare reported that

the governor had tasked the Director of Civil and Political Affairs with super-
vising the work of missionary teachers, and that curricula for “natives” were
“conveniently reduced and subject to the Governor’s approval.”14 Like the Min-
istry of the Colonies, the local administration did not develop strict directives
on education, but limited their action to ensuring that missionaries respected
the general guidelines for differentiating schools for Italian citizens from those
for colonial subjects.
Correspondence from the mid-1930s between the Governor of Somalia,
Ruggiero Santini, and the Minister of the Colonies, Alessandro Lessona, con-
firms this lack of initiative from the state. In July 1936, the Minister Lessona
requested the Governor Santini to strengthen the surveillance of schools in
the colony in two ways. First, he proposed the creation of state-administered
schools for colonial subjects alongside missionary schools. He saw state-
administered schools as model schools to inspire missionaries (“foster emula-
tion on the part of missionaries”). He argued that the dearth of good examples
provided by the colonial state gave missionaries too much freedom to develop
their own curricula for colonial subjects. Second, Lessona suggested creating a
Central Direction for Primary Schools to better supervise missionary teaching.
The Governor welcomed the expansion of the state-administered school sys-
tem as a measure to solve the problem of local students’ preference for Koranic
schools and to attract more colonial subjects to Italian schools. While he did
not question missionary education, he proposed a plan to Lessona: hire 64 cer-
tified secular teachers, open primary state schools in Mogadishu, and in eleven
more centres. Santini’s goal was not to undermine missionary teaching, but to
back it up, expand the existing school network, and increase school attend-
ance among colonial subjects.
The Minister rejected Santini’s proposal. In his view, school enrolment
data suggested that a “sufficient” number of colonial subjects attended colo-
nial schools. He argued that, according to the policy “in preparation” at the
Ministry, in Somalia the education of colonial subjects was to be limited both
in quality and quantity. In his view, only centres with a large population of
Italian citizens required state schools. In response, Santini’s counterproposal
was to open only one state school for colonial subjects in Mogadishu; the
latter would include the teaching of Islam in the curriculum, and a local
Muslim teacher would be appointed. I found no response to Santini’s

14 “L’istruzione primaria in Somalia,” L’Oltremare, August 1933. The titles of this and the next
sections refer to James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the
Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
72 Scalvedi

counterproposal, but located a letter written by Santini, in which he indicated

he had changed his mind and dropped his proposal due to the lack of available
school buildings in Mogadishu, and to the fact that, contractually, missionaries
had been granted the monopoly of education for colonial subjects.15
This back and forth between Lessona and Santini reveals the ways in which
state authorities envisioned education in Somalia in the 1930s. First, both the
Minister and the Governor proposed measures to strengthen the surveillance
of missionary schools. This suggests that colonial administrators did not feel
that schools were under their control. Rather, they knew that another party, the
missionaries, set the curricula and administered them on the ground. At the
same time, the correspondence shows that neither the Governor nor the Minis-
try were interested in discussing curricula for colonial subjects, fully delegating
this responsibility to the missionaries. The Governor of Somalia—unlike those
of Libya and Eritrea—issued no specific law concerning education, nor did he
name a specific figure to be in charge of supervising education.16 This task was
assigned to the Director of Civil and Political Affairs, who, unlike school super-
intendents in Libya and Eritrea, did not fully devote the directorate’s working
time to the functioning of schools, but divided his attention between multiple
duties concerning the civil and political relationships between the colonial
state and its local subjects. In Somalia, the fascist colonial regime neglected
education for the entire colonial period.
Moreover, the correspondence between Lessona and Santini discloses the
different views held by Rome and Mogadishu regarding the education of colo-
nial subjects. On the one hand, Rome was not interested in growing the school
network for colonial subjects, focusing only on surveillance, as evidenced by
Lessona’s proposal to open schools to “foster emulation on the part of mission-
aries”, and his later refusal of Santini’s plan to establish more state schools. On
the other hand, in Mogadishu, the Governor was willing to open more schools
to further attract Muslim-majoritarian local students, who tended to opt for the
numerous Koranic schools in the region. The correspondence does not men-
tion why Santini wanted more local students to enrol in missionary schools,
yet the emphasis in other governmental documents on the lack of labour for

15 This correspondence is located in ACS, MAI, Busta 161, Fasc. Governo della Somalia Fun-
zionamento Scuole: Alessandro Lessona to Ruggiero Santini, July 8 and August 21, 1936;
Santini to Lessona, August 5, September 8, and November 6, 1936.
16 The first specific law on education was the Ordinamento scolastico, issued by the Minis-
try of the Colonies in 1936 to regulate the organisation of education not only in Somalia
but in the whole newly founded Italian Empire in Northeastern Africa, Africa Orientale
­Italiana, which included Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 73

both administrative and manual tasks suggests that the reason might be found
in the government’s need to use schools to train a local labour force.17 As I
show in the following section, the missionaries also influenced the Governor’s
call for a strategy to attract more students to state schools. Neither the Minister
nor the Governor had a clear grasp of what was happening on the ground, and
they thus aimed to survey and develop an educational centralised policy for
colonial subjects. Yet, the Minister was observing schools in Somalia from afar,
and did not want to deploy resources for their smoother functioning, the edu-
cation of colonial subjects not being a priority. Conversely, the Governor had
a greater appreciation of what happened in schools and took a practical inter-
est in their functioning and eventual expansion. With no funding from Rome,
however, the local authority could do little to develop colonial education.
To summarise, state authorities did not enforce clear and definite top-down
directives for curricula for colonial subjects in Somalia, instead promoting only
general guidelines for distinguishing between curricula for Italian citizens and
those for colonial subjects.18 This approach on the part of the state expressed
a tension between the need to strengthen the surveillance of education and
the lack of initiative regarding the organisation of education. In the next sec-
tion, I explore how missionaries articulated curricula and teaching strategies,
within a local context, drawing from their daily, direct experience with stu-
dents throughout the colony. While authorities in Rome wanted missionaries
to emulate governmental curricula, what happened on the ground suggests the

17 On the high demand for labour in Somalia, see Robert L. Hess, Italian Colonialism in
­Somalia (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966); Lee V. Cassanelli, “The End
of Slavery and the ‘Problem’ of Farm Labor in Colonial Somalia,” in Proceedings of the
Third International Congress of Somali Studies. History, Anthropology and Archaeology,
eds. Annarita Puglielli, and Francesco Antinucci (Rome: Pensiero Scientifico, 1988), ch.
36; Andrea Naletto, Italiani in Somalia. Storia di un colonialismo straccione (Padua: Cierre
edizioni, 2001); Gianluca Podestà, Il mito dell’impero. Economia, politica e lavoro nelle col-
onie italiane dell’Africa orientale 1898–1941 (Turin: G. Giapicchelli Editore, 2004); Annalisa
Urbano, “A ‘Grandiose Future for Italian Somalia’: Colonial Developmentalist Discourse,
Agricultural Planning, and Forced Labor (1900–1940),” International Labor and Work-
ing-Class History 92 (2017): 69–88; Riccardo Tesolin, “Investire in colonia. Somalia italiana
e Côte Française des Somalis 1920–1960” (Master’s thesis, University of Bologna, 2018).
18 The regime articulated an exhaustive plan on the matter only in the 1939–1940 school
year, after that the General School Superintendent Edmondo Pietrosi toured schools in
Italian East Africa. Such a plan came too late because the new detailed scheme—which
circulated in draft form among Governors and the Ministry—never was enforced due to
the outbreak of World War II in Africa in the spring of 1940 and the subsequent ­collapse
of Mussolini’s empire. See Amedeo di Savoia, Programmi di insegnamento delle scuole
per sudditi coloniali, ASDMAE, MAI – Gabinetto Archivio Segreto 1925–1942, Busta 72,
Fasc. Scuola Arti e Mestieri per S­ udditi AOI.
74 Scalvedi

opposite: the state mimicked the pedagogic strategies of ­missionaries, who in

turn borrowed teaching content from their Muslim counterparts—the Muslim
teachers at Koranic schools.

3 Seeing Like Missionaries: Teaching Challenges

In 1934 Venanzio Filippini, Bishop of Mogadishu and head of the Catholic mis-
sion in Somalia, invited all teachers to address education as the “best field for
evangelisation.” He recommended learning local languages for teaching pur-
poses and avoiding all religious content.19 This model of evangelisation was
not specific to Somalia, but belonged to the Papacy’s broad strategy of indi-
rect evangelisation among Muslims in the interwar period.20 For missionaries,
conversion was not possible in the short run because of the Muslims’ diffi-
dence towards Christianity and because the Governors did not want mission-
aries to interfere with local religious beliefs and practices. Direct apostolate,
which consisted of catechism, addressed the Christian minority, which was
composed of workers from Italy and colonial soldiers from Eritrea, as well as
orphans. Indirect apostolate, conversely, involved the entire Muslim popula-
tion, and consisted of showing how magnanimous missionaries were by pro-
viding Muslims with various charity activities, the most important being the
provision of education, health care, and employment opportunities.21

19 Venanzio Filippini, Circolare no. 8, September 26, 1934, Somalia – Lettere Documenti del
Vicariato Apostolico di Mogadiscio, I. Doppioni 1930–1950. I analyse the Consolata mis-
sionaries’ plan of indirect evangelisation through education among Muslims in Somalia
in my “Cruce et Aratro: Fascism, Missionary Schools, and Labor in 1920s Italian Somalia,”
in Education and Development in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa: Policies, Paradigms, and
Entanglements, 1890s–1980s, eds. Matasci, Bandeira Jerónimo, and Gonçalves Dores, ch. 6.
20 In 1919 and 1926, Benedict XV and his successor Pius XI, respectively published the apostolic
letter Maximum Illud and the encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae, both exhorting evangelisation
among “pagan” people as a supranatural endeavour separated from national and imperial
aims. See Benedict XV, Maximum Illud, apostolic letter, November 30, 1919, http://w2.vatican
.va/content/benedict-xv/en/apost_letters/documents/hf_ben-xv_apl_19191130_maximum
-illud.html; Pius XI, Rerum Ecclesiae, encyclical letter, February 28, 1926, http://w2.vatican
.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_28021926_rerum-ecclesiae
.html. Both are from the Vatican website, accessed September 24, 2021. In 1926, Pius XI also
founded the Institute for Islamic Studies in Rome.
21 The possibility of conversion was remote because Islam was wide-spread and colonial
authorities discouraged direct proselytism for internal security reasons. Relazione di
Filippini sulla storia della cattedrale e sulla popolazione musulmana, July 12, 1934; Eugène
Tisserant and Giuseppe Cesarini to Venanzio Filippini, May 22, 1939, Somalia – Lettere
Documenti del Vicariato Apostolico di Mogadiscio, II. Somalia Fotocopie documenti
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 75

In the 1930s, the organisation of missionary education for colonial sub-

jects operated as follows: Daniele Gorlani, a Friar Minor who had graduated
in Islamic Studies at the Oriental University in Naples, was the director of all
primary schools for colonial subjects. These schools comprised three grades
and came at no cost to students, thanks to the administration’s subsidies.22 The
student population included children23 and adults24 who gravitated around
the Italian community, including recruits who attended schools as part of
their colonial military training.25 It was common for the Italian colonial police
(Carabinieri) to collect orphans on the street and bring them to the missionar-
ies, or for local chiefs to take the initiative and ask missionaries to take care
of abandoned orphans whom the community was unable to raise and sup-
port.26 Unlike the schools for citizens, where schooling was coeducational, in
the schools for colonial subjects all students were male, except for a few female
orphans and abandoned children of an Italian and a Somali parent, who at the
time were called with the denigratory term of meticci, or “­mixed-race.” Friar
Minors taught only male students, while the Consolata nuns supervised the
upbringing of both male and female children in gendered separate schools.27

d­ attilogr. scuole. An exception to such approach was the policy by Cesare Maria De Vecchi
(1923–1928). The first fascist Governor of Somalia, he envisioned schools not only as edu-
cation centres, but also as a tool to spread political, religious, and cultural values among
colonial subjects. For a detailed discussion of De Vecchi’s policy, see my “Cruce et Aratro.”
22 The only cost was a single annual payment of the printed progress report (pagella) for the
modest price of 1 Lira. See “Le scuole elementari parificate presso il Vicariato Apostolico,”
Somalia Cristiana (hereafter cited as SC), October 1938. Free enrolment at colonial schools
under the Italian administration is mentioned also in the Final Report on Somaliland by
the Four Power Commission of Investigation, July 1948, FO 371–6320, BNA.
23 Missionaries reported that a few, mostly local urban families enrolled children in mis-
sionary schools to have them learn to write and read Italian as well as receive a free daily
meal. See Suor Leonia Simoncelli, ‘Somalia. Cenni storici sulle scuole’, no date [after 1991],
AIMSC.
24 Venanzio Filippini mentioned evening courses for adults from Eritrea in Mogadishu in
1933 in Venanzio Filippini, ‘Appunti di Storia sulla Missione Cattolica in Somalia’, 1971,
Somalia – Doc. Monsignor Filippini.
25 Cronaca Baidoa, February 1927; “Oasi cristiana in Somalia,” Missioni Francescane, May
1935; Daniele Gorlani a tutte le unità scolastiche governative della colonia, 26 October
1936 Somalia – Lettere Documenti del Vicariato Apostolico di Mogadiscio, I. Doppioni
1930–1950.
26 Cronaca Giohar I, May 1935, and Cronaca Afgoi I, July–August 1935, both in Somalia –
­Manoscritti Cronache Gioar Afgoi; Tisserant and Cesarini to Filippini, May 22, 1939.
27 Missionaries pointed to local misogynous attitudes as the main factor behind local
families’ reluctance to enrol female children at school. This narrative is questioned by
local chiefs’ demand for girls’ schools under the British Military Administration, and
the expansion of female education during the Trusteeship of Somalia under Italian
­administration in the 1950s. See: Venanzio Filippini to Ispettorato Scuole, Relazione
76 Scalvedi

Upon graduation, a minority of students, mostly orphans, enrolled in the

School of Arts and Crafts in Mogadishu, or the School of Agriculture in Afgoy,
both administered by Catholic missionaries.28 By the end of Italian colonial
rule in 1941, nine Friar Minors and thirty Consolata nuns were running a net-
work of twelve primary schools in Mogadishu, Merka, Brava, Gelib, Jonte, Kis-
mayu, Afgoy, Villabruzzi, and Baidoa, with a total of about 1400 male and 40
female students.29
In this context, missionaries perceived and framed their work in schools for
the local youth as a great challenge. All school reports at that time empha-
sise that attendance was very low: teachers struggled not only with attracting
students to schools, but also with making sure that the few who had enrolled
would complete the school year.30 In their interpretation of the low attend-
ance rates, the missionaries emphasised the “indolent nature” of local stu-
dents, a commonplace in missionary and general colonial discourse in Africa.
In a report from 1937, for example, Gorlani wrote:

For didactic purposes, the inconstancy of Somali children is a big prob-

lem. The teachers … are able to bring only one third of the enrolled stu-
dents to the end of the school year and to the final exams. The majority of
students drop out of school at the end of the first quarter, their sole rea-
son being that the commitment to study for a period of nine months …
is an effort that goes beyond their strength and willingness. Many indig-
enous students are open- and sharp-minded; yet there is a good percent-
age of … mentally and physically unable [children] who are not worth
the teacher’s effort. The age at which indigenous children appear more
unable and less disciplined is between 10 and 18 years, at which point

S­ cuole per i nativi, April 4, 1949, Somalia – Mogadiscio Scuola Parificata Relazione funzi-
onamento; O.N.U., Organizzazione scolastica per i somali, April 3, 1950, ACS, MAI Busta
159; “Ripresa scolastica” and “Notiziario”, Eco di Casa Madre, February 1952 and 1953
respectively; Emanuella Dominici, ‘Il lavoro delle suore missionarie della Consolata nelle
scuole della Somalia’, May 5, 1954, AIMSC.
28 “Le scuole elementari affidate al Vicariato Apostolico,” SC, September 1938.
29 This data come from ‘Scuole affidate al vicariato apostolico di Mogadiscio’, attached to
‘Pro Memoria per il Political Senior per le scuole del Vicariato’, December 10, 1941, Somalia
– Lettere Documenti del Vicariato Apostolico di Mogadiscio, I. Doppioni 1930–1950.
30 Only about 80 out of 1000 enrolled students completed the 1934–1935 school year. In
1936–1937, 914 students attended school until the end of the year, but only 628 of them
were admitted to the final exam, and 380 passed; and in 1937–1938 only 450 students out
of 2005 were admitted to the final exam, and 239 passed. See articles published in SC:
“Fanciulli somali,” May 1936; “Notizie varie,” August 1937, 131; “Le scuole elementari affi-
date al Vicariato Apostolico,” September 1938.
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 77

a good percentage appear incapable of concentration. These problems

require an attitude of sacrifice and abnegation from teachers; it is recom-
mended that comfortable schools be built and designed according to the
needs of equatorial weather, and that there be some form of coercion and
enticement to engage with the students’ inconstancy.31

In August of 1938, the periodical of the mission Somalia Cristiana, founded,

published, and circulated among the Catholic minority in the colony, stated:

For Somali students … the final exams did not present good results. The
reasons for this are many … It will suffice to mention one: our Somali lack
constancy; they do not feel comfortable to engage with nine consecutive
months of school.32

A careful look at other materials produced by missionaries demonstrates that

teachers struggled to convince students to remain in school for a variety of rea-
sons that had little to do with the “inconstancy” of students. A key factor dis-
couraging students from attending schools regularly was the outbreak of the
second Italo-Ethiopian war (1935–1936), which ended with the Italian Army’s
conquest of Ethiopia. Pupils had to take a break from school to either fight on
the front or run the household and work in place of their family members who
had left for the war.33 Another reason mentioned in missionary sources was
that students were following the teachings of the santoni, a denigratory term
for Muslim holy men. The mention of santoni appears in missionary chroni-
cles, private correspondence between missionaries and Vatican authorities,
and articles on Islam and local customs in Somalia Cristiana. Though these
documents do not concern education specifically, Muslim holy men were
often mentioned in relation to education.

31 Daniele Gorlani, ‘Relazione straordinaria alla sovrintendenza sui servizi scolastici’, March
13, 1937, Somalia – Lettere Documenti del Vicariato Apostolico di Mogadiscio, I. Doppioni
1930–1950.
32 “Notizie varie,” SC, August 1938. See also “Notizie varie,” August 1937, “Le scuole elementari
affidate al Vicariato Apostolico,” September 1938, “Alla scoperta dei somali,” December
1939, all in SC.
33 “The school for natives resumes. We notice the absence of many students … but given the
political events at the Abyssinian frontier many have enlisted [in the Army] and others
have supplied the labour of the absentees for military service in the workplace; hence for
many it has been impossible to resume school.” Giohar I, Diario della Residenza Mission-
aria del Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi Maggio 1934–Novembre 1963, January 1935, ­Somalia –
Manoscritti Cronache Gioar Afgoi. See also “A scuole finite,” SC, July 1936.
78 Scalvedi

Muslim holy men were not a fantasy created by the missionaries but in fact
existed. As recent studies of Islam in Somalia point out, they acted as char-
ismatic intellectuals and religious leaders in Banaadir in the same period in
which Catholic missionaries wrote. These men—defined by Scott Reese as
“renewers of the age”—disseminated complex theological ideas and preached
social reform to a wide, diverse, and largely non-literate audience. Influenced
by the discourses of other intellectuals from across the Muslim world, they
often spread their messages through itinerant proselytism, as the Christian
missionaries did. Their beliefs and reformist messages were not uniform, but
emerged from each preacher’s personal trajectory and specific mystical reli-
gious order (especially the three Sufi brotherhoods Ahmadiyya, Salihiyya, and
Qadiriyya) as well as from the features of the community in which their ideas
circulated. Muslim holy men, in other words, were not a homogeneous group,
but a series of individuals who all preached in Somalia at a given historical
moment while accomplishing different agendas.34
An example of missionaries’ mention of Muslim holy men appears in an
article in Somalia Cristiana in 1935.35 Here, Muslim holy men are depicted as
simultaneously mysterious and renowned, and as charismatic and materially
poor preachers with many followers. Yet, while the article does not mention
their proselytism among students, it says that missionary education played a
key role in the decline of their charisma among the Somali:

… even this gullible people [gente credulona] today tend to relegate to the
times of the One Thousand and One Nights the fantasies that do not hold

34 For Reese, Muslim holy men primarily spoke to people searching for ways to face and
manage the changes to end the decay brought about by colonial conquest, economic
crisis, and wide-spread epidemics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
These men gained a prominent intellectual authority across the social spectrum: in both
rural and urban spheres, among merchants, farmers, pastoralists, slaves, freedmen, and
occasionally women. Reese interprets the very few references to European administra-
tors in oral accounts and Arabic writings on and by Muslim holy men as a sign that they
may have maintained an amicable relationship with one another. See Reese, Renewers
of the Age. For an analysis of Muslim holy men’s preaching activities in Somalia under
colonial rule, see also Federico Battera, “Le confraternite islamiche somale di fronte al
colonialismo (1890–1920): tra contrapposizione e collaborazione,” Africa: Rivista trimes-
trale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente 53, no. 2 (June
1998): 155–85. The main colonial-era source regarding the relationship between Muslim
holy men and the Italian community in Somalia is Enrico Cerulli, “Note sul movimento
musulmano nella Somalia,” Rivista degli studi orientali 10, no. 1 (1923): 1–36.
35 The article was divided into two texts, each published in two different issues of SC: ‘Nel
mondo mussulmano’, October 1935, 14, and November 1935, 10–11.
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 79

up any longer against the education victoriously introduced by Italy in

the country of parfums.

More significantly, the article mentions that Muslim holy men’s children
attended missionary schools:

Nowadays in the principal centres of the Colony almost all the santoni’s
children attend our schools; they understand that shortly they will need
to orient their life towards other ideals and activities, while sticking tena-
ciously to Muhammad’s credo.36

A few years later, in July 1939, the chronicle from Baidoa reported:

After lunch, at the time of rest, the orphan Donato left the orphanage
driven by an old santone. The boy has been tracked and brought back by
the Carabinieri; the santone, who has vanished, is … wanted.37

In that same year, the Bishop Filippini illustrated the role played by Muslim
preachers among recent Muslim converts in a long questionnaire compiled for
the Congregation of Oriental Churches:

If in Somalia there cannot be any [religious] propaganda … yet the

‘­santoni’, zealous Muslim preachers, usually much admired or feared,
increasingly intensified their propaganda among those ‘tribes’ that are
still little Islamised, especially through Koranic Schools. Their zeal is
almost exclusively for profit, as they subtract from those very poor peo-
ples a portion of their earnings under the threat of divine punishments in
case they do not give generously. These ‘santoni’ easily escape all control.38

36 The mention of the enrolment of Muslim holy men’s children in missionary schools also
appears in the Consolata nuns’ periodical Eco di Casa Madre, which reported that a Mus-
lim holy man’s son from Mogadishu not only gravitated around the mission, but even
asked for permission to be baptised from his father, who consented. “Notiziario delle mis-
sioni,” Eco di Casa Madre, December 1935.
37 Cronaca Baidoa, July 24, 1939, Somalia – Manoscritti Cronache Baidoa Ionte. The Chroni-
cle of the Apostolic Vicariate of Mogadishu too reported that in Baidoa in 1934 some locals
complained that “children were educated Christianly” (cristianamente) at missionary
schools, while others praised missionary teaching. See Cronaca del Vicariato Apostolico,
24 November 1934, Somalia – Lettere Documenti del Vicariato Apostolico di Mogadiscio,
Somalia Fotocopie documenti dattilogr. scuole.
38 Tisserant and Cesarini to Filippini, May 22. Somalia Fotocopie documenti dattilogr. scu-
ole. Colonial authorities were also aware of Koranic schools run by Muslim holy men. See
80 Scalvedi

The article, the chronicle, and the questionnaire together show that the mis-
sionaries’ perception of the reason for students tendency to flee from schools
was because Muslim holy men had convinced them to do so, and that mis-
sionaries had no option but to rely on the colonial police to bring them back to
the missionary station. In these sources, Muslim holy men emerge as evasive
and disruptive figures that the missionaries fear and abhor at the same time.
All missionary references to Muslim holy men report a connection between
Muslim holy men and education: either the former convinced students to flee
from missionary schools, or missionary schools convinced students to ques-
tion their teachings, or their own children attended missionary schools.
The diversity of Muslim holy men and their preaching, and the fact that
Muslim preachers enrolled their children at colonial schools, should not nec-
essarily be interpreted as contradictory. Likely, the former were Sufi scholars
preaching against colonial occupation, while the latter were Muslim leaders
who lived near colonial centres and had good, stable contacts with the Italian
community, including missionaries. A documented example of an amicable
relationship between Muslim elites and colonial officals was the cooperation
of the Qadiriyya brotherhood and fascist authorities in neighbouring Harar.39
In this context, the reason why Gorlani’s Primo libro invited students to pay
respect to Shayk Sufi’s mausoleum was not only that Shayk Sufi was seen as
a positive model of learning and erudition, but also that he belonged to the
Qadiriyya. Two letters sent to the Bishop Filippini in 1950 by Sharif Aydarus
b. Ali, a prominent Muslim businessman, urban communal leader, and classi-
cally trained Islamic scholar, constitute further evidence of a Catholic-Muslim
cooperative relationship in Somalia during the colonial and early post-colonial
period.40
Historians have already pointed out the involvement of the Muslim elite in
colonial education policy in the Horn of Africa and beyond. Tekeste Negash
and Silvia Bruzzi, for example, have shown that Muslim leaders actively con-
tributed to the creation of organisations connected with the colonial model

Pietro Barile, Colonizzazione fascista nella Somalia meridionale (Rome: Società Italiana
Arti Grafiche, 1935), 158.
39 Silvia Bruzzi, Islam and Gender in Colonial Northeast Africa. Sitti ‘Alawiyya, the uncrowned
queen (Boston: Brill, 2018), 15–17.
40 Sharif Aydarus b. Ali to Venanzio Filippini, May 29 and June 15, 1950, Somalia – L­ ettere
Documenti del Vicariato Apostolico di Mogadiscio Somalia Fotocopie documenti
­dattilogr. scuole. In the same year, Sharif Aydarus b. Ali published the first history of the
Somali under the Italian Trusteeship Authority. See Scott Reese, “Tales Which Persist
on the Tongue: Arabic Literacy and the Definition of Communal Boundaries in Sharīf
ʿ­­aydarūs’s Bughyat Al-Āmāl,” Sudanic Africa 9 (1998): 1–17.
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 81

of “modernity,” such as schools and hospitals,41 while Jean-Hervé Hézéquel’s

works on French West Africa retrace the history of Muslim elite families who
enrolled their children at colonial schools to maintain and improve their social
status.42 In Somalia, Muslim holy men likely adopted similar approaches to
colonial education and sent their children to Catholic missionary schools to
have them learn Italian as well as to acquire the legal and writing skills that
were necessary to occupy a distinguished position in an emerging colonial
society. In short, the response of Muslim preachers to colonial education (and
colonialism in general) was not a univocal but an ambivalent one: some sent
their children to missionary schools, while others preached against Catholic
missionary education and fascist Italy’s rule.
Nevertheless, according to the missionaries, the Muslim holy men’s influ-
ence on students and their families was the most important reason for the
low attendance at missionary schools throughout the colonial period. Mis-
sionary texts written after the outbreak of World War II further confirm this
point in both the short and long term. In the 1941–1942 school report, Gorlani
mentioned “the tenacious work of santoni” among the issues that “distracted
students from school.”43 Many decades later, in the 1990s, the nun Leonia
Simoncelli wrote:

School-aged children of the Somali did not attend our schools back then
because they were busy with Koranic schools; there were many concerns
(due to religion) about sending them to our schools.44

41 Tekeste Negash, Italian colonialism in Eritrea, 1882–1941 (Uppsala: Uppsala University

Press, 1987), 79–80; Silvia Bruzzi, “The Role of Muslim Mentors in Eritrea: Religion, Health
and Politics,” Storicamente no. 8 (2012).
42 Jean-Hervé Jézéquel’s pioneering study of the life trajectories of African graduates at the
French secondary school École Normale William Ponty in Dakar in the years 1906–1948
revealed that Islam was not necessarily a factor or obstacle that prevented Muslim stu-
dents from attending lay French schools, as suggested by previous scholarship, and that
not only marginalised children but also both urban and rural (not necessarily Euro-
peanised) elite families were attracted by the social opportunities offered by colonial
education. Jean-Hervé Jézéquel, “Histoire de bancs, parcours d’élèves. Pour une lecture
‘configurationnelle’ de la scolarisation à l’époque coloniale,” Cahiers d’études africaines
169–170 (2003): 409–33.
43 Daniele Gorlani, Relazione finale dell’anno 1941–1942, July 11, 1942, Somalia – Lettere
­Documenti del Vicariato Apostolico di Mogadiscio, I. Doppioni 1930–1950.
44 The nun worked in Somalia from June 1934 to January 1991. Simoncelli, ‘Somalia. Cenni
storici sulle scuole’.
82 Scalvedi

While missionaries talked about the indolence of local children as the main
motive behind their learning failures, a close reading of the sources reveals
that the didactic problems teachers faced resulted from a combination
of infrastructural, social, cultural, and religious factors. The war, the lack of
resources and, most importantly, the proselytism of Muslim preachers made
of the missionary-run primary school system a weak yet expanding network
with limited outreach. As shown in the previous section, in 1936, the Governor
Santini justified his proposal to build more schools and hire secular teachers
as being a measure designed to attract local students who preferred Koranic
education to the Catholic missionaries’ primary schools. Now we understand
that his justification comes from the missionaries’ continual complaints about
Muslim preachers’ disruptive action and students’ low attendance rate. Santini
was likely pressured by missionaries to open more schools for colonial sub-
jects and in this way compete with Koranic education. From the perspective
of evangelisation, the missionaries were interested in dissuading school-aged
colonial subjects from attending the courses on Islam delivered by Muslim
teachers. In the following section, I explore the missionaries’ strategic initia-
tives to convince students to prefer their schools over the education offered by
Koranic teachers.

4 Pedagogic Strategies

Under the direction of Gorlani, missionary teachers on the ground experi-

mented with several pedagogic strategies aimed at attracting more local stu-
dents to schools. The first strategy was to convince the Governor to improve the
infrastructure and offer students more comfortable buildings. However, as we
have seen, this strategy failed because, when in 1936 Santini asked the Minister
to expand the school network, Lessona refused. Gorlani then opted for two
pedagogic strategies that he and the other missionaries themselves developed
on the spot: the production of new teaching materials and the modification of
the school calendar. This section shows how education policy emerged from
the bottom-up at the fringes of the colonial empire. Missionaries who taught
in colonial schools made strategic changes to the curricula, thus leading the
development of education policy in Somalia, with few interferences and final
complete approval from fascist state authorities in Rome and Mogadishu. Colo-
nial law did not intervene in the practice, but practice slowly coded in the law.
The way missionaries produced textbooks for colonial subjects demon-
strates the process of negotiation between teachers and students in schools.
From Rome, the Ministry of the Colonies shipped teaching materials (text-
books, blackboards, maps, and abacuses) that were not produced to be used in
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 83

colonial schools specifically, but for use in all Italian-language primary schools.
Gorlani, the Director of Primary Schools, lamented that the imported text-
books were not appropriate for teaching in Somalia and decided to compile
two that would specifically address students’ needs in the colony.45 The first
of these textbooks was the Primo libro di italiano per i Somali (“First ­Italian
Book for the Somali”), published by the governmental printing house in Mog-
adishu in 1933, and presumably employed by missionary teachers beginning
with the 1933–1934 school year.46 It is comprised of three sections: the alpha-
bet, an ­Italian-Somali dictionary, and short readings. In the preface, the author
explains that he wrote this textbook to fulfil his fellow teachers’ desire for teach-
ing materials that fit the “all particular needs” of local students in ­Somalia.
­Specifically, the dictionary constituted a key teaching tool that would facilitate
the communication between Somali-speaking students and Italian-speaking
teachers.47
In the Primo libro, all references are intended to be familiar to the students.
Examples include the names of local people, animals, objects, and localities,
all employed to teach the alphabet as well as the selection of words included
in the dictionary. References are not only local, but also grounded in the pre-
sent. Readings, for example, mention the King of Italy’s visit to Somalia in
March 1928 and the death of the founder and owner of the large agricultural
settlement in Southern Somalia, the Duke of Abruzzi, in March 1933, which
occurred only a few months before the publication of the textbook.48 A series
of drawings and pictures of local animals, landscapes, and monuments con-
stitute familiar visual references for the students, such as the lighthouse in
Cape Guardafui on the cover (see Figure 3.2), at the time considered a symbol
of Italian and fascist technology’s domination of dark wild natural forces in
Somalia.49 In this respect, Gorlani respected the state guideline to “adapt” the
teaching materials to the specific context in which teachers used them.

45 In the context of Italian colonialism in Northeast Africa, the practice of compiling text-
books for colonial subjects was not peculiar to Friar Minors in Somalia. Other Catholic
as well as Protestant missionaries in Eritrea and the Ministry of the Colonies itself had
already produced specific textbooks for their local students. A number of these textbooks
have been analysed in Laura Ricci, “La debole ‘italificazione’ delle ex colonie africane:
sulla manualistica didattica per la Libia e il Corno d’Africa,” Testi e linguaggi 11 (2017):
87–100.
46 Gorlani, Primo libro.
47 Gorlani, Primo libro, 3.
48 Gorlani, Primo libro, 88.
49 According to the colonial rhetoric, the lighthouse built by the Italians in 1922 allowed
ships for the first time to see, map, and bypass the insidious fog along the coastline after
centuries of natural darkness and unnumerable shipwrecks. See the story of the light-
84 Scalvedi

Another feature of the Primo libro, as we have seen in this chapter’s intro-
duction, is the inclusion of all religious content alluding to Muslim religious
beliefs, practices, and holidays. For the letter “g”, there are two references in
this respect: digiuno (“fast”) figures among the sample words that contain the

Figure 3.2 Cover of Gorlani, Primo libro

house presented in “Il fascismo in Somalia. Il faro di Capo Guardafui,” L’azione coloniale,
19 July 1934, 3.
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 85

letter, while the sample sentence giovedì è giorno di vacanza (“Thursday is a

day of vacation”) is a clear reference to the Muslim religious holiday start-
ing Thursday at dusk until Friday at dusk.50 For “m”, the sample sentence is
è venuto il Maallim (“the Mu’allim has come”), with explicit reference to the
figure of the Mu’allim, the Muslim teacher at Koranic schools.51 Alongside the
reading “Allah” two more readings include information on Islam: “Time and
Season” (Tempo e stagioni) compares the Muslim moon-based calendar with
the “­European” sun-based one,52 while “The Flag” (La bandiera) mentions
that “our flag must be hoisted on all our houses, on churches, on mosques”
and was accompanied by a drawing of a large mosque with a flag hoisted on
the ­minaret.53 Fasting, holiday on Thursday, Koranic teacher, Allah, mosque,
minaret are all references that must have been very familiar to the Muslim-­
majoritarian students at missionary schools.
Together with the inclusion of local references and Muslim religious ­content,
the readings emphasise the strong relationship between Italy and Somalia and
the Somali-Italian identity of children, as well as the notions of Italy as a “great
Mother” and Benito Mussolini as a fair, strong, and magnanimous ruler:

I was born in Italian Somalia. Italian Somalia is a large region that is

located between Abyssinia, Kenya, and the Indian Ocean. I am Somali-
Italian because Italy, like a great Mother, sent a Government to teach us
the Italians’ knowledge. Great Mother Italy teaches us to work, to live in
a civil way, and protects us from all enemies … All the Italians and the
Somali love Benito Mussolini because his word is fair, his hand is strong,
and his heart is big.54

Italy appears as a “mother” who protects, builds, teaches, transforms, and

civilises. Readings are meant to show how global communications in Somalia
are much quicker and easier thanks to “modern” means of transport (steam-
ship, car, plane) bestowed by Italian rule, and the radio, presented as a “great

50 Gorlani, Primo libro, 35.

51 Gorlani, Primo libro, 17.
52 Gorlani, Primo libro, 17.
53 Gorlani, Primo libro, 104. The only two mentions of the Catholic church are in the reading
on the flag and in the alphabet section, where the sample word for the letter “c” chiesa
(“church”) is located next to a drawing of the façade of the cathedral of Mogadishu, inau-
gurated in 1928. In both cases, the church is presented not as a religious site but as part of
the colonial landscape, and there is no mention of Christianity or Catholicism. Gorlani,
Primo libro, 29, 104.
54 Gorlani, Primo libro, 88.
86 Scalvedi

invention” of the Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi.55 The textbooks also

exalt discipline and hygiene.56 The description of “useful animals” (camel,
horse, cattle, chicken, elephant) invites readers to exploit them for productive
purposes, while samples of a letter to a friend, a letter to a superior, and a mili-
tary report suggest that, starting in first grade, students were being trained to
familiarise themselves with bureaucratic formalities and to be loyal to hierar-
chies in both the civil and military administration of the colony. The aim of
Italy’s “motherly care,” the textbook suggests, is the progressive transformation
of Somalia into a modern colony via the dissemination of the love for work,
hygiene, technology, education, and discipline—all values that missionaries
assumed to be foreign to the Somali.
The publication of this textbook was a great success. In December 1933
Gorlani received a letter of congratulation from the Ministry of the Colonies.57
Moreover, he edited a second edition in May 1936 as well as a textbook for
second-grade students in July 1936, both published by an independent publish-
ing house in the North Italian town of Monza.58 In the preface to the second
edition of the Primo libro, Gorlani wrote that “numerous requests, not only
from the natives but also from fellow Italians, induced me to print a further ten
thousand copies.”59 Overall, the first and second edition of the Primo libro help
us understand how the production of teaching materials for colonial subjects
functioned in Somalia. The author was a teacher on the spot and drew the ref-
erences presented in the text directly from his life and teaching experience in
the colony. The textbook was not commissioned by the state but published in
response to the local needs of the teachers and, according to Gorlani, of those
of the students as well. State authorities congratulated him after the publi-
cation, likely because the textbook followed the guidelines set by the Minis-
try to uphold a professional standard of teaching as well as to “adapt” to the
addressed student audience.

55 Gorlani, Primo libro, 92–95.

56 Gorlani, Primo libro, 100, 104.
57 The letter sent by the Ministry to the mission is cited in “Encomio scolastico,” SC, March
1934. The textbook by Gorlani also received positive feedback in “Scuole elementari
­governative della Somalia Italiana”, L’azione coloniale, 29 October 1933, 2.
58 Most probably, this textbook was published in Monza because of personal connections:
the director of the printing house in Monza was the brother of one of the missionaries
who worked in Somalia. Venanzio Filippini, Appunti di Storia sulla Missione Cattolica in
Somalia, 1971, Somalia – Doc. Monsignor Filippini.
59 Daniele Gorlani, Primo libro di italiano per i Somali. II edizione riveduta (Monza: Tipogra-
fia Sociale, 1936), 5. Changes to the first edition include the new mention of the conquest
of Ethiopia and the foundation of Africa Orientale Italiana in May 1936, announced by
Mussolini a few days before the publication of the textbook.
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 87

The approach taken in the second textbook, titled “The Second Class for the
Somali” (La seconda classe per i Somali) and authored by Gorlani and two Con-
solata nuns,60 is very similar to that of the Primo libro. It is comprised of four
parts: readings, Italian language, basic knowledge (Nozioni varie), and arith-
metic. Here too all references are meant to be familiar to students, with minor
changes that reflect the more advanced level of the book as well as the politi-
cal changes taking place in Somalia, most notably its incorporation into the
Italian Empire of Northeastern Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana) in 1936.
The authors dwell on all the major professional opportunities for the Somali
in the colony and exalt the role of labour and productivity in the development
of civilisation. Moreover, they welcome the birth of the Italian Empire, often
mention Eritrea and Libya, and insist on the imperial identity of students.61
This approach differs from that of the Primo libro, whose emphasis is on the
relationship between Italy and Somalia: here Somalia is represented as part
of an ambitious imperial project and not simply an object or focus of Italy’s
“motherly care.” Still, the use of local vocabulary and references, the stress on
productive labour, and the inclusion of present political references reiterate
the Primo libro’s outline.
The approaches of the two books are also very similar in the way they pre-
sent Islam. They not only invite students to pay respect to the mausoleums of
Muslim holy men, but in another passage also recommend fasting during the
month of Ramadan:

The ninth month of the Muslim year is called Ramadan, in Arabic; in

Somali Someàt. The Ramadan is the fasting month for all Muslims. The
fast was ordered in the ninth year of hejira by Mohammed himself, both
to get the believers used to moderation in eating and drinking, and to
remove many unhealthy abuses. The fast teaches us to bear suffering,
inspires in us pious feelings for the poor and the needy. From dawn to dusk,
during the month of Ramadan, the good Muslim does not eat, drink,
or smoke and abstains from any nourishment. Seriously ill people are
excused from the fast.62

60 Gorlani et al., La seconda classe.

61 See, for example, the readings on labour, agriculture, the weaver, the woodworker, and the
goldsmith (30–37, 43–47) as well as on the general Rodolfo Graziani who led the military
campaign in Ethiopia (21–22) and the Empire (65–66), in Gorlani et al., La seconda classe.
62 Emphasis added. Gorlani et al., La seconda classe, 30.
88 Scalvedi

This invitation to fast greatly diverges from the derogatory description of

­Ramadan in Somalia Cristiana, in which the author derides the ambivalent
nature of Ramadan by emphasising the eating and drinking excesses that
­follow the fast.63
Considering the missionaries’ negative depiction of Muslim holy men and
of Ramadan, the question arises of why Catholic fathers and nuns ended
up inviting students to respect the fast and follow the Muslim holy men as
positive models. From a state-centered perspective, one reason might be the
authors’ intention to adapt the curriculum to the context as required by the
state guidelines set in Rome. Yet adaptation is a vague policy that can occur
or be implemented in different ways, and which might not necessarily include
proselytism of Muslim principles.64 Missionary sources, moreover, never men-
tion state education guidelines, rendering a state-centered analysis inadequate
to explain the positive representation of Islam in the curricula.
Another point that calls a state-centered perspective into question is that,
when the Governor asked the Minister of the Colonies to include Koranic
teaching in a yet-to-be-founded state-controlled school for colonial subjects in
August-September 1936, all three textbooks had already been published and—
in the case of the Primo libro’s first edition—used by missionaries at schools
for three years.65 The Governor’s proposal, in this sense, was not original but
drew from missionary pedagogy in schools—just when Lessona proposed that
Santini open exemplary schools that missionaries would have “emulated.” The
shaping of curricula for colonial subjects, I argue, did not result from orders

63 “… if for a month they [Muslims] have not been able to engage in any activity due to
fast-induced physical weakness, they remain dazed for fifteen days as a result of the
effort of digestion. Still, [by fasting] the law is respected.” “Nel mondo mussulmano,” SC,
­February 1936.
64 Another reason might be that in the 1930s Mussolini developed a pro-Islam policy that
included a liberal attitude towards Muslim judiciary and religious authorities as well as
the regime’s support for Koranic schools. Yet historians of the regime’s religious policy
have pointed out that fascist Italy’s pro-Islam policy had propagandistic purposes and
was not directed to Muslim colonial subjects in Somalia (for which the state lacked a
clear and definitive policy, as I also showed in the first section) but to Muslim colonial
subjects in Libya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, and in the colonies of rival European powers in
Northern Africa and the Middle East. In Somalia, fascist authorities did not promote an
active pro-Islam propaganda. Rather, they granted religious freedom as a way to avoid
any interference with local religious beliefs and practices, and thus both prevent any reli-
gious-based dissent and maintain internal security. On Mussolini’s relgious policy: Cesare
Marongiu Bonaiuti, Politica e religioni nel colonialismo italiano (1882–1941) (Rome: Giuffrè,
1982), 107–116.
65 Santini to Lessona, August 5 and September 8, 1936.
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 89

from Rome or Mogadishu, as a state-centered perspective might suggest, but

from local interactions between non-state actors.
Indeed, teaching materials reflected grounded negotiations between
Catholic evangelists and Muslim holy men, or, put simply, between Catholic
and Muslim missionaries. In the previous section, I showed that missionary-
produced documents from 1935 mention that Muslim families were reluctant
to enrol their students in missionary schools for religious reasons, and that
missionaries feared the preaching activities of Muslim holy men. We have
also seen that Muslim holy men occasionally sent their children to mission-
ary schools. By locating the production of La seconda classe in this context,
I argue that the missionaries gave a positive representation of Islam to meet
the needs of the students and their families or, in the case of orphans, of their
Muslim community of origin. A missionary pedagogic strategy to attract more
students to school and convince them to stay until the end of the school year
was to include religious content and even proselytise Islam in the curriculum.
In doing so, the schools run by Catholic missionaries could compete with
Koranic schools and ultimately convince the local community of the possibil-
ity for children to attend colonial schools.
It comes as no surprise that in December 1938 the colonial state appointed
Gorlani to open a new “school for the sons of the local chiefs”, who were willing
to work as interpreters and customary judges for the colonial a­ dministration,
with no cost to the students.66 While I could not find detailed information
on this school, a few pictures document its existence, one of which portrays
a student holding Gorlani’s Primo libro (see Figures 3.3 and 3.4).67 The crea-
tion of such an institution was part of fascist Italy’s empire-wide project to
supervise the secondary education of local chiefs’ sons and turn them into
loyal colonial clerks.68 In Somalia, in the colonial state’s view, only a mission-
ary teacher like Gorlani, with a diploma in Islamic Studies and eight years of

66 Tisserant and Cesarini to Filippini, May 22, F. Barone, “Cronache dalle terre d’Oltremare,”
Rivista delle Colonie, June 1939. Already by 1930, the Governor of Somalia Guido Corni had
mentioned the need to open a school for local customary judges, interpreters and officers:
Guido Corni, Relazione sulla Somalia italiana: per l’esercizio 1929–30, presentata a S. E. il
Ministro delle Colonie (Mogadishu: R. Stamperia della colonia, 1931), 8.
67 In addition to Pictures 1 and 2, see the folder Mogadiscio Scuola Sultanelli (direttore Padre
Daniele Gorlani), Somalia – Documentazione Fotografica Vol. II.
68 In Libya, colonial authorities inaugurated the Islamic Superior School of Tripoli in 1935,
while for Harar the Ministry of Italian Africa envisioned an Islamic school based on the
model of Al-Azhar in Cairo. ‘Una scuola superiore islamica istituita a Tripoli’, L’Azione
coloniale, August 1, 1935, 1; ‘La tutela dei culti’, Annali dell’Africa Italiana no. 1 (1940): 709.
90 Scalvedi

Figure 3.3 “Group of chiefs’ sons (sultans) students of Father Daniele Gorlani – 1939”
 D aniele Gorlani, Somalia – Documentazione Fotografica
Vol. 1

teaching experience with Muslim students on the ground, could accomplish

such a delicate mission.
Alongside the production of new textbooks, the modification of the school
calendar was another pedagogic strategy with which the missionaries experi-
mented to attract more students to Italian-language schools. In Somalia the
school calendar followed the 9-month schedule that was in place in Italy.
Classes started in October and ended in June of the following year, with a three-
month summer break from July to September.69 As we have seen, for Gorlani
this schedule did not work well in Somalia because of what the missionaries
described as local students’ “indolence” and the consequent difficulty students
had attending school for as long as nine consecutive months.70 In 1938, he pro-
posed to the Director of Civil and Political Affairs that the school ­calendar be
changed by dividing it into two periods of four months, each followed by two
months of vacation. In the new schedule (four-month school term + two-month

69 See for example Pietro Barile, Calendario 1936–1937, September 10, 1936, Somalia – Lettere
Documenti del Vicariato Apostolico di Mogadiscio, I. Doppioni 1930–1950.
70 “Notizie varie,” SC, August 1938.
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 91

Figure 3.4 “ The school for the chiefs’ sons (sultans) with Monsignor Filippini and Father
Daniele, Director”
Daniele Gorlani, Somalia – Documentazione Fotografica Vol. 1

break + four-month school term + two-month break), ­Gorlani wanted one of

the school breaks to correspond with the month of Ramadan. He also recom-
mended that the administration attach value to school diplomas by requir-
ing colonial subjects to possess one when they applied for jobs in the colonial
administration.71
Such proposed changes attempted to address the question of students tak-
ing a break from school during Ramadan, and prepare them for school diplo-
mas that would provide access to posts in the colonial administration. Once
again, while the missionaries mentioned the “indolence” of students as the
main motive for low attendance, the proposal to resolve the matter reveals that
there were other factors dissuading students from attending schools regularly.
One year later, Somalia Cristiana reported that the issue of the validity of
school diplomas was under study, and that the new calendar proposed by
Gorlani was approved by the Ministry of Italian Africa upon request of the
Governor. In the 1939–1940 school year, Somali students attended school from

71 “Le scuole elementari affidate al Vicariato Apostolico,” September 1938; “Per l’anno
s­ colastico 1939–40,” October 1939. Both in SC.
92 Scalvedi

November 15 through March 15, and from May 1 through August 31.72 In April
1940, an article in the periodical commented that:

The holidays correspond to the period of agricultural work concomitant

with the period of the great rains … The experiment introduced in the
new school organisation for the Somali … has brought tangible and unde-
niable didactic results for the teachers and fruitful results for the students.
Except for few school units, attendance has been normal, especially in
the capital, in Mogadishu, where the enrolled students have tenaciously
maintained their position until the end of the four-month period.73

For the first time, missionaries reported that the enrolled students “tenaciously
maintained their positions until the end of the term.” Here, however, the expla-
nation for the school break did not concern Ramadan, but was linked to the
“agricultural work concomitant with the great rains season.” This extract fur-
ther suggests that missionaries changed the school calendar not because of
their perception of the students’ “indolence” but to align it with the season
of agricultural labour. In the eyes of the missionaries, students went to school
regularly when the school, religious, and work calendars aligned.

5 Conclusion

The appearance of increasingly positive references to Islam in teaching mate-

rials, and the changes in the school calendar, demonstrate that, by the end
of the 1930s, schools had become a terrain of contact between teachers, stu-
dents, and local society. By contextualising the production of school curricula
for Muslim-majoritarian colonial subjects within the confrontation between
Catholic missionaries and local Muslim preachers, my case study ultimately
emphasises the grounded dimension of education and calls into question the
totalitarian nature of both fascist and colonial politics. Indeed, on the one
hand, the fascist state actors produced documentation of, and showed inter-
est in, colonial education. But on the other, the state played a very auxiliary
role in the definition and creation of the curricula for colonial subjects, mostly

72 Daniele Gorlani, Circolare, October 27, 1939, Somalia – Lettere Documenti del Vicariato
Apostolico di Mogadiscio, I. Doppioni 1930–1950; “Notizie varie,” SC, November 1939.
73 “Notizie varie,” SC, April 1940.
Catholic Teachers and Muslim Students in Italian Somalia 93

encouraging and approving the educational strategies practised by missionar-

ies in their immediate local contexts.
If this case study uncovers the limited outreach of Mussolini’s fascist regime,
by definition a strong state, it also questions the centrality and actual power
of the state in the colonial situation in general, and particularly in an area
like education. A vision of colonial politics as total domination of the “colo-
nised” by “the coloniser” does not fully explain the complex social and politi-
cal dynamics surrounding the creation and organisation of colonial schools.
In Italian Somalia, Catholic missionaries felt their position as teachers to be
threatened by what they perceived as the disruptive action of Muslim holy
men. As a result of this perception, the missionary textbooks offered a blend
of imagined Muslim and Italian-Somali identity, popularised by Catholic mis-
sionaries on behalf of the Italian fascist empire as a negotiation and accom-
modation strategy responding to students’ low enrolment in schools. Here, as
elsewhere in colonial Africa, education was a quintessentially local, porous
field that, under the (often vague) guidelines of state authorities, absorbed
and reflected the competing yet mutually influenced agendas of different local
actors. Ultimately, my case study is an invitation to researchers to put aside an
all too common colonised/coloniser binary as well a state-centered perspec-
tive in the study of colonial education and of colonialism in general.

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 Chapter 4

Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen

School for Girls and the ‘New Era’ in Ethiopia
(1940s–1950s)
Pierre Guidi

Never before had the disordered hearts and minds of the peoples
of the world stretched out in global soul searching for true under-
standing and friendship. In these times of dynamic transitions it is
the mothers of mankind who form the hub of this swirling wheel.1

∵
In her opening speech to the United Nations Seminar on Participation of Women
in Public Life, held in Addis Ababa from 12 to 23 December 1960, where most
African countries in the process of gaining independence were represented,
Empress Menen of Ethiopia expressed a pivotal idea. In an historical moment
perceived by Ethiopian school actors as one of great change on a global scale,
one bringing hope in progress as well as fears of social disruption, she declared
that women, considered above all as mothers, were the ones she saw as being
able to both propel and stabilise the rapid movement towards future progress
and “modernisation”. In declaring this, Empress Menen was summarising
twenty years’ worth of debates that had taken place in Ethiopia about women’s
education, status, and roles in shaping the future of the nation.
In 1941, Ethiopia regained its independence and Emperor Haile Selassie
regained his throne after five years of Italian occupation. Under his rule the
1940s–1950s came to be characterised by a dynamic central focus, with nation-
alism and “modernisation” as ideological drivers. These two ideals were clearly
articulated by Haile Selassie, his government, and the intellectuals associ-
ated with it, as the focus of progress. Emperor Haile Selassie, and the school

1 Empress Menen, Speech to the United Nations Seminar on Participation of Women in Public
Life, 12–23 December 1960 (Addis Ababa: National Archives and Library of Ethiopia, folder
1-2-80-08).

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_005

98 Guidi

educated elites supporting his policy, coined the term “New Era” (Addis Zemen)
to characterise the period they saw opening up. Not surprisingly, school educa-
tion was a central tool in the process. The state reorganised and expanded the
school system, which, before the Italian occupation, had been embryonic in
form. In the spirit of the times the goal was “to instil the faith that ‘the human
story’ (or ‘the nation’s story’) [was] one of progress” and “to provide the capaci-
ties for the next generation to achieve that progress.”2 School education was,
therefore, the bearer of a new articulation between past, present, and future,
where the promise of the future became central and the relation to the past
altered.3 This specific relation to time is seen as a key feature in the ideology of
modernity,4 and its embodiment is a pivotal aim of all schooling systems glob-
ally in modern history.
In the global context of the 1940s–1950s, Western industrial society was the
dominant model which other societies were expected to adopt in their march
towards progress. However, rather than roughly adopt this imperial model,
dominated nations – whether colonised or, as Ethiopia was, on the periphery
of the world order – during this decade positioned themselves in relation to
Western hegemony in order to redefine who they were.5 Both schooling and
gender, which are subject to cultural exchange across borders within unequal
power conditions, are relevant “contact zones” for the analysis of this process.6
Within the Ethiopian school-system, elite single-sex schools in Addis Ababa
can be seen as laboratories of pedagogical elaboration related to the new gen-
dered roles projected by Ethiopian political elites for the future of the nation,
and where Ethiopian and Western knowledge were to be combined.
Such was the case of the Empress Menen School (EMS) which selected what
the school considered the best girl students to train as a future female elite. As
observed by the literate Ethiopian public, schools were also subject to major

2 Peter Seixas, “Progress, Presence and Historical Consciousness: Confronting Past, Present
and Future in Postmodern Time,” Paedagogica Historica 48, no. 6 (2012), 863.
3 François Hartog, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2015).
4 James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Con-
ceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Redwood City, CA: Stanford U ­ niversity
Press, 2002); Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (­Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1985).
5 Donald L. Donham, Marxist Modern: An Ethnographic History of Ethiopian Revolution (Los
Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 2.
6 Bärbel Pauline Kuhn, “Introduction. Gender and education: A commentary,” Paedagogica
Historica 48, no. 3 (2012); Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Professions 91, (1991):
33–40.
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 99

debates about which direction the nation was heading. Indeed, even though
girls were enrolled in very limited numbers compared to those of boys,7 girls’
education, and the figure of the “modern” (i.e. school educated) woman, were
central to highly contested debates during the 1940s and 1950s.8 Using EMS as a
case study, this chapter analyses the curriculum and objectives of girls’ educa-
tion, and the hopes and fears these raised among literate Ethiopians concern-
ing the future of the nation.
Girls’ education, and the debates it fostered at the time, were closely linked
with perceptions of modernity, a concept coined in Amharic as zemenawi seltané
(“modern”, “up-to-date” civilization) or addisu seltané (new civilization).9 Sev-
eral scholars have investigated how, from the early 20th century, Ethiopian
intellectuals attempted to define an Ethiopian modernity against, or in rela-
tion to, the challenge of colonialism and Western hegemony. Refined analyses
have explored how Ethiopian political and intellectual elites, facing this une-
qual encounter, redefined Ethiopian identity, and elaborated projects involv-
ing social and political reforms.10 In a recent work on sport, modernity, and the
nation in Ethiopia from the 1920s to the 1970s, Katrin Bromber notes that “writ-
ing about modernity means struggling with a vexed category, both in terms of
an analytical tool and an ideological construct.” Following Frederick Cooper,
she argues for a “multifaceted and nonteleological reading of modernity”.11
In this chapter “modernity” is not understood as a concept or an analytical

7 Girl students made up 9,9 % of the school population in 1945. In 1960, they made up 22%
at primary and 7% at secondary level; Teshome Wagaw, Education in Ethiopia: Prospects and
Retrospects (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan, 1979), 68; Ministry of Education and
Fine Arts, Government, Mission, Community and Church Schools (Addis Ababa, 1959–1960), 7.
8 For studies done on debates about girls’ education in colonial contexts, see for instance
Gertrude Mianda, “Colonialism, Education, and Gender Relations in the Belgian Congo:
The Evolue Case,” in Women in African Colonial Histories: An Introduction, eds. Susan
Geiger, Nakanyike Musisi, and Jean M. Allman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2002), 144–163; Carol Summers, “‘If You Can Educate the Native Woman ...’: Debates over
the Schooling and Education of Girls and Women in Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1934,”
­History of Education Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1996): 449–471.
9 Thomas Leiper Kane, Amharic-English Dictionary (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990).
10 Elizabeth Wolde Giorgis, “Charting out Ethiopian Modernity and Modernism’, Cal-
laloo 33, no. 1 (2010): 82–99; Bahru Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist
­Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002);
Messay Kebede, Survival and Modernization: Ethiopia’s Enigmatic Present: A Philosophical
­Discourse (Lawrenceville, GA: The Red Sea Press, 1999).
11 Katrin Bromber, “Improving the Physical Self: Sport, Body Politics, and Ethiopian Moder-
nity, ca. 1920–1974,” Northeast African Studies 13, no. 1 (2013), 71–100; Frederick Cooper,
Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2005).
100 Guidi

tool, but as a set of representations. Through an exploration of women’s edu-

cation in Ethiopia, and the debates it fostered, I attempt to understand how
educational actors at the time interpreted and coped with the acceleration of
time embedded in the idea of social progress, “a key intellectual underpinning
for the project of modernity.”12 Scholars reflecting about historical time have
emphasised how perceived or experienced “acceleration betokened to those
experiencing it a present composed of many layers of time.”13 The social actors
whose voices are reported in this chapter situated themselves in the time of
progress and modernisation. This was a perception of time deeply entrenched
by and in schooling.
In the first part of the chapter I analyse the curriculum content selected
by the EMS, using written and oral sources (a brochure presenting the school,
textbooks, reports, interviews with former students). The analysis focuses
on the ways in which Ethiopian knowledge and Western knowledge were
selected, combined, prioritised, and, eventually hybridised by the teachers
and successive school headmistresses in the 1940s and 1950s. In the second
part I examine articles published in the national Amharic and English press
in order to locate these school knowledges in public debates about girls’ edu-
cation. Several questions were raised at the time in the public sphere. These
questions linked girls education to the past and future of Ethiopia, and to its
identity in relation to the West. This debate provided space for multiple voices:
women and men, Ethiopian and Western teachers, school administrators, and
students. Although the discourses were framed by small political and intellec-
tual elites who were far from being representative of the whole nation, these
elites claimed to represent the entire Ethiopian population, and affected to be
leading the nation towards its true destiny.

1 Inside Empress Menen School: Local and Western Teachings

Arrangements

In 1943 the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Blatengeta Belatcheo Yadete,

gave the following address:

Our strictest obligation is to abide by our ancient traditions and never-

theless adapt them to modern circumstances, for these traditions are the

12 Peter Seixas, “Progress, Presence and Historical Consciousness: Confronting Past, Present
and Future In Postmodern Time,” 859.
13 John Zammito, “Koselleck’s Philosophy of Historical Time(s) and the Practice of History,”
History and Theory 43, no. 1 (2004), 127.
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 101

manifestations of the innate genius of our race and constitute, for our
plan of work, the surest guide for our efforts, a guide once prudent and
bold, for our traditions are rooted in the past and their development lies
in a future full of possibilities.14 [in English in the source]

His words echoed statements made by Emperor Haile Sellasie and Ethiopian
intellectuals who were concerned that Ethiopia should take its place in the
“modern” world through importing Western knowledge, without denying its
past and losing its identity. How did this concern translate into the education
of girls provided at EMS?

1.1 Achieving International Academic Standards

The trend established in the first years of organising the curriculum was to
reserve Ethiopia-related subjects - about Ethiopian history and cultural pro-
ductions, and taught in Amharic or Geez languages - for the first grades, and
Western subjects - such as Geography, World History, English Literature, or
Mathematics - for the higher grades. In February 1944, the headmistress of the
School, Lydia Joss, wrote in a school report:

Ethiopian History has been added to the subjects already taught, i.e.
Amharic, Arithmetic, Psalms, Geography, English, and Geez. All subjects
are taught in Amharic, but during the coming year we are going to form
a class where some subjects will be taught in English. The aim is to pre-
pare the more promising students for Secondary School Standard.15 [in
English in the source]

In the following year she reported that the grade 6, was “taught entirely in Eng-
lish except for one Amharic language lesson each day”.16 The objective was to
establish a secondary section with English as the language of learning. Knowl-
edge related to Ethiopia was therefore reserved for the primary level. Geez is
the Ethiopian ancient language and remains the liturgical language of the Ethi-
opian Orthodox Church. Reading and reciting the Psalms in Geez is the first
step in Church education, which is a central component of the Christian Ethio-
pia historical legacy and identity.17 Nevertheless, during the 1940s, as was the

14 Blatengeta Belatcheo Yadete, “Chamber of Deputies: New President Address,” Ethiopian

Herald, 24 July 1943.
15 “School Reports Presented to Their Majesties At the Annual Prize Giving On February 17,
1944,” Ethiopian Herald, 26 February 1944.
16 “Reports Given at Annual School Closing, July 5, 1945,” Ethiopian Herald, 7 July 1945.
17 For centuries these schools had trained the literate clergy who had produced and
­transmitted Ethiopia’s written heritage.
102 Guidi

case in every government school in the country, Geez teaching progressively

disappeared from the curriculum. Political elites considered this language to
be overly associated with the past and not appropriately adapted to the politi-
cal and socio-economic needs of the “New Era”. A sign of the cultural impact
of colonisation on an uncolonised country was a determination on the part of
intellectual and political elites for Ethiopian modernity not to be built on this
ancient foundation, even though the official government discourse claimed
the contrary.
In contrast, as specified in the 1947 national curriculum for primary schools,
Amharic was highly valued for its potential role in building a future unified
nation.18 One of the books most frequently used for Amharic was the Tarikenna
Mesalé (Stories and Parables) by Kebede Mikael, a famous writer, essayist, and
periodically Minister of Education. Composed of stories with moral content,
these books conveyed what was considered important patriotic advice about
devotion to the country, the monarch, and to social progress.19 For its part, the
Ethiopian history curriculum aimed at “a comprehensive knowledge of Ethio-
pia’s long history” and it “began with His Imperial Majesty and His Family before
going into the remote past”.20 The main teaching resource was Tekle Tsadiq
Mekuria’s YeItyopya Tarik KeAtsé Téwodros Eske Qedamawi Hayle Selasé (His-
tory of Ethiopia from Emperor Tewodros to Haile Sellassie I). Written in the early
1940s, it is devoted to the grand heroic deeds of emperors and great aristocrats,
and notably focuses on the way in which Ethiopia managed to safeguard its
independence in the 19th and 20th centuries.21 Academic teachings at the pri-
mary level encouraged students to look at their country’s past with pride, to
feel concerned about national unity; they were also encouraged to hold the
centuries’ long duration of their country’s independence in very high regard.
In comparison, the Ministry of Education’s objective for secondary schools
was to achieve international standards represented by those of the British
school system.22 At EMS, this goal was considered to have been reached in 1954,

18 Ministry of Education and Fine Arts, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools, grades 1–8
(1947), 89.
19 Ministry of Education and Fine Arts, ታሪክና ምሳሌ ፩ኛ መጽሐፍ (Tarikenna Messalé,
Book 1) (Addis-Ababa, 1942).
20 Ministry of Education and Fine Arts, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools, grades 1–8
(1947), 116.
21 Tekle-Tsadik Mekuria, የኢትዮጵያ ታሪክ ከዐፄ ቴዎድሮስ እስከ ቀዳማዊ ኃይለ ሥላሴ (History
of Ethiopia from Emperor Tewodros to Haile Sellassie I,” (Addis Ababa: Berhanenna Selam,
1943).
22 During the 1940s, as Great Britain exercised a high imperial pressure on Ethiopia, British
expatriates had the upper hand in the educational system. In the 1950s the USA became
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 103

when the school extended its curriculum to grade 12 and when, for the first
time, students sat for the London General School Certificate Examination.23
This reflects a dual purpose. First, extending the national educational level to
grade 12 represented an attempt to emulate the curricula and education sys-
tems of the world’s dominant countries, and represented a political aim on the
part of Ethiopia to seek to compete with other nations. Second, educating the
girl students up to the same academic level as that of the boys was a priority
for EMS. Like their male counterparts, girl students in the secondary section
followed the national curriculum whose stated aim was that “the boy or the girl
who has completed the various years of work in Ethiopia schools will have cov-
ered the equivalent of subject matter included in the program of any high grade
modern school system”.24 In 1950 a decision was made by EMS authorities to
concentrate on academic subjects, and to exclude Domestic Science from the
time-table of the girls’ secondary section, the stated reason being that it “took
up so much of the school day that other subjects were suffering.”25 The disciplines
taught included the English and French languages, English literature, World
History, World Geography, Mathematics, and General Science (Physics, Chem-
istry, and Biology). The courses were all presented in English and none of the
subject content taught, including History, was related to Ethiopia, except in the
case of the Amharic language, which was taught as a specific subject.
In accordance with this curriculum, Ethiopian teachers taught at primary
level, and foreigners at secondary level. For the school-year 1956–1957, there
were “57 members of the teaching staff representing some dozen different nation-
alities – 27 foreigners and 30 Ethiopians”.26 Even though the British system was
by far the dominant model, the diverse origins of the teachers reflected the
Ethiopian government’s desire not to be entirely dependent on one impe-
rial power. The teachers’ nationalities included British, Canadian, American,
Swedish, Norwegian, Lebanese, Armenian, and Indian. Both the Ethiopian
and foreigner teachers were well qualified. For example, Lydia Joss, the Brit-
ish headmistress and teacher from 1943 to 1946, was trained at the Charlotte
Mason College in England. She taught there and in Switzerland for five years

Ethiopia’s main imperial “patron” and North American educational advisors and teachers
replaced the British. Nevertheless, the British “twist” of the system remained.
23 Empress Menen School, The History of Empress Menen School, 1931–1956: In commemora-
tion of the Silver Jubilee (Addis Ababa, 1957), 62.
24 Ministry of Education and Fine Arts, Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools, grades 1–8, 87.
25 Empress Menen School, The History of Empress Menen School, 1931–1956: In commemora-
tion of the Silver Jubilee, 57.
26 Empress Menen School, The History of Empress Menen School, 1931–1956: In commemora-
tion of the Silver Jubilee, 81.
104 Guidi

before obtaining a position in Ethiopia.27 Ethiopian Senedu Gebru, a teacher

and assistant headmistress in the 1940s, before becoming headmistress in 1949,
had studied at the Swedish mission in Addis Ababa before she went to France
in the late 1920s for her secondary education. Her final course of study was
European literature at the University of Lausanne. Senedu Gebru was also a
refined and prolific writer of theatre plays, essays, and newspaper articles in
Amharic.28
Thus, Ethiopian and Western knowledge did “meet”, but did not “clash and
grapple”, to use Mary Louise Pratt’s words about the functioning of the contact
zone.29 They were separated in the curriculum of the academic section, one
following the other. It was in the Domestic Science section that the encounter
was most present.

1.2 Knowledge for the “New” Housewife

In an article published in 1957 in the English-language journal Ethiopia Observer,
headmistress Senedu Gebru wrote that too many students left school too early,
before completing their secondary education, but added that “the many who
have left school to marry have likewise made a contribution by establishing better
homes and finer families”.30 This view suggested that, in continuity with tra-
ditionally accepted women’s duties in the Ethiopian society, domestic work
was inserted into the nationalist discourse of progress. Senedu Gebru first
reminded readers of how the training of Ethiopian girls for their future roles
had taken place, over an indefinite time during which they were firmly situ-
ated in domestic contexts and played traditional domestic roles before their
introduction to formal schooling:

In practical training girls at an early age were initiated in the culinary arts
… girls were introduced to child care by helping their mothers to carry
and tend small children. Spinning in those days was a very important art
since most of the clothing for the whole family depended on the mother’s

27 Empress Menen School, Ethiopia Review, October 1944.

28 Rudolf K. Molvaer, “Siniddu Gehru: Pioneer Woman Writer, Feminist, Patriot, Educator,
and Politician,” Northeast African Studies 4, no. 3 (1997); Rita Pankhurst, “Senedu Gebru:
A Role Model for Ethiopian Women,” in Gender Issues in Ethiopia, ed. Tsehai Berhane-­
Selassie (Institute of Ethiopian Studies: Addis Ababa Ababa University, 1991), 71–87.
29 Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” 34.
30 Senedu Gebru, “Girls’ education,” Ethiopia Observer Special issue: The Ethiopian woman,
1957.
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 105

diligence and skill. Basket-making was also an important and purposeful

art because many household articles were made of basketry.31

During the 1940s, Domestic Science as a school subject corresponded to the

common knowledge and skills required by any Ethiopian housewife, whether
or not she had been to school. In 1947–48 girl students learned “sound practical
knowledge in such crafts as sewing, dress-making, the making of baby clothes,
knitting, basket-making and spinning – all crafts of great importance to the
future wives and mothers in the home.”32 In 1948–49, a more precise codifica-
tion of home-making practices into school knowledge was evolved under the
supervision of a Canadian teacher:

Miss Robertson, a Canadian, […] laid the foundations of the present

Home making course. For some years there had been cooking and dress-
making classes, but there had been no coordinated Domestic Science or
Home-making Course. She organised a special department, prepared a
comprehensive curriculum which included the […] subjects already
established, and extended it to include others, e.g. child care. The first
aim was to train a group of students thoroughly in the practice and
­theory of Home-making.33

Since the 19th century in Europe, the United States, and the colonies, school-
ing in home-making had progressively integrated scientific aspects into child-­
rearing, nursing, pedagogy, nutrition, management of the family resources,
and the planning of daily activities. This “rationalization” into codified school
knowledge aimed to make this subject fit into the “progressive” projects cat-
egory embraced by modern nation-states. This was the case in Ethiopia, where
the curriculum was meant to reform already existing domestic knowledge
from the inside to improve the condition of living of average families. In 1954:

… a four roomed model house […] had been constructed […]. It was
meant to be an ideal and inexpensive home for an average Ethiopian
family, embodying simple features of hygiene and ventilation so that the

31 Gebru, “Girls’ education,” (April 1957), 76.

32 Empress Menen School, The History of Empress Menen School, 1931–1956: In commemora-
tion of the Silver Jubilee, 53.
33 Empress Menen School, The History of Empress Menen School, 1931–1956: In commemora-
tion of the Silver Jubilee, 55.
106 Guidi

students of the Home-making department should receive practical train-

ing in this essential sphere of teaching.34

In the realm of Domestic Science, the incorporation of imported ‘scientific’

knowledge and practices in the wake of local ones, seemed more obvious
and easier to do than would be the case in the academic section. This work
was done through a close collaboration between the successive Swedish and
Canadian heads of the Domestic Science section, the 10 Ethiopian teachers
working under their supervision, and the students.35 The Empress Menen
School Cook Book is an emblematic example in this regard. In 1948–49, the first
group of students from the Domestic Science section “gathered together, with
the help of Miss Olaussen, the recipes which were finally put into book form and
published as The Empress Menen Cook Book”.36 Presented in two distinct sec-
tions, the “Ethiopian recipes” and the “European recipes”, the book included
sixty-six Ethiopian recipes. Including Ethiopian recipes with European ones
in the international standardised form of a cookbook was a way of asserting
the nation’s identity in the eyes of foreigners.37 In their collecting of recipes
as attributes of the nation’s identity, women were guardians and bearers of
“reactivated traditions”.

1.3 Moral Regulation at EMS: Loyalty to the King, the Country, and the
Women
Along with the acquisition of prescribed knowledge, “a key purpose of […]
state schooling has been the formation of conduct and beliefs” to shape “self-
disciplined individuals who adhere to explicit and implicit rules of conduct
and norms of conscience as if they were their own.”38 A common feature of
all state-run school systems, this training and development of character was,
and is, considered to be as influential as the curriculum in shaping future

34 Empress Menen School, The History of Empress Menen School, 1931–1956: In commemora-
tion of the Silver Jubilee, 72.
35 Empress Menen School, The History of Empress Menen School, 1931–1956: In commemora-
tion of the Silver Jubilee, 55.
36 Empress Menen School, The History of Empress Menen School, 1931–1956: In commemora-
tion of the Silver Jubilee, 55.
37 Thomas Guindeuil, ‘Cuisine et construction nationale en Éthiopie des années 1880 aux
années 1950’, in Ambivalences patrimoniales au Sud : mises en scène et jeux d’acteurs, edited
by D. Guillaud, D. Juhé-Beaulaton, M-C. Cormier-Salem & Y. Girault Y. (Montpellier: IRD
Éditions, 2016), p. 228.
38 Kate Rousmaniere, Kari Dehli, and Ning de Coninck-Smith (eds), Discipline, Moral
­Regulation and Schooling. A Social History (New York: Routledge, 1997) p. 3.
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 107

adults. In Ethiopia, one of the main functions of schools was to instil in stu-
dents an unwavering loyalty to Haile Selassie, whose tutelary figure embodied
the nation. However, at EMS, in particular, students’ education also included
standing up for the advancement of women within the nation.
Instilling patriotism was the main objective of school rituals and extra-­
curricular activities which had a very important place at EMS. Every morn-
ing “at 8 o’clock, all students congregate in front of the main school house for the
ceremony of Flag-raising, and as they stand round the pole they sing the Patriots’
Song”39 The patriots’ song evoked the sacrifice of the forefathers who fought to
safeguard independence and praised Haile Selassie as the saviour and embodi-
ment of Ethiopia. It was sung daily, at the same time, in every school of the
country. Girl students, as well as boys, were told to carry forward the traditions
of their heroic forefathers. As headmistress Senedu Gebru noted in a speech
on 27 April 1957, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of EMS, that school
education was the new weapon to defend and preserve the independence that
the Emperors and the forefathers had safeguarded.40 In the New Era, only
education would allow the fruits of independence to be harvested. Patriot-
ism was also a common theme of the theatre plays, mostly written by Senedu
Gebru herself and performed by the students. Among them was one which
presented in dramatic form Marshal Graziani’s massacre. Between 19 and 21
February 1937, several thousand people were massacred by Italian soldiers in
Addis Ababa in reprisal for an attack on Graziani, the “Viceroy” of Ethiopia,
organised by Eritrean patriots. The play bears witness to the sacrifice of the
Ethiopian people under colonialism and its purpose was to demonstrate to the
new generation the cost of defending and preserving their nation.41 In addi-
tion to instilling patriotism, the aim of the Amharic plays was to encourage
the students to master and be proud of their own language.42 These theatrical
works were performed by EMS students during school ceremonies and in pub-
lic places such as the National Theatre. Therefore, girl students were not only
taught patriotism per se, but also, through these plays, to help disseminate it
in their society.
Patriotism and Western education were not opposed to each other. On the
contrary, the headmistress stressed the need to blend them. A former student
remembers her vision of blending the two:

39 Empress Menen School (1957), 88.

40 ‘የግርማዊት እቴጌ መነን ትምህርት ቤት ፳፭ኛ ዓመት የብር ኢዮቤልዩ’ (The Empress Menen School
25 years’ Silver Jubilee), Addis Zemen, 27 April 1957 [19 Miyazya 1949].
41 ‘መጽሐፍ ተመልከት። የልቤ መጽሐፍ’ Addis Zemen, 10 February 1950 [1 Megabit 1942]
42 Pankhurst, “Senedu Gebru: A Role Model for Ethiopian Women,” 80.
108 Guidi

Wayzero [Madam] Senedu wanted us to properly assimilate the foreign

[western] civilization and the culture of our country to make them go
together. It is not a question of forgetting one to go towards the other. We
did both, in order to improve our country Ethiopia, very. Her motto was
Ethiopianness.43

Lastly, Senedu Gebru, for what she saw as being for the benefit of her students,
stressed that equality between women and men was a key requirement for
both their self-improvement and the progress of the nation. She stated: “the
Ethiopian girl seems quite resolute in sharing the work, responsibilities and privi-
leges enjoyed by men.”44 She pushed her students to finish secondary education
and enter university, and was exasperated when she saw how many promis-
ing students interrupted their studies at the end of grade 8 to get married. To
counteract this practice, she made the families of promising students sign
a contract committing them to keep their daughters in school. Parents who
signed this “were to pay back to the Government the investment made in their
daughters” if they forced them to withdraw from secondary school.45
Conscious that women had to confront strong male resistance to achieve
equality, the headmistress sought to instil a fighting ethos in her girl students.
A conversation between two former students illustrates how these pupils
reacted to their headmistress’s exhortations:

T : she gives you extra enthusiasm and extra strength. After all, women
are not that weak. After all, women are not here just to produce children.
A : she believes in equality.
T : and she proved on many occasions that what she wants she will get it.
So she was an example for …
A : … giving confidence. And to believe in equality of women and men.

These two former students went on to recount how Senedu Gebru made them
aware that girl students, as future women citizens, had to share the aim of the
nation’s progress with men, in addition to their specific duties as women, and
that they had the strength to do this:

We have to make a difference in our own life, for our country, and for
the girls, the women. […] It was a big contribution for the country. That

43 Interview with Weyzero Berhané Yeraswerq, 5 June 2021, Addis Ababa.

44 Gebru, “Girls’ education,” 77.
45 Pankhurst, “Senedu Gebru: A Role Model for Ethiopian Women,” 79.
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 109

women also go to school, and find out that they are able to stand like a
man, and contribute to the growth and development of the country.46

To summarise, education, gender, and the nation’s progress were combined

and articulated in complex ways at EMS. The division of the organisation into
two separate sections, domestic and academic, after the primary level reflected
the two roles assigned to women in building the nation’s future. On the one
hand, women had to improve the quality of family life as mothers and wives,
through “rationalised” domestic practices integrated in the discourse of social
progress. Keeping women’s work in the domestic sphere implied a clear repro-
duction of gender roles and hierarchies, albeit in revised form. On the other
hand, women’s equality with men in education and work opportunities was
the objective of the secondary academic section and was also set as a condi-
tion for social progress.

2 Debates over Girls Education: the Acceleration of Time, Gender

and National Identity

The related issues of reform, education, gender and national identity were the
subjects of intense debates that took place particularly in the two government
newspapers, the English-language Ethiopia Herald and the Amharic-language
Addis Zemen. Both were read by Ethiopian reading elites and, in the case of
the former newspaper, by Western expatriates. The articles addressing these
issues were written by a variety of people: journalists, teachers, school admin-
istrators, and students, women and men, Ethiopians and Westerners. Because
Empress Menen School was a prominent elite institution in the capital, and
seen as a model for women’s education, its educational and social objectives
were focal points for the debates. Senedu Gebru herself was a regular advo-
cate of her ideas regarding women’s education and autonomy. Her positions on
these were an essential source of inspiration for the school educated women
who wrote in the press in support of their rights to education, autonomy, and
equality in what they saw as a period of rapid social change.

2.1 The Acceleration of Time

In 1957, EMS British teacher Ms Davis wrote: “[Empress Menen School’s] own
history is an answer to the challenge created by sudden and rapid development

46 Interview with Weyzero Tsehai Yitbarek and Weyzero Almaz Haile-Selassie, 2 April 2019,
Addis Ababa.
110 Guidi

in a fast changing country emerging from the isolation of centuries to take its
place in the modern world”.47 The idea that Ethiopia’s opening to the world after
centuries of isolation required those running formal education to import Euro-
pean knowledge had been a common, shared idea since the writings of the
Ethiopian reformist intellectuals of the early 20th century.48 In the 1950s it was
a common trope, albeit a debated one. This break with an alleged isolation was
perceived by intellectual elites as a transition from passivity to activity, from
torpor to dynamism. More revealing of Ethiopia’s future agenda at this time is
the discourse used by Ms Davis, which included such words as “sudden”, “rapid’,
“fast changing”, “challenge”, indicating a clear sense of urgency.
In 1947, David A. Talbot, an African American born in British Guyana, chief-
editor of the English-language official newspaper Ethiopian Herald, and an
advisor to Haile Selassie,49 wrote in an editorial:

Skills which today are fundamental to organise social life and living, also
have their roots in education. […] Because of the impelling force of what
we call Western Civilization, both the diversity and proficiency of these
skills spell the degree of survival. […] The two hundred and forty odd
schools operating today in the Empire […] represent an epoch of acceler-
ated change, a rapid emergence of new ideas, the dissolution of the old
customs, and, if anything, the re-creation of the spiritual and intellectual
furniture and implements to meet the challenge of the new age.50

In the same editorial he specified what he meant by Western civilization: elec-

tricity, modern sanitation, new methods of production, means of transporta-
tion, and the telephone. Writing even more strongly and dramatically than Ms
Davis had, he used words such as “impelling force”, “far-reaching innovations”,
“survival”, words that conveyed a sense of speed, urgency, irreversibility, and
destiny. Ethiopia had to adapt to “Western civilization” as quickly as possible
in order to survive in an increasingly interconnected world dominated by the
West. All of his articles in the Ethiopia Herald defended the country’s unnu-
anced imitation of the West as the sole path to progress; the Ethiopian past was
essentially viewed as a hindrance from which the country needed to escape.

47 Empress Menen School (1957), 35.

48 Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth
Century.
49 Giulia Bonacci, “Talbot, David Abner,” Encyclopedia Aethiopica, vol. 4 (2010), 846.
50 David A. Talbot, “Education and the Growing State,” Ethiopian Herald, 16 June 1947.
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 111

Articles published in the “Student section” (YeTemariwoch Amd) of the

Amharic newspaper Addis Zemen promoted the same kinds of ideas, but in a
more nuanced way. On 23 February 1949, the article The goals and main ideas
of the young, educated women, written by “a young women student” started as
follows:

If our forefathers made their living by bravery, religion, kindness, and

compassion almost without having ever tasted education, today, the
new modern civilization is an imperious necessity. And, as we need a
­medicine, the strong idea that adequate education should be our fellow
companion in life is testified; we understood that wisdom knocks at every
door.51

The values of the forefathers which they saw as having sustained the lon-
gevity of the nation for centuries had to be revered in ways they deserved to
be. But, to use the words of Reinhart Koselleck, their “historical experience
descended from the past could no longer be directly extended to the future.”52
Moreover, talking metaphorically about the need for a medicine implied an
illness, which suggested that the past generations, stuck in their old values and
ways of life, failed to put Ethiopia on the path to progress and this implied an
urgent responsibility to be taken on by the present generation. This indicates
an ambiguous relation to the past; on the one hand, this narrative looked to
Ethiopia’s glorious past, its longevity dating back to antiquity, and its preserved
independence in the time of colonization; on the other hand, it also regretted
the nation’s “backwardness” and its need to catch up with Europe. While Ethio-
pian knowledge should be acquired, it belonged to the past. In writing this arti-
cle, the “young women student” echoed a widely shared equivocal relationship
with the past, one found in the words of Haile Selassie and Empress Menen
themselves. Haile Selassie constantly glorified Ethiopia’s ancient past to estab-
lish his legitimacy and as the root of the identity of the nation. At the same
time he stated, also using a medicinal metaphor, that “education is the tried
remedy for the cure of Ethiopia and Our people”.53 In similar vein, in the speech
she made on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of EMS, Empress Menen told

51 ‘የወጣትዋ ተማሪ ምኞትና ጠቅላላ ሓሳብ’ (The aims and general ideas of the young, ­educated
woman), Addis Zemen, 23 February 1949 [16 Yekatit 1941].
52 Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, 281.
53 ‘Education Crossroads. The Empress Manen School ‘Girls’ House of Learning” is an
­Education Forepost’, Ethiopian Herald, 1 December 1947.
112 Guidi

the students, the staff, Ethiopian dignitaries, and foreign diplomats that “there
is no remedy better than education to bring progress and development”.54
If the road to progress implied breaking with the past for the modern future
to be realised, the key issue for politicians and policy-makers was how to main-
tain stable ground in the path ahead. This was where the education of women
and their future roles in the nation entered the debates. These debates con-
cerned, on the one hand, the subjects to be taught, the level of education to
be achieved, and their purpose, or value to women, and, on the other hand,
the question of women’s autonomy and authority, both in marital life and in
the public space.

2.2 Which Women’s Education for Which Social Roles?

Not surprisingly, an important part of the debates focused on domestic knowl-
edge, although, as has been indicated, there were different interpretations of
the meaning or specifics of such a path. In the Spring of 1957, members of the
Ethiopia Observer team visited the Yeshemabet Girls’ School in Harar. They
report their discussion with the Canadian headmistress of the school:

Unfortunately, the headmistress is totally out of sympathy with the pre-

sent programme for girls’ education in Ethiopia. She wants to discard for
them the usual school subjects and to have them taught instead, clothes
washing, house-cleaning, cooking, spinning in the oldest way in the
world, as they do it in Ethiopia, and the traditional basketry. We suggested
the two latter indigenous arts might probably be learnt outside school
and that literacy is important for girls as well as boys. She replied … that
time is thrown away in attempting to give the girls a liberal academic
education. ‘It is useless to teach them science’. … She wanted the girls to
devote most of their time to housework. ‘We are failing,’ she urged, ‘in
our task of preparing these children to be better wives and mothers’. She
seemed to ignore the fact that that aim might be served by intellectual as
well as by manual instruction. That the condition of inability to read with
understanding a written or printed communication, to keep accounts of
expenditure, is a hardship in the modern world.55

For the Canadian headmistress, the purpose of schooling was a simple repro-
duction of already practised domestic skills, while the Ethiopian Observer team

54 ‘Education Crossroads. The Empress Manen School ‘Girls’ House of Learning’ is an Educa-
tion Forepost”, Ethiopian Herald, 1 December 1947.
55 “Yeshemabet Girls’ School,” Ethiopia Observer. Special Issue on Harar 2, no. 2 (1958), 84.
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 113

considered it necessary to adapt domestic work to the general movement of

society toward progress. In the same vein, the journalist reporting the cere-
mony held in EMS for the 25th anniversary of the school praised the harmoni-
ous encounter between the “ancient” (“tentawi”, Ethiopian) and the “modern”
(“zemenawi”, Western) in students’ learning of domestic skills as one of the
great achievements of the school.56In this context, the objective was to reform
or reconfigure domestic work, and the attitudes towards this work, in ways
which would bring social progress from within the family without affecting
gender roles.
Numerous historical studies have demonstrated how, in colonial contexts,
educators and curriculum designers were concerned about giving women a
minimal school education to complement that of men in maintaining gen-
der hierarchies.57 Colonial powers feared an emergence of uprooted men
whose dissatisfaction could lead to political unrest. They saw school-educated
spouses with the same shared cultural practices and references as forming sta-
ble couples, which would provide a lasting foundation for the colonial order.
These couples should be models for others, and provide evidence of the noble,
uplifting work of the “civilising mission”. In some colonies, however, women
teachers and students made strong demands for the same level of education
between women and men and equality in work opportunities, and for women
to play roles outside of the domestic sphere and to gain public respectability.58
This was also the case in independent Ethiopia. In an article published in
1948 in the Amharic-language newspaper Addis Zemen, a woman teaching in
the town of Menagesha denounced the wasted opportunity to contribute to
society when girls left their studies prematurely. After stating the common
argument that unequal levels of education between genders were detrimental
to satisfactory marriage, she added that: “in other countries, women don’t live
‘looking the hand of their husband’. Rather, they work, earn an income, and help

56 ’የግርማዊት እቴጌ መነን ትምህርት ቤት ፳�፭ኛ ዓመት የብር ኢዮቤልዩ’ (The Empress Menen School 25
years’ Silver Jubilee), Addis Zemen, 27 April 1957 [19 Miyazya 1949].
57 Pascale Barthélémy, Jean-Hervé Jézéquel, “Marier les ‘demoiselles frigidaires’ et les
‘­mangeurs de craies’: l’idéal du ménage lettré et l’administration coloniale en Afrique
Occidentale Française,” in Perspectives historiques sur le genre en Afrique, ed. Odile Georg
Cahier Afrique 23 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007), 77–96; Summers, “‘If You Can Educate the
Native Woman ...’: Debates over the Schooling and Education of Girls and Women in
Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1934.”
58 For example in South Africa and Nigeria: Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of
South African Women’s Education; Denzer, “Domestic Science Training in Colonial Yorub-
aland, Nigeria,” 116–139.
114 Guidi

their country while reinforcing their marital life.”59 By earning a salary, women
would be participating in the production of the family’s financial income and
contributing to the nation’s wealth while gaining autonomy and independ-
ence from their husbands. In the same vein, some articles demonstrated that
women students and teachers were annoyed with the patriarchal argument
that salaried women would neglect their marriage. In April 1951, a girl student
from the school of Bishoftu presented her argument challenging the patriar-
chal view in Addis Zemen:

In civilised countries, when the women along with men are accomplish-
ing their studies, they honour their country as much as possible, regard-
less of their marital lives, and perform tasks in the workplace. […] We
can dare to do that if we take on as much as possible our work share to
support our brothers, and if we address our shared problems. We will not
miss the so-called marriage whenever. But, as time goes as fast as water
flows, our country Ethiopia is now on the fast track to reach the new civi-
lization, and women are left behind, either in education or in other fields.
So, instead of being lazy not handling it, let’s learn hard and be fruitful in
following the precept “let’s control time instead of being controlled by it”.60

In addition to sarcastically advising the newspaper readership not to worry

about marriage, this student pointed to a key argument in the representations
of progress: the timespan of progress followed its own linear movement and
what “came from progress” was beyond the control of social actors.61 And, as
western education alone was assumed to provide the knowledge and skills to
enable people to control the pace of progress, Ethiopian women had to fight
for equality in education and not be side-lined and kept from it by men.
In their discourses, women teachers and students always reminded each
other and society that their claim to equal participation in education and in
the professions was aimed at ‘balanced’ couples (in terms of participation of
both husband and wife) and prosperous families; this would help to reproduce
the family order in a new context. But, at the same time, they were questioning
the legitimacy of the existing male authority in family and public life.

59 ’ስለ ልጃገረዶች ትምህርት’ (On the education of adolescent girls), Addis Zemen, 13 February
1948 [5 Yekatit 1940].
60 Bezunesh Gezaw, student at Bishoftu, “ወሮታ ያሻል” (The reward is worth it), Addis Zemen,
7 April 1951 [29 Magabit 1943].
61 Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, 219.
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 115

2.3 Debates over Authority

Senedu Gebru made this point very clear in the article “Enamesgn YeTeweled-
betn Zemen” (“Let’s praise the times in which we are born” published on August
12, 1944, in Addis Zemen. She first stated that the only good reason for men’s
domination over women was the “law which was established to suit men with-
out any women being consulted.” And, as women’s “burden” was “confirmed by
history and recognised by religion” for “thousands years”, “nobody pays attention
when [women] claim to adjust [their] power with that of men”. Her purpose was
to denaturalise women’s inferior social position by uncovering it as a histori-
cal construct that had been institutionalised and internalised by society over
time. Senedu Gebru continued in an optimistic tone regarding the future. The
rough road to equality was now being paved because “civilization [ forced] men
to examine their conscience” and “to improve laws in favour [of women]”. As a
result, “when the man joins the public hall, the woman now takes part in the fes-
tivities instead of staying in her empty room”. In the second part of her article
Senedu Gebru drew on rules of etiquette – when men let women enter or sit
first, when men ask women’s permission to open or close a window etc. – to
celebrate new times where women gain power and respectability. She con-
cluded by saying “let’s praise our time that made us order instead of obey.”62
Here, Senedu Gebru brought into the present what she anticipated for a future
which would be better for women. She was conscious of male resistance while
trusting “what comes from progress”. Progress, as a transcendent force, was a
conveyor of equality, and education was the way for women to participate in
its march. In her struggle for EMS students to achieve higher academic stand-
ards, Senedu Gebru wanted to equip women to use this opportunity for their
own social and economic promotion, as well as that of the country.
One year later, the article Advice for the Women, also published in Addis
Zemen, seemed to be a strident challenge to Senedu Gebru’s championing
of women’s education and autonomy. The writer, a man named Mekonnen
Wolde-Ab, strongly criticised women’s independence. Noting his concern that
more and more women who were able to earn their own income were living
alone or with other women, he contended that a woman must live with a man.
He pronounced that men should not “give full rights to women and have author-
ity over them by virtue of superior law”. This authority was needed because
“women’s minds being unsettled”, “they wander here and there”. He added: “most
of women at present definitely free themselves from men’s authority. The former
agreement between the two sides has therefore been destroyed and replaced by

62 Senedu Gebru, እናመስግን፤ የተወለድንበትን ዘመን። (“Let us praise the era in which we are
born”), Addis Zemen, 12 August 1944 [6 Nehasé 1936].
116 Guidi

a new one”. He declared that if they did not change or reverse this new trend
very quickly it would become customary and women would “drag men into
their hateful bad behaviour”. It was for this reason that they had to “leave their
bad habits and be led to return under desirable authority”. If not, they would
“spoil the ancient h­ istory of the Ethiopian people”, and set “a bad example” which
would be “a stumbling block for the coming generations”.63
Reinhart Koselleck recalled that “‘Progress’ and ‘decline’ are both terms that
are meant to conceptualise transformations of historical time”, binary oppos-
ing terms according to which societies are “stepping forward” or stepping
“downward”.64 As we saw earlier, advocates of women’s education included in
the same progressive movement the progress of women, the progress of the
nation, and the stability of society. For their opponents, as the example above
demonstrates, progress for women signified, on the contrary, the decline of
the nation and the destruction of society. These opponents were using at least
four main arguments to oppose women’s education and equal opportunities,
arguments to which Ethiopian women teachers and students felt compelled
to respond. The first argument was that women should not learn at school and
should stay under men’s authority because of their alleged congenitally unsta-
ble nature and inferior intellectual capacities. Against this, advocates of wom-
en’s education recalled that powerful women in the Ethiopian past have shown
themselves to be as capable and firm in character as men,65 and that science
had proved that women and men have the same intellectual capacities.66 A
second argument was that women “threaten the male to revert to Matriarchate,
a world where the opposite sex has the greatest influence”67; in this world women
aimed to dominate man. In response to these voices, women writing in the
press were repeatedly reminding them that their aim was not to dominate men
but to contribute to national progress by sharing the burden with men, and
that equality would lead to a more productive workforce and a more efficient
collaboration between women and men. A third argument was that question-
ing male authority would undermine the family patriarchal order which would
in turn destroy the society. The response of proponents of women’s education
was to argue that, in a globally changing world, where western education was

63 Mekonnen Wolde-Ab, ’ለሴቶች ምክር’ (Advice for the Women), Addis Zemen, 18 August 1945
[12 nehassé 1937].
64 Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, 220.
65 Sylvia Pankhurst, “Three Notable Ethiopian Women,” Ethiopia Observer Special issue: The
Ethiopian woman, April 1957, 84–90.
66 Gezaw, ‘ወሮታ ያሻል’ (The reward is worth it).
67 “Women Gain in Prominence as Civilization Progresses,” Ethiopia Herald, 25 October
1958.
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 117

needed for everyone to survive, only educational equality could prevent the
kind of imbalances that would cause the ruin of the family and of the social
order. A fourth argument was that women’s emancipation came from the West
and was therefore unquestionably detrimental to Ethiopian identity and his-
tory. The first answer to this was that Western knowledge was set to regenerate
nationalism and make Ethiopia strong. The second response was that Ethiopia
was part of a global trend towards progress and modernisation, and not a mere
follower, as evidenced by the fact that Ethiopian women had rights that were
not enjoyed by their sisters in the Middle East and even in Europe, for instance,
the vote, land inheritance, and divorce.68

3 Conclusion: the Hub of the Swirling Wheel

During the 1940–1950 period in Ethiopia, women’s education was a site where
social actors tried to find relevant ways to maintain the stability of the nation
in the process of controlling the social changes implied, or, according to some,
threatened by knowledge transfers from the West. The education of women
in Ethiopia highlighted their specific place in this maintenance of stability in
the face of transformation: they had to argue that changes regarding women
should not be considered disruptive. If the two genders had to bring social
progress, women had a double duty as they had to both manage change and
stabilise the march towards progress. Being “the hub of the swirling wheel”, as
the Empress Menen expresses it in the quote at the beginning of this chapter,
meant that women had to equilibrate change and stability. Whenever the issue
was raised concerning the aim to facilitate or accelerate progress by reform-
ing women’s work in the family, or by advancing women’s place in the public
sphere, these debates always reflected both the hopes and the fears generated
by transformations in the family order which was agreed upon by educators
and the government as the very foundation of the nation. Because the claim
for women’s education and gender equality meant a rebalancing of author-
ity between women and men, the men who spoke to the press on this sub-
ject, and who were afraid to lose their supremacy, resisted strongly. Therefore,
those women who advocated high standards of education for girls and women
had constantly to justify themselves when addressing questions of their social
role in marriage and in relation to the family. That is why the “new marriage”,
where both women and men are breadwinners, and where authority is equally

68 Ethiopia Observer Special issue: The Ethiopian woman, April 1957, 74.
118 Guidi

shared, was at this time being constantly contested. This concept of “new mar-
riage” was rejected as detrimental to the stability of the society by those who
wanted to justify minimal education for women, while those who defended a
high standard or level of education for women advocated this quality in mar-
riage as the only way to ensure the stability of the family in a rapidly changing
world. According to this latter argument, if “new civilization” was an impel-
ling force, a wide acceptance of a “new marriage” was needed to ensure both
Ethiopia’s rapidly advancing future and its stability. It appears from my review
of all the articles published in Addis Zemen, the Ethiopian Herald and Ethiopia
Observer in the 1940s and 1950s, that the defenders of equal education and
authority were almost exclusively women, sometimes, but rarely, supported
by men. On the contrary, those who advocated minimal education and the
maintenance of male authority were mostly men, although the example of
the Canadian teacher mentioned above indicates that women, and certainly
not only expatriates, could defend this position. Of course, only a minority of
literate, school educated, individuals were writing in the press. These sources
unfortunately do not allow for the collection of opinions from other sectors of
society.
Times of societal reform, whatever or whenever they are, tend to both open
and close down opportunities for women. Ethiopian elite women during the
1940–1950 period attempted to address and manage changes, arguing not only
for their own advancement, but for the promotion of women in general, as well
as for the progress of the nation. Moreover, women students and teachers who
were at the time engaged in debating these issues demonstrated an acute sense
of historical time: the speed at which it can pass and the irreversible conse-
quences it can generate. This was a sense of historical time instilled by school
education. These students and teachers were focussed on the future and were
concerned with attempting to control an historical time that they perceived to
be passing very quickly in the context of rapid global changes.
Finally, in their writings these students addressed the relation to the West
only through the term “new civilization”; as if they accepted it not as relating
specifically to western ‘civilization’, but as the world’s new civilization. Cur-
rent academics, for instance, Tekeste Negash, Messay Kebede, or Yirga Gelaw
Woldeyes investigated the ways in which independent Ethiopia had been
“culturally” colonised through schooling.69 But it seems that most teachers

69 Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes, Native Colonialism: Education and the Economy of Violence against
Tradition on Ethiopia (Trenton, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 2017); Messay Kebede, Radicalism
and Cultural Dislocation in Ethiopia, 1960–1974 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester
Press, 2008). Tekeste Negash, Education in Ethiopia: From Crises to the Brink of Collapse
(Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2006).
Where is the Nation Heading? Empress Menen School for Girls 119

and students of the 1940s and 1950s did not see the introduction of Western
knowledge into the Ethiopian secondary school curriculum in terms of threat-
ening their national identity. Rather, they considered it, rightly or wrongly, as
a means for national improvement in a time of urgency, and they believed in
independent Ethiopia’s capacity to resist a form of cultural colonialism.
This has been an account of the very long struggle of Ethiopian women
for their right to education. In terms of education, opportunities, and rights,
equality remains a struggle for feminist groups up to the present day.70 When
I presented a first draft of this chapter to some Ethiopian colleagues at Addis
Ababa University, they were astonished by the strength and intensity with
which those young women of the 1940s–50s expressed themselves. They told
me that current discourses, at a time of “UN” and “NGO” feminism, are much
duller, more pedestrian, and conciliatory to patriarchy than the rhetoric of the
1950s. I see my colleagues’ enthusiasm for reading these forgotten texts from
the 1940s–50s as part of a current process taking place in Ethiopia, where femi-
nists are working to reconstruct the broken genealogies in the history of their
struggles. This chapter will have achieved one of its objectives if it contributes,
however modestly, to this endeavour.

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 Chapter 5

Women Teachers in Mayotte: Student Migration

and Models of Womanhood in the Southwest
Indian Ocean in the 1950s and 1960s
Mamaye Idriss and Mihary Jaofeno

With a peaceful gaze, her palms resting quietly on her knees, Juliette Bébé,
one of the first ‘native’ teachers in Mayotte, looks into the camera. Her face
uncovered, wearing a simple dress, she exudes a sense of tranquillity – a sign
of accomplishment and personal satisfaction. Born in Mayotte to parents from
Sainte-Marie, an island of the east coast of Madagascar, she was among the
first generation of girls to attend one of the few official French schools on
Mayotte, schools previously reserved for boys.1 The girls went to Madagascar
for their secondary education; then, in the late 1940s, their academic success
earned them the first posts open to colonised people within the administra-
tion in Mayotte. Moving from place to place for education, and then for work
as teachers, midwives or nurses, was an entirely new pattern of movement for
Mayotte women. Their return to Mayotte was part of the profound social, eco-
nomic and cultural changes on an island where, until then, for the most part
only colonised men had gone through the French school system. Education
for Mayotte girls had previously been restricted to religious instruction given
in the madrasas as part of Koranic education. The entry of girls into official
schools in Mayotte, initiated by migrant women from Sainte-Marie, marked
a break from the past and opened the way to new possibilities for women’s
achievements.
This chapter uses the examples of Juliette Bébé and Anne-Marie Novou,2
two young women who had similar educational and professional careers, to
investigate the emergence of new female role models in Mayotte. How do the
educational and migratory strategies of the first generation of female teachers
in Mayotte demonstrate social and racial issues relating to an emerging impe-
rial elite and a citizenship regime? To answer this question we analyse sources

1 In the early 1940s there were four official schools, established since the mid-19th century.
2 Anne-Marie Henry known by her married name.

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004690172_006

Women Teachers in Mayotte 123

Figure 5.1 Juliette Bébé

Private archive of Juliette Bébé’s son, no date, no place
124 Idriss and Jaofeno

which include private writings, including Juliette’s diary,3 and a publication

which is somewhere between an essay and a pamphlet, written by an activ-
ist to publicise the cause of the Sainte-Marian population whose members
were seeking to maintain their French citizenship under common law. This
document provides insight into the relationship of the colonised to French
education over several generations. In addition, interviews were conducted
with the young girls’ friends, school cohorts, relatives, former pupils and with
Anne-Marie herself.4 These fragments, together make it possible to retrace the
progress of the first colonised women in the southwest Indian Ocean towards
achieving graduation. This journey is a subject that remains barely touched on
in the historiography of education in Africa.5
Juliette and Anne-Marie belonged to the Sainte-Marian community that
had settled in Mayotte in the second half of the 19th century, and were liv-
ing near Dzaoudzi, the capital. The people of Sainte-Marie had been French
citizens under common law since 1750, whereas the majority of colonised peo-
ple were colonised later; among others, those in Mayotte were subject to the

3 Archives of the family of Juliette Bébé, Pamandzi. The diary was discovered among Juliette’s
belongings by her children when she died. Her eldest son kept it in memory of his parents.
It is undated but appears to have been written after she returned to Mayotte as a teacher in
September 1966. The notebook was probably used for other purposes, as indicated by the
hand-drawn clothing patterns. Pages of writing alternate with photographs taken in Anta-
nanarivo and Mayotte, and cards given to her by her pupils. Captions and empty rectangles
indicate the past presence of photographs. Juliette recounts the beginnings of her love affair
in 1965–66 as well as her years of solitude in Mayotte before her wedding in Paris in 1969.
4 The main data were collected through Interviews with Juliette Bébé’s husband and son,
conducted by Mihary Jaofeno in 2020 as part of her doctoral research on Malagasy women
teachers, and interviews with Anne-Marie Novou during the summer of 2018, conducted by
Mamaye Idriss at her home, in the presence of her husband Marcel Henry.
5 On the Indian Ocean region, we can cite Simon Duteil, “Institutrices françaises à Madagascar
(1896–1939),” Outre-mers 98, no. 370 (2011): 161–172; Simon Duteil, “Enseignants coloniaux:
Madagascar, 1896–1960” (PhD dissertation, University of Le Havre, 2009); Simon Duteil, “De
la mission laïque à la mission civilisatrice : Un instituteur colonial à Madagascar au début du
XXe siècle,” Histoire de l’éducation 128 (2010): 79–102. Many articles exist on education in Mad-
agascar: Francis Koerner, Histoire de l’enseignement privé et officiel à Madagascar (1820–1995):
les implications religieuses et politiques dans la formation d’un peuple (Paris: L’Harmattan,
1999); Anne-Marie Goguel, Aux origines du mai malgache, Désir d’école et compétition sociale,
1951–1972 (Paris: Karthala, 2006); Marie-Christine Deleigne, “Les jardins scolaires du pre-
mier degré à Madagascar (1916–1951),” Histoire de l’éducation 128 (2010/4): 103–128; Ellen Vea
Rosnes, and Monique Irène Rakotoanosy, “Contextualising the place of French and Malagasy
in Madagascar’s education system: A historical perspective,” Paedagogica Historica 52, no. 1–2
(2016): 43–57.
Women Teachers in Mayotte 125

indigénat regime.6 The Sainte-Marians lost their French citizenship in 1896

when the island was attached to the French colony of Madagascar. From then
on, the Sainte-Marians were governed as a ‘native’ population. Sainte-Marians
who migrated to Mayotte brought with them the dream of French citizenship
under common law. A way of improving their citizenship status after its sudden
devaluation in 1896, was to settle in a territory that had earlier joined the same
administrative entity as Sainte-Marie. The mobility of Sainte-Marians between
the colonies, as well as between France and its colonies, helped to redefine the
contours of the Empire, as well as those of gender and citizenship.7 Given the
citizenship laws in force in the French Empire, education was key to achieve a
higher citizenship status than the one enjoyed by indigenous people.

1 French Colonial Education and Questions of Citizenship in the

Southwest Indian Ocean

Connected to a much wider world, the Sainte-Marians of Mayotte developed

migratory strategies one of which was French education which they saw as
a means of preserving their French citizenship. While recent historical work
has highlighted the production of globalised identities, the study of the Sainte-
Marians’ demonstrates that the trajectory of these processes also helped to
establish hierarchies among the citizens of the Empire, hierarchies which were
based on education and origin.8 The new ‘Imperial elite’ (insofar as it existed
across all the French colonies of the Indian Ocean) had been educated in the
various different territories of the Empire where the education available varied

6 The code de l’indigénat was a set of repressive regulations (fines, internment, requisition of
property, capitation tax, forced labour) that could be enforced by the administrative author-
ity despite the separation of judicial and administrative powers. It concerned only the sub-
jects of the French colonies, and did not apply to French citizens. Its application differed
between colonies. Isabelle Merle, “De la « légalisation » de la violence en contexte colonial.
Le régime de l’indigénat en question,” Politix: Revue des sciences sociales du politique 66
(2004): 137–162; Sylvie Thénault, “L’indigénat dans l’Empire français: Algérie/Cochinchine,
une double matrice,” Monde(s) 12 (2017): 21–40, https://doi.org/10.3917/mond1.172.0021
7 Lorelle Semley, To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France’s Atlantic Empire (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017).
8 In earlier work, Idriss has suggested defining this group as Catholic Creoles (Kuruweli). This
has the disadvantage of confusing the Creoles of La Réunion with those of Sainte-Marie, but
it does match contemporary types of categorisation. Despite the time gap, these categorisa-
tions, which refer to religious affiliation and connections, seem to have been forged from
the time these communities were established. See Mamaye Idriss, Le combat pour Mayotte
française (Paris: Karthala, 2018).
126 Idriss and Jaofeno

according to the policies of the respective colonies and the presence or absence
of a regional capital. Mayotte, purchased by France in 1841, was administra-
tively tied to La Reunion, Sainte-Marie and Nosy-Be until its attachment to the
Comoros in 1912 as part of the Colony of Madagascar and Dependencies. Edu-
cation of the indigenous population in the French colony of the Comoros was
unevenly spread amongst the different regions of the Comoros and was lim-
ited to primary and lower secondary school. Apart from the few official schools
providing primary education, two regional schools were set up in Mutsamudu
(Anjouan) and Mitsamiouli (Grande Comore) in 1915 and 1949 respectively, to
provide pupils who passed the competitive exam at the end of the first cycle
with a three-year general and professional education.9 For higher education
levels students had to go to Madagascar where the offering was more diverse.
In fact, the social and racial mix within the community of students from all
over Madagascar and the Comoros archipelago contributed to the formation
of an Indian Ocean imperial elite beyond the internal borders of the Empire.
In 1946, Comoros was detached from the French colony of Madagascar and
Dependencies at the request of the Comorian elite, who wanted to break free
of the “big island”. However, since the French government’s investment in edu-
cation had been focused on Madagascar relatively little educational infrastruc-
ture existed in the Comoros at that time.10
The educational careers of Juliette and Anne-Marie together provide a good
example of the path followed by the first women graduates of the Comoros
islands. Without directly examining the educational processes they went
through, we examine the social trajectories in and of their colonial e­ xistence.11
The chapter begins by examining the Sainte-Marians’ relationship and engage-
ment with education and their use of it as a strategy for their social and
economic advancement, taking as its starting point a movement led by Sainte-
Marians in the late 19th century to demand the maintenance of their French
citizenship. The chapter then goes behind the scenes to follow the academic
paths of these new ‘fighters for the Republic’.12 From their schooldays, through
to their lives as teachers, we select various areas of learning to shed light on the

9 Mahmoud Ibrahime, “Madagascar, un modèle pour les Comores ?,” in Madagascar et

l­ ’Afrique: entre identité insulaire et appartenances historiques, eds. Faranirina Rajaonah,
and Didier Nativel (Paris: Karthala, 2007): 278.
10 Jean-Paul Eyrard, Mayotte et l’école: 145 ans d’une histoire singulière: Mémoire du CHEAM
(Paris: CHEAM, 1990): 13.
11 Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge,
1995).
12 Labrune-Badiane, and Smith, Les hussards noirs de la colonie: instituteurs africains et
« petites patries » en AOF, 1913–1960.
Women Teachers in Mayotte 127

Figure 5.2 Map of the southwest Indian Ocean

circulation of knowledge in school and in the community. Finally, the aim is to

highlight the human and social consequences of the arrival of Sainte-Marian
women teachers in Mayotte and their individual trajectories. While not claim-
ing to be able to generalise from these two cases, we proceed to look at the
possible implications of these for the education, changing social status, and
independence of women in the Comoros islands from the second half of the
20th century onwards.
128 Idriss and Jaofeno

2 The Sainte-Marian Diaspora in Mayotte: French Education as Legacy

After migrating for work or for marriage, most of the members of the Sainte-
Marian diaspora in Mayotte settled near the capital (Dzaoudzi), in the district
of Sandravangue and M’roniumbeni. Several women who had come with their
families or siblings wanted to pass on to their children certain privileges held
by their parents. By connecting citizenship with the French school habitus,
they wanted both to educate their children (girls as well as boys) and to perpet-
uate their common law civil status. Thus a specific Sainte-Marian identity took
shape in Mayotte, despite the many intermarriages between Saint-Marians and
Mainland French, Mahorais and Comorians. This Sainte-Marian identity was
forged from a French cultural heritage acquired through a French education. It
gave rise to a citizenship regime that represented the means by which Sainte-
Marians could rise to the top of the social ladder in terms of social status and
work in the French administration.
By settling in Mayotte, the Saint-Marians made sure to retain their French
citizenship and the associated social advantages. They were aware that, as
French citizens, they had a special status within the Empire, as can be seen
from the essays of Joachim Firinga (1877–1917), a Sainte-Marian living in Paris
at the end of the 19th century and a member of the Committee for the Protec-
tion and Defence of the Natives of Sainte-Marie. Firinga published two works
with a Parisian publisher to contest the demotion of status of natives after
Sainte-Marie was joined with Madagascar in 1896. In line with earlier writings
published after printing had spread to the Indian Ocean, Firinga developed
a legal, historical and cultural argument, highlighting the close link between
French citizenship and the right to education.13
According to Firinga, the attachment of Sainte-Marie to Madagascar was
detrimental to its inhabitants as it considerably reduced their social advan-
tages. As citizens of the Colony of Madagascar, not only were they subject to
the colonial legal system and mandatory corvée labour, they also had their
access to French education drastically reduced, as the focus was placed by the
French government on the main island:

If, in recent times, the proportion of illiterates has increased in Sainte-

Marie, the fault lies solely with the local administration: it was the mem-
bers of this body who wanted it. For it is they who, with an un-avowed,
and therefore unmentionable, aim, have suppressed the schools here,

13 See Isabel Hofmeyr, Kaarsholm Preben, and Frederiksen Bodil Folke, “Introduction:
Print Cultures, Nationalisms and Publics in the Indian Ocean,” Africa: The Journal of the
­International African Institute 81, no. 1 (2011): 1–22.
Women Teachers in Mayotte 129

while they create new ones every day in Madagascar, especially in Ime-
rina among the Hova.14

The author continued with a description of the reason why the colonial power
put its efforts into developing education in Madagascar:

From the point of view of education, the difference in policy adopted by

the government between the large island and the small island was moti-
vated by the need to counterbalance the educational work of the mis-
sions. But since the suppression of their subsidy, the missions no longer
have any schools in Sainte-Marie, whereas they have more than 600 in
Madagascar. So the small island has been given short shrift.15

While expressing the will of the people of Sainte-Marie to preserve their

­educational advantages, the author also expresses a certain mistrust towards
Madagascar, where the French authorities had invested more in school infra-
structure than in Saint-Marie. France wanted, and set out, to counter the
­influence of Catholic and Protestant mission schools which had been estab-
lished in Madagascar since the middle of the 19th century.16 However, this
move on the part of France had serious consequences for those with educa-
tional ambitions in Sainte-Marie. The Jules Ferry laws of 1881–1884, which sep-
arated Church from State in France as of 1905 (though applied somewhat later
in the colonies), ended state funding of mission schools in Sainte-Marie as it
did in other French colonies.17 In 1912, only one school was open for serving a
population of 5600, including 2700 children under the age of 16.18 This state
school was in the main town of Bourg-Madame on an island 55 km wide.
Firinga shows how French education and common law French citizen-
ship are intertwined, and points out how citizenship status was downgraded
in conjunction with a reduction in the provision of education. According to
Firinga, the authorities justified the withdrawal of common law citizenship
from Sainte-Marie because of the large number of illiterates and their desire
not to debase the title of citizen. Education was thus a means to counter any

14 Joachim Firinga, Mémoire sur la question saint-marienne (Paris: Inalco, 1912): 74‑75,
author’s translation.
15 Firinga, Mémoire sur la question saint-marienne.
16 Rebecca Rogers, “Éducation, religion et colonisation en Afrique aux XIXe et XXe siècles,”
Clio. Histoire’ femmes et sociétés 5, no. 6 (1997): 1–5.
17 Ellen Vea Rosnes, The Norwegian Mission’s Literacy Work in Colonial and Independent
Madagascar (London: Routledge, 2020), 202.
18 Rosnes, The Norwegian Mission’s Literacy Work in Colonial and Independent M
­ adagascar, 75.
130 Idriss and Jaofeno

Figure 5.3  ap of Sainte-Marie

M
Archives de la BNF/GALLICA, gabriel malleterre (1858–1923)19

downgrading of Sainte-Marian status and to ensure the exercise of common

law citizenship.
This citizenship regime was achieved by the indigenous population through
developing individual literacy and fluency in the French language (reading,
writing, social uses) and the intellectual skills that stem from literacy. As ­Firinga
pointed out, ‘many Sainte-Marians [were] employed as writers, either in the
various departments of the local administration in Madagascar or in private
companies’.20 Mastery of the French language was not only a p ­ rerequisite for
access to well-paid jobs; it also helped to build an elite distinct from the rest of
Madagascar’s population, who had little or no French.21 The sharing of a com-
mon language (French) and a common narrative based on the Sainte-Marian

19 Archives de la BNF/GALLICA, Gabriel Malleterre (1858–1923) (Author of the text), Livre-­

atlas des colonies françaises à l’usage de l’enseignement des colonies (New York: Hatchette,
1900–1902). Partie générale: l’Europe, l’Asie, l’Afrique, l’Amérique, l’Océanie. La France
et ses colonies. II. Colonies de l’Océan Indien. Madagascar et dépendances, La Réunion,
Côte des Somali et dépendances, îles Kerguelen, Saint-Paul, Amsterdam, établissements
français de l’Inde / by G. Malleterre and P. Legendre,.... 1900–1902, p. 3.
20 Firinga, Mémoire sur la question saint-marienne, 73–74, author’s translation.
21 Brian Stock, The implication of Literacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983).
Women Teachers in Mayotte 131

origin, according to Firinga, constituted the foundational pillars of this com-

munity. The culture of the written word in the Sainte-Marian community, part
of a wider development of literacy in Madagascar due to the presence of Eng-
lish missionaries, was what Jack Goody has called restricted literacy, i.e., use of
the written word confined to an elite.
Firinga’s essay clearly shows that writing was not used only in its simplest
forms but became an effective weapon for challenging the colonial power,
against which he himself had been fighting. He had been trying “in vain for
two years to make people listen to reason […] on a question of law”.22 Through
its own materiality, the written word thus achieved temporal and geographical
depth, reaching people across a vast range from the confines of the Empire to
its capital and helping to define globalised identities.23

3 Tensions and Issues of Literacy in the Development of Hierarchies

among Citizens of the French Empire from 1896 Onwards

From 1896 French citizenship was granted only to a very small group of Mada-
gascar’s population.24 There was also a specific linguistic policy that led to the
devaluation of Sainte-Marie’s status by making Malagasy the official language
and the first language of instruction in primary schools.25 Although this deci-
sion by the French government was a response to local political issues,26 it was
not without problems, because there were and are other languages spoken in
Sainte-Marie such as Sakalava and Betsimisaraka. However, Firinga’s criticism
focused on the loss of status of the French language. French was reduced to the
status of a second language of instruction:

The schools that used to exist in Sainte-Marie are being abolished. In the
only remaining school in the chief town, Hova textbooks replace the
French ones. However, teachers and pupils understand French better than
Hova. This is what is called substituting indigenous [language] teaching
for French. The French schools of the big island are no longer available

22 Firinga, Mémoire sur la question saint-marienne, 73–74, author’s translation.

23 Joachim Firinga signs his manuscript from Paris (rue Linné, Paris 5).
24 Rosnes, and Rakotoanosy, “Contextualising the place of French and Malagasy in Madagas-
car’s education system: A historical perspective,” 6.
25 Firinga, Mémoire sur la question saint-marienne, 8. According to Firinga, Sakalava and
Betsimisaraka, the local languages spoken in Sainte-Marie, seem not have been taught as
written languages.
26 Firinga, Mémoire sur la question saint-marienne, 8.
132 Idriss and Jaofeno

to the Sainte-Marie children who attended them until now. Finally, as a

supreme concession, French law has been replaced by native law.27

In addition to the closure of French schools on Sainte-Marie, the Sainte-­

Marians no longer had primacy in the recruitment of pupils to the French
schools in Madagascar. This new trend benefited the Merina, the dominant
group in the Highlands, and one which was better integrated into the island’s
education system. Whether in terms of enrolment rates, the number of schools
in the Highlands, or the use of their language – defined as Malagasy – as the
language of instruction, the Merina were in an advantageous position.
Firinga points out that Malagasy was a minority language, limited to a
fraction of the Madagascan population. By using the term hova, he confers a
statutory character on this language, which he associates with the category
of commoners as distinct from slaves (andevo) and free blacks (mainty).28 He
applied the generic term ‘hova’ both to the Merina language and to the status
of a commoner. In doing so he signalled to informed readers that it was mainly
commoners who were concerned with the teaching of written Merina, which
had been written down with the Latin alphabet on the initiative of British mis-
sionaries from 1820. This led to the educational marginalisation of the vast
majority of the Madagascan population, who were members of other groups
and spoke other dialects.
While helping to establish Merina hegemony over the other linguistic groups
in Madagascar, the use of Malagasy as the first language of instruction in the
colonial school system continued and consolidated the process of establishing
a hierarchy among the citizens of the Empire. Losing their status as French citi-
zens, the Sainte-Marians also lost the possibility of learning French as a written
and spoken language. This reduced the new generation of Sainte-Marians to an
“illiterate” status while making the mastery of French a key parameter of the
citizenship regime. However, some of the Sainte-Marians, being a migrating
population, managed to develop strategies to retain a preferential position for
acquiring schooling.

27 Firinga, Mémoire sur la question saint-marienne, 13, author’s translation.

28 “The subjects, both men and women, were divided into four main categories: slaves
(andevo), free ‘blacks’ (mainty), commoner free ‘whites’ (hova) and ‘whites’ related to the
sovereign (andriana) (3), who could be considered nobles”, Cf: Faranirina Rajaonah, “Pres-
tige et métier dans la société malgache à Tananarive aux XIXe–XXe siècles,” Le ­Mouvement
social 204 (2003): 65–79, https://doi.org/10.2307/3779936
Women Teachers in Mayotte 133

4 Migration for Education

While escaping the downgrading of their citizenship status was not necessar-
ily the primary motive for migration, many Sainte-Marians emigrated to the
French colony of Mayotte from the mid-19th century onwards and greatly ben-
efited socially and economically from the move. The first arrivals, attracted by
the jobs available in the new administrative centre,29 settled in the vicinity of
the main town, Dzaoudzi, where the main French educational facilities were
located.30 These included two religious schools, the Pères du Saint-Esprit for
boys and the Sœurs de Saint-Joseph de Cluny for girls, established in 1845 and
184631 respectively. The range of schools expanded with the opening of the first
official school in Dzaoudzi in 1860, followed by M’Tsapéré in Grande-Terre in
1868. Unlike the missionary schools, these ‘official’ schools, so called to mark
their anchorage in the colonial power, provided an education similar to that
of mainland France, one that probably had strong resemblances to that which
had been available previously in Sainte-Marie. They were intended for ‘Euro-
pean’ and ‘assimilated’ pupils, and several reports mention the presence of
indigenous pupils.32 Reports also point out the failure of this education which
was based on the primary education programmes in metropolitan France.33
The case of Dzaoudzi school, which became an official ‘native school’ by
decree on 9 July 1921, shows most of the students were European or assimilated
children, admitted by authorisation of the district chief.34 The ‘native’ children
were mainly descendants of Sainte-Marians, identified in the school registers
as ‘mixed race European’, ‘Malagasy’, ‘native’ or ‘assimilated’. Thus, Dzaoudzi
school ‘was native in name only’.35
Access to secondary education was through the primary school certificate
and the subsequent passing of the competitive government examination for
entry into the sixth grade. Success in these exams was difficult to achieve as

29 Dzaoudzi became the capital of the new colony of Mayotte.

30 Dahy Rainibe, “Sainte-Marie: quelques aspects démographiques au XIXe siècle,” Omaly Sy
Anio 21–22 (1985): 87.
31 Patrick Boissel, L’école à Mayotte du XIXe siècle à nos jours (Mamoudzou: Archives dépar-
tementales de Mayotte, Service éducatif, 2017), Part 1, L’école à l’époque colonie; Isabelle
Denis, “Les religieuses de Saint-Joseph de Cluny à Mayotte, 1846–1905,” Histoire et missions
chrétiennes 16 (December 2010): 53–71, 70.
32 Journal Officiel de Madagascar, 16 juillet 1921, arrêté du 9 juillet 1921, p. 856.
33 ANOM 2 D 72, Report on the situation of the island of Mayotte in 1908, dated 19 March
1909.
34 Boissel, L’école à Mayotte du XIXe siècle à nos jours.
35 ANOM 2D74, Political report of 1921.
134 Idriss and Jaofeno

teaching conditions were difficult. The very large class sizes - between 60
and 70 pupils on average per class - was detrimental to learning, as were the
teaching conditions: lack of materials (a limited number of textbooks from
Madagascar), and defective supplies (“poor quality slates”36). In the mid-1940s
only a handful of candidates from the Comoros archipelago were admitted to
the sixth grade.37 Some of these were children of Sainte-Marie descent, who
were no doubt more familiar with the French school system. This certainly
gave them an advantage over the majority of Mahorais pupils, originally from
­Mayotte, who were unfamiliar with French.
So the Sainte-Marians of Mayotte were not excluded from French schooling
as were the other Sainte-Marians. In spite of the downgrading of their French
citizenship, and the application of native education in Mayotte in 1922, they
had the benefit of primary education in French, based on the national pro-
gram. Although mediocre in quality, this education program opened the doors
to secondary education. After an elementary primary education in French
in Mayotte,38 a certain number of children continued their secondary stud-
ies in regional schools which were for those who had passed the preliminary
examination, subsequently in high school, or in the rare girls’ home economics
schools. The best-prepared students completed their studies with a few years
in vocational higher education (agricultural school, teacher training school,
medical school, or training as interpreters or administrative officers).39 From
the confines of the Empire to the training centre of the western Indian Ocean
in Antananarivo, a network of schools was woven between the various school
centres of the region.

5 Indian Ocean Trajectories: Women’s Educational Strategies and

Networks

From 1946 education was reorganised to meet the provisions of the constitution
of France’s Fourth Republic. This put an end to restrictions on the admission

36 ANOM 2 D 76, Annual report for 1947.

37 Between 1942 and 1947, the number of candidates varied between 4 and 7, while those
admitted varied between 2 and 4 people for the whole of the archipelago. ANOM 2 D 76,
Annual report for 1947.
38 The teaching of Malagasy was certainly rendered irrelevant by Mayotte’s remoteness from
Madagascar.
39 Duteil, “De la mission laïque à la mission civilisatrice: Un instituteur colonial à Madagas-
car au début du XXe siècle.”
Women Teachers in Mayotte 135

of indigenous pupils to secondary schools.40 The admission of pupils of ‘all

origins’ marked the end of an exceptional system based on awarding ‘politi-
cal scholarships’ to colonised people under the indigénat system. Under these
new provisions, a considerable number of pupils moved between the Comoros
islands and Madagascar, which was the only territory to have established
regional girls’ schools (home economics schools).
The six home economics schools were concentrated in the Highlands
region: in Tananarive, Ambositra, Fianarantsoa and Analalava. They drew girls,
not only from different parts of Madagascar, but also from the French overseas
territories of the Indian Ocean. Their arrival in the regional schools, from the
Comoros or the coastal regions of Madagascar, created a melting pot where
pupils of different cultures, languages and beliefs41 lived together. One school,
the Avaradrova home economics school, stood out from the others for both
the quantity and quality of the education it provided. It included a section
for apprentices, which provided a purely vocational education, and a section
which prepared pupils for the entrance exam to the special section for those
students who wanted to become teachers, midwives or doctors. This school
alone accounted for more than half of the girls enrolled in secondary school.42
Unlike the boys, the girls’ entry into these schools was not conditional on
passing any tests. It consisted solely of a summary examination of their knowl-
edge of the primary school curriculum and of French. They had to acquire ‘the
practical notions useful to a good housewife’ and learn a trade ‘that could pro-
vide them with more resources in the region they live in’.43 Only the special
section of Avaradrova offered girls the possibility of accessing professional
higher education.
The choice of Avaradrova as the destination of Mayotte’s first educated girls
seems significant. The nearest home economics school was in Ananalava in
northwest Madagascar. The fact that these girls aimed for a home economics
school that was further away but offered an education leading to more reward-
ing professional careers in the colonial administration, gives an indication of
their motivation and ambitions. We hypothesise that for them it was not a mat-
ter of acquiring knowledge useful to their future as ‘housewives’, but a question

40 In Madagascar, this decision was taken on 17 August 1946. Journal Officiel de Madagascar
of 31 August 1946.
41 Mihary Jaofeno, “Les filles malgaches à l’école officielle: Histoire de la scolarisation
féminine à l’époque coloniale 1895–1960” (DEA thesis, Université de Paris Diderot, 2008).
42 CAOM, 5 (2) D 13, 1915.
43 Journal Officiel de Madagascar, 20 March 1909, decree on the reorganisation of secondary
level native schools, p. 180, article 14.
136 Idriss and Jaofeno

of obtaining a diploma that gave them resources, and so protected them from
having to depend on others.
In the Comoros the first girls to follow this curriculum were mostly girls
from the Sainte-Marian community. Many lived in the suburbs of the capi-
tal, in the M’roniumbeni and Sandravangue districts, and had similar profiles.
Of Sainte-Marian descent, and from modest backgrounds, many of them had
grown up in single-parent families, their mothers providing for the household’s
needs by working as auxiliaries in the administration or in the service trades
(sewing, laundry, sales, etc.).
The first girl to make the move was apparently Paulette-Albertine Henry, a
neighbour of Anne-Marie Novou.44 She had obtained a “political scholarship”
from the General Council of the Comoros, by order of the General Govern-
ment in January 1944, to continue her studies. Her departure to Tananarive
opened the way to a series of other departures by girls, who were no doubt
better informed of the steps to take towards, and the possibilities of obtaining,
a scholarship. There had been “political scholarships” at the beginning of the
century, but the creation of the General Council of the Comoros in 1946 gave
the councillors the task of awarding educational scholarships,45 until a real
“system of educational scholarships allocated from the territory’s budget” was
established in 1957.46
Several girls from the Sainte-Marian community followed in Paulette-­
Albertine’s footsteps: the Novou sisters (Edmée and Anne-Marie), Sonia Giraud,
Augustine Behava and Juliette Bébé from Mayotte, Faouzia Saïd Ahmed from
Grande Comore, Michelle Payet, and Hélène Mac Luckie, daughter of a planter
based in Anjouan. This first count shows the predominance of Sainte-Marian
descendants from the Sandravangue district among the pioneers of girls’ higher
levels of schooling in Mayotte. As far as the island of Mayotte is concerned, the
existence of a network of family and friends in the microcosm of Petite-Terre
may explain the predominance of Sainte-Marians. Not only did this network
enable the girls to set up a chain of mutual aid and support regarding choice
of study, and the difficulties due to remoteness, it also facilitated procedures
because people who had already taken those steps could provide guidance.
In addition to the Dzaoudzi-Tananarive route, a second route for pupils from
Mayotte was created in 1949 when a course was created in Mitsamiouli on Grande
Comore, offering first and second level education. The establishment of this

44 Interview with Martial Henry, Pamandzi, 2018.

45 Decree of 25 November 1946, Article 33–19.
46 Journal Officiel of 23 July 1957, Decree No. 57–814 of 22 July 1957, p. 7 263–273, Articles
40–26 and 27.
Women Teachers in Mayotte 137

structure led to an influx of pupils, most of them boys, from all over the Comoros
archipelago. Its transfer to new premises in Moroni in 1954, and its conversion
into a teacher training college for the Comoros three years later, helped to make
Grande Comore one of the focal points of school education in the archipelago.
The students gained admittance to this school via a competitive examina-
tion and were supervised by teachers from metropolitan France. The board-
ing school system enabled students, boys exclusively from Anjouan, Mayotte
and Moheli to enrol. From there, at the end of the fourth year, they took the
exit exams which enabled them to continue their studies in Madagascar, at
the expense of the Comoros administration. On 1 January 1954 there were 51
Comorian scholarship holders in Madagascar, distributed as follows:
Medical School...... 4
Lycée Gallieni ....14
College of Administration Le Myre de Vilers ...18
College of Administration in Tulear...10
School of Water and Forests ...1
School of veterinary auxiliaries ...1
Avaradrova Girls’ College...3
ADM 18W16, 1954 report
While the home economics school stands out with three female laureates,
the Gallieni high school and the Le Myre de Vilers administration college
accounted for the majority of male scholarship holders. Thus Grande Comore
was progressively becoming the nodal point for the schooling of pupils of both
genders from the Comoros archipelago prior to their continuation of their
studies at the training centre of Antananarivo.
All pupils from the Comoros archipelago had to follow these e­ ducational
pathways. As a result, from an early age, they acquired a varied form of
­socialisation outside of the family circle. Although they did not attend the
same schools, girls and boys took similar trajectories. The Moroni teacher
training school offered co-educational education, while the elite schools of
Antananarivo operated a gender division, the two sexes meeting only in public
areas within the well-defined perimeter of Antananarivo’s sacred hills. While
the girls boarded at the home economics school, the first cohort of boys from
Mayotte went to the Le Myre de Vilers or Gallieni high schools. Future politi-
cians and civil servants of the administration, some of them like Younoussa
Bamana and Anne-Marie’s future husband, Marcel Henry, both of Sainte-­
Marian descent, were later the mainstays of the struggle for French Mayotte
when the question of independence was on the agenda in the early 1970s.
Anne-Marie’s education journey is a good example of a varied trajectory
oscillating between teaching centres. In 1948, when she had completed her
138 Idriss and Jaofeno

primary education, her mother sent her to Grande Comore for a year to do her
sixth grade in Mitsamiouli. She boarded with a Comorian family, probably on
the recommendation of friends, and was the only girl in the school. Her mother
did not know the family, but this did not stop her from entrusting her daugh-
ter to them. Sending children away to school was common in the Comoros at
that time, as it was in Madagascar. As there was only one secondary school in
Grande Comore from 1949 to 1960, several prominent families, well integrated
in colonial administration and plantation circles, welcomed children from all
over the archipelago. This not only represented solidarity between households,
helping to build strong links outside the family network, it was also a form of
philanthropy, and a source of prestige. No exchange of services was demanded
in return.
We now present the stories of Anne-Marie and Juliette before we analyse
their educational and migrational strategies.

6 The Stories of Anne-Marie and Juliette

Anne-Marie was born July 26, 1936, in Dzaoudzi. She grew up in the Sainte-
Marian district of M’roniumbeni in a family of eight, with five brothers and
three sisters (see family tree). Her mother, who was self-taught and a nurse at
the hospital in Dzaoudzi, apparently wanted her children to continue their
studies post primary school. All of them took diploma courses in the French
education system. On the boys’ side there were engineering graduates, while
the girls went into the caring professions or education, in line with the gen-
der division inherent in the colonial education system. Being one of the older
children and therefore considered responsible for contributing to the family
income, Anne-Marie did not wish to continue her studies. After obtaining her
teaching certificate, she almost immediately took up a teaching post to sup-
port her mother financially. She first taught in Mitsamiouli in Grande Comore
where her husband Marcel Henry worked. He was the leader of the Congrès des
Notables party, which called for Mayotte to be joined to France as a départe-
ment (The Congrès des Notables became the Mouvement Populaire Mahorais
(MPM) in 1966). Anne-Marie and Marcel Henry had similar backgrounds. They
were neighbours, of Christian faith, and both their mothers were from Saint-
Marie, and were among the many Saint-Marie women to move to Mayotte in
the second half of the 20th century. From 1959 to 1978, Anne-Marie taught in
Mayotte at the primary school in Dzaoudzi. She started a family there while
her husband gained increasing political prominence, being elected to the terri-
torial assembly in 1966 and 1972. In 1978 they left Mayotte for Paris because her
Women Teachers in Mayotte 139

husband had been elected Senator for Mayotte. He held this position for more
than twenty years while Anne-Marie stopped working and devoted herself to
raising their five children. Anne-Marie died in Mamoudzou on May 1, 2020.
Juliette was born in Mayotte in 1945 and grew up in Petite-Terre with her
mother and her grandmother, the latter born in Sainte-Marie in 1890. She was
the third of six children. Of Sainte-Marian descent, she lived near the capital
of Mayotte, Dzaoudzi, in the Sandravangue district, which is mainly inhab-
ited by the island’s Sainte-Marian community. For primary education she
went to the official school in Dzaoudzi before going directly to the Avaradrova
home economics school in Antananarivo. She obtained her school certifi-
cate and returned to Mayotte in 1964 to take up her first teaching post at the
M’Roniumbeni school. She taught there until December 1968, when she joined
her husband in Paris.
Despite family opposition, she married Ambroise, whom she met during
her stay at the Tananarive home economics school. He was of Central African
origin. He had studied at the Le Myre de Vilers high school and trained as a
teacher. Four children were born of Juliette’s marriage to Ambroise.
After a brief stay in Paris, from 1968 to 1970, they decided to move to the Cen-
tral African Republic where they both taught, he in a high school and she in a
girls’ school, until 1982. She introduced co-education the country and forged
ahead in her career, working as a pedagogical advisor from 1983 to 1986, sub-
sequently director of pre-school education at the Ministry from 1987 to 1994,
and finally inspector of pre-schools from 1995 to 1999. Juliette died in Troyes on
February 22, 2005.

7 Education, Friendship and Love in Antananarivo

The years of secondary school for young women like Anne-Marie and Juliette
were a time of new socialisation, new friendships and new love. Despite the
gender divide at the time, ties of acquaintance and the proximity of the edu-
cational institutions on the hills of Antananarivo made it easy for secondary
school girls and boys to meet. Socialising both in and outside of school helped
to build up a community of graduates across gender, class and race.
The boarding school years were a time for leaving one’s family and forg-
ing new friendships, some of these lasting into adulthood. Despite her regular
returns to Mayotte during the school holidays, and regular correspondence,
Juliette’s stay in the Malagasy capital marked a kind of break with her fam-
ily. New relationships transformed the daily life of young girls who had grown
up in a family setting that was less open to cultural diversity than were the
140 Idriss and Jaofeno

schools. Juliette’s diary shows the emotional shock this period gave her in this
regard. Her diary lifts the veil on a youth made up of encounters, of holiday
loves evolving into platonic friendships, all reflecting a greater freedom of
movement in a larger territory.
It was during this period that Juliette met her future husband, Ambroise.
He was staying at the Le Myre le Vilers boys’ school,47 not far from the home
economics school. Juliette met him through her circle of friends during the
school holidays in Mantasoa,48 near the capital Antananarivo. A letter-writing
relationship very soon began with the complicity of friends, the pair sending
their letters to each other without the knowledge of the school’s supervisors.
At first their meetings were occasional, arranged for formal events such as the
Sunday mass in Andohalo on the hilly outskirts of Antananarivo.49 Then they
met frequently, walking in the surrounding countryside, or meeting at friends’
houses, or in the city to eat ice cream, or near Juliette’s school, as mentioned
in a summons sent to Ambroise by the headmistress of the home economics
school.
Interestingly, the headmistress’s reaction to the discovery of the intimate
relationship between one of her boarders and a young pupil of the elite Le
Myre de Vilers school was far from unfavourable. She received him in her office
and simply warned him of the ‘irreparable’, in other words the risk of preg-
nancy. This is how Juliette described the incident.50 By not expressing hostil-
ity to the relationship, the headmistress of Avaradrova was tacitly expressing
her agreement to it, and, in so doing, displaying a certain adherence to the
ideal of ‘advanced’ couples in vogue in the territories of French West Africa.
And indeed, Juliette continued to see Ambroise despite these revelations. That
same year, she was invited to the end-of-year ball organised by the Myre de
Vilers school, where she danced with her companion under the benevolent
gaze of her mathematics teacher. The implicit validation of this relationship by
the teaching staff can certainly be explained by Ambroise’s achieved academic

47 Faranirina Rajaonah, “L’école Le Myre de Vilers (1940–1950): politique des races et forma-
tion d’une élite nationale à Madagascar,” in La nation malgache au défi de l’ethnicité, eds.
Françoise Raison-Jourde, and Sofolo Randriana (Paris: Karthala, 2002), 183–206.
48 A Malagasy royal resort town in the pre-colonial period.
49 Interview, husband of Juliette Bébé
50 Juliette wrote in her diary that she was talking to a group of boarders in the company of
boys from Le Myre. The headmistress saw the group and told them that visiting time was
over. Later, the matron noticed Ambroise coming regularly to the school, and informed
the headmistress. According to Ambroise, she summoned him, asked for his identity and
then for the reasons for his visits, and gave him a warning (Interview with Ambroise, 3
February 2018) Juliette does not mention this event in her diary.
Women Teachers in Mayotte 141

level and the staff’s approval for educated youngsters forming relationships.51
Coming from the privileged background of the best high school in Antanana-
rivo, Ambroise would be considered highly eligible and as having all the attrib-
utes of a good match. Hence the absence of reprimands received by Juliette,
as her diary confirms. Thus, romantic relationships, while not being officially
approved by the school management, were at least tolerated insofar as they
met the expectations of the institution, i.e. the formation of ‘advanced’ cou-
ples, and it was in the intervals of boarding school life that the girls explored
and experimented with these relationships.
The years at the Avaradrova home economics school were thus a period
of transition for the girls, both professionally and personally. The social and
racial mix within the community of students from all over Madagascar and the
Comoros archipelago contributed to the formation of an Indian Ocean impe-
rial elite beyond the internal borders of the Empire. The formation of this
homogeneous group with similar educational capital and similar upward
mobility had significant effects on civic practices and introduced a new way
of forging citizenship. Indeed, this new social group, being better equipped
educationally than the mainly primary and lower secondary school educated
previous generation, was better able to access the political and social sphere
and transform it.
Attending primary school and then secondary education at the Avaradrova
home economics school had a strong impact on the girls’ social and profes-
sional trajectories. Their new function as teachers in Mayotte, at the source of
the chain of knowledge, was a key factor in the emergence of new models of
womanhood and its concomitant redefinition of gender relations.

8 Social Changes in Mayotte

On their return to Mayotte, the newly qualified women teachers conveyed

new ideas about the place of women in society and the need for girls’ educa-
tion. These aspirations, although not expressed in politically committed terms,
were nevertheless reflected in the women’s daily actions and way of life.
The educational project of these young teachers was part of an old fam-
ily project which they themselves had not initiated. As Anne-Marie recalls
with admiration, her mother had fought for the education of her children. Her
efforts had borne fruit, since all her children followed elitist training courses

51 For the same practices in West Africa see Barthélémy, Africaines et diplômées à l’époque
coloniale, 1918–1957, 139–153.
 142

Lucien Novou Salavavy Joséphine

Of English origin Tembo
of Sainte-Marian origin

Bertine Novou
Born in 1915 in Sainte-
Marie Midwife

Bernardine Anne-Marie Christian Edmée Charles Yves Jean-Claude Jean-Jacques

Armand
Teacher Surgeon Anaesthetic Engineer School of Gendarme professor of
death nurse administration sport (born in
Paris 1947)

Figure 5.4 Family tree of the Novou family

Idriss and Jaofeno
Women Teachers in Mayotte 143

and held comfortable positions in the administration (as civil engineers,

nurses or surgeons).52 This is also the case with Juliette’s sister, who became a
doctor. Although this upward mobility reflected women’s aspirations for social
advancement and financial independence, these aspirations were not explic-
itly formulated as a social demand. The women wanted to defend a Sainte-
Marian school habitus, promoting what they saw as an ideal of life centered
on education.
Nonetheless, these women were implicitly promoting that ideal in the con-
text of debates about the development of the colonial territories, in the course
of which two phases emerged. The first, between 1900 and 1930, coincided
with the development of native education.53 The second, between 1930 and
1960, was part of a rationale of ‘adapted’ or ‘vocational’ education promoted
by missionaries, the colonial apparatus and, later, by international organisa-
tions such as UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation). The concept of ‘fundamental education’ strongly influenced
the debate, as did that of ‘mass education’, which was seen, both by the former
colonial government and the local governments, as essential for the develop-
ment of democratic regimes in the newly independent African states. To this
end, improvements in the population’s standard of living were closely tied to
issues of health, nutrition, productivity and social welfare.54
Apart from strictly educational issues, it was in the private sphere that new
gender dynamics took shape under the impetus of the teachers. On leaving
the home economics school, Juliette and Anne-Marie each entered into an
endogamous, monogamous marriage within their own social educated class.
In so doing they were making a break from a local marriage, which tended to
be short-lived and fragile.55
In the late 1950s, after graduating, Anne-Marie was transferred to the town
of Mitsamiouli in the north of Grande Comore. She joined up with a childhood

52 Cf: Novou family tree.

53 Damiano Matasci, Miguel Bandeira Jeronimo, and Hugo Gonçalves Dores, “­Introduction:
Historical Trajectories of Education and Development in (Post)Colonial Africa,” in
­Education and Development in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa: Policies, Paradigms,
and Entanglements, 1890s–1980s, eds. Damiano Matasci, Miguel Bandeira Jeronimo, and
Hugo Gonçalves Dores (Cham: Palgrave McMillan, 2020), 7. See also Kallaway, The Chang-
ing Face of Colonial Education in Africa: Education, Science and Development.
54 Matasci, Jeronimo, and Dores, “Introduction: Historical Trajectories”; See also Kallaway,
The Changing Face of Colonial Education in Africa: Education, Science and Development, 19.
55 As Paul Ottino points out, it was not uncommon for a woman to contract three or four
marriages in her lifetime. This pattern is also found in the Sainte-Marian community in
Mayotte. Paul Ottino, “La crise du système familial et matrimonial des Sakalava de Nosy
Be,” Civilisation malgache, 1 (1964): 225–248.
144 Idriss and Jaofeno

friend, Marcel Henry who worked for the largest colonial perfume plant
company in the north of Grande Comore, the Société anonyme de Grande
Comores. Marcel was of Sainte-Marie origin and came from the same social
background as Anne-Marie. Their parents were neighbours and friends; both
sets of parents had migrated to Mayotte at the same time, in the second half
of the 19th century. This shared family history, as well as their own educational
careers in two renowned schools of Antananarivo (Marcel had studied at Le
Myre le Vilers), followed a new pattern of endogamy within the Sainte-Marian
community – with marriage.56 While attaching themselves to a social group,
they indirectly adopted the Christian values of lasting monogamy conveyed
by the ideal of the ‘advanced couple’ promoted at the home economics school.
While these practices had the advantage of normalising gender relations and
modifying family organisation by introducing a shared patronymic system and
property inheritance by descent, they generally remained permeable and not
very strict, as shown by the continuance of polygamy alongside Christian prac-
tices at that time.
Juliette’s marriage to Ambroise was not without complications. Although
she had the tacit approval of the teaching staff at the home economics school,
her family was somewhat hostile to the marriage because of her partner’s
Central African origins.57 According to Juliette’s son, the family wanted her to
marry a Frenchman or ‘a Comorian minister’. One of Juliette’s former students
also testifies that Ambroises’s Central African origins posed a problem despite
his job:

Her family was well off and her parents did not want her to marry the
father because he was African. The father of [Juliette’s son by Ambroise]
came here, stayed for a while and then left. But she didn’t let him go. She
didn’t attach importance to his origin, to all that. She was ahead of her
generation. She was open-minded. She made the revolution here.

Despite her attempts at dialogue,58 Juliette’s parents did not relent. They were
not present when Juliette married Ambroise in a civil ceremony in Antanana-
rivo in October 1967. Her choice was a clear-cut decision in the face of family

56 Mamaye Idriss, “Femmes et engagement pour la départementalisation de Mayotte

(1958–2011): Dynamiques du genre dans les luttes sociales et politiques dans l’archipel des
Comores” (PhD dissertation, Université de Paris Cité, 2019).
57 Juliette mentions ‘criticism’ of Ambroise in her diary, without further details.
58 Still a student, Ambroise travelled to Mayotte on his own initiative to meet Juliette’s
­parents. Ambroise interview, Petite-Terre, 3 February 2018.
Women Teachers in Mayotte 145

expectations, which were part of their strategies for social advancement, inter-
twined with the preference for a marriage with a Sainte-Marian. Her family
said her husband did not meet their criteria for the ideal son-in-law, and they
immediately disqualified him as a son-in-law, despite his educational back-
ground and financial situation.59
What stands out in this decision is the freedom Juliette gave herself in the
face of family injunctions. Her salary as a teacher enabled her to face criticism
and to free herself from various social norms and prejudices, but her attitude
may also be linked to individuation processes and the values transmitted dur-
ing her schooling. Similarly, the marital ideal that emerges from her diary, full
of romanticism and chivalric ideals worthy of Western medieval courtly love,
demonstrates the strong influence of her student years in shaping her life as
a woman and a wife. Her adherence to a Western model of life, if it can be
defined in this way, can also be seen from her clothing and hairstyle.60 She used
a hair straightening iron while most young girls braided their hair, and she
wore shorts to play basketball in Labattoir with her friends.61 Our two school-
teachers from Sainte-Marian backgrounds can thus be seen in their youth to
be challenging the more local forms of marriage of their original social group,
preferring an ‘advanced’ Western-style vision of a married couple.62 They con-
formed to a system of endogamous, monogamous marriages practised only by
the colonial category of ‘advanced young people’ and, in Anne-Marie’s case,
reinforced by a certain rootedness in the Sainte-Marian community. Finally,
education, at the centre of their family project, became the reference for social
development and a model for the following generations.

9 Women Teachers’ Contribution to Education

From the 1960s onwards new dynamics in the teaching field emerged as a result
of certain initiatives of young female graduates. Although it is hard to know
the details of their teaching methods, the testimony of one of Juliette’s former
students tells us something about her pedagogical initiatives in the classroom
and the place she took up in the hearts of her students.63

59 Former student interview, 12 November 2020, Labattoir, Mayotte, author’s translation

60 Interview with her son, 10 February 2018, Pamandzi.
61 Interview with former student, op.cit.
62 Barthélémy, and Jézéquel, “Marier les ‘demoiselles frigidaires’ et les ‘mangeurs de craies’:
l’idéal du ménage lettré et l’administration coloniale en Afrique Occidentale Française,”
77–96.
63 The Labattoir 4 primary school now bears his name.
146 Idriss and Jaofeno

After graduating from the Ecole Normale in 1964, Juliette was appointed
assistant teacher at the primary school in Dzaoudzi. She began her career in
the new school in M’roniumbeni district, a school built specifically to relieve
overcrowding at the school in Sandravangue. It seems to have been her unau-
thorised use of ‘forbidden’ languages in class that endeared her to her pupils.
This was an innovative approach in the multilingual context of Mayotte:

In class, she used different languages depending on the situation. We

were Francophiles but French was not our mother tongue. The textbooks
we used were written by Malagasy people; we had African literature too.
We read authors like Rabemananjara. We had books from IPAM [Institut
Pédagogique Africain et Malgache] ... In fact there were times when she
was obliged to speak in Shimaore. She would ask us to write the word on
the board and then she would correct it. She was like that. [...] It was rare
for other teachers to do that. They followed the rules. Madame Bébé did
it. She spoke to us like that and we understood. We would speak Shimaore
and then she would correct, she would explain.

On an island where few pupils spoke French, the use of local languages -
­Shimaore, Shibushi - was a valuable learning aid. According to her former pupil,
the use of the children’s mother tongue, made possible by her own mastery
of both these languages, helped the pupils to understand. They could express
themselves in their own language if they experienced difficulties, while the
teacher used it to explain elements of the lesson if they had not understood. In
this way, content was more important than form in the knowledge transmis-
sion process.64
Pupils were forbidden to use languages other than French as remembered
former pupil of Juliette. So Juliette was taking liberties in her teaching that
other teachers did not take, and that only a teacher able to speak these lan-
guages would be able to do:

In fact, we were forbidden to speak Shimaore; French was compulsory

but it was difficult for us. Outside school we didn’t speak French. Mad-
ame Bébé was different, she saw further ahead. She used both languages.
Today we try mother tongues at school, but she was already doing it then.
By mixing French and Shimaore in the classroom, Juliette Bébé distanced
herself from teaching exclusively in French; she gave a new place to local

64 Interview with a former student of Juliette, Petite-Terre, 12 November 2020, author’s

translation.
Women Teachers in Mayotte 147

languages, which nevertheless remained secondary in usage since they

were limited to oral expression.65 It should be noted that the introduc-
tion of local languages in education was not a novelty. Malagasy was
taught in schools on the Big Island. Juliette Bébé’s particularity was in
mixing languages and using mother tongues for educational purposes.66

The particularity of Juliette’s teaching practice was not limited to the question
of language. It included a deep commitment to her young pupils. As her son
likes to say, “school was a religion” at home.67 She often discussed personal
issues with her pupils, even visiting their homes to enquire about them when
they were absent. Through her commitment, she seems to have been a model
in the eyes of her pupils, as one of them recalls:

At the time, she was a respected teacher. Respected because all education
was [and had been] geared towards respecting the masters [since Koranic
school], as well as respecting the elders. The fundi,68 the holder of knowl-
edge, was very important. For us, our State school teachers were also our
fundi. We used to hide out of respect when our teachers passed by.69

This shows Juliette to have been equated by her pupils with a Koranic teacher
(fundi). This statement is particularly revealing of the place she acquired in the
eyes of her pupils, and also within society. In fact, in Mayotte society, Koranic
teachers, male or female, were not only responsible for initiating pupils into
the precepts of religion and the rudiments of writing and reading. Activities
could concern many other fields such as the knowledge of medicinal plants
and farming.70 These teachers also had a certain kudos with the parents, who
allowed them to intervene in more personal matters or to discipline unruly
children. Without playing this role directly, Juliette rose to the rank of Koranic
teacher in the eyes of her pupils, who saw in her care and commitment an
approach very different from the normal, accepted attitude of their teachers.
As for Anne-Marie Novou, we have no precise information about her
­teaching and pedagogic approach apart from the fact that she taught in

65 In the madrasas, the Koranic schools of Mayotte, Shimaore was written in Arabic script.
66 Interview with a former student of Juliette, author’s translation.
67 Interview with a former student of Juliette
68 Shimaore term for Koranic masters or mistresses.
69 Interview with Juliette Bébé’s former student, author’s translation.
70 Maoulida Mchangama, and Marie Salaün, “Recueil d’une pharmacopée à Mayotte: le
savoir sur les plantes médicinales de Maoulida Mchangama,” Études Océan indien 48
(2012): 229–292.
148 Idriss and Jaofeno

Petite-Terre from 1958.71 The children, about fifty in total, and at all different
levels, were grouped together in one class and taught by a pair of teachers,
Anne-Marie and a teacher from the mainland. This configuration undoubtedly
reduced the possibility of using several languages in class.
The arrival in Mayotte of young women with diplomas to take up teaching
posts raised awareness among local women of the benefits of French school-
ing. Most of the educated women’s childhood friends in Mayotte had gone to
Koranic schools and glimpsed, through their returning friends, a new way of
achieving independence, autonomy, and social advancement. Anne-Marie’s
influence was all the stronger because she was the wife of one of the leaders
of the Congrès des Notables, the movement whose aim was to keep the island
under French administration. In the mid-1960s this movement benefited from
the mass support of the women on the island of Petite-Terre.72 Although Anne-
Marie did not intervene publicly in the political arena, she undoubtedly played
a leading role in the emergence of women’s demands by suggesting the idea
of a French citizenship for the educated.73 Juliette, for her part, ardently sup-
ported the schooling of girls from 1964 onwards without, however, adopting
and promoting explicitly feminist demands.74
The first generation of female teachers in Mayotte had a strong influence on
women’s representations and imaginations. Their more inclusive educational
practice, based on the pupils’ knowledge (languages, content knowledge) and
their proximity to the population (mastery of local languages, family ties)
helped to drive a growing a desire for schooling in Mayotte,75 making French
education a lever for the exercise of a ‘new’ citizenship. Given the citizenship
laws in force in the French Empire, the aim was to achieve, through education,
a higher citizenship status than the one they enjoyed as indigenous people.

71 The sudden death of Anne-Marie in 2020 cut short our investigation.

72 Mamaye Idriss, “Le mouvement des chatouilleuse : genre et violence dans l’action
politique à Mayotte (1966–1976),” Le Mouvement Social 255 (2016): 57–70, https://doi
.org/10.3917/lms.255.0057
73 It is difficult to establish what form the discussions took. At the interview, Anne-Marie
was very reticent on this subject. See: Interview with Anne-Marie Henry, Paris, 2018.
74 This raises the question of the existence of implicit Afrofeminism . Cf. Jennifer A. Boittin,
Jacqueline Couti, Lucia Direnberger, Silyane Larcher, Rose Ndengue,and Myriam Paris,
Colloquium on Black Feminisms in the French (Post)Imperial Context: Histories, Experiences
and Theories, at the Cité des Humanités et des sciences sociales, Campus Condorcet,
­Paris-Aubervilliers (France), 3 to 5 March 2020.
75 Goguel, Aux origines du mai malgache, Compétition sociale et désir d’école, 1951–1972.
Women Teachers in Mayotte 149

10 Conclusion

Nurtured in the close community of Petite-Terre, the young girls of the Sainte-
Marian community were pioneers of girls’ schooling in Mayotte during the
colonial period. Following the example of their brothers, they were prompted
to join the first official schools by a Sainte-Marian habitus inherited from the
maternal line. Their enrolment in secondary school was driven by a family
project for upward mobility, but the logic behind it was to preserve the status
of common law citizen in a citizenship system that hierarchically ranked the
populations of the Empire according to their literacy level (mastery of French
and ability to read and write).
Their school journey took them to the Avaradrova home economics school
in the Malagasy capital. While their stay gave them an educational diploma,
it also gave them new social relations and a network of links with pupils from
the Southwest Indian Ocean region. It was during this period that an imperial
elite was formed, characterised by a common experience of mobility, a school
culture, and a network of friends who were in favour of mixed marriages.
Their stay away from their families bore and germinated the seeds of an
individuation process in the course of which a new ideal of life was conceived,
often in opposition to local social practices. They traced the contours of a new
model of womanhood both in the private sphere (monogamous and endoga-
mous marriage strategy) and the professional sphere (in their teaching prac-
tices). Juliette broke the rules by introducing her pupils’ mother tongues into
her teaching practice. Anne-Marie, on the other hand, played a central role as
a model of social success and as the wife of the leader of the fight to separate
Mayotte from the rest of the Comoros archipelago. Both women had consider-
able kudos in society and became role models for future generations.
The tributes paid to them today, such as the naming of the M’Roniumbeni
school after Juliette, and the creation of the Juliette Bébé association to pro-
mote education in Mayotte, show how important her role, and the roles of
other women like Anne-Marie, were for the general population. Similarly, the
importance which came to accrue to female teachers tells us about the central
place given to French education in Mayotte society. More than a tool for the
development of colonised societies, education in the French school system
also proved to be a springboard for freedom and equality between men and
women.76 It was also, for the people of Mayotte, the means of achieving full

76 In an interview, playwright Charifati Soumaila agrees: “In my opinion, yes, it [schooling] helps
to liberate women’s speech because at school men and women are equal.They both acquire the
same knowledge and skills.” https://revueprojectiles.com/2020/11/15/en-tant-que-femme
150 Idriss and Jaofeno

French citizenship, as witness the 1960s political campaign to keep the island
under French administration as a département.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ellen Vea Rosnes, Pierre Guidi and Jean-Luc Martineau
for their suggestions in improving the article and also many thanks to ­Harriet
Coleman for the additional translation with the support of the Institut national
d’études démographiques (INED).

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les ‘mangeurs de craies’: l’idéal du ménage lettré et l’administration coloniale en
Afrique Occidentale Française.” In Perspectives historiques sur le genre en Afrique,
edited by Odile Goerg, 77–96. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2017.
Boissel, Patrick. L’école à Mayotte du XIXe siècle à nos jours. Mamoudzou: Archives
départementales de Mayotte, Service éducatif, 2017. Part 1, L’école à l’époque colonie
[unpaginated review].
Boittin, Jennifer A., Jacqueline Couti, Lucia Direnberger, Silyane Larcher, Rose
­Ndengue, and Myriam Paris. Colloquium on Black Feminisms in the French (Post)
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ences sociales, Campus Condorcet, Paris-Aubervilliers (France), 3 to 5 March 2020.
Deleigne, Marie-Christine. “Les jardins scolaires du premier degré à Madagascar (1916–
1951).” Histoire de l’éducation 128 (2010/4): 103–128.
Denis, Isabelle. “Les religieuses de Saint-Joseph de Cluny à Mayotte, 1846–1905.” ­Histoire
et missions chrétiennes 16 (December 2010): 53–71.
Duteil, Simon. “De la mission laïque à la mission civilisatrice: Un instituteur colonial à
Madagascar au début du XXe siècle.” Histoire de l’éducation 128 (2010): 79–102.
Duteil, Simon. “Enseignants coloniaux: Madagascar, 1896–1960.” PhD dissertation,
­University of Le Havre, 2009.
Duteil, Simon. “Institutrices françaises à Madagascar (1896–1939).” Outre-mers 98, no.
370 (2011): 161–172.

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accessed on 7 December 2020.
Women Teachers in Mayotte 151

Duteil, Simon. “Un instituteur colonial à Madagascar au début du XXe siècle.” Histoire
de l’éducation 128 (2010): 79–102. https://doi.org/10.4000/histoire-education.2271
Eyrard, Jean-Paul. Mayotte et l’école: 145 ans d’une histoire singulière: Mémoire du
CHEAM. Paris: CHEAM, 1990.
Firinga, Joachim. Mémoire sur la question saint-marienne. Paris: Inalco, 1912.
Goguel, Anne-Marie. Aux origines du mai malgache, Compétition sociale et désir d’école,
1951–1972. Paris: Éditions Khartala, 2006.
Hofmeyr, Isabel, Preben Kaarsholm, and Bodil Folke Frederiksen. “Introduction: Print
Cultures, Nationalisms and Publics in the Indian Ocean.” Africa: The Journal of the
International African Institute 81, no. 1 (2011): 1–22.
Idriss, Mamaye. “Femmes et engagement pour la départementalisation de May-
otte (1958–2011): Dynamiques du genre dans les luttes sociales et politiques dans
l’archipel des Comores.” PhD dissertation, Université de Paris Cité, 2019.
Idriss, Mamaye. Le combat pour Mayotte française. Paris: Karthala, 2018.
Idriss, Mamaye. “Le mouvement des chatouilleuses: genre et violence dans l’action
politique à Mayotte (1966–1976).” Le Mouvement Social, 255 (2016): 57–70, https://
doi.org/10.3917/lms.255.0057
Jaofeno, Mihary. “Les filles malgaches à l’école officielle. Histoire de la scolarisation
féminine à l’époque coloniale 1895–1960.” DEA thesis, Université de Paris Diderot,
2008.
Kallaway, Peter. The Changing Face of Colonial Education in Africa:. Education, Science
and Development. London: Routledge, 2020.
Koerner, Francis. Histoire de l’enseignement privé et officiel à Madagascar (1820–
1995): les implications religieuses et politiques dans la formation d’un peuple. Paris:
L’Harmattan, 1999.
Labrune-Badiane, Céline, and Étienne Smith. Les Hussards Noirs de la colonie: Institu-
teurs africains et petites patries en AOF, 1913–1960. Paris: Karthala, 2018.
Mahmoud, Ibrahime. “Madagascar, un modèle pour les Comores ?” in Madagascar et
l’Afrique: entre identité insulaire et appartenances historiques, edited by Faranirina
Rajaonah, and Didier Nativel, 273–293. Paris: Karthala, 2007.
Matasci, Damiano, Miguel Bandeira Jeronimo, and Hugo Gonçalves Dores. “Intro-
duction: Historical Trajectories of Education and Development in (Post)Colonial
Africa.” In Education and Development in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa: Policies,
Paradigms, and Entanglements, 1890s–1980s, edited by Damiano Matasci, Miguel
Bandeira Jeronimo, and Hugo Gonçalves Dores. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Mchangama, Maoulida, and Marie Salaün. “Recueil d’une pharmacopée à Mayotte: le
savoir sur les plantes médicinales de Maoulida Mchangama.” Études Océan indien
48, (2012): 229–292.
152 Idriss and Jaofeno

Merle, Isabelle. “De la « légalisation » de la violence en contexte colonial: Le régime de

l’indigénat en question.” Politix: Revue des sciences sociales du politique 66 (2004):
137–162.
Ottino, Paul. “La crise du système familial et matrimonial des Sakalava de Nosy Be.”
Civilisation malgache 1, (1964): 225–248.
Rainibe, Dahy. “Sainte-Marie: Quelques aspects démographiques au XIXe siècle.”
Omaly Sy Anio 21–22, (1985): 79–92.
Rajaonah, Faranirina. “Prestige et métier dans la société malgache à ­Tananarive
aux XIXe–XXe siècles.” Le Mouvement social 204, (2003): 65–79. https://doi
.org/10.2307/3779936
Rogers, Rebecca. “Éducation, religion et colonisation en Afrique aux XIXe et XXe
­siècles.” Clio: Histoire’ femmes et sociétés 5, no. 6 (1997): 1–5.
Rosnes Ellen Vea, and Monique Irène Rakotoanosy. “Contextualising the place of
French and Malagasy in Madagascar’s education system: A historical perspective.”
Paedagogica Historica 52, no. 1–2 (2016): 43–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230
.2015.1133670
Rosnes, Ellen Vea. The Norwegian Mission’s Literacy Work in Colonial and Independent
Madagascar. London: Routledge, 2020.
Semley, Lorelle. To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France’s Atlantic Empire.
­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Stock, Brian. The implication of Literacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Thénault, Sylvie. “L’indigénat dans l’Empire français: Algérie/Cochinchine, une double
matrice.” Monde(s) 12 (2017): 21–40. https://doi.org/10.3917/mond1.172.0021
Young, Robert. Colonial Desire. Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London:
­Routledge, 1995.

Private Archives
Firinga Joachim, Mémoire sur la question saint-mariennes, Inalco, Paris, 1912.
Committee for the Protection of the Defence of the Indigenous People, St. Mary’s
Island, Six Thousand French Stripped of Citizenship, 1911.
Diary of Juliette Bébé, undated, 19 pages.

Public Archives
Printed Sources
Journal Officiel of 23 July 1957, Decree No. 57–814 of 22 July 1957.
Journal Officiel de Madagascar of 20 March 1909, decree on the reorganisation of
­secondary level native schools.
Journal Officiel de Madagascar, 16 July 1921, order of 9 July 1921.
Journal Officiel de Madagascar of 31 August 1946.
Decree of 25 November 1946, Article 33–19.
Women Teachers in Mayotte 153

Administrative Sources
Civil status of Dzaoudzi (years 1850–1900)
ADM 18W16, 1954 report.
ANOM 2 D 72, Report on the situation of the island of Mayotte in 1908 dated 19 March
1909.
ANOM 3 D 3, Report of 3 May 1909 on the Public Education Service.
ANOM 2 D 73, Political and administrative report for the year 1914.
ANOM 2D74, Political report of 1921.
ANOM 2D74, 1922 report of the provincial head, Mayotte et dépendances.
ANOM 2 D 76, Annual report for 1947.
CAOM, 5 (2) D 13, 1915.

Oral Sources
Mamaye Idriss Interview with Anne-Marie Novou, Paris, July 2018.
Mihary Jaofeno interview with the nephew of Anne-Marie Novou, Mamoudzou, 26
September 2020.
Mamaye Idriss interview with Martial Henry, Pamandzi, 13 August 2020, 2018.
Mihary Jaofeno interview with the son of Madame Bébé, Pamandzi, 10 February 2018,
04 March 2021.
Mihary Jaofeno interview with the husband of Madame Bébé, Ambroise, Pamandzi, 3
February 2018.
Mihary Jaofeno interview with a former student of Madame Bébé, Labattoir, 12 Novem-
ber 2020.
 PART 2
Colonial Spaces of Contact, Allegiances and
Loyalties

∵
 Chapter 6

Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of

Madagascar: Role Models and Notables for Village
Communities (1920 to 1970)
Roland Rakotovao

1 Introduction

The training of teachers was an important aspect of the creation of both colo-
nial and mission educational structures in Africa, and one which increasingly
attracted attention and support during the first half of the 20th century.1 At
lower secondary level at the regional schools in Madagascar, the French colo-
nial authorities favoured general education (50% of the students). Pupils
admitted to the highest educational level school in the capital, Le Myre de ­Vilers
(Le Myre) were mainly preparing for careers in medicine, administration, and
teaching in particular, the three main concerns of the colonial authority. As
was also the case in other colonies, the French colonial educational policy in
Madagascar aimed at “providing human resources to the civilising missions”
and policy makers tried to avoid creating a “‘pseudo-educated’” group among
the indigenous populations.2
Educated teachers played an important role in the educational project and
acquired new roles in society.3 An interesting dimension of teacher education
in colonial Africa relates to their roles as intermediate actors who took on new
roles in local and national contexts. In the Malagasy colonial context, the recog-
nition of the status of teachers in rural areas was defined by the quality of their
own education, their social distinction by their salary, and by their frequent
or definitive return to their village of origin. The civil servants were obliged,
according to the jargon of the colonial period, to accomplish the “tour de côte”,
meaning working in different coastal areas. They therefore built and followed

1 Brendan P. Carmody, The emergence of teacher education in Zambia (Bringley: Emerald

Publishing, 2020); Kallaway, The Changing Face of Colonial Education in Africa: Education,
Science and Development, 41, 51, 54.
2 Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, The ‘Civilising Mission’ of Portugese Colonialism, 1870–1930
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
3 Kallaway, The Changing Face of Colonial Education in Africa: Education, Science and Develop-
ment, 41, ch. 6–7; See Berge’s contribution in this book on Protestant elites in Ethiopia.

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_007

158 Rakotovao

most of their career far from their place of origin (tanindrazana). Protestant
mission education personnel, during a period of 20–30 years, worked in dif-
ferent places on the island, sometimes in their region of origin. Those who
migrated to other areas of Madagascar for work had the means to return fre-
quently to the tanindrazana before their retirement. Some of them came back
for specific events: when death occurred or to supervise the progress of the
construction of a house or a tomb. Most of the teachers returned permanently
to their village of origin when they retired.
Within the community, or lineage, social advancement brought greater
respect and helped to consolidate personal identity. The construction of
houses and tombs served, for instance, as proof of their owners’ success: they
were a sign of prestige, inspiring the admiration of local communities. Con-
struction of houses and tombs also maintained the identity of the family and
the lineage. Construction of tombs showed respect for the ancestors, and
was one among the most sacred duties of the community. Most teachers in
Lutheran schools in the colonial context in Madagascar were peasants from
rural areas and continued to be attached to their village of origin after they
had completed their training. They enjoyed a certain esteem in the new places
where they went to take up posts. They were not simply teachers, but key per-
sons, resources, intermediaries and educators. The status of educated people
they enjoyed within their village community meant that they did not have to
compete with Europeans, other officials, or other members of the elite.4 They
became role models for the young and enjoyed the status of a small notable in
the colonial era and also during the First Republic after independence in 1960.
This study aims to analyse the history of education and schooling in rural
Madagascar in North Betsileo through the lens of the nature of the influence
of male and female teachers in village communities at the end of the colonial
period and the First Malagasy Republic (1920–1970). From the 1920s onwards,
the first intellectuals trained by mission societies became the role models in
North Betsileo. Until the 1970s, teachers’ roles laid the ground for an identity
based on academic success, one recognised throughout the island. In this

4 Teachers were only one part of the group of educated people who came from this region.
There were also doctors, pastors, clerks in the administration. See Roland Rakotovao, “D’une
génération à l’autre: la mission luthérienne de Norvège (1871–1960) et la promotion des
jeunes du Fisakana (Nord-betsileo, Madagascar),” Cahiers Afrique, 29, (2016): 161–196; Ellen
Vea Rosnes, “Educating an Opposition: Protestant Secondary Education in Madagascar in the
1920s and 1930s,” in Missionary Education: Historical Approaches and Global Perspectives, eds.
Kim Christiaens, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Pieter Verstraete (Leuven: Leuven University Press,
2020).
Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 159

chapter I analyse the careers of such teachers and their place and role within
the village community.
Many teachers in North Betsileo have written diaries describing their career
paths and socio-professional mobility. This chapter is based on those sources,
in addition to oral surveys and official documents from public institutions.
The chapter mainly analyses mission and colonial education in a rural area
of Madagascar by asking the question: How did education contribute to the
formation of elites, and how did it impact on identity formation in rural areas?
As has been mentioned, while many of the educated people migrated to other
parts of Madagascar for work, they kept in touch with their places of origin and
many settled back there after their retirement. Their reconstruction of iden-
tity and their impact in the villages can be observed through both material
and non-material factors. The chapter is inspired by Françoise Raison-Jourde’s
description of identity as imposed within the family and a lineage, with a focus
on a particular distinguished person: “the individual becomes the producer of
an identity more than he is the heir of a given. He leaves an illustrious name
which would become the first name of a lineage, erects a monumental mark in
space (raised stone, tomb) to which a narrative is attached”.5

2 Educational Offer in North Betsileo

North Betsileo was made up of the territories of the former kingdoms of Fisa-
kana and Ambositra, and is the result of geographical boundaries and history.
The village communities had interdependent histories and cultural identities
as their rulers were often related. In this region members of village commu-
nities identified themselves as Betsileo avaratra (north). North Betsileo was
different from South Betsileo, mainly because it was marked by an important
influx of migrants from Imerina, the kingdom further north; these migrants
were the politically dominant group in 19th century Madagascar.6
North Betsileo covers about one quarter of the Betsileo country
(6000km²/39720km², with an average of 31hbt/km² in the 1960s). During the
period under study most residents were farmers, yet the shortage of agricultural

5 Françoise Raison-Jourde, “Individualisation sociale et production d’identités dans la société

merina au XIXe siècle,” Omaly sy Anio 29–32 (1989), 173–188, author’s translation.
6 The Merina were a group based in Imerina, whose capital is Antananarivo. From the end of
the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, this group dispersed into different regions of
Madagascar following the territorial extension carried out by their sovereigns. This led to the
formation of the Kingdom of Madagascar which occupied about two thirds of the Malagasy
territory. The North Betsileo was part of the Merina Kingdom.
160 Rakotovao

land and demographic pressure resulted in widespread poverty. Agriculture

was only profitable with hard work and the regular use of ­fertilisers. North
Betsileo was at the time the region where population density was highest,
being concentrated in the areas where most of the fertile land was located
(Ambositra, Fandriana, Mahazoarivo, Imady and Sandrandahy). As a result,
most farmers had small plots of land at their disposal and densities exceeded
40 inhabitants per km.7
Thus, the Betsileo of the North had difficulties in paying the capitation
fee due by every adult male from the colonial period onwards. Due to these
economic circumstances the activities of the missions aroused an interest in
schooling amongst the population and, urged by their parents, young peo-
ple chose to pursue their studies outside their village of origin. The colonial
government o responded to the desire of these young people for schooling.
Thus, through evangelization and education, the Betsileo solved some of their
problems.
The desire for modernity associated with schooling, initiated and encour-
aged by several missions, in addition to the French administration, had an
impact on the population. Three Protestant mission societies began opera-
tions in the region: the London Missionary Society (LMS) in 1861, the Norwe-
gian Mission Society (NMS) in 1870, and the Society of Evangelical Missions
of Paris (SMEP) in 1897.8 The Catholic mission had been active in the entire
region since 1872. Thomas Brockway, the first British missionary, who arrived in
Ambositra in 1873, opened a teacher training school in 1875 for 40 young men
whom Brockway saw as destined to become teachers or evangelists. Later, the
French Protestant Mission (MPF), with the SMEP, took over all the schools of
the LMS as well as the religious responsibility of the district.9 The construction
of temples and schools testifies to the dynamism of the MPF which in 1897,
appointed Élysée Escande as missionary in Ambositra, who was replaced by
Péchin in 1898. The Benjamin Escande school directed by Léopold Galland,
opened in 1900. Similar to the Rabaut Saint Etienne school in Fianarantsoa
(for South Betsileo), this secondary school trained the staff of the mission in

7 Jean Pierre Raison, Les Hautes Terres de Madagascar et leurs confins occidentaux. Enracine-
ment et mobilité des sociétés rurales (Paris: ORSTOM, Karthala, 1984), 395.
8 Rajosefa Rakotovao, Gabriel Nekkestad, Christian Razanadraibe, and Laurel O. Johnson, Voly
maitson’Andriamanitra, Tantaran’ny Fiangonana loterana Malagasy (1867–1967) (Antanana-
rivo: TPL, 1967), 1–22.
9 Bruno Hubsch, Madagascar et le christianisme, histoire œcuménique (Paris: Karthala,
1993), 331.
Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 161

North Betsileo. In 1909 the MPF had 45 temples and 21 schools in the Ambosi-
tra region, with a combined total of 3142 pupils.10
In the 19th century the NMS had a temple in each village, the temple also
housed a school where the pupils received general education from a catechist
during the week and religious instruction on Sundays.11 The NMS also had Bible
schools (Roambinifololahy) for future catechists in each station, the Efapo-
lolahy School in Masinandraina (Betafo) for the training of the first ­evangelists
and teachers, and the Asily Zazalahy and Zazavavy boarding schools for
girls and boys at Antsahamanitra and Isoraka (Antananarivo), as well as the
Dimampololahy12 school which prepared students for careers as doctors or
teachers. The missionaries selected those whom they considered deserved to
continue on to further education in Antsirabe or Antananarivo.13 The missions
subsidised the students, and at the end of their studies, they entered into the
service of the missions that had trained them. Towards the end of the 19th
century, in 1893, the NMS had 63 temples in the North Betsileo region, divided
between five fitandremana (a district directed by a pastor and grouping ten to
fifteen temples).
For the Catholic mission, around 1872 the Jesuits of the Province of
­Champagnes started evangelising in Ambositra and in the south of Fisakana.14
During the colonial period the Catholic mission was present throughout North
Betsileo. They were building churches and schools, and teaching was provided
by congregations (Sisters and Brothers). By 1940 the mission had 5628 pupils
and 46 schools, some of which were situated in villages far from the main
towns of the cantons or districts. Most of the pupils acquired basic education,
while a minority continued on to higher education. Like the NMS and the MPF,
Catholics had institutions for the training of their workers, such as teachers
and administrative staff. In 1898 the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Cluny built a
school in Ambositra. In 1900 the Brothers of the Christian Schools founded

10 FJKM Archives, Diary of the MPF station in Ambositra, 1907–1920.

11 Rosnes, The Norwegian Mission’s Literacy Work in Colonial and Independent Madagascar.
12 Rakotovao, Nekkestad, Razanadraibe, and Johnson, Voly maitson’Andriamanitra. Roam-
binifololahy for twelve boys and Dimanpololahy for fifty young men. The names of these
centres refer to the number of pupils who were admitted there.
13 Rakotovao, “D’une génération à l’autre: la mission luthérienne de Norvège (1871–1960)
et la promotion des jeunes du Fisakana (Nord-betsileo, Madagascar).”
14 Adrien Boudou, Les jésuites à Madagascar au XIXe siècle (Paris: Beauchesne et ses Fils,
1940). The Catholic mission was present in the Betsileo country from 1869. Father Finaz,
the pioneer of the mission, erected the first station in Fianarantsoa.
162 Rakotovao

the Saint Louis College.15 Like the highly regarded Catholic establishments of
Fianarantsoa (Saint François Xavier) and Antananarivo (Saint Michel, ­Sisters
of Cluny and the Brothers of the Christian Schools), these institutions were
training grounds for pupils of the only public third level school within the
indigenous education system, Le Myre, which was in the capital. Le Myre was
created by a January 2, 1897 decree for the training of Malagasy auxiliaries
(teachers, writer-interpreters and clerks). The recruitment was closely linked
to that of the second level regional schools, schools which were key institutions
in the implementation of the La politique de races, the “race policy”.16 This was
a policy designed and implemented by the colonists, a policy built on the idea
of ‘divide and rule’, based on ethnic identity, rather than one intended to unify
the population.17 A stipulation was that classes should include representatives
of different population groups. Students were admitted according to a quota
fixed each year and came from public and private (mission) institutions.
In addition, each mission had third level institutions: the NMS had a
teacher training Normal school in Antsirabe, MPF had two in Antananarivo
(­Ambohijatovo avaratra and Ambohijatovo atsimo), and the Catholics had the
Saint Michel college as well as that of the Brothers in the capital. Licensed
teachers18 who graduated from these schools worked in the cantons of North
Betsileo. As with the men of the church, these teachers enjoyed consider-
able esteem in the community.19 In Ambositra the youth also had the option
of entering a public teacher training institution. This was made possible by
the missions at the Saint Louis College and the Escande School of the MPF
being qualified to train students to take the entrance exam for admission to
Le Myre de Vilers (Le Myre) in Antananarivo, the only public third level indig-
enous educational institution. From 1910 onwards North Betsileo had a certain
advantage over other regions of Madagascar: the pupils of the missions did
not have to leave Ambositra to prepare for the Certificate of Teaching Abil-
ity (Certificat d’aptitude à l’enseignement - CAE), a certificate which qualified
them to work as primary school teachers. They sat the exams in Fianarantsoa
or Antananarivo.

15 Bernard Chandon-Moet, Les catholiques de la région d’Ambositra après cent ans, Esquisse
de situation 1876–1976 (Fianarantsoa: Diocèse de Fianarantsoa, 1976). Beginning in 1910,
Saint Louis College became a third level institution.
16 Rajaonah, “L’école Le Myre de Vilers dans les années 1940 et 1950, entre politique des races
et formation d’une élite nationale,” 183–206.
17 Rosnes, The Norwegian Mission’s Literacy Work in Colonial and Independent ­Madagascar, 43.
18 During the colonial period, this title was used to designate the teachers who graduated
with the Certificate of Teaching Ability, or CAE.
19 Information from Alphonse Randrianasolo, MPF teacher, Ambositra.
Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 163

The colonial government also opened schools in the region whose purpose
was to train labourers for the colonists and auxiliaries for the administration,
including teachers. In 1950 the districts of Fandriana and Ambositra boasted
14 public primary schools.20 In the 1950s, the administration founded other
schools, and Fandriana and Ambositra were provided with school workshops.
There were 2665 public primary school pupils in North Betsileo in 1950. Previ-
ously, in 1904, the Education Department had also created a regional school
in Ambositra, which was attended by students in the general, agricultural,
and industrial sections. This regional school also prepared students for the
entrance exam to the third level schools. The number of places in regional
schools was fixed each year within the general, industrial and agricultural edu-
cation categories. Thus, in 1921, out of the hundred or so candidates for the
regional school of Ambositra, 29 were accepted, of which 14 were accepted for
general education and 15 for the two other sections.21 Since 1928, the recruit-
ment districts for the Ambositra regional school have included the districts
and administrative posts of the province of Ambositra. Pupils who failed the
entrance exam to the regional school were obliged to enrol in private schools if
they wanted to continue their studies. Most of the young people from Fisakana
who were Lutherans went to Antsirabe where the NMS had its own establish-
ment since the Escande School only received former MPF students.22
Until shortly after the Second World War, although there was no great gen-
der difference in primary education in the Betsileo country, girls were much
less likely than boys to prepare for the second degree exam (Certificat d’études
du second dégrée – CESD) in regional schools.23 Holders of this diploma could
take the entrance exam for the Avaradrova school in the capital by virtue of the
decree of 6 November 1923, which created a special section to prepare appli-
cants for being a certified teacher.24 Table 6.1 shows the quotas of students set
by the administration for the entrance examinations to the regional school in
Ambositra (2nd level).
Pupils who had completed second level rarely abandoned their studies, the
exception being their failing the entrance examination to the third level school
in the capital, Le Myre. From 1920 to 1940, the regional school of Ambositra

20 National Archives of Madagascar, Monographie du district de Fandriana, N°112 à 117,

1949–1960
21 National Archives of Madagascar, Official Bulletin of the Directorate of Education, 1921.
22 Information from Solo Rabemananjara, a teacher with the CAE trained at the NMS ­Normal
School in Antsirabe and the Brevet élémentaire in Antananarivo.
23 Information from Rasoatahiana. She was among the first girls to obtain the CAE diploma
in Fandriana.
24 National Archives of Madagascar, Official bulletin of the Education service, 1920–1940.
164 Rakotovao

Table 6.1  umber of pupils to be admitted to the regional school of Ambositra

N
(1920–1925–1935)

SECTIONS 1920 1925 1935

General 14 48,27% 20 57,14% 14 53,84%

Education
Industrial 12 41,37% 12 34,28% 08 30,76%
Section
Agricultural 03 10,34% 03 08,57% 04 15,38%
Section
Total 29 100% 35 100% 26 100%

Sources: DAN, Official Education Bulletin: 1920, 1925, 1950

Table 6.2  umber of pupils from the regional school of Ambositra admitted to the school
N
Le Myre in 1940 and 1950

SECTIONS 1940 1950

Administrative 01 09
Normal – 15
Postal – 04
Technique 01
Medical 02 02
Total 03 31

Sources: DAN, Official Education Bulletin: 1940, 1950

annually sent between ten and twenty students to Le Myre.25 The candidates
admitted to Le Myre were automatically classified in the normal section, i.e. as
teachers. Table 6.2 shows the quotas of students set by the administration for
the entrance examinations to Le Myre (3rd level) from the regional school of
Ambositra.
Those male and female teachers of North Betsileo who were of peasant
origin, had a chance of becoming part of the elite through the educational
system. This provided them with an opportunity to overcome the economic

25 National Archives of Madagascar, Official bulletin of the education service, 1920–1940.

Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 165

constraints of the region, and thus mission and colonial education had, since
the 19th century, been well received by the communities. Thanks to these edu-
cation establishments, the Betsileo families of Ambositra and Fisakana came
to be among the educated elites in the 1910s. When the observed the distinc-
tion enjoyed mainly by the men trained by the missionaries, people in these
rural areas began to take an interest in education. Some of the members of
these peasant families managed to rise to the level of those who, from the 1940s
onwards, were referred to, by peasant people in the regions from which these
trained teachers came, as “advanced”.26

3 Educational Stories and Model Teachers

In the case of North Betsileo, most of the second generation of educated people
were primary school teachers. These people made a considerable expansion of
schooling in the region possible. Although the region had sufficient teachers
for all schools, many worked outside the region. Those who succeeded in their
studies, and managed to qualify as teachers, possessed the means to honour
their duties towards their village of origin. One of the ways in which they did
this was to play an active role in the construction of schools in their home
communities.
In the 19th century several descendants of Rainitsitohaina and Rainitsimba
Rapetera in North Betsileo were trained by the NMS.27 Some of their descend-
ants continued their studies in NMS establishments, others in those of the
colonial administration. Rainitsitohaina’s grandson28 Philippe ­Rajohanesa’s29
learned marquetry from Norwegian missionaries in Antananarivo. After
obtaining his CAE in 1903 he taught third grade students at the Escande school
from 1903 to 1918. Several young people from his area embarked upon the same
career.30 Youth from mission schools entered the service of the ­administration

26 André Razafimahafaly, “L’école Benjamin Escande 1900–1913” (Dissertation CAPEN,

­ istory-Geography, 1987).
H
27 Rainitsitohaina and Rainitsimba Rapetera were the first people to be educated in the
Fisakana by the Norwegian Lutherans.. Even though they did not come from the training
schools for teachers and evangelists in the 19th century, they learned the art of build-
ing, the basics of teaching and evangelism from the missionaries. They encouraged their
descendants to study in the mission training schools. Diary of Philippe Rajohanesa.
28 Rakotovao, “D’une génération à l’autre: la mission luthérienne de Norvège (1871–1960)
et la promotion des jeunes du Fisakana (Nord-betsileo, Madagascar).”
29 This is the teacher who wrote the diary, the main source of this work.
30 Diary of Philippe Rajohanesa; Razafimahafaly, “L’école Benjamin Escande 1900–1913.”
166 Rakotovao

and enjoyed a certain influence among their compatriots.31 Thanks to their

knowledge of the French language acquired during their studies in the c­ apital,
they were able to work as interpreters. Philippe Rajohanesa acted as inter-
preter with MPF missionary Péchin who was based in Ambositra,32 and the
administration entrusted him with the recruitment of its first auxiliaries in
North Betsileo. He selected his recruits from among the Lutherans, notable
examples being Arsène Rajaonarivelo of Fandriana and Raphaël Ramahaleo
of ­Sahamadio.33 One of their tasks was to encourage parents to send their chil-
dren to school, and since their fellow citizens looked up to them, they were
listened to and exerted significant influence.
For Brockway, the first LMS missionarywho looked after the Ambositra sta-
tion in the 19th century and later joined MPF, a number of hish students stood
out from their fellow students.34 Rasahia Rainiharoson, born in Iary Ambosi-
tra around 1870, obtained the CAE in 1900.35 Also worthy of note is Raoelina
Andrianavanona who studied at the Escande school and obtained his CAE in
1906.36 His daughter Razavaoelina also became a teacher. Two young people,
Ralaivelo and Franck Andrianarivo, continued their studies at the teacher
training school of the Friends Foreign Missionary Association (FFMA) in the
capital. Apela Rabenja and her brother Raobelina from the Ambatomanana
district, passed the CAE in Fianarantsoa. Rajosefa Ramarika, son of Ramarika,
a rich notable from a small village west of Ambositra, attended the MPF estab-
lishment in Ambatomanga, 30 km from Antananarivo.37 He subsequently
entered the service of this mission. The descendants of these early intellectu-
als were a distinguished group amongst the Ambositra community by virtue of
their status as civil servants.
Those students whose aim was to work in the colonial administration fol-
lowed a different path from those who aimed to be employees of the missions.

31 Rakotovao, “D’une génération à l’autre: la mission luthérienne de Norvège (1871–1960)

et la promotion des jeunes du Fisakana (Nord-betsileo, Madagascar).”
32 Station book: Diary of the French Protestant Mission station in Ambositra (1907–1920)
33 Diary of Philippe Rajohanesa, NMS trained teacher.
34 Philippe Rajohanesa ‘Ny sekoly protestantan’Ambositra’, Mpamafy (Antananarivo: May
1928).
35 It should be noted that, while most of Brockway’s students belong to the Merina or royal
families of Ambositra, the families we mention here are Betsileo. Raotozafy, Tantaran’ny
olo-malaza teto amin’ny tanintsika (Isaha-Manandriana-Akona) (Ambositra: The Protest-
ent temple of Ambohipierenana, 1955).
36 Raotozafy, Tantaran’ny olo-malaza.
37 Raotozafy, Tantaran’ny olo-malaza.
Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 167

Table 6.3 Evolution of the number of Betsileo students admitted to Le Myre (1937–1955)

Year 1937–1940 1941–1945 1946–1951 1952–1955

Parents’ domicile

Fisakana 5 13 34 47
North Betsileo Ambositra 14 17 23 24
Merina living in 6 6 4 4
Ambositra
Total 25 36 61 75
South Betsileo Fianarantsoa 23 30 41 69
Total 48 66 102 144

Sources: Register of pupils of Le Myre de Vilers from 1937–1960

The former finished primary school in the canton and then took the entrance
examination for secondary schools.
Table 6.3 is based on the registers of Le Myre between 1937 and 1960. Some
registers are missing, notably for the year 1941, and for a large part of the period
1956 to 1960. We analysed the registers up to 1955, when the home address of
the parents was no longer mentioned. Between 1937 and 1955 the documents
provide information on the identity of the pupils as well as the address of
their parents. The indications by the school administration of “ethnic” ori-
gin indicates they were Betsileo who came from Ambositra or Fisakana. The
register also indicates their villages of origin even if some of them were born
outside North Betsileo. Their parents were, for the most part, civil servants or
agents of missionary societies (pastors or teachers) who had returned to their
tanindrazana after their retirement. The parents of some students of Merina
origin who studied at the regional school of Ambositra also lived in Fisakana
or Ambositra. For the entrance exam to Le Myre the Education Department
made a distinction between students from Fianarantsoa (in South Betsileo)
and those from Ambositra, but once admitted, they were all classified as being
in the Betsileo ‘ethnic’ group.38 Towards the end of the 1940s, and during the
1950s, there was a general increase in the number of pupils. In the Betsileo as a
whole, the natives of North Betsileo were better represented than those of the
South (52% of the pupils against 48%). Moreover, Fisakana stands out because

38 Merina, Tanala and Zafimaniry come from these regional schools. But at the Le Myre, they
are distinguished from the Betsileo.
168 Rakotovao

in the course of ten years, from 1940 to 1950, the number of third-level school
pupils increased ninefold. In 1952, 62% of the Betsileo who were destined for
the civil service came from the same region.
After two years of training, students classified in the normal section took
the final CAE exam to become teachers. Some of them took competitive exam-
inations to become inspectors or assistant teachers. The latter earned more
than other teachers because they were assimilated into the metropolitan staff.
One example is Samuel Andrianarivo, son of Franck Andrianarivo, pastor of
the MPF from Ambositra.39 Former students at the Catholic primary schools,
and especially those at the Saint Louis College, worked for the administration.
Jean Pierre Ralaivao and Joseph Ralahamady, two teachers who graduated in
the 1920s, originally from Fiadanana Fisakana, did their primary studies in
Catholic mission schools before being admitted to the regional schools of Ant-
sirabe and Ambositra.40 These teachers, being among the first people of these
­villages to be educated, were highly regarded in Sahamadio and Fiadanana.
They worked in their own region only towards the end of their careers, after
having worked in other regions. Regarding women, between 1930 and 1950, ten
young women from the North Betsileo region completed their studies as teach-
ers. Students who were not admitted to the regional school or to Le Myre nev-
ertheless had a level of education that differentiated them from the rest of the
members of their village communities. This qualified them to teach in private
or village schools.
The civil servants from North Betsileo were distinguished in their places of
origin and in their places of work by their number as well as by their repu-
tation. We have identified them through various sources: files of pensioners
in the pension archives of the Ministry of Finance and Budget, documents of
native associations, the civil registry of Antananarivo, and electoral lists.
Table 6.4 shows the census of retired civil servants, based on the files kept
in the Pensions Department of the Ministry of Finance.41 The sources used are
incomplete, as many files are missing and the information provided by certain
documents does not make it possible to accurately identify people from North
Betsileo. I have therefore relied only on the holders of a civil pension born in
the districts of Ambositra and Fandriana. There would certainly be a margin
of error in this choice, one which is difficult to assess as the places of birth
do not necessarily coincide with the villages of origin. However, we took the
precaution of selecting people born before 1930. Indeed, given that migration
really only took off after the Second World War, one can assume almost all of

39 Raotozafy, Tantaran’ny olo-malaza.

40 Diary of Jean Pierre Ralaivao.
41 These documents are kept in the Ministry of Finance, Antaninarenina Antananarivo.
Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 169

Table 6.4 List of occupations by place of birth, and born between 1873–1940

Professions Men Women

Ambositra Fisakana Ambositra Fisakana

Administration 88 35,78% 57 27,53% 2 05,13% 1 06,67%

Health 36 14,64% 38 18,36% 30 76,93% 11 73,33%
Teaching 58 23,58% 67 32,36% 7 17,94% 3 20,00%
Public Safety 28 11,38% 31 14,98%
Justice 3 01,21% 1 00,49%
Other 33 13,41% 13 06,28%
Total 246 100% 207 100% 39 100% 15 100%

SOURCES: Census of retired civil servants, Pension Service, Ministry of

Finance and Budget, Antaninarenina Antananarivo

these former civil servants were born in their tanindrazana.42 This data was
also cross checked with oral sources and other documents, including the list of
native parishioners of Fisakana kept at the Lutheran church of Ambatovinaky,
Antananarivo.43
Table 6.4 shows the diversity of the functions performed and the young age
of the incumbents (some of whom were born around 1870 and were probably
recruited in the early years of colonization). The majority of male civil servants
from North Betsileo were in the administration and in teaching. The women
from this region, on the other hand, were destined for health professions. The
number of civil servants who came from Ambositra is high compared with
that from Fisakana due to the fact that, from 1885 to 1949, Ambositra was the
administrative capital of North Betsileo, and therefore, schools, especially sec-
ondary level schools, were located there. The relatively higher number of civil
servants in certain professions, such as doctors, police officers and teachers,
distinguish Fisakana from Ambositra.
The success model represented by the elites encouraged families to educate
their children. The consequences of this can be observed in school enrolment

42 This choice also implies that the elites born outside the tanindrazana before 1930 are
excluded from our census because it is difficult to locate them, unless the people con-
cerned mention in their files the villages where they retired.
43 This temple of the NMS in Antananarivo, since 1871, is attended by all the Lutherans of
the capital. The second one was built in the 67 ha district only in the 1980s. N. Randri-
anarimanana, “Tantaran’ny Fileovana Fahamarinana 67 Ha,” (Master of Theology, SALT
Fianarantsoa, 2006).
170 Rakotovao

in North Betsileo. The example of Sahamadio can be used to illustrate this phe-
nomenon. This vohitra, made up of a few large hamlets (Milamaina, Ambohipo
or Ambohipotsy, Ambohimanambola, Ambohimanandriana, Voainana and
Miadanimerina), benefitted from an exceptional historical circumstance: the
Catholic and Norwegian missions had been established there since the 1880s.
In a drive to recruit faithful members to their congregations, they engaged in
a competition in the field of education. It was in Sahamadio that the French
administration opened the first official school in Fisakana. This emergence of
an elite in North Betsileo, particularly in the Fisakana, was reinforced by the
competition between the missions and the public institutions. In addition, the
Norwegian Lutheran Mission started a teacher training college in Fandriana
(Fisakana) in the 1950s to train teachers, not only for the North Betsileo region,
but for most of the southern part of Madagascar. During the colonial period
many citizens from the village of Fisakana became civil servants, a category
which included teachers. The return of civil servants to their tanindrazana or
village of origin, after their retirement, especially for the more famous figures,
was not only beneficial for their relatives and their lineage but also for the
whole area around the village.

4 Attachment to the Tanindrazana, the Village of Origin

4.1 Pride of Family and Lineage

By returning to their region of origin on retirement, educated teachers ­provided
some relief to those who stayed in the village in terms of their socio-economic
difficulties. In a context where money was scarce, even a modest pension con-
stituted an insurance. Often these retired teachers had saved some money and
assets. The presence of people who had earned a salary and pension was there-
fore crucial to the subsistence farmers during the lean months and during peri-
ods of crisis such as the 1930s and 1940s. Thus, thanks to the success of some
of their members, the Betsileo families and lineages of the North were bet-
ter off at such times than were other families. Help given to the family repre-
sented something significant for parents living a precarious existence in rural
areas. Sometimes these retired teachers even took over the payment of taxes of
those relatives who had previously helped them during their studies. ­Boniface
Ramena, from Fiadanana, Fisakana, a farm worker in the Middle West, con-
tributed to the success of a relative who became a public teacher.44 When the

44 Testimony of Boniface Ramena. He came from the same village as Jean Pierre Ralaivao
whom he quotes in his newspaper.
Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 171

relative started to receive a salary, he was able to help Ramena pay his taxes.
The teachers used part of their earnings to pay the labourers in order to main-
tain the rice fields in their home village.45 Those who settled in Antananarivo
attached great importance to this practice to maintain the link with the tanin-
drazana.46 This attachment was shown, for example, by the fact that the peo-
ple of Fisakana preferred to eat rice brought from their village rather than rice
sold in Antananarivo. Upon their final return, retired people ­introduced cer-
tain habits in the village, or vohitra, inspired by their meetings with individuals
or groups they had met during their years in other regions. In this way they
came to introduce urban practices to their region of origin. These contribu-
tions can be observed, for example, during festivities, such as certain events
during the periodic assemblies organised by the missions or during the annual
meeting of the associations of natives.
A long absence did not necessarily harm or diminish the identity of retired
people; instead their identity as a group evolved in relation to the change in
their socio-economic status. Many contributed financially to social and com-
munity work in the villages (building schools, contributing financially to par-
ishes), concrete contributions which became a source of pride for the family
and the community. This could also apply in the case of those who got married
outside the circle of Northern Betsileo. One example is the teacher Jean Pierre
Ralaivao who, during his service in Faravohitra in the district of Andramasina
in Imerina, married a Merina woman.47 Having fulfilled his duty towards the
village communities of origin, he enjoyed a great deal of respectability upon
his return to the tanindrazana. Moreover, his status as civil servant earned him
respect.

4.2 Attaining Prestige in Tanindrazana through the Construction of

Houses and Tombs
Building houses and tombs was considered a duty of the educated. Indeed,
these constructions represented proof of people’s attachment and belonging
to a village. Houses and tombs have profound meanings in Betsileo society
as they contribute to the definition of personal and family identity and are
highly important symbols. As early as the 19th century, missionaries indirectly
introduced the villagers of North Betsileo to a new art of building: erecting

45 Information taken from the diary of Jean Pierre Ralaivao.

46 Luke Earl Freeman, “Knowledge, education and social differentiation amongst the ­Betsileo
of Fisakana, Highland Madagascar” (Doctor of Philos, London School of ­Economics and
Political Science, 2001).
47 Information taken from the diary of Jean Pierre Ralaivao.
172 Rakotovao

churches, prayer houses, mission stations, and schools. The Norwegians taught
them to mould and bake bricks and to substitute them for wood. The mission
opened a carpentry and masonry school at Masinandraina, situated close
to Antsirabe. In their turn, students shared and spread the techniques they
had learned, in particular the architectural models the missionaries’ houses
provided.
At the time of retirement, to live in the house that he had built in the village
of origin, was a common aspiration of a civil servant, including teachers. The
house ensured them a certain continuity in the places where their ancestors
had lived and where their families were living. The construction depended on
family solidarity, competition between individuals, and the financial support
of the educated. Three main periods can be distinguished in the construction
of these houses. In the first phase, during the 1910s and 1920s, houses were built
by intellectuals trained by missionaries in the late 19th century and inspired
by the design of houses of these missionaries. The construction model is
­commonly called madio ivelany (literally: net from the outside) because the
house seems to be made entirely of brick, while the main body of the work was
made of rammed earth. Those who managed to build a house of this kind in
the village acquired great prestige. This was one of the ways social competition
between elites in search of respectability was established.48
In the following two decades (from 1930 to 1950), the first generation of
the elite trained in the schools that came with French colonization, and built
houses marked by the style of public buildings and the residences of certain
rich families of the Imerina. Some restored ancestral houses built in the 1910s
and 1920s. The result was a mix of the missionary model and the colonial style,
but the new elite often built in new styles to demonstrate and prove their suc-
cess. In terms of the scale of the villages, these houses were particularly impos-
ing because they were much larger than the madio ivelany (Literally: Clean on
the outside only). With the expansion of the Betsileo elites who lived in Ime-
rina, more houses were built in tanindrazana. On their return, civil servants
and the former employees of the missions were inspired by the houses they
saw in Antananarivo.49 Thus, in the city of Fandriana and its surroundings, as
well as in Ambositra and Sahamadio, some houses are built whose appearance
recalls that of the residences of the dignitaries of Imerina.

48 Information from Georges Rajaonarivelo. His father-in-law, Pastor Augustin Rajakoba,

brother of Philippe Rajohanesa has one in this style, 2001.
49 It is still the cottage style, but with several variants: including T- or H-shaped architecture,
Didier Nativel, “L’architecture et métissage culturel en Imerina au XIXe siècle,” Annuaire
des pays de l’Océan indien XVII (2003): 193–207.
Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 173

Figure 6.1 House based on the model madio ivelany

In the third phase, the elite of the 1950s built houses in a different style.
These were inspired by architectural models they had seen in the various
regions where they had worked. They are also evidence of more individualised
tastes. The Betsileo abandoned the missionary or colonial touch and design
and adopted different styles they had come across during their travels, par-
ticularly in Vakinankaratra and central Imerina. The returnee’s house of this
period, increasingly imposing in its size, is called voriloha (it is a house with a
four-sloped roof).50 The difference between those who succeeded and those
who did not can be seen in the size of the houses and the care given to their
architecture and design. These trends were evident throughout North Betsileo,
even in the most remote villages.
These houses were intended for the use of the extended family, since, in a
way, they embodied, or signified, the lineage. The diary of Jean Pierre Ralaivao,

50 This style was introduced under Radama I by Europeans such as Louis Gros. Also, the
houses with four-sloped roofs are reminiscent of the Creole dwellings of Reunion and
Mauritius. This type of house only spread in the Betsileo country during colonization.
The Europeans of the first half of the 20th century living in Antananarivo and the towns
of Vakinankaratra, such as Ambatolampy and Antsirabe, also adopted this style. See Vin-
cent Belrose-Huyghues, “Un exemple de syncrétisme esthétique au XIXe siècle. Le Rova
de Tananarive d’Andrianjaka à Radama I,” Omaly sy Anio 1–2 (1975): 173–207.
174 Rakotovao

Figure 6.2 House inspired by Merina architectural style

a teacher from Fiadanana (Fisakana), provides information on the time

required for the building of such a house, and, in addition, details of the stages
of construction. He has a house in his anarandray, still visible in the village.
In his house various different styles are combined: an L-shaped plan follow-
ing the distribution known as vaky lalantsara, a four-sloped roof (voriloha)
and a veranda that wraps around the three facades (North, West and East) of
the building. He worked for a decade, during the 1940s, on its elaborate con-
struction. During this time, he sent regular payments to his relatives in tanin-
drazana.51 Some people even sold land acquired in Imerina to build a house
in tanindrazana. Sometimes houses remained unfinished due to the owner
not having raised enough money after retirement. Originally the family houses
were in the old Malagasy style, but were transformed as their owner’s careers
progressed. A new house, in the style in vogue at the time of its construction,
symbolises the reconstruction of identity; it also signifies the desire to distin-
guish oneself from the rest of the inhabitants of a village. The appearance of

51 Diary of Jean Pierre Ralaivao, Fiadanana, Fisakana.

Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 175

such houses is reminiscent of buildings in the capital. As proof of their ­owners’

success, they are a sign of prestige, inspiring the admiration of local communi-
ties. In some cases, no one occupied the houses as descendants were all estab-
lished in Antananarivo.
In North Betsileo we can also observe houses of various styles belonging
to elites.52 Apela Rabenja, an evangelist and teacher, built a house in the rec-
tangular style of the end of the 19th century,53 while Franck Andrianarivo was
inspired by the missionary style. Examples of this style would be the houses
of Seth Andrianarivo (1898–1960), schoolteacher and first mayor of the city of
Ambositra, and Franck Andrianarivo’s eldest son, who built such a house in
Alakamisy Ambohimiadana, a neighbourhood east of the city of Ambositra,
Samuel Andrianarivo (1900–1974), assistant professor at the regional school of
Antsirabe and younger son of Franck Andrianarivo, who acquired a colonial-
style house from a Merina merchant in the town of Ambositra.54 This house
also evokes the mix between the missionary, and, in particular, the colonial
style: verandas, a square plan. Alphonse Randrianasolo, teacher of the MPF,
built his house according to the colonial style, which at the time was a more
“modern” model. The building, which, according to its size, is not intended to
house a single family, already shows the desire of people at the time to accom-
modate many people in one house. The houses can be regarded as signs of
identity formation. They allowed the large family to be welcomed during the
celebrations organised in tanindrazana, such as the famadihana (turning
over the dead or second funerals) and weddings. Similarly, the members of a
­lineage met there on the occasion of a death or simply for holidays. Finally, the
descendants of the elites could, through a mode of construction, maintain the
identity of the family and the lineage
The Betsileo also attach considerable importance to the tomb. It is through
the act of building that an individual emerges socially and becomes a rec-
ognised and respected person. The construction of a new tomb is necessary
for any person who has created a clientele and accumulated wealth.55 It is a
sign of belonging to the group and of the desire to show the community the

52 See on this aspect in particular, the illustrations showing houses with verandas around
the Rova, very close in design to the buildings mentioned. Nativel, “L’architecture et
métissage culturel en Imerina au XIXe siècle,”192.
53 Information from Alphonse Randrianasolo, who wrote that he comes from the same vil-
lage as the Apela Rabenja and Andrianarivo family in Ambositra. That is why he provided
us with a certain amount of information about them.
54 Information from Alphonse Randrianasolo.
55 Raison-Jourde, “Individualisation sociale et production d’identités dans la société merina
au XIXe siècle.”
176 Rakotovao

changes that have taken place in the village of origin. This act is sometimes
an obligation as much as a necessity for the descendants of the same ances-
tor, as the old tombs are no longer sufficient for the needs of the lineages that
would have expanded. Thus, those who have attained official positions invest
ostentatiously in the tombs.56 While a migrant can build a house by himself,
as an individual, a tomb requires family solidarity. The initiative for building
a tomb usually comes from a successful lineage member or family. All mem-
bers of the group must contribute to the building of a lineage tomb since they
will all be buried there. Generally, people who have succeeded in their studies
and subsequently built their careers as civil servants, make a more substantial
contribution than those who have never left their village because their income
is often greater. In some cases, members of the lineage who did not have suf-
ficient means during this period to build the tomb, were offered plots of land.
Thus, in the 1940s, Jean Pierre Ralaivao, a schoolteacher, obtained a few plots
of rice land when the tomb of his lineage was built.57 A beautiful sepulchre,
quickly completed, soon aroused collective admiration. In the south-east of
Fisakana and the north-east of Ambositra, the building of tombs and respect
for the ancestors were among the most sacred duties of the community. The
family tombs were immense. Their construction took time, effort, and consid-
erable financial resources.58 Building a tomb was more expensive than build-
ing a house; above all, it required more time and more care.59
In Fisakana the tombs date from different periods. In the north, those built
before colonization coexist with the madio ivelany (simply rebuilt construc-
tions) and the newly built tombs. Most of the individual graves are those of
elites of the Lutheran faith, such as that of the teacher Abel Arnesa, from
Andranoraikitra, Fandriana, one of the pillars of the NMS in Fisakana, and
those of personalities from the Rajaonarivelo family.60 In the southern part,
on the other hand, there are more new constructions than renovated tombs
(madio ivelany), such tombs generally dating from the 1940s and 1950s. Tradi-
tionally the tomb does not have the same dimensions as the house because of

56 Jean Noël Gueunier, “Les monuments funéraires et commémoratifs de bois sculpté

b­ etsileo” (Paris: Thèse de IIIe Cycle, 1973).
57 Diary of Jean Pierre Ralaivao.
58 Information from Joseph Rabemananjara, Imito, Fisakana, 2001.
59 We know the fomba (traditions) attached to the construction of a burial site. It is gener-
ally on the vintana (destiny) of the oldest and most representative character of the lin-
eage that the destiny is placed; it is necessary to consult the mpanandro, and then, it is the
whole lineage group that is involved in the undertaking, and bears the responsibility.
60 Information from Georges Rajaonarivelo, Note that he is also the grandson of Arsène
Rajaonarivelo, 2001.
Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 177

its cultural value, which is indicated by the “care” that surrounds its construc-
tion, the time that is devoted to it, and finally its cost.

5 Conclusion

The elites in North Betsileo belonged to three generations. The first included
Protestant and Catholic intellectuals, the majority of whom were schoolteach-
ers, and who were trained in the 19th and early colonial periods and commit-
ted to their respective missions. Thanks to an agreement between the mission
societies, students and staff of the NMS learned the French language from
the French missionaries.61 It was from among this group that the government
chose its first auxiliaries. These elites were highly regarded by their contem-
poraries. They formed a special group in the communities, if only because of
their habits and dress.62 The second generation of elites was educated in the
first decades of the 20th century. The emergence of this elite was as a result
of the interest that village communities showed in schooling, as evidenced by
increased volume of the construction of schools. Also, within a family or a lin-
eage, the members encouraged social mobility and unity, and at least one of
the children became a civil servant. The third generation of elites was formed
in the 1950s and 1960s. Its members engaged in more diversified activities,
particularly outside the civil service. Many of them participated in the socio-
political life, not only of the North Betsileo but also of the entire nation in the
1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Their social origin, together with their school career through training and
social connections among fellow students, forged the personalities and identi-
ties of teachers. Their acquired socio-professional mobility meant that, after
leaving school, they generally worked in a range of rural areas and became
acquainted with different regions of Madagascar, well beyond their village of
origin. This situation gave rise to competition between teachers in public, pri-
vate, and religious schools, and determined the distinction that village com-
munities made between members of the teaching profession in private and
public institutions, on the one hand, in the host society where they worked,
if the teachers decided to settle there permanently, and on the other hand, in

61 Rakotovao, “D’une génération à l’autre: la mission luthérienne de Norvège (1871–1960) et

la promotion des jeunes du Fisakana (Nord-betsileo, Madagascar).”
62 Faranirina Rajaonah, “Elites et notables malgaches à Antananarivo dans la première
moitié du XXème Siècle” (Université Lumière, Lyon 2, Thèse soutenue pour l’obtention du
doctorat ès Lettres Histoire, 1996–1997), 1002p multigr.
178 Rakotovao

the society of origin, when they returned, which was the case of most teachers
in North Betsileo. The view and regard shown them by the village community
enabled them to rise in society by performing functions other than teaching.
These included inspiring others to get an education and to contribute to the
society in general and to their families in particular.

References

Belrose-Huyghues, Vincent. “Un example de syncrétisme esthétique au XIXe siècle. Le

Rova de Tananarive d’Andrianjaka à Radama I.” Omaly sy Anio 1–2 (1975): 173–207.
Boudou, Adrien. Les jésuites à Madagascar au XIXe siècle. Paris: G. Beauchesne et ses
fils, 1940.
Carmody, Brendan P. The émergence of teacher education in Zambia. Bingley: Emerald
Publishing, 2020.
Cazeneuve, Jean. Sociologie de Marcel Mauss. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1968.
Chandon-Moet, Bernard. Les catholiques de la région d’Ambositra après cent ans, Esqui-
sse de situation 1876–1976. Diocèse de Fianarantsoa, 1976.
Civil Cabinet. Monographie du district de Fandriana, no. 112 to 117. Antananarivo:
National Archives of Madagascar 1949–1960.
Freeman, Luke Earl. “Knowledge, education and social differenciation amongst the
Betsileo of Fisakana, Highland Madagascar.” PhD thesis, London School of Econom-
ics and Political Science, 2001.
Gueunier, Jean Noêl. “Les monuments funéraires et commémoratifs de bois sculpté
betsileo.” Thesis og IIIe Cycle, Paris I, 1973.
Hubsch, Bruno. Madagascar et le christianisme, histoire œcuménique. Paris: Karthala,
1993.
Jerónimo, Miguel Bandeira. The “Civilising Mission” of Portuguese Colonialism, 1870–
1930. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Le Myre de Vilers School. Register of pupils of the Le Myre de Vilers school from 1937–
1960. Antananarivo 1937–1970.
Ministry of Education. Official Bulletin of the Directorate of Education, 1921. Antanana-
rivo: National Archives of Madagascar 1949–1960.
Ministry of Education. Official bulletin of the Education Service, 1920–1940. Antanana-
rivo: National Archives of Madagascar 1949–1960.
Ministry of Finance and Budget. Census of retired civil servants. Antananarivo: Service
des Pensions, Antaninarenina.
Nativel, Didier. “L’architecture et métissage culturel en Imerina au XIXe siècle.”
­Annuaire des pays de l’Océan indien XVII (2003): 193–207.
Male and Female Teachers in Rural Areas of Madagascar 179

Rabemanantsoa, Jean Louis. “Evolution récente du famadihana à Fandriana.” Omaly sy

Anio 23–24, (1986): 453–459.
Raison, Jean Pierre. Les Hautes Terres de Madagascar et leurs confins occidentaux. Enra-
cinement et mobilité des sociétés rurales. Paris: ORSTOM, Karthala, 1984.
Raison-Jourde, Françoise. “Individualisation sociale et production d’identités dans la
société merina au XIXe siècle.” Omaly sy Anio 29–32 (1989–1990): 173–188.
Rajaonah, Faranirina. “Elites et notables malgaches à Antananarivo dans la première
moitié du XXème Siècle.” PhD thesis, Université Lumière, Lyon 2, 1996–1997.
Rajaonah, Faranirina. “L’école Le Myre de Vilers dans les années 1940 et 1950,
entre ­politique des races et formation d’une élite nationale.” In La nation malgache
du défi de l’ethnicité, edited by Françoise Raison-Jourde, 183–206. Paris: Karthala,
2003.
Rajosefa, Rakotovao, Gabriel Nakkestad, Christian Razanadraibe, and Laurel O. John-
son. Voly maitson’Andriamanitra, Tantaran’ny Fiangonana loterana Malagasy (1867–
1967). Antananarivo: TPL, 1967.
Rakotovao, Roland. “D’une génération à l’autre: la mission luthérienne de Norvège
(1871–1960) et la promotion des jeunes du Fisakana (Nord-betsileo, Madagascar).”
Cahiers Afrique 29, (2016): 161–196.
Randrianarimanana, N. “Tantaran’ny Fileovana Fahamarinana 67 Ha.” Master of Theol-
ogy, Fianarantsoa, 2006.
Razafimahaly, André. “L’école Benjamin Escande 1900–1913.” Thesis, Antananarivo,
1987.
Rosnes, Ellen Vea. “Educating an Opposition. Protestant Secondary Education in Mad-
agascar in the 1920s and 1930s.” In Missionary Education: Historical Approaches and
Global Perspectives, eds. Kim Christiaens, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Pieter Verstraete.
Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020.

Private Written Sources

Diary of Jean Pierre Ralaivao, Teacher with the CAE, Fiadanana, Fisakana (Written
between 1910 and 1940)
Diary of Philippe Rajohanesa, trained teacher. (Written between 1939 and 1970)
Raotozafy, “Tantaran’ny olo-malaza teto amin’ny tanintsika (Isaha-Manandriana-
Akona)” Vato fehizoro, published by the Protestant temple of Ambohipierenana
Ambositra, (Ambositra : 1955).
Station book: Diary of the French Protestant Mission station in Ambositra (1907–
1920). (Annual statistics, Annual report, Annual notes on the indigenous personnel
employed in the work (evangelists, teachers, etc...).
Philippe Rajohanesa, “Ny sekoly protestantan’Ambositra “, Mpamafy, (Antananarivo:
May 1928).
180 Rakotovao

Oral Sources
Joseph Rabemamamjara: born on September 1, 1924, teacher of the Catholic mission.
He collected oral traditions which he transcribed in notebooks. He taught in dif-
ferent schools in the fields of the Catholic mission. When he retired, he returned
to his home village of Imito Ambositra where he built a house in the 1970s. Survey
conducted in 1998 in Imito - Fisakana.
Solo Rabemananjara : born around 1928, Licensed teacher. Married to a schoolteacher.
He practised his profession in the NMS fields of action outside Fisakana. He built
a house in the town of Fandriana where he has lived since his retirement. Survey
conducted in 1997 in Fandriana - Fisakana.
Georges Rajaonarivelo, son-in-law of Philippe Rajohanesa’s brother who kept the
­latter’s diary, He is also the grandson of Arsène Rajaonarivelo, mentioned in the
article, 2001.
Alphonse Randrianasolo, born on 19 July 1930. A public schoolteacher with a ­Brevet
élémentaire in 1956. He worked in different regions of Madagascar such as
Fianarantsoa, Mananjary, Fort-Carnot and Ambositra. He returned to Ambositra on
his retirement in 1979. Survey in Ambositra in 2000. MPF teacher, Ambositra.
Rasoatahiana, born in 1924, qualified teacher in official schools. Daughter of a teacher,
she attended several schools in Vakinankaratra and Fianarantsoa. Her father built
a house in her native village, in the anarandray of Tsarazaza, but she built another
in the town of Fandriana. She has lived there since her retirement. Survey in 1998 in
Fandriana- Fisakana.
Jacques Robinson, born on 26 January 1911. Licensed teacher from the Norwegian
­public school. He worked in the mission fields of the NMS and especially at the
public school of the NMS in Ambozontany, Fandriana. He has a house in Avaratan-
ana (Fandriana). Survey in 1997 and 1998 in Fandriana, Fisakana.
 Chapter 7

Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in

KwaZulu-Natal

Ellen Vea Rosnes and Kalpana Hiralal

1 Introduction

Within the history of education, feminist scholarship has provided a central

influence since the 1970s.1 Colonialism, mission education, and gender have
been the subject of numerous studies over the past few decades. While tradi-
tional scholarship has at times highlighted the ‘positive’ aspects of missionary
zeal and evangelical work, in recent years there has been a growing debate
about the ways in which colonialism restructured the gender relations of both
colonising and colonised societies. Some scholars have argued that colonial
and mission influences on women are complex, and have provided African
women with both opportunities and constraints.2 Kathleen Sheldon argues
that, despite the limitations of the domestic science curriculum, girls and
women gained some valuable skills through mission education.3 Helen Call-
away argues that during the colonial and post-independence period African
women’s deprivation was pervasive and manifested not only in the political
sphere, but also ‘in the social, economic, and religious functions’.4 Recent
scholarship has sought to assign agency to women, arguing that “…colonial
encounters often had multiple, and even contradictory, effects and that African
women were not merely passive subjects, but agents capable of rejecting and

1 Isaac Gottesman, “Theory in the History of Education,” in The Oxford Handbook of the ­History
of Education, eds. John L. Rury, and Eileen H. Tamura (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2019), 71–72; Jill K. Conway, “Perspectives on the History of Women’s Education in the United
States,” History of Education Quarterly 14, no. 1 (1974): 1–12.
2 Melinda Adams, “Colonial Policies and Women’s Participation in Public Life: The Case of
British Southern Cameroons,” African Studies Quarterly 8, no. 3 (2006).
3 Kathleen Sheldon, “‘I Studied with the Nuns, Learning to Make Blouses’: Gender Ideology
and Colonial Education in Mozambique,” International Journal of African Historical Studies
31, no. 3, 1998.
4 Helena Callaway, Gender, Culture and Empire: European Women in Colonial Nigeria, (Urbana
& Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 3–6.

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_008

182 Rosnes and Hiralal

transforming colonial policies and ideologies that did not meet their needs”.5
This chapter aims to contribute to the history of women and education in the
context of colonial and post-independence Africa, through the use of a com-
bination of archival and oral sources, by focusing on the history from below.6
While for an extended period mission organisations and churches were the
primary providers of “modern” education to the African and Indian popula-
tions in South Africa, from the time of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the
state played an increasing role. Still, missions continued to be the key actors,
supported by, and tightly bound to, provincial authorities.7 In 1951, three years
after the National Party (NP) came to power, 8,99% of African children (defined
as “Bantu” pupils), 18,45% of the group defined as “Coloured and Asian”, and
20,27 % of those defined as “White pupils” attended school.8 The attendance
rate, especially among African children, was low compared to other countries,
for instance Madagascar, where the attendance rate, considered high in the
African context in this period, at primary level was 29,5 % in 1951.9 With the
passing of the Bantu Education Act of 1953, racially differentiated education
was institutionalised. The majority of African schools prior to the Act were
state-aided mission schools. The new Act brought African education under the
control of the state and extended apartheid to black schools. The latter had to
register with the state under the Bantu Education Department. The Act ended
the relative autonomy of missionary schools and provincial authorities. Con-
trol was now centralised in the Bantu Education Department, a body aimed
at implementing a segregated, racialised and discriminatory curriculum. Thus,
state aid to African schools became conditional on acceptance of a racially
discriminatory curriculum. Mission schools closed down due to a lack of fund-
ing and their unwillingness to promote apartheid, others were transferred to
local Bantu community organisations under the control of the Department of
Native Affairs of the central government.10

5 Adams, “Colonial Policies and Women’s Participation in Public Life: The Case of British
Southern Cameroons,” 1.
6 Richardson, “Method in the History of Education,” 58–59.
7 Richard Elphick, The Equality of Believers. Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics
of South Africa (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 181–182.
8 Ernst G. Malherbe, Education in South Africa. Volume II: 1923–75 (Cape Town, Juta & Co.,
Ltd., 1977), 710.
9 Goguel, Aux origines du mai Malgache. Désir d’école et compétition sociale 1951–1972, 341.
10 Ellen Vea Rosnes, “A Time of Destiny for Norwegian Mission Schools in Zululand and
Natal under the Policy of Bantu Education (1948–1955),” History of Education 49, no. 1
(2019): 104–125; Neil Overy, “‘These Difficult Days’: Mission Church Reactions to Bantu
Education in South Africa 1949–56” (PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London, 2002), 212–235.
Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 183

At this time many of the teachers and pupils in mission schools were females.
This paper examines the impact of Protestant mission education amongst
Zulu and Indian females in KwaZulu-Natal, with a focus on the educational
work of Indian Baptists and Norwegian Lutherans. Viewing mission education
as forming a transcultural contact zones, we aim in this chapter to highlight
women as actors negotiating their changing roles in these circumstances. The
gendered nature of mission education, and processes of transloyalties are key
issues that will be identified and problematised.
The term transloyalties is explored in the context of the women’s testimo-
nies and biographical profiles. It refers to the multifaceted processes in various
contact zones through which cultural and religious identities were trans-
formed and contested.11 Loyalty is, according to Bernard Gert, about having a
faithful adherence to a lawful government, but also to a group of which one is
a member.12 Daniel Calin opposes the term loyalty to the term loyal, arguing
that the term loyal has, at least in the French language, its origin in the law,
whereas loyalty refers to personal relationships with others: “Fidelity, engage-
ment, one’s word given”.13 He is critical of the use of concepts like loyalty as
well as “conflict of loyalty”, especially with regard to children and pupils in
schools, as it would involve children’s conscious choice between loyalty and
treason. The concept Transloyalties focuses on multiple relations, and loyal-
ties, and takes various dimensions into account. In mission education, seen as
a transcultural contact zone, different loyalties are at stake, for example, loy-
alty to the church and mission, government, local community, school leaders,
teachers, pupils, neighbourhoods, and to the family. Navigating between loyal-
ties connected to different contexts, institutions, norms and traditions can be
called processes of transloyalties. It is within this framework that transloyalties
are examined here.
A comparative study of Zulu and Indian female education in the context of
KwaZulu-Natal allows for the analysis of connected histories and transloyal-
ties to be explored within nuanced and diverse experiences. It challenges the
homogeneity of women’s experiences in race, class and gender in the colonial

11 The term transloyalties has been developed in a project at VID Specialized University, ‘Con-
nected Histories - Contested Values. World Lutheranism and Decolonisation: Processes
of Transloyalties, 1919–1970 (CHCV)’, https://www.vid.no/forskning/vids-fremragende
-forskningsmiljoer/connected-histories-contested-values.
12 Bernard Gert, “1. Loyalty and Morality,” in Loyalty: NOMOS LIV, eds. Sanford V. Levinson,
Paul Woodruff, and Joel Parker (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 3–21). https://
doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814785935.003.0001
13 Daniel Calin, “Explorations autour de la notion de loyauté,” Enfances & Psy 56, No. 3
(2012): 27, authors’ translation.
184 Rosnes and Hiralal

context. The study alludes to how race and class - with particular reference
to Indian immigrants and indigenous Africans - were politically and socially
constructed in Natal, and how these processes shaped and defined women’s
experiences. We probe how and why the Lutheran and Baptist mission educa-
tion in KwaZulu-Natal was gendered and the ways in which it promoted loyal-
ties among teachers and pupils. This study adds to current debates on gender,
colonialism and mission education in that it aims to shift the voices of the
‘colonised’ from the margins to the centre.

2 Research Methodology: Archival and Oral Histories

In this chapter we aim to tell the story of women, mission education and loyal-
ties in KwaZulu-Natal, mainly by using a range of various sources, including
oral and written accounts by Indian and Zulu female pupils and teachers in
Lutheran and Baptist schools. In order to do this, we make use of biographi-
cal narratives and oral interviews in addition to archival sources. Archival
material, including detailed statistics, helps to illustrate the gender aspect.
Moreover, this material provides insight into the loyalties of missions and mis-
sionaries to the missionary society, the government and/or local community
organisations within the wider colonial and state framework. In line with post-
colonial research, the oral histories seek to unearth multiple co-existing and
interacting narratives.14 They reveal the everyday lives of female teachers and
pupils, their lived experiences, the various ways in which they negotiated their
way through the educational system, and how they responded to the various
claims for loyalty.
Archival materials used in this paper are found in the Killie Campbell
­Africana Library, the Natal Archive in Pietermaritzburg as well as the Mis-
sion and Diakonia Archives, VID. One challenge of writing mission history in
KwaZulu-Natal is the general lack of information on women. Existing archi-
val sources, such as the Indian Immigration Papers (which documented the
arrival and settlement of Indian immigrants to Natal), and mission archives,
are rich sources of information but display a bias towards male histories, with
little in the way of female voices.15 Despite these limitations, archival informa-
tion is useful in constructing some aspects of education in KwaZulu-Natal.

14 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference.

15 Gandhi Luthuli Documentation Centre (hereafter cited as GLDC), Report of Protector of
Immigrants, 1877, p. 6.
Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 185

Over the past decades, a growing body of historical and anthropological

work has challenged malestream work by shifting women’s narratives from
the margins to the center of history. The need to challenge gender stereotypes,
explore power relations between the sexes, and unearth linguistic obscurities
has led scholars to re-think approaches and methodologies in the construction
of feminist narratives.16 The limitations found to exist in traditional sources
have led to the embracing of oral histories “as a means of integrating women
into historical scholarship.”17 An invaluable source of information in this paper
is the Roots Project, initiated in the 1980s by historian Professor Surendra Bhana,
at the former University of Durban-Westville. The Roots Project was the first
attempt to extract personal accounts of families associated with the indenture
of Indian labour to the Colony of Natal. This collection of oral biographies was
significant in several ways. It allowed undergraduate students to trace their
family histories, and to become aware of the methodological process involved
in knowledge production through oral histories. It also led to a rich compila-
tion of personal documents which included photographs, pass and medical
certificates, and immigration documents. The Roots Project provided insights
into the reasons for women’s migration, their lives under indenture and how
religion permeated the lives of women immigrants. Moreover, we were able to
unearth several narratives of indentured women and their missionary work
in Natal.18 For this particular chapter we have largely focused on the lives of
Kanakamma Rangiah and Sungunamma Rangiah.
To include female Zulu voices, the paper draws on life stories collected
in 2018 from former pupils at Norwegian mission schools in Zululand dur-
ing the 1940s and 1950s. These former pupils were recruited and interviewed
by one of the co-authors through a church network with historical links to
the Norwegian Mission Society (NMS). Altogether, five interviews were con-
ducted, all ­interviewees gave their consent to participate and have been given

16 Devarakshanam Govinden, Sister Outsiders: The Representation of Identity and

­ ifference in Selected Writings by South African Indian Women (Imagined South Africa)
D
(Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2008); Joan Sangster, “Telling Our Stories:
Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History,” Women’s History Review 3, No.1 (1994);
Antoinette Burton, “‘History’ Is Now: Feminist Theory and the Production of Historical
Feminisms,” Women’s History Review 1, No. 1, 1992; June Purvis, “Using Primary Sources
When Researching Women’s History from a Feminist Perspective,” Women’s History
Review 1, No. 2 (1992).
17 Sangster, “Telling Our Stories,” 5.
18 GLDC, Z. Sayed, “Unpublished Essay: The Circumstances Surrounding My Great-­
Grandmother Buttow Kareema from India 1882–1947,” Roots Project, Bhana Collection
(1983).
186 Rosnes and Hiralal

pseudonyms: Tutu, Thandiwe, Sindiwe, Sbongile and Busisiwe. These inter-

views yielded valuable insights into the experiences of female pupils at mis-
sion schools in KwaZulu-Natal. In this paper, we include information from
several of the interviews, and the story of Thandiwe is described in more depth
than the others to gain a deeper understanding of a female pupil’s experiences.
The use of oral interviews - a critical methodological tool in this paper -
reveals that the absence of women’s voices in the archives need not be a limi-
tation. On the contrary, oral interviews provide a platform for social histories,
and for the marginalised and ‘silenced’ women to share their lived experiences
and tell their own stories. Whilst there are criticisms levelled against oral inter-
views in terms of their subjectivity, they do yield rich information on women’s
lived experiences: their challenges, hopes and dreams.19 Perhaps equally sig-
nificant, these interviews provide a window into the ways in which women
have shaped, and continue to shape, the research agenda, which proved to be
the case in the research documented in this chapter.

3 Baptist Education and Gender among the Indian Populations in

Natal

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the migrations (both inden-
tured and free) from South Asia (India) to Africa, Canada, Fiji, Mauritius, the
Caribbean, and the Americas led to the establishment of distinct Indian com-
munities abroad. Most Indians arrived under a contractual system and worked
as indentured labourers. Many remained behind in Natal after their labour
contracts expired. Among the indentured arrivals were, a small group of Chris-
tians who constituted 1,4% of the total 152 184 immigrants . Despite the small
number of Christian Indians in Natal, the Christian missions played a signifi-
cant and conspicuous evangelical role amongst the Indian settlers. N ­ otable
amongst the missions active in the area were the London Missionary Soci-
ety (LMS), the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), the Wesleyan
Methodist Missionary Society, St Aiden’s Mission, the Lutheran and the Baptist
Churches, and the Roman Catholics. These missionary societies, churches and
missions hailed from India, France, Germany and Sweden.
The Churches and the missionaries were among the foremost in spear-
heading educational work in the community. The early Indian schools were
constructed of wood and iron, and the primary medium of instruction was

19 Richardson, “Method in the History of Education,” 58–59.

Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 187

English. Indian pupils were taught Christian values and practices. The first
schools for Indian immigrants were opened by the Catholic Church in 1867 in
Natal.20 By the late 1860s Reverend Ralph Stott, a Methodist minister, estab-
lished two schools in Durban with state assistance: a Day School and an Even-
ing School, which had a total of 34 and 20 students in 1877 respectively. In these
schools both English and the Indian languages - mainly Tamil and Telegu - were
taught, together with reading and arithmetic.21 By the early 1890s the Wesleyan
Mission had established 11 schools, but by the late 1890s, many of its schools
were forced to shut their doors due to a shortage of teachers, together with the
migration of labour from one plantation to another.22 The Church of the South
African Indian Mission, formed in 1877, had by 1893, established approximately
26 schools along the north coast of Natal, as well as in the hinterland districts.23
In 1878 legislation provided for the creation of an Indian Immigrant School
Board responsible for the promotion and development of the education of
Indian children. By 1883 the Indian Immigrant School Board had established
11 schools, but one of the serious challenges they encountered was the lack of
`suitable men as teachers’.24 The Board set up several schools, but the building
and furniture were of a poor standard. In 1894 the `ad hoc’ Indian Immigrant
School Board was abolished and Indian education was placed under the Natal
Education Department.25
Whilst the early missionaries played a significant role in developing Indian
education, it was largely gendered in terms of its structure, staff, curriculum,
and attitudes. This must be viewed within the broader context of the social
and cultural attitudes that governed women’s position in Indian society at the
time. Women occupied a secondary status, with limited opportunities in edu-
cation, health, and politics. In many instances, female mobility was restricted
by purdah (seclusion of women), commonly practised among Hindus and
Muslims. Migration did little to change these attitudes which were pervasive
in the diaspora.
These gendered attitudes were embedded in education as well. There was
a reluctance on the part of Indian parents to send their daughters to school.

20 G.K. Nair, and G. Naidoo, Celebrate Indian Christians in South Africa 1860–2010 (Durban,
Legacy Literature, 2010), 7–15.
21 GLDC, Indian Immigration Trust Board of Natal 1877, Immigration Department, Durban
June 22, 1877.
22 Nair, and Naidoo, Celebrate Indian Christians in South Africa 1860–2010, 16; GLDC, Report
of the Protector of Immigrants 1881, pp. 16.
23 Nair, and Naidoo, Celebrate Indian Christians in South Africa 1860–2010, 16.
24 GLDC, UKZN, Report of the Protector of Immigrants 1882, pp.35, Acc no. 1/07/430.
25 Fiat Lux, 1966, p. 8.
188 Rosnes and Hiralal

Indian society was highly traditional and patriarchal, and gender roles were
clearly defined. Boys were positioned higher than females, and the latter
were tasked to engage in domestic duties. Education and politics was seen at
the time as the domain of men. A colonial Inspector of Schools, Mr F. Col-
peper, supported a gendered education for girls which would be a ‘prerequi-
site for the graces of motherhood’.26A perusal of female enrolment at schools
between the 1870s and 1940s reveals the pervasive gendered attitudes towards
women. By 1872, four schools were established at Durban, Umgeni, Umbilo and
Verulam, with a combined total of 73 boys and 15 girls.27 By 1885, 25 schools
were established, with a combined total enrolment of 1,480 students, of whom
only 223 were females. The low attendance of females can also be attributed to
the reluctance of Indian parents to send their daughters to a co-educational
school. There were calls for separate schools for females.28 Subsequently, in
1889, two all-girls schools were established. However, these early schools
lacked female staff. One of the ways these issues were resolved was for Indian
girls to be taught separately by experienced white English female teachers.
Other teachers were recruited from India. In 1889, the Catholic St Aiden’s Mis-
sion recruited Mrs Simon Vedamuthu, who arrived in Natal with her brother
and her husband.29 Religious instruction was important in mission schools,
and often classes were conducted in the vernacular languages: Hindi, Tamil or
Telugu.30 By the turn of the century female enrolment in schools had increased
to some extent. For example, by 1929 there were 2,754 girls enrolled at schools,
but overall males continued to outnumber females.31
Another explanation for the lack of female attendance at this time was
­poverty. In 1884 a Protector of Indian Immigrants Report highlights the slow
progress in education32:

... one of the chief hindrances to progress is the facility with which Indian
children can earn a living. There is hardly a boy or girl of seven years of
age whose earnings do not contribute some trifle to their parents’ stock or
for whom employment as domestic servants in European families might
not be obtained if desired. Boys are frequently kept away from school by

26 Fiat Lux, 1967 vol. 2, p.176.

27 Nair, and Naidoo, Celebrate Indian Christians in South Africa 1860–2010, 16.
28 Fiat Lux, 1967 vol. 2, p.176.
29 Indian Opinion, 28 July 1922.
30 Indian Opinion, 28 July 1922.
31 Fiat Lux 1967, vol.2, 7 September, pp.177–178.
32 The Protector of Immigrants was a government official appointed to look after the
­interests of the indentured population. He was tasked with registration of the arrival of
immigrants, births, deaths and marriages and to hear civil cases.
Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 189

their parents for half and even whole days in order that they may hawk
fruit and vegetables, work in the gardens ...33

Collectively these socio-economic factors played a pivotal role in shaping and

defining women’s access to education in the colonial and post-colonial period.

4 Norwegian Lutheran Education and Gender in KwaZulu-Natal

among Zulu Women

Missionaries from the Norwegian Lutheran mission, NMS, started work in

­Zululand in the 1840s. The NMS was part of the Co-operating Lutheran M ­ issions
in Natal (CLM) and involved the Church of Swedish Mission (CSM), the Berlin
Mission Society (BMS), the American Lutheran Mission (ALM), and the Her-
mannsburg Mission (HMS). Financial support from the provincial authorities
in Natal was the main reason why the NMS was able to expand its educational
work in KwaZulu-Natal during the 20th century. When the state took over mis-
sion schools after the passing of the Bantu Education Act in 1953, over 10,000
pupils were attending NMS schools.34
During World War II the Norwegian missionaries were tempted to hand over
the schools to the state due to the financial constraints, but the NMS recog-
nised that “When these schools are in our hands, we have more influence over
the children. In addition, we have a lot to say concerning employing teachers
and dismissing those who turn out to be unfit for the position”.35 The teachers’
opportunities to exert a Christian influence on children from non-­Christian
homes was recognised, the success factor being that many non-Christian
pupils also came to Church for religious learning.36 This illustrates the link
made by missionaries between school and church. The education of children
and youth remained the main strategy to promote loyalty to the church and
recruit faithful indigenous workers:

Through the primary schools, Sunday schools, bible schools and youth
associations etc. we have to seek to have an influence on the youth with

33 SR Maharaj, `Indian Education in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century; in Indian

­ entenary Commemoration Brochure, 33.
C
34 Rosnes, “A Time of Destiny for Norwegian Mission Schools in Zululand and Natal under
the Policy of Bantu Education (1948–1955).”
35 NMS, ‘Referat fra konferansen og jubileumsfesten på Umpumulo 8.-13- Juni’, VID_MA_
A-1045_Konf_ref_SA_1944, 1944, pp. 7–8, authors’ translation.
36 NMS, ‘Referat fra konferansen på empangeni 23-28.06’, VID_MA_A-1045_Konf_ref_SA_1945,
1945, p. 5.
190 Rosnes and Hiralal

qualified God-affectionate workers, blacks and white, men and women.

We have to win large crowds for Christ. In this way, we would in the
future not lack candidates to fill the demanding positions in schools and
congregations.37

The life stories that were collected from former Zulu female pupils speak to
how education fostered loyalty, recruited workers to the church and engaged
congregational members.38 Busisiwe was ordained as evangelist, Thandiwe
served on different church committees, Sindiwe called herself “Prayor warrior”,
and Tutu and Sbongile were engaged in church work, and, in particular, in the
women’s league.
In 1941, when Thandiwe, whose life story is told later in this chapter, started
as a six-year-old at Kwa Mondi school in Eshowe district, Zululand, she was
one of 6331 pupils enrolling in NMS schools in KwaZulu-Natal, of whom 3596
were girls.39 For the Lutheran Norwegian mission and Church, it was crucial
that both girls and boys received an education, yet it remained more difficult to
enrol boys than to enrol girls.40 This is clear from the school statistics from the
district of Eshowe, where, in contrast to the situation in Indian schools, girls
outnumbered boys in all schools (see Table 7.1). The most common explanation
was that boys were needed to raise the family income and herd the cattle in Zulu
families. Among the female pupils interviewed, there were, however, a variety
of stories regarding their entrance into schooling and their school progress.41
Sbongile started school at the age of seven, whereas Tutu, who was the oldest
of 10 siblings, was 13 years old before starting school, explaining that she had to
herd the cattle. Busisiwe’s father was not convinced about letting his daughter
go to school before he himself attended an evening school and experienced the
opportunities presented by the acquisition of literacy. Thandiwe’s family lived
on a mission station, and for them, it was taken for granted that they would start
school when they were old enough. Sindiwe explained, however, that, since she
was not very tall, she did not start school before she was 10 years old.
In addition to primary schools in Zululand and Natal, the Norwegian mis-
sion, partly in collaboration with CLM, established and ran an industrial

37 NMS, ‘Referat fra konferansen på Ungoye 16. - 28. Juni’, VID_MA_A-1045_Konf_ref_SA_1948,

1948, p. 7, authors’ translation.
38 Former pupils Busisiwe, Thandiwe, Sindiwe, Tutu and Sbongile ‘Pers.Com’, (2018).
39 NMS, ‘Statistics of Nms Work in Zululand and Natal’, VID-MA-A-1045-D-Da-L0675-17-
statistikk-SørAfrika-1940, 1940.
40 Johan Kjelvei, “Zululand Og Natal,” in Mørkets Lenker Brast. Nms Årbok 1938 ed. NMS
(Stavanger, NMS forlag, 1939), 36; Former Pupil Busisiwe, ‘Pers.Com’ (2018).
41 Former pupils Busisiwe, Thandiwe, Sindiwe, Tutu and Sbongile ‘Pers.Com’ Rosnes (2018).
Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 191

school, a Bible school, a teacher training college and a high school. The Nor-
wegian missionaries had high expectations when it came to fostering loyalty
through the Zulu Lutheran High School where Thandiwe was a student: “We
hope that this new high school will provide us with faithful young men and
women, who, with their knowledge, will achieve positions in society, where
they can have a good Christian influence”.42 All the students at the High School
“received Church History and Scripture teaching which conformed to the Sylla-
bus of the Cooperating Lutheran Missions”43 in addition to the curriculum laid
down by the Natal Education Department. The educational and moral impact
on the students was apparent as all students, even those who came from sur-
rounding areas were boarders in the school hostel. Extra-curricular activities
were important in the education of the youths. There were morning and even-
ing prayers and services, Bible classes, and an association called the Luther
League. Female students assisted with Sunday schools in the neighbourhood
and they had their own prayer room. This indicates that in the Lutheran High
School female pupils met expectations for them to participate in praying and
taking care of children’s religious education.
There were more boys than girls at this level in contrast to primary school
level (see Table 7.1).44 In addition, the disparity between male and female stu-
dents in the period 1950–1953 sharpened over time as the percentage of female
pupils in the High school decreased from 47% to 28%. The decrease was
explained by a new opportunity arising elsewhere to attend a nursing course
without paying boarding costs. The Principal reported that it was a challenge
to attract girls to the school, which indicates that this was due, not to the reluc-
tance of the mission policy, but to a genuine decline in female attendance.
At the Lutheran High School students were prepared for the Natal Junior
Certificate Examination with the following subjects being offered: English,
Zulu, Arithmetic, Biology, History, Geography and Mathematics.45 In 1952,
50 % passed the Junior Certificate exam, this number increasing to 67 % in
1953. Even though this result seemed modest, only five schools in Natal had
better results than the Lutheran High School. In Standard VII the result was
74% in 1952 and 68% the following year, this decline being attributed to the

42 NMS, ‘Referat fra konferansen på Ungoye 16. - 28. Juni’, p. 9, authors’ translation.
43 L. E. Reinertsen, “Zulu Lutheran High School: Principal’s General Report for the Year of
1952,” VID-MA-A-1064-172-3, 1952, author’s translation.
44 W. O. Rindahl, “Zulu Lutheran High School: Principal’s General Report for the Year of
1953,” VID-MA-A-1064-172-4, 1953; Reinertsen, “Zulu Lutheran High School: Principal’s
General Report for the Year of 1952.”
45 Rindahl, “Zulu Lutheran High School: Principal’s General Report for the Year of 1953”;
Reinertsen, “Zulu Lutheran High School: Principal’s General Report for the Year of 1952.”
192 Rosnes and Hiralal

Table 7.1 School statistics from Eshowe district

School S\Na Teachers Pupils Attendance

Boys Girls Total

Kwa Mondi S 16 262 294 556 478

Elomoya S 2 33 45 78 63
Umhlatuzana S 2 42 54 96 83
Entenyane S 2 45 64 109 98
Esiqwaqweni S 1 15 20 35 24
Mpumaza N 1 11 24 35 30
Mkukuza N 1 8 14 22 17
Emvutshini N 1 1 13 14 11

Source: NMS, ‘Statistics for the school work in Eshowe’, VID-MA-A-1064-207-4,

1950
a
S = Subsidised/ Grant schools N = Non-subsidised/ Mission/private schools

fact that the class that year was “…below standards…”, which was considered
“…­especially true for the girls…”.46 From this it seems that education was
gendered and that girls and boys were met with different expectations by
the teaching staff. The issue of education being gendered in African schools
is raised by Andrew John Moore.47 According to him, the main emphasis for
African males’ education was learning agriculture, the Zulu language and
industrial arts such as w
­ oodwork, whereas for girls, the emphasis was domes-
tic science (cooking, needlework, laundry work, household management).
Domestic ­science was seen as providing the opportunity to girls to set up their
own “civilised” home, as well as providing them with the skills necessary to
secure work opportunities. That education was gendered also appears by an
article in the Norwegian Mission tiding (NMt) (the magazine of the NMS) from
1942. Educator-­missionary Margrethe Skavang writes that, despite women’s
subordinate position in Zululand, they were able to receive the same educa-
tion as boys, and they were up to it. “But”, she added “for them it is particularly

46 Rindahl, “Zulu Lutheran High School: Principal’s General Report for the Year of 1953.”
47 Andrew John Moore, “Natal’s ‘Native’ Education (1917–1953): Education for Segregation”
(Master’s dissertation, University of Natal, 1990), 88–89.
Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 193

Table 7.2 Number of pupils at Zulu Lutheran High School

Opening of the year End of year

Male Female Total Male Female Total

Standard VIII 1953 27 8 35 25 8 33

Standard VII 1953 40 18 58 38 18 56
Total 1953 67 26 93 63 26 89
Total 1952 55 28 83 46 25 71
Total 1951 57 51 108 48 40 88
Total 1950 58 53 111 54 52 106

Source (Rindahl 1953, Reinertsen 1952)

important that education become as practical as possible”.48 From 1953, Health

Education was offered as an alternative to Mathematics, due, among other
reasons, to difficulties in passing the exam. All of the girls and 24 boys chose
this option. The fact that all the girl students chose this option would seem to
indicate that this was expected of them. However, the outbreak of the Second
World War was to impact on African women’s education, particularly those
training as nurses. The war led to rising food prices, poverty and rapid African
urbanisation. With many white nurses involved in the war effort, there was
a shortage of nurses, thus the need to train African nurses became impera-
tive. African nurses were also required to assist with the health care services
for the ­African people due to the rapid effects of urbanisation.49 Thus during
the 1950s a growing number of black women were gaining access to femin-
ised professions such as nursing and teaching due to the need for professionals
in these fields to serve the black population.50 Girls’ and women’s education
in KwaZulu-Natal was shaped by negotiations of interests between different
actors operating in transcultural contact zones. Zulu traditional views on girls,
and the needs of the community, influenced the content of this education in
the way that ­parents had to be ­convinced about sending their girls to mission

48 Margrethe Skavang, “Zulu Ungdommen i dag. En begavet slekt som vil fram. Men hvor
den trenger hjelp,” NMt 97, No. 16 (1942).
49 Johanna Maria Esterhuizen, The Professional Development of Black South African Nurses
1908–1994: A historical Perspective (Master’s dissertation, 2021): 86–87.
50 Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education, 136,
139; Shula Marks, Divided Sisterhood: Race, Class, and Gender in the South African Nursing
Profession (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 1994), 170.
194 Rosnes and Hiralal

schools. The mission’s aim of educating women, impacted by the missionaries’

own culture and aims of mission work, also influenced the form and content
of girls’ education. Not the least of these influencing factors, were the needs
of the government which contributed to shaping girls’ education, especially
since they set educational policies and gave financial support to the missions
in order for them to run schools.

5 Female Narratives of Education

Archival material provides an overview of the aim of mission education and

the ways in which attendance and content were gendered. The narratives of
Indian female teachers, Kanakamma Rangiah and Sungunamma Rangiah, illu-
minate the role and contributions of Indian missionary women to the spread
of Christianity and their early attempts to educate young girls during the
period. Thandiwe’s story illustrates the experience of one Zulu female pupil
who attended Lutheran primary and secondary schools in Eshowe. These
­stories add to an understanding not only of how education contributed to fos-
tering loyalties among women in the context of shifting locations (migration)
accommodating identities (religion), but also the ways in which women made
use of education for self and community development.

6 Kanakamma Rangiah and Sungunamma Rangiah’s Stories51

Kanakamma Rangiah was born in 1868 in Nellore, South India. She married
Revd John Rangiah who was the first missionary sent to Natal. Rangiah and
his wife Kanakamma arrived in Natal from Nellore, southern India, on the 13
June 1903. An American missionary in India, Mrs Alice Stenger, writes about
Kanakamma taking on the challenging journey from India to South Africa:

It was especially hard for Kanakamma to take this journey into the
unknown. It was a great sacrifice leaving a good home and all the relatives

51 All information in this section is extracted from the following source: GLDC, M. Viranna,
“Unpublished Essay: John Rangiah,” Roots Project, Bhana Collection; Nair, and Naidoo,
Celebrate Indian Christians in South Africa 1860–2010; Rodney Ragwan, “The narrative
of the Baptist Association of South Africa and its significance for the Indian Baptist
Church in KwaZulu-Natal,” unpublished paper, http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle
/10500/4627/Ragwan.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y, accessed 3 March 2021.
Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 195

in a community where John was respected and loved. Kanakamma

became a fine missionary and John was outstanding. They dedicated
Churches and laid foundations for other churches. At John’s death,52
Kanakamma carried on the work pioneered by her husband.53

Initially, Kanakamma was somewhat reluctant to travel to Africa. Her narrative

is similar to that of other colonial missionary wives, such as that of Mrs Ann
Hodgson- wife of Methodist missionary, the Reverend Thomas Hodgson -who
shared similar anxieties. Travelling to a foreign land, leaving behind family and
friends, was certainly no easy task. Moreover, this was her first trip abroad, and
sea travel terrified her. At the time of her journey to Africa she was pregnant
with her third child. Her family, especially her in-laws, were not happy for her
to travel.
Nevertheless, despite her concerns about her in-laws, she decided to join
her husband on the journey to Africa. They arrived in Natal on June 13, 1903.
Kanakamma and her husband eventually settled on the north coast of Natal
on a plantation near Kearsney. They subsequently established the first Indian
Baptish Church with 64 members. Life was quite challenging for Kanakamma.
She had to oversee her home and her children, and assist her husband in his
missionary work. Kanakamma served as a teacher in the school that Rangiah
established in Kearsney, where she provided education to the children of
indentured labourers. She taught vernacular classes in Telugu, as the majority
of the indentured labourers were from the south of India, of which ­Telugu was
one of the dominant spoken languages. In addition, young girls were taught
hymns and Bible studies.54 Kanakamma’s husband John describes the work of
his wife amongst the indentured women and their children:

We have two schools, just started, one in Kearsney, and the other at
Stanger. My wife Mrs K. Rungiah helps us in preaching the gospel to the
women around us. Her frequent visits to them have made some of them
friends of the gospel, and she has been successful in her efforts. She also
teaches at the school for children at Kearsney. Thirty-one have been
added to our churches by baptism since the beginning of 1904.55

52 John Rangiah died in 1915.

53 Viranna, “Unpublished Essay: John Rangiah”; Nair, and Naidoo, Celebrate Indian ­Christians
in South Africa 1860–2010, 183.
54 Ragwan, “The narrative of the Baptist Association of South Africa and its significance for
the Indian Baptist Church in KwaZulu-Natal.”
55 Viranna, “Unpublished Essay: John Rangiah”, 15.
196 Rosnes and Hiralal

She was also involved in an orphanage on Hulett’s estate, where she took care
of the educational and spiritual needs of children between the ages of 12 and
15 years. As the membership of the Baptist Church increased, the community
decided to build a bigger church. Kanakamma and the women in the congrega-
tion embarked on a fundraising campaign for this project. During the periods
when John was away attending a conference abroad at the World Mission-
ary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, Kanakamma often provided religious
and community leadership to the Kearsney Baptist Church in her husband’s
absence. She also took charge of the home during his absence. Even when
her husband John proved to be unpopular amongst a section of the Indian
Baptists, Kanakamma stood by her spouse. Kanakamma Rangiah is known for
her sterling work, up to her death on 13 April 1931. Her daughter-in-law, Sun-
gunamma Rangiah (1921–1943), shared her spiritual passion and followed her
footsteps in her missionary work.56
Sungunamma Rangiah migrated to South Africa on the 5 March 1921 from
India with her husband Theophilus on board the SS Umtata. Sungunamma,
a young 18-year-old immigrant, found her new life in Natal challenging. She
was unfamiliar with the country, the environment and its people. However,
it was largely through her in-laws- Kanakamma Rangiah - that she gradually
assimilated into her adopted home. Sungunamma, together with her husband
Theophilus, established the church in Glendale on the Natal North Coast.
­Sungunamma was well known for her deep religious faith. For example, when
a woman called “Mother Subbamma” was seriously ill and needed healing,
Sungunamma prayed for her full recovery. The woman recovered and this was
attributed to Sungunamma’s strong faith.57
Sungunamma played a pivotal role in spearheading social work among the
churches of the Baptist Association of South Africa. According to Ragwan, she
taught Telugu, English hymns and choruses, and held cooking, dressing, and
hygiene classes. She was particularly interested in promoting the English lan-
guage. Young people who passed Standard VI (grade 8), and who entered high
school, were required to preach a sermon in English in the presence of Theo-
philus and Sungunamma Rangiah. On Tuesdays services were held in English
to promote the language. She also served as a mentor, assisting with personal
and spiritual issues, helping families to organise wedding ceremonies, advis-
ing on the choice of jewellery, clothing, food, and even the choice of hymns.

56 Ragwan, “The narrative of the Baptist Association of South Africa and its significance for
the Indian Baptist Church in KwaZulu-Natal.”
57 Ragwan, “The narrative of the Baptist Association of South Africa and its significance for
the Indian Baptist Church in KwaZulu-Natal.”
Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 197

She served the Indian Baptist Church for 23 years.”58 Sungunamma died in
1943. However, the legacy of evangelical work of the Rangiah family was con-
tinued by her granddaughter Rajithamma Rangiah, who was to emerge as an
­important woman leader in the Baptist Association of South Africa Church in
South Africa.59

6.1 Thandiwe’s Life Narrative60

Thandiwe was born in 1934 at Kwa Mondi (meaning at Ommund’s place), a
Norwegian mission station near the city of Eshowe named after the Norwegian
missionary to South Africa Ommund Oftebro.61 Her family was Lutheran by
faith, and she grew up in the area around the mission station with six sisters.
Her father had low paid work, so it was difficult to manage all the expenses. Her
mother was a faithful member of the Church and brought them up “in a Chris-
tian manner”. Thandiwe remembers that her mother, whom she described as
“a Christian worker”, collected sweets and other things for the children to enjoy
Christmas in church. Thandiwe attended Sunday school and Bible courses. As
a child she observed how church workers, including the missionaries, took care
of the children “They were looking after the girls”, she said, adding that they
used to call the area of the mission “the girl’s boarding school”. Figure 7.1, a
picture of your girls gathering with the female missionary drinking from white
cups is an illustration to this “boarding school”.
At the age of six, Thandiwe started at Kwa Mondi primary school where she
completed Standard V (grade 7). They prayed every day before starting school.
They learned about the Bible, the catechism and “the teachers, they belonged
to the mission”. They learned to read in Zulu, and she remembers the Zulu
poems. However, they were taught in English, which is why this generation is
known as “Royal Readers,” as these were the widely used textbooks of the time.
In those days there was strong authoritarian discipline in the schools, and she
considered discipline helped them to focus. They got some books at school,
especially from Standard III (grade 5) on, but they had to buy the rest. She
also remembers they got a meal at school, which was much appreciated. Her

58 Ragwan, “The narrative of the Baptist Association of South Africa and its significance for
the Indian Baptist Church in KwaZulu-Natal.”
59 Ragwan, “The narrative of the Baptist Association of South Africa and its significance for
the Indian Baptist Church in KwaZulu-Natal.”
60 All information and citations in this section are taken from the interview one of the
co-authors conducted in KwaZulu-Natal with Former Pupil Thandiwe, ‘Pers.Com’ (2018).
61 Olav Guttorm Myklebust, “Det Norske Misjonsselskaps Historie. Sør-Afrika,” in Det Norske
Misjonsselskaps Historie i Hundre År: Det Norske Misjonsselskaps Historie: Sør-Afrika,
China, Sudan III, eds. Olav Guttorm Myklebust et al. (Stavanger: Dreyer, 1949), 109.
198 Rosnes and Hiralal

Figure 7.1 Young South Africans, South Africa

 P hotographer: Larsen, Anna Emilie (1887–1967), Mission and
Diakonia Archives, VID Specialized University

mother did not earn much money and it was difficult to afford those books.
She used to buy slates, but they were easily broken. The oldest sister did very
well, went to teacher training college, became a teacher, and supported her
sisters’ education.
In 1949, Thandiwe continued at the Zulu Lutheran High-School in Eshowe
where she finished Standard VII (grade 9) and obtained her Junior Certificate.
She remembers that they learned, English, Zulu and arithmetic. The medium
of instruction was English, and they were expected to speak English in school,
which they found difficult. All pupils stayed in the dormitory so that they could
work and concentrate. It was quite strict, but she enjoyed High School, espe-
cially taking part in extra-curricular activities. They were taught church work,
cookery, and “everything - how one behaves in life”.
After High school Thandiwe was trained at a hospital in Durban where she
eventually qualified as a nurse. After finishing her studies, she married and
had three children. Since she was a professional health worker, she continued
working: “We were these first to work while married because it wasn’t in our
culture that women work because they are supposed to stay at home and look
at their family”. She was thankful for being a professional as her husband died
after six years of marriage. She chose not to remarry and to focus on her chil-
dren: “to bring them up in a proper place, in a Christian way and to educate
them”. As a widow, she managed everything by herself, including building a
Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 199

house and paying for the children’s education. “Because when you pray hard,
God answers your prayer”, she explained. Two of her children passed on and
she looked after her grandchildren. As an adult, she took up distance educa-
tion to encourage her children and grandchildren to get educated, and made
sure that all of them proceeded to University level.
Thandiwe worked as a nurse for over 30 years before she went on pen-
sion. After that, she stayed at Kwa Mondi. All her life she has been engaged in
Church and schoolwork, serving in different committees.

7 Women’s Experiences of Mission Education and Processes of

Transloyalties

The narratives of Kanakamma Rangiah, Sungunamma Rangiah, and Thandiwe

highlight women as agents of missionary work and communal upliftment.
Missionaries in Natal aimed to promote both the education and the social wel-
fare of the marginalised African and Indian communities in the framework
of mission and evangelising work. For African and Indian women who were
engaged in Christian work and educational upliftment, straddling these issues
led them to negotiate their national identity, as well as their communal and
spiritual allegiance.
The narratives of Kanakamma and Sungunamma Rangiah reveal the con-
tributions of women led missions in colonial Natal. Both women had a deep
allegiance to the Baptist faith and viewed missionary work as an integral part
of their Christian faith. Engaging in the vocational, spiritual and social needs
of the community allowed these women to fulfil the callings of their Baptist
faith. However, this engagement also provided an opportunity for such women
to move from the periphery to the centre of evangelical work within Church
structures. Both Kanakamma and Sungunamma were immigrant women who
accompanied their spouses to Natal. Migration provided an opportunity for
both women to pursue their evangelical work across oceanic spaces - from
India to Natal - thus allowing for the strengthening of religious ties and loyal-
ties. These ties were further embedded within the community, largely through
upliftment work amongst the poor.
The missionary work of Kanakamma and Sungunamma also became a plat-
form for early female empowerment. Both women sought to encourage female
education at a time when patriarchal attitudes were deeply entrenched in
Indian society. While there was criticism from some parents who were firmly
against female education, this did not prevent the women from pushing for
the need for progressive attitudes towards women. The education that was
200 Rosnes and Hiralal

provided by missionary schools to girls at the time aimed not only to address
their academic and spiritual needs, but also to develop their social and artis-
tic skills. Young girls were taught how to sing, play instruments, lead worship,
and participate in plays. The girls were taught in their mother-tongue, Telugu,
learned English hymns, and their teachers held cooking classes, dressmaking,
as well as hygiene classes.62 However, in spite of this curriculum, these early
attempts to encourage female education and evangelical work did little to
change patriarchal attitudes and the gender status quo within the Indian fam-
ily structure. The vocational training given to girls tended to echo and repro-
duce traditional gender roles, and encouraged, rather than providing them
with the opportunity to move beyond domesticity.
The Kanakamma and Sungunamma Rangiah narratives also to some extent
reveal the contestations around national identities. Both women were anx-
ious about migrating, from India, their homeland. Kanakamma was a native
of Nellore in South India and accompanied her husband to Natal to work
amongst the indentured labourers on the coastal plantations. Kanakamma
was a reluctant immigrant, afraid to travel to a foreign country and for her,
the prospect of leaving her land, family and friends behind was fraught with
anxiety. Nevertheless, she accompanied her husband to Africa, and by 1903 the
Rangiahs were successful in terms of fulfilling their evangelical aims, and had
established the first Indian Baptist Church. But in 1915, as has been mentioned,
Kanakamma became a widow with six children. She was initially torn between
returning to India or staying behind and continuing the work of the Baptist
faith. Kanakamma subsequently decided to remain in Natal, which she now
called her ‘home’.63 Similarly, Sungunamma had accompanied her husband to
colonial Natal and found it difficult initially to assimilate in her new adopted
country. Both women eventually made Natal their permanent home, raised
families, and embraced their evangelical work in their new environment. Thus
migration led to a shift in loyalties in terms of `home’ and `belonging’, and the
narratives of Kanakamma and Sungunamma allude to the particular ways in
which they navigated and negotiated these challenges.
Thandiwe’s story follows a similar trajectory. It also offers a deeper under-
standing of how education within a mission school was experienced by a
female pupil, and of the processes of transloyalties amongst African women.

62 Ragwan, “The narrative of the Baptist Association of South Africa and its significance for
the Indian Baptist Church in KwaZulu-Natal.”
63 Nair, and Naidoo, Celebrate Indian Christians in South Africa 1860–2010, 184; Ragwan, “The
narrative of the Baptist Association of South Africa and its significance for the Indian
Baptist Church in KwaZulu-Natal.”
Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 201

It tells us something about how she, building among other influences on her
Lutheran identity and education, negotiated her dual roles both in Zulu soci-
ety and in the modern urban/medical professional world. Given that at that
time a very small percentage of the black population was educated, oppor-
tunities to attend school were minimal. For a family closely connected to the
church, as was the case of Thandiwe, it was, however, seen by them as a mat-
ter of course to educate their children. Her parents managed to educate them
all, despite their low income, with the help of the oldest sister who worked
as a teacher. In this context, influencing your children in a religious direction
by sending them to school and Sunday school was in fact a way to demon-
strate faithful adherence and loyalty to the mission and church. The strong link
between school and church becomes even clearer through Thandiwe’s descrip-
tion of teachers at her school, who, in multiple ways, “belonged to the mission”,
that they prayed every morning, and religious education was part of the school
programme.
Through offering higher education, the mission also aimed to educate
workers to participate in and serve the different institutions of the Church.
Thandiwe’s sister went to the Lutheran teacher training college and worked
as a teacher, while Thandiwe attended the Lutheran High school. During the
1950s she qualified as a nurse and was one of the first Zulu women to work out-
side of the house. Her education led her to a profession as a nurse, and through
this, she negotiated her role as a working mother in the Zulu society. Since her
husband died early, her paid work was important because it provided her with
the choice to be both independent and to support her own household. Her
life story can be seen to indicate that pupils, including black female pupils,
at the time, took advantage of their education and could as female actors in
the Zulu society make choices about how they preferred to live their lives. She
also reported that, through their schooling, her own children and grandchil-
dren advanced to University level. Education had for her become an important
value, to the extent that she studied as an adult with the purpose of motivat-
ing her children and grandchildren. The support she provided her children
and grandchildren for their education is a demonstration of her loyalty to the
family.
Even though not all pupils at the mission schools went on to work in
church or mission institutions, such as Lutheran congregations, hospitals, or
schools, they were expected to be active church members, to contribute to
congregational work, and to have a positive influence on their society. One
way of exercising an influence on society is through the example of the way
you live your family life. This is illustrated by Thandiwe’s comment about
how she learned “running a house”, “how to behave”, and cookery. From her
202 Rosnes and Hiralal

narrative we learn that she used what the missionaries and teachers in schools
had taught her to educate her children “in a proper place” and “in a Christian
way”. Both Thandiwe and her mother contributed to mission and church work
through living a Christian family life, which can be seen as an indication of
their loyalty to the church. Another way of having an influence on society is to
engage as a volunteer in Church and make sure your children follow religious
education. Thandiwe had clear memories from the Sunday school and Bible
courses that she attended and in which her mother was engaged as a volun-
teer. Like her mother, and many other women reached by the educational work
of missions and Churches, Thandiwe has been an active and faithful Church
member and has contributed to congregational work all of her life.
Providing mission education was thus not only intended by a mission to
improve individual lives, but also to educate Christians who, out of loyalty to
the church, contributed to the developing the church spiritually and increasing
its members and improving society. In this way Thandiwe’s narrative speaks to
the transloyalties at stake among Lutheran Zulu women during this period.
Out of both loyalty to her profession and to her family, whom she wanted to
support economically, she resisted and disrupted the expectations and gen-
der norms of traditional Zulu society when she continued working outside
of the house even after her children were born. Thandiwe does not mention
much hardship regarding this in her narrative, the reason perhaps being that
she came from a Lutheran family and lived in a Lutheran neighbourhood.
In this context it is likely that her parents would want their daughters to be
educated and Thandiwe had a highly educated sister whom she looked up to.
Archival material and Thandiwe’s narrative together provide an insight into
the processes of transloyalties that were at stake in mission education seen as
a transcultural contact zone.

8 Conclusion

Many archival sources are riddled with male biases and written from the per-
spectives and subjectivity of those who wrote them. Too often the experiences
of female missionaries and educators, and of missionaries’ wives are gleaned
from the biographies and letters of missionary spouses, pastors or teachers.
They do not provide insights into the nature of the work of these women nor the
challenges they experienced as women, teachers and missionaries, nor of the
wider context within which they were working, or striving to work. In a­ ddition,
the experiences of pupils at mission schools are absent in archival materials.
The oral histories in this study provide some insights into the particular ways
Women, Mission Education and Loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal 203

in which this methodology can shape and define narratives, thereby unearth-
ing ‘lost’ voices. This research calls for new ways of thinking and documenting
gender and mission and colonial education histories. Through the focus on dif-
ferent voices and perspectives from this time, education appears as a transcul-
tural contact zone where negotiation between different actors took place.
These narratives of Indian and African women allude to the intersections
of race and gender. Both gender and political oppression shaped and defined
female education during the period under study. Equally significant is that the
narratives allude to the heterogeneity of oppressed women’s experiences in
the context of mission education when seen as a transcultural contact zone
where they negotiated their roles. In other words, the intersections of race and
gender cannot be homogenised when looking at female missionary education.
The narratives also allude to notions of loyalties across variables - religious,
cultural, national, ethnic and family. Clearly, the women embraced their faith,
perceiving it as a platform for social and educational upliftment. For immi-
grant women like Kanakamma, whilst she was a devout Baptist, in her case,
migration raised issues regarding geopolitical commitment to national and
religious identities.
While this chapter challenges notions of gender, race and education, also
embedded within this framework are discussions around transloyalties in
varying contexts, in particular in the education context when this is seen as a
transcultural contact zone. We see this research as pushing boundaries further
than previous research has done, to highlight that the issues raised here are not
simply additive in recovering women’s voices but invite a platform to revisit and
disrupt traditional narratives, and to offer fresh interpretations of discourses
associated with gender, mission education, and loyalties in KwaZulu-Natal.

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 Chapter 8

School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling during

the Algerian War of Independence (1956–1962)

Lydia Hadj-Ahmed

Through the micro-history of a sibling who attended school during the Alge-
rian war of Independence, which lasted for more than eight years, this chapter
intends to analyze school both as an institution and as an experience lived by
a family1 in a colonial situation. After World War II the French colonial state
promoted school reforms in Algeria,2 but was unable to fulfil its promises of
equality in a context where the colonial empire was confronted by a state of
crisis.3 While the proportion of Algerian children enrolled in the French public
primary school system remained extremely limited,4 the start of the Algerian
war of Independence made the schools a target for activism, and a site of polit-
ical conflict in the struggle for control of Algerian civilian populations. Neither
the maintaining of French control of Algeria, nor the building of a new and
independent Algeria could be done without the participation and support of
schools. In this respect, the French elementary school, up to this point deeply
discriminating and unequal, became both the space and the engine of strug-
gles and mobilizations of the different actors involved. On the French side,
the need for a school policy, in particular with regard to the most isolated and
neglected rural regions, was recognised during the war, although the reforms

1 This chapter focuses on the so-called “Muslim” families. Nevertheless, I do not refer to this
term because it is a colonial category, used in the archives as opposed to “European” families.
When writing about families in this chapter, it is Algerian families because, on the European
side, schooling was not a political problem since for them it was compulsory. In addition,
rural areas are populated mainly by Algerians and not Europeans.
2 This was not the first school reform in French colonial Algeria, but the Algerian War of inde-
pendence accelerated the need to enrol the Algerian children in the French school system.
3 Pascale Barthélémy, “L’enseignement dans l’Empire colonial français: une vieille histoire?,”
Histoire de l’éducation 128 (2010): 12.
4 In 1954, 14% of school-age boys were enrolled in school, while no more than 5% of school-age
girls were enrolled. Private Koranic schools existed but were mainly focused on learning the
Koran, while the colonial administration, worried about the progress of nationalism, tended
to target them and tighten the conditions for their opening. See Kamel Kateb, Le système
éducatif dans l’Algérie coloniale (1833–1962), Bilan statistique historiographique (Algiers: APIC
editions, 2014).

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_009

208 Hadj-Ahmed

undertaken were often not specific to the school.5 In areas where the French
elementary school was already present and well-established, long-lasting rela-
tionships had been established between Algerian families, their children and
their teachers. These relationships were all the more crucial when established
in under-administered rural areas, where the French presence was nearly
absent. This was the case of El-Flaye, a village in Kabylia and mostly populated
by so-called “Muslim” Algerians, according to the census categories of the time,
as opposed to families known as “Europeans” who mainly lived in urban areas
of colonial Algeria. This local scale allows us to grasp the importance of these
subordinate agents as teachers, who represented the continuity of the colonial
state within neglected rural spaces. The outbreak of the Algerian War of Inde-
pendence led to a profound disorganization of French elementary schools.
Due to the subsequent increase in insecurity, schools were closed locally by
the colonial authorities, while as early as 1956, French primary schools were
also targeted by the violence of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN). Some
of their leaders did not hesitate to set fire to schools to prevent them from
being occupied by French soldiers. From then on, the pupils were no longer
taught by civilian but by “military” teachers, drawn from the troops stationed
in the village.
This chapter aims to analyze the war as a laboratory for pedagogical experi-
mentation, looking at the new educational structures created during and as
a result of the Algerian War of Independence. The war precipitated the need
for the colonial power to take on the responsibility for alternative schooling of
children who were too numerous to be integrated into the traditional school
model. The chapter proposes to examine how education was impacted when
the war took hold in Algeria by focussing on the local history of a village in
Kabylia, which was populated mainly by Muslim Algerian families. The aim is
to understand, at a local level, how the war reconfigured relationships between
Algerian families and French schools in a rural area. The question posed is:
how did the outbreak of war affect the desire of these families for their chil-
dren to be educated at a French school? The time during which that schools
were negatively influenced by the outbreak of war, raises the question of the

5 In general, the war was a period during which the French state initiated a multitude of
changes, such as those relating to the transformation of the administration in Algeria, the
social promotion of “Muslims” in the civil service, and additional investments in economic
development. See Raphaëlle Branche, and Muriam Haleh Davis, “Une guerre à la misère? Les
ambitions modernisatrices de la Caisse des dépôts en Algérie,20&21, ” Revue d’histoire 153
(2022): 65–78.
School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling 209

creation and perpetuation of the school as a “world of contact”6 between

­Algerian f­amilies and the colonial state. The chapter examines the ways in
which these contacts were impacted from the time of the outbreak of the war
in Algeria.
From the time of the outbreak of the Algerian War of Independence many
new influences disrupted the daily life of Algerian families and in multiple
ways. This chapter analyses the influence of schools’ policies designed and
implemented by the French military authorities regarding family life and social
relations, in particular in rural areas marked by the violence of a conflict which
lasted eight years. Our work focuses in particular on the instances of intensi-
fied violence, from 1956 until the end of war, in 1962. It must be noted that the
involvement of the army in Algerian education was not new. The army’s incur-
sions in this area were already present, not only in the metropolitan context in
the 19th century, but also in the colonial context.7 In the wake of the “civilising
mission” of France in colonised territories,8 the colonial government consid-
ered it necessary not only to educate children to demonstrate the benefits of
French control of Algeria, but also, and above all, to counter the propaganda
of the FLN. We show how the war acted as a driving force of school reforms
in a context where issues of schooling evolved from an educational issue cen-
tral to the maintenance of French control to gaining prominence as a political
issue, one central to maintaining French control in Algeria. The response of
Algerian nationalists was to make school an equally political issue, mobilising
families in various ways, because the education of children was in their view
central to the construction of an independent Algeria: breaking with colonial
­domination also meant breaking with the French school model. Schools and
education became more than ever both instrument and site for the control
of the country’s population. By following the actors within and outside the
school, we propose in this chapter to attempt to understand how these dif-
ferent initiatives were both experienced and perceived, at both individual
and collective levels. The war severely tested families, both in terms of their

6 Emmanuel Blanchard, and Sylvie Thénault, “Quel ‘monde du contact’? Pour une histoire
sociale de l’Algérie pendant la période coloniale,” Le Mouvement Social 236 (2011): 3–7,
https://www.cairn.info/revue-le-mouvement-social1-2011-3-page-3.htm
7 For instance, in the Moroccan protectorat, Lyautey defined the “social role of the officer” in
which political schooling was crucial. See Jean-Yves Puyo, “Une application du ‘rôle social de
l’officier’ (Lyautey): les services du contrôle politique dans le Protectorat français au Maroc
(1912–1926),” Les Études Sociales 156 (2012): 85–100; see also Segalla, The Moroccan Soul:
French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim Resistance, 1912–1956.
8 See Carole Reynaud-Paligot, L’École aux colonies: entre mission civilisatrice et racialisation
(1816–1940) (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2020).
210 Hadj-Ahmed

s­ tructure and in terms of the future paths and trajectories affecting each of
their members. In the wake of recent historiographical renewals in the his-
tory of the family,9 and in the history of education,10 this chapter proposes to
examine school experiences during the war through the history of members of
the same sibling group.
As with other wars of decolonisation,11 the war profoundly disrupted the
schooling of children in Algeria: some students attended school throughout
the war, others commenced their attendance at various stages during, or at
the end of the war, some ceased to attend during or because of the conflict,
while most of them, because they were too young, or because they did not have
the opportunity, had no experience of schooling during the war. The study of
a small sibling group allows us to observe and engage with these actors’ tur-
bulent and disruptive schooling experiences in a highly immediate way. This
process provides us with an opportunity to study, firstly, how the war affected
children/siblings differently, depending on their place in the family - eldest,
or youngest – and, linked to this, depending on their ages. This approach also
helps us understand the gendered access of siblings to schooling, reinforced
by the effects and legacy of a colonial school which was highly discriminatory.
Similar to the rest of the French colonial empire, Algerian girls were truly “for-
gotten by the colonial school12”, as historian Pascale Barthélémy, a specialist in
the Afrique-Occidentale française (AOF), puts it. Those studies in the history
or sociology of education which have focused on colonial and post-colonial
situations during the period under study reveal the low rate of schooling for
girls during these periods.13
Five children compose the siblings we studied: two brothers and three sis-
ters. The eldest, born in 1945, is a girl who never went to French elementary
school. In those Algerian families categorised as “Muslim”, the schooling of
girls was not self-evident or taken for granted, both for structural reasons (the

9 Fabrice Boudjaaba, Christine Dousset, and Sylvie Mouysset (dir.), Frères et sœurs du Moy-
en-Âge à nos jours (Amsterdam: Peter Lang, 2016); Didier Lett, “L’histoire des frères et
sœurs en Europe dans la recherche en sciences sociales,” Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire 34
(2011): 182–202.
10 Isabelle Matamoros, “Moi, je revenais à ma mère ». Les trajectoires « scolaires » des frères
et des sœurs comme lieu d’expérience de la différence des sexes au XIXe siècle,” Genre &
Histoire 20, 2017.
11 As for the Vietnam War for instance, see Thuy Phong Nguyen, L’école française au Vitenam
de 1945 à 1975. De la mission civilisatrice à la diplomatie culturelle (Paris: Encrage, 2007).
12 Barthélémy, Africaines et diplômées à l’époque coloniale, 1918–1957, 33–42.
13 Pascale Barthélémy, and Rebecca Rogers, “Enseignement et genre en situation coloniale
(Maghreb, Afrique, Inde, Indonésie, Indochine),” in Travail et genre dans le monde. L’état
des savoirs, ed. Margaret Maruani (Paris: La Découverte, 2013), 377.
School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling 211

impossible application of compulsory schooling in colonial Algeria) and for

moral reasons, linked to family practices that disadvantage girls in relation to
boys. Thus, unlike her, her two younger brothers, Laarbi (born in 1947) and
Mr. M. (born in 1950), with whom two oral interviews were conducted, had
an education, even if it was suddenly disrupted by the outbreak of war.14 Two
young sisters were born at the end of the war and entered elementary school
after the war of independence. They lived through the conflict in the village of
El-Flaye, located in the Soummam valley, in Kabylia. The family, in this study
referred to as the AD family, came from a background of small traders who,
although not well off, enjoyed a certain material comfort until the outbreak
of the war. The family enjoyed a standard of living which was higher than the
average for Algerians living in Kabyle villages at the time. The siblings grew
up in a typical rural Algeria “Muslim” family in the 1950s, that is, an extended
family several generations of which lived together under the same roof, in this
case, the grandparents, the parents, an aunt, and the children. Through a close
analysis of their school experiences, we attempt to understand in detail the
specific ways in which the war affected the school careers of the two brothers,
and how it reconfigured the future plans that their parents had formulated for
them before the beginning of the war.
The oral investigations conducted with the two boys are cross-referenced
with the administrative archives created and preserved by the school inspec-
torate, the civil authorities and the local military authorities, the large part of
which are kept at the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer. These sources are sup-
plemented by written testimonies of actors during that time, notably through
the press or personal correspondence. These include those of the teachers or
doctors present in the immediate locale, and the written testimony of the eld-
est of the two boys, Larbi,15 published in 2019.
In 1956, Algerian resistance fighters of the FLN set fire to the boys’ primary
school to prevent its occupation by the French military. From then on, the
school was no longer taught by civilian but by “military” teachers, drawn from
the troops stationed in the village. This constitutes a decisive moment in the
study of the change not only in the children’s educational trajectories, but also

14 The testimonies were conducted and recorded in Algeria in both French and Kabyle,
with some passages requiring translation on my part. These interviews were conducted
with life story type questionnaires, leaving the witness a great deal of freedom, and with
reminders and interventions limited to a minimum. The younger brother’s name has
been anonymised as Mr. M.
15 Larbi Adouane, Combats d’un humaniste algérien. Entretien avec Pierre Guelff (Deauville:
Champs-Élysées, 2019).
212 Hadj-Ahmed

of the reconfiguration of their experience of the war and of what they expected
from school as pupils, their expectations related to their futures.

1 A Village Marked by Long Traditions of Schooling

1.1 Access to Schooling: a Privilege in Colonial Algeria in the 1950s

Since the beginning of colonization in Algeria, the village of El-Flaye had
enjoyed an exceptionally privileged schooling situation compared to the
rest of the Algerian territory. The extension of the application of the 1882 (in
France) Ferry laws on compulsory schooling in Algeria in 1889 for children of
school age was not fulfilled in El-Flaye, due to the lack of places to welcome
every child. Indeed, on the eve of the war of independence, the administration
of National Education in Algeria – directed by the Rector of Algiers since 1944
- was still weakly represented in the most rural fringes of Algeria. Due to a lack
of resources and political will, the number of schools and classes was not suf-
ficient to absorb the growing demographic flow of Algerian children of school
age. As early as 1893, the village was provided for the first time with a French
public primary school, based on the metropolitan model.16 The academic or
military authorities, former teachers or former students who lived in the vil-
lage, were well aware of that this was an asset for the village. For example, the
former teachers at the school of El-Flaye describe at length, in a 1956 article:

… great work of modernization [that] has been done since 1945: construc-
tion of a school for girls with four classes; tarred road to Sidi-Aïch, the
main town of the commune three kilometers away; electrification. Much
remains to be done, but the country is considered rich and the standard
of living is higher than the average level of Algeria.17

The presence of a school for girls was exceptional in rural Algeria in the 1950s,
in a context where the school policy of the French Government still c­ onsidered
that the education of Algerian boys was a priority over that of girls.18 El-Flaye
was at the time therefore a village that was not really representative of the

16 According to an article written by two former teachers of El-Flaye: Henri Munier, and
Bernard Linglin, France Observateur, no. 326, May 9, 1956.
17 Munier, and Linglin, France Observateur, no. 326, May 9, 1956.
18 See Lydia Hadj-Ahmed, “L’école malgré la guerre, l’école grâce à la guerre? Des enfants
et des familles algériennes à l’épreuve de la guerre d’indépendance (1954–1962)” (PhD
­dissertation, Paris Nanterre University, 2022), 113.
School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling 213

school reality in rural Algeria. Several factors explain the early establishment
of a school on the French model in this area. Firstly, as the historian and
anthropologist Alain Mahé notes, “In France’s education policy in Algeria, Kab-
ylia was a pilot region, we might even say a laboratory for experimentation.19”
Thus, this commune benefited from a voluntarist policy which, despite the dif-
ficulties and upheavals linked to local opposition, enabled a primary school
to be set up very quickly. In addition, this village benefited from an adminis-
trative reform,20 applied to Kabylia since 1945, and reinforced in 1956, whose
initial objective was to allow the acceleration of the modernization of the terri-
tory on administrative, social and economic levels. All of these reforms, which
targeted Kabylia in particular, were based, to a large extent, on a system of
colonial representations, as the “Kabyle myth”, attributing to this territory and
its inhabitants a supposed predisposition to welcome French culture and to
assimilate into it.21 Most historians also agree that Kabylia benefited early from
an active and voluntary schooling policy, compared to other regions in Algeria.22
Finally, the geographical situation of this village also explains its rapid social,
economic and demographic development. The proximity of El-Flaye to a local
urban centre - Sidi-Aïch - and, thus its proximity to a local French administra-
tion, undoubtedly played a driving role in the establishment of administrative
structures, schools in particular, that were tighter than elsewhere. This early
school setting can be seen as an exception in colonial Algeria, and makes it
possible to understand the place accorded to education in the AD family.

19 Alain Mahé, Histoire de la Grande-Kabylie. XIXe–XXe siècle. Anthropologique historique du

lien social dans les communautés villageoises (Paris: Bouchène editions, 2001), 262.
20 See Mahé, Histoire de la Grande-Kabylie. XIXe–XXe siècle. Anthropologique historique du
lien social dans les communautés villageoises. He describes and explains the history of this
reform, which consisted in creating “municipal centres” in Algeria.
21 The historian Charles-Robert Ageron has described this system of representation as the
‘Kabyle myth’, i.e. a set of discourses that guided the actions of the colonial administra-
tion in Kabylia between 1870 and 1890. Within the framework of a ‘divide and rule’ policy,
this colonial myth postulates the superiority of the Kabyles compared to the Arabs, based
on physical and moral characteristics that would be superior to them. These discourses
and representations had an impact on French administrative practices.
22 Alain Mahé considers that Kabylia knows a « relative over-schooling » compared to
other regions in Algiera. See Mahé, Histoire de la Grande-Kabylie. XIXe-XXe siècle. Anthro-
pologique historique du lien social dans les communautés villageoises, 291. However, it
must be carefully pointed out that, based on the scale of Kabylia itself, some villages were
completely deprived of schools. See Ali Guenoun, “Des ‘intellectuels’ et l’idée nationale:
parcours du ‘groupe de Ben Aknoun’,” in Une histoire sociale et culturelle du politique en
Algérie. Études offertes à Omar Carlier, eds. Morgan Corriou et M’Hamed Oualdi (Paris:
Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2018), 319.
214 Hadj-Ahmed

1.2 The Place of School in the AD Family: a Privilege Reserved for Boys
In the AD family, schooling was reserved for boys and a tradition which goes
back at least to the generation of the father and his close relatives (uncles,
cousins), specifically male relatives. After four years of primary school, their
father had been withdrawn from school by his father to help cultivate the land
during the 1940s. Despite this short period of schooling, the father of the sib-
lings could read and write, and even played a central literate role in the family,
writing letters and dealing with complaints to the authorities. In their inter-
views, the brothers underlined how much their father would have liked to
continue his schooling, and seemed to attach a certain importance to it, in an
Algeria where schooling remained a privilege. In particular from the end of the
First World War, French schools were perceived and valued by Algerian fami-
lies as powerful engines for social advancement, providing the opportunity for
access to the French language and the labour market.23 In Kabylia, a favoured
region of immigration to France since the First World War,24 mastering French
was an even greater asset. This importance of school to the families of El-Flaye
was maintained during the Algerian War of independence. Thus, in a survey
conducted in 1959, the head of the SAS (Specialized Administrative Section) in
El-Flaye notes that: “on the whole, Kabyle families urge their children to attend
school as soon as it reopens”.25
The most striking fact with regard to education in the AD family is the
absence of schooling for the older sister, despite the presence of a girls’ school
in the village. She did not attend either the public primary school before the
war, nor the school provided by the local military authorities during the war,
nor even the Koranic school. In addition, the girls’ French primary school was
established later than the boys’ school. Despite the presence of this school,
girls’ schooling does not seem to have attained the status of a “social fact26”

23 In colonial Algeria, the Certificat d’Études Primaires (CEP) gives students the opportunity,
even if hypothetical, to reach the status of a small civil servant or a qualified worker. See
Omar Carlier, “Espace et temps dans la formation de l’identité nationale algérienne (1880–
1930),” in Défis démocratiques et affirmation nationale. Algérie. 1900–1962, eds. ­Bererhi
Afifa, Khadda Naget, Phéline Christian, and Spiquel Agnès (Alger: Chihab ­Éditions, 2016).
24 See Emmanuel Blanchard, Histoire de l’immigration algérienne en France (Paris: La
­Découverte, 2018).
25 Investigation of the Muslim family unit by Captain Pierre MARY, head of the SAS of
El-Flaye, April 18, 1959, 937–137, ANOM, editor’s translation.
26 Jean-Hervé Jézéquel uses the concept of “social fact” in reference to a set of practices
that collectively lead families to take school, i.e., school and institutionalised forms of
education, for granted. Through the study of the case of the AOF, he demonstrates that
the logics of schooling in a colonial situation call for “the most detailed reconstruction
possible of the ‘weft of determinations’”, i.e., a bundle of converging factors, in a s­ ociety
School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling 215

for the families in the village. In other words, sending girls to school was not a
matter of course. If, as scholar Kamel Kateb notes, the “demand for schooling
on the part of the population depended on the social position of the families”,27
it seems that the desire for schooling, and in particular for French schooling
for girls, was dependent on other factors. The difficulty lies not only in avoiding
falling into the trap of culturalist explanations that predict the practices of the
actors, but also avoiding stereotyped representations formulated during this
period by the colonial authorities themselves. The contribution of anthropolo-
gists to studying ‘the Algerian family’, in particular, in the case of the K ­ abyle
family, makes it possible to understand more easily a situation where the
weight of the patriarchal family relegates girls to a secondary place in relation
to boys.28 In the case of the AD family, not sending their eldest daughter to
school can be read as the result of Muslim family practices that symbolically
demote girls to a place or status below that of boys. Larbi tells us that the disap-
pointment of the birth of an elder daughter was so great that his father wanted
to get a divorce, but the grandfather managed to persuade him against this.29
Whether at primary or secondary level, the preference Muslim families had
for boys over girls to enter the education system must also be read in the light
of the future plans that mainly Muslim parents at that time formulated for
their children. The father of the AD family, for example, seems to have invested
his faith and hopes primarily in the boys. At the family level, the absence of
schooling for the eldest daughter30 reflects both the profound inequalities that
run through relations between women and men in rural Algerian, particularly

where “schooling is not yet a shared social practice. Jean-Hervé Jézéquel, “Histoire de
bancs, parcours d’élèves. Pour une lecture ‘configurationnelle’ de la scolarisation à l’épo-
que coloniale,” Cahiers d’études africaines 169–170 (2003): 428, https://doi.org/10.4000
/etudesafricaines.207
27 Kamel Kateb, “Les séparations scolaires dans l’Algérie coloniale,” Insaniyat 25–26 (2004):
94, https://journals.openedition.org/insaniyat/6242
28 See Pierre Bourdieu, Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique précédée de trois études
­d’ethnologie kabyle (Paris: Droz, 1972); Mostefa Boutefnouchet, La famille algérienne.
­Évolution et caractéristiques récentes (Algiers: SNED, 1982).
29 Adouane, Combats d’un humaniste algérien. Entretien avec Pierre Guelff, 37.
30 It is interesting to note that, in the interview itself, the two brothers refuse to talk in more
detail about the fate of their older sister, about whom little is known, due to the lack
of opportunity to conduct an interview with her. As with many of the other witnesses
interviewed, these questions about the sisters’ or daughters’ schooling are in fact a source
of embarrassment. Few of them dwell on them much during the interview. Because they
are asked these questions today, in a context that is very different from the Algeria of the
early 1950s and 1960s. These questions about girls’ education also allow us to measure the
gap that separates the cultural representations of the time from those of contemporary
Algeria, where girls’ education is a structural fact.
216 Hadj-Ahmed

in Muslim, families in the 1950s and 1960s, and the symbolic hierarchy intro-
duced into the family between brothers and sisters.
The analysis of the interviews with the brothers makes it possible to meas-
ure, to a certain extent, the symbolic place occupied by the sister within the
sibling hierarchy of a Muslim family. Thus, to the question “What is your place
amongst the siblings”, Larbi’s answer was spontaneously: “I am the eldest”,
although he is in fact not the oldest of the five. This answer implied that he
was in fact the oldest boy. The lack or absence of schooling for the eldest sib-
ling seems to be the result of a double constraint which, in general, weighed
heavily on all Algerian girls, particularly, in Muslim families, and particularly
in rural areas: the weight of the colonial situation on the one hand, combined
with the weight of Muslim family practices giving priority to the school educa-
tion of boys over that of girls on the other. In El-Flaye, where the population
was growing steadily, the French principle of compulsory schooling could not
be applied because of the lack of sufficient places, whether for boys or girls.
Algerian parents were indeed confronted with common-place and inevitable
school refusal. Nevertheless, it is difficult to determine clearly whether the eld-
est daughter was not enrolled because of lack of space at the girls’ school, or
because of parental refusal based on Algerian family tradition relating to the
lower status of girls and women. In any case, it is not totally clear whether
none of the girls in the village were able to find a place in the local school, or
whether some gained access. In 1959, the chief of the SAS of El-Flaye estab-
lished lists of pupils enrolled in school. Although he does not explicitly indi-
cate the number of places available in the girls’ school, he noted that 250 girls
are of school age but that only 96 of them are actually enrolled due to a lack
of places. Although the context of the war could be added as a factor influenc-
ing de-schooling, the lack of places and of teachers remained the structural
factor.31 Mr. M. sums up his father’s state of mind at that time: “Why do you
want the daughter to be ... it can’t occur to me that she studies! What’s the
point? A man is going to come and marry her, so there’s no point!”32 For other
families, girls also played a supporting role in the boys’ education by encourag-
ing them to invest in school and not abandon them. This was the case of the
family of Saïd Sadi who, in his Memoirs,33 relates how his older sister had never
been schooled despite the presence since 1934 of a girls’ school in his village

31 Report of the head of the SAS of the commune of El-Flaye on school attendance,
S­ eptember 25, 1959, 9 SAS 331.
32 Testimony of Mr. M., interview conducted in Kabyle and French, recorded on 28 April
2018 in Setif.
33 Saïd Sadi, Mémoires. La guerre comme berceau, 1947–1967 (Paris: Frantz Fanon, 2020).
School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling 217

of Grande-Kabylie. In the case of one of her sisters, she only attended school
for one year before being withdrawn by her parents. Sacrificing girls’ schooling
seems to have been commonplace at the time.
For the families whose daughters had, in spite of these various constraints,
attended the French primary school in El-Flaye, the question of the usefulness
of the school for girls and women was raised forcefully by their families, in
­particular its purpose. In fact, the pursuit of secondary studies for boys and
a fortiori for girls in colonial Algeria was reserved for a small minority.34 To
pursue studies outside one’s village represented both an economic and moral
cost for the families.35 In the absence of complementary courses or colleges
within the village, as was the case in El-Flaye, continuing one’s studies meant
leaving the family home. It required substantial economic resources to send
a ­daughter to a distant town, and to pay for boarding where girls’ boarding
schools existed, and at the same time having to do without the daughter’s con-
tribution to the economic and domestic activities of the household. In these
Algerian traditional patriarchal societies, particularly in Kabylia, girls were the
bearers of the family’s honour, particularly with regard to the preservation of
virginity.36 In this context, leaving the family home for reasons other than mar-
riage could represent a serious transgression of norms and values, i.e. a moral
cost for families concerned with protecting their reputation. Until independ-
ence, primary school for this sibling group was a boys’ affair. The effects of the
war on school careers were therefore observed exclusively for boys.

2 Contrasting the Effects of Schooling on Siblings: the Outbreak

of War

Although the year 1954 was chosen by Algerian nationalists as the official date
for the start of the war of independence, the war did not begin in the same way
or at the same time everywhere in the country. The children in El-Flaye would
have witnessed the arrival of the first contingents of French soldiers between
1954 and 1956, before the troops were permanently stationed in the village, by
their setting up of a garrison from 1957. In their testimony the two brothers
emphasised their being fascinated by the novelty of these events. They were

34 Kamel Kateb, “Les séparations scolaires dans l’Algérie coloniale,” 71.

35 See Jean-François Condette, ed., Le coût des études. Modalités, acteurs et implications
sociales: Modalités, acteurs et implications sociales XVIe–XXe siècle (Rennes: Presses
­universitaires de Rennes, 2012).
36 See Bourdieu, “La représentation comme volonté,” 126.
218 Hadj-Ahmed

impressed by the novelty of these soldiers drawn from other colonies of the
empire whose presence in the village constituted a marked break with the daily
and ordinary maintenance of order, usually embodied by French ­gendarmes.
For Larbi’s young brother, it was above all the skin colour of these soldiers
that marked his memory: “... there was one thing, something at least, that was
­visible: when they came ... what did we call them ... the ... the mercenaries ...
the Senegalese! They were ... I don’t know what they were. In any case, people
who are different from us”.37
If this increased presence of the military contingent constituted an initial
change in the daily landscape of the village, it did not upset the daily school
life of the boys who, as Larbi points out, observed these changes with curiosity,
while continuing to attend school. The younger brother started primary school
for the first time in 1956 in a very ordinary way:

1956 was the first year I went to school. So, it was a neighbour who took
his brother - who was the same age as me - to school: we’re going to study.
Well, the big gate was open, we were running around, laughing ... I found
myself all alone in the yard, the big yard ... Then the bell rang, and rows
began to form. There were many classroom doors. Rows were forming ...
I looked and I see many friends, friends from the village: “Ah M. come!” I
came, I ran, I lined up with them. I went into the classroom.38

For the two brothers, the war only really began in 1956, when their primary
school was burned down. Throughout 1955 many schools in the area had
been closed by panic-stricken European teachers and gradually these clo-
sures became widespread in the Algerian countryside. At El-Flaye the teach-
ers ensured the continuity of schooling for the children: “After the All Saints’
Day’s holidays, there was only one school left open in the village above Sidi-
Aïch, ours, despite the defection of a few Europeans who were immediately
replaced by teachers from the village”.39 Indeed, these teachers seem to have
maintained sufficiently good relations with the Algerian fighters for the school
to be able to function:

On Sunday morning, January 29 [1955], three armed fighters in (Armée

de Libération Nationale) (ALN) uniforms knocked on our door. After

37 Testimony of Mr. M.
38 Testimony of Mr. M.
39 Munier, and Linglin, France Observateur, no. 326, May 9, 1956.
School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling 219

gathering all the teachers, they told us that we were perfectly safe and
expressed their desire to see the school continue to function.40

Until 1956 the boys’ school was still operating on borrowed time and escaped
the violence of the FLN. For the boys of the AD family, the war only came to
disrupt their schooling when their primary school was set on fire in May 1956
by the local Algerian independence fighters, on the decision and orders of
­Amirouche, a military Algerian fighter, head of the third Wilaya.41
In his testimony, the youngest brother explained that he did not even bother
to go to school that day:

... they burned down the school!... They had given us a holiday, I don’t
know, winter, summer, or Christmas or spring I don’t know! I still remem-
ber ‘tomorrow is the first day of school’; so we slept with the grandmother
in a small room like this. We slept. The next morning, so I slept but with
the concern of waking up for school ... Well. I woke up in the morning, I
was about to wake up, and my mother heard me getting ready and she
came up to me and said, ‘sleep my little one, sleep my son ... tahya al
djazair [long live Algeria],’and I said, ‘why?’ the school burned down, so
there’s no need.42

The fire at the boys’ primary school constitutes the crossing of a decisive
threshold in the upheaval of the siblings’ daily life. The boys, who had been
absent from home during the day until then, now found themselves without
schooling and confined to their home with the family and the siblings. This
disrupted the lives of the students. Like any other public primary school in
France, their school had set the rhythm of their daily lives with fixed hours,
breaks, homework, and holidays.
These routines were now disrupted. Larbi attributes to this school a major
role in providing a rhythm and order to the days: “As surprising as it may seem
to you, the school represented a form of deliverance from the monotony and
misery of which our days were made. We had just had a week’s holiday and I
was happy to go back to school, to find my teacher, Mr Henry Meunier (Sic)”.43

40 Munier, and Linglin, France Observateur, no. 326, May 9, 1956.

41 The wilaya is a territorial unit corresponding to the seven command zones delimited by
the FLN since 1956.
42 Testimony of Mr. M.
43 Adouane, Combats d’un humaniste algérien. Entretien avec Pierre Guelff, 74.
220 Hadj-Ahmed

Unlike his younger brother, Larbi went to the school on the day it burned
down and witnessed the material damage caused:

Our school … was indeed on fire: doors, windows, frames and tables
were burning, there was smoke everywhere. Our notebooks and books
were consumed. A few rare objects were spared. The teachers who lived
inside the school had been evacuated ... A few figures appeared in the
smoke, individuals who were trying to recover or steal anything of value.
As for the girls’ school, although it was initially targeted by the fighters,
it seems not to have been damaged and was eventually occupied by the
troops and used as a command post.44

At the age of nine, Larbi witnessed a before and after that marked a direct
experience of the effects of the war on his daily life. The teachers’ testimo-
nies of this event emphasise the fact that the FLN soldiers had taken care to
“[move] all the teachers’ furniture and put it in a safe place”.45 Indeed, this
testimony was given almost in loco’, in 1956, in a newspaper with a progressive
stance and favourable to the FLN action. In May 1956 schooling was abruptly
interrupted for the two brothers for four months. In 1957, the troops of the
French Army’s 28th Battalion of Alpine Chasseurs (28th BCA) settled perma-
nently in the village. In consultation with the head of the local SAS, the soldiers
of the 28th BCA took over from the teachers to improvise a form of school
teaching and to ensure the continuity of education for the children. The year
1957 was thus a moment of reconfiguration of the schooling experiences of the
boys among the siblings.

2.1 The Contrasting Experience of the Military School

Although the boys’ school was rendered unusable, the soldiers of the 28th BCA
undertook renovation work to be able to run the classes again with the help
of soldiers acting as teachers. They also financed the provision of furniture
and supplies for the children. Thus, following an inspection visit, the primary
inspector of Bougie noted in his report of 22 January 1958 that “two class-
rooms were restored at the school of El-Flaye by the care of the Commandant
and the Captain SAS with the support of the District Commander...”46 From

44 Adouane, Combats d’un humaniste algérien. Entretien avec Pierre Guelff.

45 Munier, and Linglin, France Observateur, no. 326, May 9, 1956.
46 Academic inspection report transmitted by the Primary Inspector of Bougie West to the
Colonel commanding the Bougie Sector during his visit to the schools opened by the
army in the Sidi-Aïch district, 22 January 1958, 9 SAS 331, ANOM, editors’ translation.
School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling 221

1957 onwards, the school improvised by the soldiers came to be the only one
functioning in the village of El-Flaye. Until 1959 it was “a professional teacher,
the soldier Martinez, [who] directed the work of the pupils in the initiation
course”.47 From 1959 onwards, and in consultation with the academic inspec-
torate, “instructors”48 were appointed by the head of the SAS to assist these
military teachers who were eventually replaced at the end of their military
service. The installation minutes show that six instructors were appointed
between September and October 1959.49 From 1959 onwards, prefabricated
schools were provided by the commune to accommodate these new teachers
and the contingents of pupils, both girls and boys. As a result El-Flaye seems
to have been relatively better off in terms of the continuity of the education
of its children than other neighbouring villages. The neighbouring commune
of Tinebdar, for example, only provided an “abandoned private house” for the
instruction of children.50
In the conclusion to his report, the primary inspector advises soldier
­Martinez “...to assert his authority and competence” but concludes that “the
education given in the schools of El-Flaye ... is a valuable education”.51 The two
brothers in the AD family did not have the same experience of these schools
improvised in the emergency. First of all, the age of school going pupils seems
to have been the determining factor in the different experiences of these so-
called “emergency” schools. Indeed, Larbi had a point of comparison firmly
anchored in his memory with a public primary school he attended for four
years. His youngest brother had only a very limited experience of a few months
at the French public primary school. The only school Larbi knew during the
war was the one established and run by the military and the military instruc-
tors. When Larbi returned to a school staffed by the military at the age of 10,
he saw it as an inferior school. First of all, he considered that the teachers were
not up to the standard he had previously experienced with Monsieur Munier

47 Academic inspection report.

48 The corps of instructors was created in 1956 by Guy Mollet to make the conditions for
recruiting civilian teachers more flexible. Their level of training was less demanding than
that of teachers from the Ecole Normale Supérieure and they could be placed in front of
children with only a BEPC or a certificate of primary studies. The academic level of these
instructors was very variable and not particularly homogenous.
49 Minutes of the installation in September 1959 of André Dupuy, Robert Forns and Claude
Galzy, in October 1959 of Jean-Claude Vincent and Madani Yanat and Pierre Marchandise
as instructors in the commune of El-Flaye, 9 SAS 331, ANOM.
50 Report of the head of the SAS on the school situation in the communes of El-Flaye
addressed to the mayor of Sidi-Aïch, 14 October 1959, 9 SAS 331, ANOM, editors’translation.
51 Academic inspection report of the primary inspector sent to the colonel commanding the
El-Kseur sub-sector, January 22, 1958, 9 SAS 331, ANOM, editors’translation.
222 Hadj-Ahmed

or Monsieur Linglin: “I had a very good French teacher, before the school was
burnt down ... the teachers who came afterwards were not teachers, they were
nothing at all: it was the Marseillaise, it was the sticks, and it was discipline”.52
On the other hand, unlike what he had experienced before, the military school
had neither the capability nor the means to separate the ages or sexes. The mil-
itary school welcomed children of all ages, mixing girls and boys. The sisters
of the AD boy siblings did not attend this school, the eldest being too old by
that stage, and the youngest too young. Thus, from 1957 onwards, Larbi found
himself in the same class as his six-year-old brother.
Finally, Larbi’s memories of what he learned in these improvised schools
remain very vague. The adult he is today considers that the military did not
really aim to educate them in a holistic way:

It was the principle of getting us into the classroom. They put us in the
classroom … The civilising mission continues its way ... It was much
more that, than teaching us anything. We didn’t learn much ... Most of the
­teachers were doing their military service, but they weren’t ... they weren’t
necessarily professional teachers. They were assigned to ­supervise [rather
than teach] students. It was much more childcare and making us sing the
Marseillaise.53

Larbi’s testimony contrasts greatly with that of his younger brother, who gives
a much more precise answer to the question of the content taught in class and
insists on the pedagogical value of this content through a very precise descrip-
tion of the subjects taught, such as the moral lessons, gymnastics or the leçon
de choses [object lessons].54 As an adult, and with the benefit of hindsight, M.
says that he is not fooled by the political aims of this type of teaching initiative.
However, unlike his older brother, M. remembers with precision the methods
of his teachers, the names of his teachers, and their severity:

Mr Martinez lasted ... six months I think ... afterwards we had a certain
Marchandise ... it was great. I remember the geography lesson: the Mas-
sif Central. So “the Massif Central” was five pages! Five pages full ... and
he said, “you have to learn it by heart!”. Oh my God! So, on the day of the
recitation [the witness recounts at length the fact that no student was
able to recite]: “nobody learned! nobody!” there were about twenty of us.

52 Testimony of Larbi, interview conducted in French, recorded on 27 April 2018 in Setif.

53 Testimony of Larbi.
54 Testimony of Mr. M.
School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling 223

No one learned. He kept us at lunchtime, he imprisoned us in the room,

we didn’t eat.55

For M. the circumstances of the improvised school during the war provided a
real place of learning. Age is a major factor in differentiating the school experi-
ence between the two brothers. Larbi, unlike his younger brother, experienced
traditional schooling for four years, schooling modelled on the metropoli-
tan model, whereas for his younger brother, the experience of schooling was
almost solely that of the school opened and taught by the military authorities,
whose functioning and methods differed from the metropolitan model.
From 1959 onwards, these schools attempted to get closer to the ordinary
functioning of primary schools run by the French National Education, and, in
this context, the head of the SAS, who acted as school director, tried to revive
orderly, formal school rituals and practices in the form of creating lists of pupils,
issuing school certificates or even trying to offer children the possibility of tak-
ing diplomas or, in rarer cases, continuing their studies. In 1961 the inspector of
primary education asked the heads of the SAS of the Soummam valley region,
of which El-Flaye was a part, to “take the necessary steps to ensure that the
military classes (or SAS) likely to present candidates are informed of the date
of the Certificate of Primary Studies and of the modalities of registration.”56
These schools, despite their improvisation, and sometimes their weaknesses
in terms of pedagogy, enabled some children to project themselves, even dur-
ing the war, towards the possibility of obtaining diplomas or even, for the most
gifted, to pursue secondary studies. Thus, the youngest brother, M. reports, “I
remember in 1961, the headmaster came into the classroom and said to me,
‘Well, A., next year you’re going to Sidi-Aïch! [a nearby town]’, ‘Oh, all right,
next year I’m going to Sidi-Aïch .... Where? At the school, opposite the market’.
Well, that’s how it is ... it’s independence that allowed me to proceed to 6th
grade”.57 In 1961, the horizon seemed to be getting ever clearer and nearer to
an independent Algeria, in particular in villages such as El-Flaye where the
French military troops were gradually starting to withdraw. This projection can
undoubtedly explain the slip of the tongue of this witness who, in fact, entered
the 6th grade in an independent Algeria but not thanks to independence.
Finally, this experience of schooling was lived by the two brothers as one
inseparable from that of the war. On November 1, 1957, the anniversary of

55 Testimony of Mr. M.
56 Circular from the Inspectorate of Primary Education to Heads of SAS, 6 May 1961, 9 SAS
331, ANOM, editors’ translation.
57 Testimony of Mr. M.
224 Hadj-Ahmed

the outbreak of the conflict, the two brothers experienced an attack on their
school when they were in the class with the military teacher Martinez:

We were in class with the teacher - who had a machine gun of course -
it was Sergeant Martinez … . The Mjouhed [Algerian fighters] started fir-
ing at the school … . I remember the cry of Sergeant Martinez [witness
speaks in a dull voice]: Damn!! liiiieee-doooown! and we found ourselves
under the table, crying. Martinez started firing at the Mjouhed. They put
us together, the soldiers ran, the civilians, the SAS, etc. They took some
of us, because they had a cellar inside the school, and they kept us in the
cellar all day until the soldiers left.58

This exceptional episode marked a moment of deep politicization of the

school in relation to political issues. The school had become a target and flash
point in the war. Thus, until the ceasefire in March 1962, the uncertainty of the
outcome of the war made any family educational project similarly uncertain.

3 School Careers and a Family Tested by the War

3.1 A Family Educational Project Reconfigured by the War

In the village, as soon as the military (re)opened the school, the FLN threat-
ened parents with reprisals if they sent their children there. Mr M. explains
that, in the absence of the father of the family, one of his cousins (‘H’), aged 16
or 17, intervened:

When we studied at school with the military, H. comes, home, finds us

with my mother [and tells us]: ‘On my mother’s head, if one of you dares
to go to school, I’ll cut your throat!’ Ah well, of course we are afraid! He’s
going to slit our throats ... that afternoon, we didn’t dare go to school.
The next morning ... we didn’t go. The military realised that we were
absent, that there were many absentees, because we were not the only
ones, there were many absentees. They sent a GMC truck, a nice truck
that can take 50 to 200 people. They sent a truck to the village to take us
by force. They put us in the truck, they took us away in the afternoon, and
we went to school. So in the morning we don’t study, in the afternoon we
go, and so on.59

58 Testimony of Mr. M.
59 Testimony of Mr. M.
School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling 225

The cousin, taking on the role of substitute father, plays this role in his relaying
of these orders and inextricably intertwines the family’s educational project
with the political stakes of the war of independence. At the family level the
FLN is therefore not an abstract or distant political entity. On the contrary, it is
embodied by members of the extended family, by neighbours or by those nota-
bles who gained influence during the war; in short, all of those who formed the
“village community” are involved”.60
These contradictory injunctions, in which all Algerian families were caught,
taken together, do not mean that the violence of the FLN was experienced in
a strictly parallel way to that exercised by the French army. Colonial violence,
including that perpetrated during the war, is experienced, according to the
­historian Mohammed Harbi, as:

… foreign violence that threatens the ethnic, religious and cultural iden-
tity of all. There is a kind of family history that the West does not under-
stand and which explains the illusions that the French military had about
the possibility of dissociating the Algerian people from the FLN.61

The military school was therefore, at least until 1959, subject to uncertainties
linked to its provisional status and the irregularity of its attendance.
The ambiguity of the relationship of the family with the French elementary
school is all the greater as the family was itself committed to the Algerian inde-
pendence movement. Indeed, the father’s activities as a fundraiser for the FLN
led to his arrest and imprisonment during most of the war (from 1956 to 1961).
The prolonged absence of the head of the family therefore raises the question
of the family’s readiness to formulate a plan for the future and, a fortiori, a plan
for the future of its children. The uncertainty in which the AD family was mired,
particularly from the point of view of economic resources, had both direct and
indirect consequences for the children’s school careers. First, the father was
arrested for the first time in 1956, a few weeks before the school fire. After such
developments, families in Algeria at the time developed avoidance strategies
when they had the means to do so. Those with resources, or relatives living out-
side the village, allowed their sons to continue their schooling by sending them
to towns where French primary schools continued to function. Larbi explains
that “for this to happen, you had to have a father or someone close to you who
was present or influential to take care of them, which was not the case for us.

60 Expression used by Alain Mahé.

61 Mohammed Harbi, Le FLN, mirages et réalité. Des origines à la prise de pouvoir (1945–1962)
(Paris: Jeune Afrique editions, 1980), 311–312.
226 Hadj-Ahmed

My father was in prison, and I had to endure events and await my fate”.62 The
direct consequence of the father’s absence was that the children’s educational
destiny was left to the vagaries of war and, thus, to chance. The father’s impris-
onment also put an end to his activities as a trader, thus cutting the family off
from an essential financial resource. Despite the presence of school canteens,
hunger particularly affected the AD family who, according to the list drawn up
by the head of the SAS, were not allowed to benefit from them,63 although the
boys continued to attend school until the cease-fire. The war thus weakened,
and rendered uncertain, the children’s plans for the future. The family break-
down caused by the absence of fathers, as well as the economic misery that it
accentuated or caused in this case, changed the concerns that put school in the
background, including for the boys.

3.2 The End of the War and Its Effect on Education

In 1961 the first troops of the 28th BCA left the country,64 loosening the ­military
grip on the population and opening up the possibility of a way out of the war.
In 1961 the future of the AD family and the siblings could once again be con-
sidered when the father was released from prison and managed to resume
his business activities. Economic conditions gradually improved and finan-
cial security was restored once again for the AD family. More importantly, the
return of the father also meant the return of an authority capable of influenc-
ing and directing the children’s educational future. His role was essential in
the continuation of the boys’ studies and in the decision whether or not to
send the girls to school, especially the two young sisters born between 1958
and 1962, since this decision was his alone. In 1962 Larbi was not allowed to
take the sixth or seventh grade exam because of his age. He then turned to
technical education and entered a boarding school in Sidi-Aïch. However, with
the suspension of his scholarship for “incomplete file”, his father refused to
pay the fees and this forced Larbi to end his studies and to find work.65 The
delay of his studies as a result of the war, and the erratic attendance, along with

62 Adouane, Combats d’un humaniste algérien. Entretien avec Pierre Guelff, 75.
63 List of beneficiaries of the El-Flaye school canteens drawn up by the head of the SAS, May
10, 1959, 9 SAS 331, ANOM.
64 According to Jean-Claude Depoutot, a doctor called up from the contingent in El-Flaye
who transcribed letters exchanged with his future wife when he was in Algeria and
­collected under the title “The Algerian war of a doctor called up from the contingent.
October 58–July 60”.
65 Testimony of Larbi.
School Careers and Experiences of a Sibling 227

the absence, handicapped his studies, without entirely ending them.66 For the
younger brother, on the other hand, schooling was much more linear and con-
tinuous, since he managed to access secondary education up to the Terminale
after the war and became an engineer. His young age thus made it possible for
him not to be disturbed by the changes experienced due to the war, and, unlike
his older brother, he did not experience the same degree of educational dis-
ruption. Finally, the war also opened new perspectives for the younger sisters,
although little is known of their educational experience in the post-war era.
We only know that they had at least a complete primary education. They grew
up in an independent Algeria, a young state that opted for mass education
of children, including girls.67 These younger sisters, unlike their older sister,
thus managed to benefit from a period of educational reform during which
the construction of primary schools, together with international cooperation,
strengthened the framework of the National Education System and gradually
imposed mass schooling for boys and, later, for girls in Algeria.

4 Conclusion

The time of the war in Algeria was a time of upheaval and reconfiguration of
the French public primary school which, according to the interventions of
new actors - military or nationalist - saw itself as permanently invested on the
political level. As a space of struggles and mobilization, the school became a
major site of struggle in Algeria, a site which was increasingly contested. The
study of the school at the village of El-Flaye, as it was experienced by the vil-
lage inhabitants, has been examined in this chapter through the experiences of
the ­brothers and sisters of one family. This lens allows us to take into account
the way in which the war immeasurably disrupted the school trajectories of
members of the family. The paths of the two brothers also show how age played
a determining role in the direction of these paths. The schooling of these sib-
lings shows, finally, the extent to which the effects of the war were felt even
after 1962. In the case of the boys, age proved to be a disadvantage for the eld-
est. The study also highlights that schooling was also a site where the inequali-
ties of education between girls and boys were played out, and reinforced by

66 Larbi managed, at the age of 20, while working as a supervisor in a school, to resume his
studies. He passed and obtained his baccalaureate in a second session and made a career
in national education, first as a teacher and then as a school director.
67 See Lydia Aït-Saadi, “La nation algérienne à travers les manuels scolaires d’histoire
algériens: 1962–2008” (PhD dissertation, INALCO, 2010).
228 Hadj-Ahmed

both the colonial situation and by the norms and values associated with tradi-
tional Algerian Muslim societies. It must also be pointed out that this moral or
traditional factor greatly facilitated the work of a colonial administration that
was reluctant to make up for the lack of education of girls in colonial Algeria.
This structural weakness in girls’ schooling was the result of the interweav-
ing and interaction of a range of factors that contributed to placing girls in a
­situation of subalternity compared to the situation of boys. For the girls, the
end of the war meant the opening up of the family to a school project which,
despite the lack of means, was shared and encouraged by the new independ-
ent state. Thus, the youngest daughters went on to primary education, unlike
their older sister.

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­El-Flaye, April 18, 1959, 937–137, ANOM.
Report of the head of the SAS of the commune of El-Flaye on school attendance,
­September 25, 1959, 9 SAS 331, ANOM.
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the Colonel commanding the Bougie Sector during his visit to the schools opened
by the army in the Sidi-Aïch district, 22 January 1958, 9 SAS 331, ANOM.
Minutes of the installation in September 1959 of André Dupuy, Robert Forns and
Claude Galzy, in October 1959 of Jean-Claude Vincent and Madani Yanat and Pierre
Marchandise as instructors in the commune of El-Flaye, 9 SAS 331, ANOM.
Academic inspection report of the primary inspector sent to the colonel commanding
the El-Kseur sub-sector, January 22, 1958, 9 SAS 331, ANOM.
Report of the Head of SAS on the school situation in the communes of El-Flaye
addressed to the mayor of Sidi-Aïch, 14 October 1959, 9 SAS 331, ANOM
Circular from the Inspectorate of Primary Education to Heads of SAS, 6 May 1961, 9 SAS
331, ANOM.
List of beneficiaries of the El-Flaye school canteens drawn up by the head of the SAS,
May 10, 1959, 9 SAS 331, ANOM.

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bre 1958-juillet 1960, (Nancy: self-publishing, 2002), available online : https://www
.miages-djebels.org/spip.php?chapter244
Article written by two former teachers of El-Flaye, Henri Munier, and Bernard Linglin.
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Sadi Saïd, Mémoires. La guerre comme berceau.1947–1967 (Paris: Frantz Fanon, 2020).
 PART 3
Limits and Closings of Contact Zones

∵
 Chapter 9

Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial

Algeria: “contact zone” or the Beginnings of an
Independent National School?
Charlotte Courreye

In Algeria, colonised by France from 1830, schooling policies evolved accord-

ing to policies strategically formulated by the colonial power in response to
political and social developments. While at first the issue of the schooling of
‘indigenous’ children1 was barely addressed by the colonial power, this issue
became increasingly important over time. One could say that after the Second
World War educating ‘Muslims’ came to be a significant and pressing strategy
underpinning French colonial policy regarding the indigenous people, the pur-
pose of this policy being to counter the increasingly strong demands of the
colonised populations.2 This also corresponds to the tension characterising the
hesitations of the colonial policy. The tension was between the defenders of a
policy of assimilation, which aimed to make the colonised people internalise
the norms defining the French civilization by the imposition of the French
institutions, and those who defended the association, which would allow the
populations to evolve in their own culture and institutions and an acceptance
of the differences between coloniser and colonised.3 Even if some periods can
be identified as assimilationist, such as the last years of the 19th century, or the
Front Populaire era in 1936–1937, the French administration in Algeria often

1 The terms ‘Muslims’ and ‘indigenous’ are those used in colonial sources and are therefore in
inverted commas in this opening paragraph. For ease of reading, once this warning has been
given, the terms will be used without commas in the text.
2 Aïssa Kadri, “Histoire du système d’enseignement colonial en Algérie,” in La France et l’Algérie:
leçons d’histoire. De l’école en situation coloniale à l’enseignement du fait colonial, eds. Frédéric
Abécassis, Gilles Boyer, Benoît Falaize, Gilbert Meynier et Michelle Zancarini-Fournel (Lyon:
ENS Éditions, 2007), 19–39; Aïssa Kadri, “Les conditions d’imposition du système scolaire
français à l’Algérie,” in Instituteurs et enseignants en Algérie 1945–1970 ed. Aïssa Kadri (Paris:
Karthala, 2014), 19–53.
3 Emmanuelle Saada, “La loi, le droit et l’indigène,” Droits 43, no. 1 (2006): 165–190; Raymond F.
Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1961).

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_010

234 Courreye

navigated between those two conceptions, according to the socio-economic

and political context.4
In the colony of Algeria the religious and civic status of citizens was legis-
lated: the term Musulmans (Muslims) designated both a population category
and a religious affiliation. It thus gathered the Arab and Berber populations
present in Algeria before the colonization under the ‘Muslims’ category,
whether they were believing and practising or not. This legislation came out
of the French indigénat system (1881), according to which all Jews (before
1870) and all Muslims were designated French ‘nationals’ but without being
granted citizenship. According to the Senatus Consulte of 1865, Muslims and
Jews in Algeria were permitted to access citizenship, apply for jobs in both the
administration and the military hierarchy, and participate in local elections,
provided they renounced their personal religious status (through a naturalisa-
tion procedure). In reality few did so. In 1870, the Crémieux decree removed
Jews from the indigénat status. From this date most Jewish children tended to
attend French schools, and Jewish religious schools almost disappeared.5 After
the First World War, the demand from those designated as Muslims for school-
ing increased. Before the war a combination of mistrust of French educational
policy and the material needs of families kept most Muslim children away
from school. In the 1930s and 1940s, while there was an increase in the number
of Muslims in French schools, they continued to represent a minority. In 1937
less than 10% of school-aged Muslim children were enrolled in state schools,
while in 1944–45, out of approximately 1,500,000 school-aged children, only
118 boys out of 1,000, and 26 girls out of 1,000, were enrolled.6 Until the 1940s,
in addition to state owned schools where a section was reserved exclusively for
the indigenous, there were many private denominational schools, both Chris-
tian and Muslim.
Muslim Algerians had their own system of Islamic education which had
partly existed before colonisation. Children who attended the Koranic or
Islamic schools learned Arabic and religion, before, in some cases, going on to

4 Segalla, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim R ­ esistance,
1912–1956, 9; Charles-Robert Ageron, France coloniale ou parti colonial? (Paris: Presses
­Universitaires de France, 1978).
5 Kamel Kateb, “Les séparations scolaires dans l’Algérie coloniale,” 65–100.
6 Denise Bouche, and Pierre Pluchon, Histoire de la colonisation française (Paris: Fayard,
1991), 244–260; Hubert Desvages, “La scolarisation des musulmans en Algérie (1882–1962)
dans l’enseignement primaire public français, étude statistique,” Cahiers de la Méditer-
ranée 4 (1972): 55–72. Sources of the statistics in the article: Exposé de la situation géné-
rale de l’Algérie (E.S.G.), statistique générale de l’Algérie (S. G. A), L’Annuaire Statistique de
l’Algérie (A. S.A.), Bulletin de l’Enseignement des indigènes de l’académie d’Alger (BEIAA).
Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria 235

attend French established state schools, as some studies have shown.7 Muslim
Algerians were, however, not a homogeneous group. The most common form
of Islam was Sufi, and the various brotherhoods (confréries) had their own
institutions of Islamic training. In the 1920s–1930s a movement emerged that
opposed the Sufi brotherhoods and defended a reformed Islam, to purify it
from what they saw as popular deviant practices. Founded in 1931, the Associa-
tion des oulémas musulmans algériens (Algerian Muslim Ulemas Association)
aimed at bringing together ulemas (Muslim scholars) who were in favour of
this reform of Islam in Algeria. They built a network of schools of their own.
We should also specify, as is discussed later, that colonial France administered
Islam in Algeria, despite the 1905 law on separation of religion and state which
was applied in metropolitan France at that time. The colonial administration
trained and appointed the personnel of the religion in the official system. To
this end, the colonial system created three official Médersas from 1850 on,
which provided higher education in both French and Arabic to train future
civil servants of justice and of the Muslim faith.8 At the beginning of the 20th
century, free mosques and free schools could be created, which, while not
dependent on the colonial administration of Islam, remained under the close
surveillance of the colonial intelligence services.
This chapter focuses on these Muslim denominational schools that devel-
oped in the period from the 1930s to 1950s, through the lens of the main actors
– the teachers – to analyze the provision of education offered by Muslim Alge-
rians for this indigenous group. Although a few indigenous children recruited
from among the intellectual and bourgeois elites had access to French schools,
as shown by the many memoirs of politicians and independence activists
(those of Messali Hadj, Ferhat Abbas, or Ahmed Taleb-Ibrahimi),9 they are
hardly representative of the majority of Muslim children at this time. In fact
the vast majority had no access to school at all prior to the belatedly intro-
duced voluntarist policies of the colonial administration at the beginning of
the 1950s. The actual policies aimed at reviving education for the indigenous
were implemented between 1947 and 1954, and were prompted by fear of the

7 Mohamed Kacimi-El-Hassani, “A la claire indépendance,” in Une enfance algérienne, texts

collected by Leïla Sebb, 162–173 (Paris: Gallimard, 1997); Malek Bennabi, Mémoires d’un
témoin du siècel, 1re partie (Editions Nationales Algériennes, 1965), 20.
8 Cf. Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine, 1871–1954 (Paris: Presses
­Universitaires de France, 1979).
9 Les Mémoires de Messali Hadj: 1898–1938, text ed. Renaud de Rochebrune (Paris: J.-C. Lattès,
1982); Abbas Ferhat, L’Indépendance confisquée (Paris: Flammarion, 1984); Ahmed Taleb-Ibra-
himi, Mémoires d’un Algérien (Algiers: Casbah Editions, 2006).
236 Courreye

political consequences of demography and politicization as well as to counter-

act the rise of nationalism.
Reformist political organizations had emerged first from the most ­privileged
and educated social circles. They were also those with the most French-­
speaking members. This is the case of the Jeunes Algériens (Young Algerians),
literate people who asked for the improvement of the condition of colonial
subjects and for equal treatment. They and their demands received a cer-
tain echo among French liberals. It is however, in particular at the end of the
1920s, that we observe a political eruption. At this time the Fédération des élus
(­Federation of Elected Officials, born in 1927) brought together elected offi-
cials of various tendencies, who took up the demands of the Young Algerians
(­representation of the colonised in Parliament and abolition of the code of the
indigeneity). In the early 1930s, certain events both demonstrated and sym-
bolised the strength of French colonial authority in the Maghreb: the celebra-
tion of the centenary of the conquest of Algiers in 1930 and the great colonial
­exhibition of 1931, while at the same time nationalist political movements
increased in strength and power. The Etoile nord-africaine (North African Star)
founded in 1926 in the Algerian emigration in the metropole, was led by Mes-
sali Hadj. While prohibited, it became the Parti du peuple algérien (Algerian
People’s Party) in 1937 and then the Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés
démocratiques (Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Freedoms) in 1947.
It called for independence from France and for the establishment of universal
suffrage and the election of an Algerian parliament.
In 1949, as part of a proactive and self-styled “egalitarian” policy, a legisla-
tive reform put an end to the separate “enseignement spécial” for indigenous
subjects and merged the two education systems. Despite these reforms, only 15
percent of school-age Muslim children attended school in 1954,10 and, accord-
ing to official figures, in the 1961–1962 school year, 40% of boys and 22% of
girls of school age were actually in school (although we should also take into
account that this was in the middle of full-on war of Algerian independence).11
How then could the French schools provide a “contact zone” between colo-
nisers and colonised? As Spencer Segalla has shown in his book on the French
protectorate in Morocco, the French schooling system, a place where “close
interaction between colonising and colonised populations” could occur, has
itself maintained the distinction between the two populations to strengthen

10 Ali Mérad, “Regards sur l’enseignement des Musulmans en Algérie (1880–1960),” ­Confluent
32–33 (juin–juillet, 1963): 596–646.
11 Desvages, “La scolarisation des musulmans en Algérie (1882–1962) dans l’enseignement
primaire public français, étude statistique,” 55–72.
Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria 237

the colonial system.12 He shows how Moroccan nationalist circles trained in

the French school thus attached themselves to an ethno-cultural essentialism
defended by France, in order to develop an anti-colonial counter-hegemony.13
In this chapter we show that the French school in Algeria did not play the role
of intermediary that France intended it to play, and that the process of integrat-
ing Algerian pupils into France from 1947 onwards was found by the colonial
power to have been delayed too long. This low rate of enrolment of Algerian
children in the schools of the French Republic does not, however, reflect the
reality of the schooling and literacy development of Algerian ‘­Muslim’ children
during this period, since Muslims had, as previously ­mentioned, taken advan-
tage of a network of Islamic education, one with institutions of different kinds
and with diverse objectives. These schools ranged from small Koranic schools
to the madrasa-s (schools) of the Association des oulémas musulmans algériens
(AOMA).
This chapter draws on sources primarily collected during my research on
AOMA, in the course of which I focused on the educational initiatives of this
movement. In this chapter I present a re-reading of these written sources, in
particular of teachers’ testimonies, with the additional purpose of describ-
ing and including in my focus the broad educational landscape in Algeria
­during the colonial period and the evolution of this landscape, rather than
limiting the study to the Algerian Muslim Ulemas Association.
I discuss the place of the indigenous teachers in French schools in terms
of the empowerment they initially thought they could achieve through an
idealised assimilation. We see how the opposition between the self and the
other tended to be reduced within this category of a population doomed to
become agents of assimilation, and intermediaries.14 The rules of the colonial
game, which prioritised the interests of the colonial power, which were distant
from those of the assimilated indigenous, prevented these indigenous teach-
ers from becoming full citizens. These rules in fact intensified their desire and
claim for equal rights, thus encouraging their politicization and exacerbating
their ­disappointment with France in the 1940s and 1950s.15 At the forefront
of the indigenous teachers’ unsustainable position as intermediaries within
the French schooling system, reformist Muslim schools emerged where “free
teachers” – in those schools which were reliant on private funds – expressed

12 Segalla, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim Resistance,
1912–1956, 6–7.
13 Segalla, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim Resistance,
1912–1956, 30.
14 Cooper, “Conflict and connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” 1528.
15 As it is also described by Spencer Segalla about Morocco.
238 Courreye

their ­opposition to the acculturated indigenous teachers in French schools

by affirming a strong cultural identity as Muslims and Arabs. Based on Coop-
er’s analysis, we demonstrate the limitations of describing colonial societies
in terms of a simple binary opposition between domination and resistance.16
Muslim schools were not fully engaged in a process of resistance insofar as
they hybridised French pedagogies with the pedagogies they inherited from
traditional Islamic curricula, injecting into these pedagogies secular materials
and modernised practical systems and organisation. Muslim schools’ promot-
ers also attempted, strategically, to gain the sympathy of the colonial admin-
istration in order to develop their schools’ network, without being entirely
successful because of the colonial authorities’ suspicions of Arab and Islamic
nationalism. Islamic education constituted a response to the colonial education
policies, offering a ‘national’ school and defending both Arabness and Islam
during the period of French colonisation. This education’s identity positioning
was reinforced by the mistrust of the colonial authorities, and the repression
of Muslim schools marked a turning point in the political positioning of the
association vis-à-vis the colonial authorities.17 Due to the fact that the schools
were partly inspired by the French and British models (through Egypt), and
driven by the will to modernise Islamic education in opposition to ‘traditional’
Koranic schools, it is relevant to regard them as constituting contact zones.
A postcolonial perspective on Islamic education and its extensions in
­independent Algeria illustrates the central place that this education system
has taken in the educational scene alongside French education, less in quan-
titative terms than in its symbolic importance as a national and nationalist
model. The question of which language of instruction and which national
identity to promote at school has been the subject of debate in education
­policy in Algeria until today.

1 The School as a “contact zone”: What Realities in Colonial Algeria?18

Whereas schools have often been considered as “contact zones” in the colo-
nial context, this concept is particularly discussed about colonial education

16 Cooper, “Conflict and connection: Rethinking Colonial African History.”

17 Charlotte Courreye, “L’école musulmane algérienne de Ibn Bâdîs dans les années 1930, de
l’alphabétisation de tous comme enjeu politique,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la
Méditerranée 136 (2014): 203–222.
18 Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation; Blanchard, and Thénault, “Quel
‘monde du contact’? Pour une histoire sociale de l’Algérie pendant la période coloniale,” 3–7.
Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria 239

in Algeria. Emmanuel Blanchard and Sylvie Thénault devoted an issue of the

journal Le Mouvement social to this subject in 2011. In their introduction they
questioned the concept of “world of contact”, a concept omnipresent in the
history of colonial Algeria but one which has never really been defined. They
underline the attention focused, in the historiography of this period, on the
conflict and on the coloniser / colonised groups. The authors stress the useful-
ness of social history in trying to perceive a “contact” created by “the interme-
diary of auxiliaries from local society, ensuring the interface with the colonial
authorities”, as embodied in the activities of journalists or urban elites.19 The
“school separation” mentioned by the Algerian demographer Kamel Kateb
undermines however the relevance of school as a “world of contact”.20 While
it may have played this role for some members of the Algerian elite, among
whom many prominent political and intellectual figures published biogra-
phies and autobiographies,21 the majority of those designated Muslim may not
have had any daily contact with those designated as Europeans, especially in
areas of low density European settlement. The existence until the 1940s of the
“special system” for indigenous people, including within the French school,
effectively embodied this separation. The indigenous teachers who succeeded
in integrating into the official school system could be considered as interme-
diaries. They were thoroughly familiar with both their environment of origin
and their acculturation environment and were able to forge links between the
two, although even these remained mainly conditioned by their social origin
and individual background.22 The examples given here demonstrate the limits
of the notion of “contact zone”.
Let us first take the example of Mohammed Soualah, a teacher and pro-
lific author of textbooks of spoken and regular Arabic, whose work is known
thanks to the writings of Alain Messaoudi on Arabists.23 Born in Frenda (near
Tiaret, south-west of Algiers) in 1873 into a peasant family, he studied at the

19 Blanchard, and Thénault, “Quel ‘monde du contact’? Pour une histoire sociale de l’Algérie
pendant la période coloniale,” 6, author’s translation.
20 Kamel Kateb, “Les séparations scolaires dans l’Algérie coloniale.”
21 For example: Ferhat Abbas, Le Jeune Algérien (1930), de la colonie vers la province,
­followed by Rapport au Maréchal Pétain (avril 1941) (Paris: Garnier, 1981). Leila Sebbar,
­L’arabe comme un chant secret (Saint Pourçain sur Sioule : Bleu autour, 2007); Assia
­Djebbar, Nulle part dans la maison de mon père (Paris: Éd. Fayard, 2007); Mokhtar
Mokhtefi, J’étais français-musulman: itinéraire d’un soldat de l’ALN (Alger: Barzakh, 2015).
22 See also Roland Rakotovao, Lars Berge and Esther Ginestet’s contributions in this volume.
23 Biographical note on Mohammed Soualah in the appendix of: Alain Messaoudi, Les
­arabisants et la France coloniale. Savants, conseillers, médiateurs (1780–1930) (Lyon: ENS
Éditions, 2015).
240 Courreye

Ecole normale d’instituteurs (Bouzareah) from which he graduated in 1893. He

was then appointed as a tutor of Arabic language to the pupils of the cours
normaux for indigenous pupils and for a special section (from 1891) dedicated
to the training of French teachers who had graduated from the metropolitan
Ecole normale d’instituteurs. He graduated in Arabic from the Ecole Supérieure
des Lettres of Algiers (1896) and then became agrégé in Arabic language in
1910. He taught at the Lycée of Alger, at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce of
Alger as well as at the Institut Agricole d’Algérie until his retirement in 1949. He
received French citizenship in 1901 and married a French woman. Mohammed
Soualah belonged to the Jeunes Algériens movement for “the rehabilitation and
progress of the natives” and participated in the management of the Tawfiqiyya
(i.e. La Concorde), a society for charity and literary and scientific education,
taken over by the Jeunes Algériens in 1911. He edited government newspapers
and showed a clear commitment to government policies. An author of numer-
ous textbooks, his Méthode pratique d’arabe régulier, written in 1900, was a
lasting success. This ‘method’ uses examples to illustrate the uses of the new
French school grammars. He also wrote a French reading book, le Premier livre
de lecture à l’usage des écoliers indigènes en pays musulmans, published in 1909,
in collaboration with the primary school inspector Louis Salomon. In the pref-
ace, the two authors highlight the need for specific textbooks for indigenous
peoples, a position which demonstrates the separation between European and
indigenous populations, at the beginning of the 20th century:

It is a question of educating children who often have no relations with

Europeans. It therefore seemed useful to us to familiarise them with a
host of topics with which they are unfamiliar, by contrast to the children
who attend French schools in a civilised center.24

Promoted to commander of the Legion of Honour in 1949, Soualah was well

integrated into colonial society, and could thus have represented the interme-
diary figure that the concept of the “contact zone” emphasises. To honour his
memory, after his death the municipality of Algiers decided to name a street
after him. However, he had been deliberately kept away from the prestigious
positions to which he was entitled as an agrégé, and his massive production of

24 Mohammed Soualah and Salomon, Louis, Premier Livre de lecture à l’usage des écoliers
indigènes en pays musulmans (First reading book for the use of the indigenous children in
Muslim countries)(Alger: A.Jourdan, 1909), author’s translation.
Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria 241

textbooks could be seen as a substitute for the disappointment and contempt

he encountered in the French educational milieu.25
In his biographical study of the indigenous Arabic teachers Alain Mes-
saoudi demonstrated the ways in which those figures “between two worlds”
were “the objects of scrupulous attention from the French authorities, anxious
to find there the expression of the success of their ‘civilising’ policy”.26 They
were “at the same time recognised by the French authorities for their qualities
as Arabists or potential mediators with the Algerian population, and suspected
of nationalist commitment or sympathies”.27 In this way, they inevitably faced
a glass ceiling, whatever their more or less favourable or distant attitudes
towards the coloniser were. Later on we find the same dynamics and ambi-
guities of the colonial authorities’ relationship towards these intermediaries or
mediators regarding indigenous teachers more widely, those who had passed
through the Ecole Normale as Soualah had previously done.
The action of the Association des instituteurs d’origine indigène (­Teachers
of indigenous origin’s association) and its newspaper La Voix des humbles
(1922–1939) challenged this role of intermediaries and thus allows us to
address the discomfort of those indigenous teachers in French schools, and
what Fanny Colonna called the “hidden but imperative” rule of the colonial
game.28 Said Faci, an Algerian teacher and one of La Voix des humbles’ leading
writers of opinion pieces, wrote in 1936 that “indigenous intellectuals” were the
“best intermediaries between France and the Muslim people”.29 In this way,
he embraced the school’s expectations but he did not take into account its
“implicit rule”, as Fanny Colonna highlights: assimilation was doomed to fail
because in the long run it went against colonial interests. The ‘correct distance’
colonial educational authorities expected from its future indigenous teachers
at the Ecole normale was one which had to ensure their adherence to their
culture of origin, but not allow for full acculturation. Being too far from one’s
culture of origin would mean no longer being a potential intermediary.
These issues can be compared to the initiatives of the French authori-
ties in Morocco. In that country they promoted the notion of the “Moroccan

25 Messaoudi, Les arabisants et la France coloniale. Savants, conseillers, médiateurs (1780–1930).

26 Messaoudi, «Des médiateurs effacés? Les professeurs d’arabe des collèges et lycées
­d’Algérie (1840–1940)», Outre-Mers 98, no. 370–371, 2011, p. 149–159, p. 153.
27 Messaoudi, «Des médiateurs effacés?», p. 149–159. P. 153–154.
28 Fanny Colonna, “Training the national elites in Colonial Algeria, 1920–1954,” Historical
Social Research 33 no. 2 (2008): 285–295; Fanny Colonna, “Verdict scolaire et position de
classe dans l’Algérie coloniale,” Revue française de sociologie 14, no. 2 (1973): 180–201.
29 Colonna, “Verdict scolaire et position de classe dans l’Algérie coloniale,” 180–201, author’s
translation.
242 Courreye

Soul”: the Muslim specificity and identity of Moroccan children had to be

preserved in order to gain the consent of the Moroccan population, thus pro-
moting the concept of association instead of assimilation.30 This idea of
authentic “Moroccanness” paradoxically reinforced the nationalist movement,
in p
­ articular within the Muslim elite, whose disappointed demand for French
education caused them to turn to free-schools, or prompted the elite to send
their children to the Middle East, in order for them to pursue their education
in Arabic. Both the French authorities and the Muslim population were thus
defending a Moroccan specificity but with diametrically opposed results.
Thus, in Algeria the mentioned examples demonstrate how ambiguous the
status of indigenous teachers could be in the colonial school system: while they
were expected to be the best intermediaries and promote French culture, their
claim for equal rights with their French colleagues was not successful.31 These
contradictions within the colonial education system led indigenous teachers
towards an uncomfortable position between the colonial education system
institution and their home communities. Some Muslim Algerians had felt
the need to set up alternative school structures, either to avoid the politics of
assimilation, or to promote Islamic education, or to offer a reformed system
which was able to complete the French curricula or to compensate for its defi-
ciencies. We will now turn at teachers who did not promote the integration of
the normal school and the assimilation path within the colonial system, but
remained attached to their culture of origin and promoted private Muslim
education by and for the indigenous children outside of the French school sys-
tem, from Koranic schools to the schools of the Ulemas Association. However,
even those who took this path were not free from the influence of the state
education system.

2 Private Schools ‘for and by’ the Indigenous

The model of the Koranic school, under its different names (msid, mammra
or kuttab depending on the region), was and is shared by the whole Muslim

30 Cf. Segalla, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim
­Resistance, 1912–1956.
31 Colonna, Instituteurs algériens, 1883–1939 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des
sciences politiques, 1975); Colonna, “Verdict scolaire et position de classe dans l’Algérie
colonial”; Kadri Aïssa, ed., Instituteurs et enseignants en Algérie (1945–1978): Histoire et
mémoires; Jean-Robert Henry, ed., “Figures d’enseignants, L’école en Algérie, l’Algérie à
l’école (Rouen: Canopé éditions, 2017), 13–24; Kaddour M’Hamsadji, Le Rêve derrière soi
(Algiers: Casbah éditions, 2000).
Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria 243

world. While studies have been specifically devoted to it, there remains sparse
precise data on this model during the colonial period in general.32 Some stud-
ies, such as that of Rudolph T. Ware on sub-Saharan Africa, or the work of
Fanny Colonna on Algeria, emphasise the intensely corporeal dimension of
this teaching in Koranic schools as far as memorising the Koran is concerned.33
It is not only a question of studying texts but of “living knowledge through
the body”.34 The first cycle in a Qurʾanic school, to memorise the Qurʾan, is
common to both rural and urban areas and is found throughout the Muslim
world. A second cycle, found mostly in cities in institutions called madrasa-s,
provides a broader education including hadith, literature, and a more in-depth
study of the language in particular. These madrasa-s may be associated with
zawiya (places of prayer, accommodation and teaching specific to the differ-
ent brotherhoods). Their purpose is to prepare the student for entry into an
Islamic university, such as those of Fes (Qarawiyyin), Tunis (Zaytuna) or Cairo
(al-Azhar). The distinction between the different types of Koranic schools
sometimes caused confusion among the colonial authorities in charge of
­listing and monitoring these institutions. The French archives in Algeria bear
witness to the diversity - sometimes the novelty - of these schools. They could
be run by individual teachers or by an association, linked to a mosque or a
zawiya, or belong to one or other current of Islam.
The 1930s were a time of overhaul of the Islamic teaching system, the devel-
opment of numerous so-called ’’reformed’’ schools, where knowledge was no
longer considered simply in terms of memorization and a body experience,
but which sought also to explore the rationality of knowledge at the heart of
the Islamic sciences and to adapt the reading of canonical texts to contempo-
rary society. From the end of the 19th century the desire to modernise Islamic
education was concomitant with religious reform movements such as those
Egypt and India had experienced under British colonisation. The best-known

32 Daniel A. Wagner, and Lotfi Abdelhamid, “Traditional Islamic Education in Morocco:

Sociohistorical and Psychological,” Comparative Education Review 24, no. 2 (1980): 238–251;
Rudolph T. Ware III, The Walking Qurʾan: Islamic education, embodied knowledge, and his�-
tory in West Africa (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2014); Nicole Grandin, and Marc Gaborieau,
Madrasa, la transmission du savoir dans le monde musulman (Paris: éd. Arguments, 1997),
95–111.
33 Ware III, The Walking Qurʾan: Islamic education, embodied knowledge, and history in West
Africa; Fanny Colonna, “Les versets de l’invincibilité: permanence et changements religieux
dans l’Algérie contemporaine” (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences
­politiques, 1995).
34 Ware III, The Walking Qurʾan: Islamic education, embodied knowledge, and history in West
Africa, 3.
244 Courreye

example is Muhammad Abduh’s reform of the University-Mosque al-Azhar. As

in Egypt, after the first treaty of independence in 1922, where public instruc-
tion remained under the influence of the British model, in the French colonies,
the teaching methods of the French school clearly influenced reformed Islamic
education. This trend is apparent, as can be seen in Tunisia at this time.35 It was
thus a movement of religious and educational reform, inspired by European
models but deeply rooted in Islamic traditions, one that influenced the reform
of education throughout the Muslim world during this period, and moved
from ‘’tablets to blackboards’’.36 Robert Launay describes this process for Africa
and Thomas Raineau for Egypt. These new types of schools, which appeared in
the 1930s in the Maghreb, and in the 1950s in sub-Saharan Africa, profoundly
changed the religious roots and Islamic knowledge in contemporary societies.37

2.1 Sufis and Reformists in School Provision in Algeria

As elsewhere in the broad Muslim world, two competing tendencies of Islam
co-existed in Algeria during the colonial period: the brotherhoods, that consti-
tuted the majority Islam, and the growing movement of reformists. The latter,
as seen above, sought to modernise their societies by advocating the use of
reason in religion, while at the same time purifying Islam by cleansing it of the
superstitions and vernacular beliefs that had been a characteristic feature for
centuries.
Thus, alongside the brotherhoods traditionally anchored in Algeria, such as
the Rahmaniyya or the Tidjaniyya, there was a strong school dynamic driven
by the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulemas. In addition, some brother-
hoods, such as the Alawiyya, were self-reforming in the same spirit of renewal
as the group of Muslim reformists, particularly in terms of a more hybrid form
of education, and school organisation.
Founded in the thirties, the Association des oulémas musulmans algé-
riens (Algerian Muslim Ulemas Association thereafter designated as AOMA)
promoted the reform of Islam in Algeria. Initially bringing together brother-
hoods Islam and Muslim reformism, the Association des oulémas musulmans
algériens was, after a year of operation, led exclusively by the supporters of

35 Noureddine Sraïeb, Le Collège Sadiki de Tunis, 1875–1956: enseignement et nationalisme

(Paris: CNRS, 1995).
36 Thomas Raineau, “Des tableaux noirs à l’ombre du minbar,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 75
(2007): 90–104; Robert Launay, ed., Islamic education in Africa: Writing boards and black-
boards (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016).
37 Dia Hamidou, Clothilde Hugon, and Rohen d’Aiglepierre, “États réformateurs et é­ ducation
arabo-islamique en Afrique. Vers un compromis historique? Introduction thématique,”
Afrique contemporaine 257, no. 1 (2016): 11–23.
Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria 245

reformism (iṣlāḥ). Partly in reaction to colonialism and European imperialism,

it advocated a more thorough knowledge of scriptural sources over certain
practices seen as ‘‘superstitious’’ and did much to develop the education of
Muslim youth in Arabic. During the period of French colonisation, the Ulemas
defended the Arab and Muslim identity of Algerians through their work as
educators and publicists, and through their schools, their articles, and their
conferences. They advocated a reformed Islam against the brotherhood tradi-
tion in which they had grown up themselves.
The educational work of the Ulemas Association and its president in the
1930s, Sheikh Ben Badis, aimed to make Algerian Muslims aware of the exist-
ence and legitimacy of an ‘Algerian personality’, both Arab and Muslim, in
opposition to the colonial belief in French cultural superiority, and to the
assimilation and acculturation process. The Association also had the clearly
stated objective of making up for the shortcomings of colonial schooling and
offering literacy training to all Algerian children and adults through evening
classes. Social measures were thus introduced by the AOMA to allow the most
disadvantaged children access to privately owned Muslim schools, where
both charity and a cultural and political ideal were at stake, i.e. to spread the
“Algerian personality” among the new generation.38 AOMA strove to establish
a centralised network of schools. The Koranic schools, which often depend on
a single master (the taleb), and the zawiyas did not really constitute a school
system in its own. Each of them was ruled by an individual and gathered to
them rather small groups of affiliates. This was due to the diversity of school
levels among pupils, to the diversity of teaching approaches among taleb-s,
and to the exclusive relationship between the pupils and their master who was
transmitting a sometimes rudimentary religious and linguistic knowledge.
A wealth of source material needs to be accessed to document precisely
the realities of teaching in the zawiyas. The many autobiographical narratives
published in Algeria, including the histories of childhood since the 1960s, offer
an opportunity to reflect on this in a more comprehensive and nuanced way.
In my own work, I have mainly focussed on the AOMA and collected testimo-
nies from actors within its ranks. These necessarily include a bias since their
memoirs often aim to demonstrate the benefits of reformism in Algeria and
the legitimacy of their movement. They therefore willingly take advantage
of this to highlight the defects of this brotherhood’s schools, which had been
­widespread in earlier years.

38 Courreye, “L’école musulmane algérienne de Ibn Bâdîs dans les années 1930, de l’alphabé-
tisation de tous comme enjeu politique.”
246 Courreye

Let us take the example of an AOMA teacher who began studying in rural
zawiyas: Salah Ben Atiq.39 He was born on 4 May 1903 in Milia (in the north-
east of Algeria) and was trained in various local zawiyas. He left these for a
Muslim school in Mila where he studied for four years, notably with Mubarak
El-Mili, an eminent member of AOMA. In 1926 he emigrated to Constantine to
enrol in the courses of Sheikh Ben Badis, president of AOMA and of al-Tarbiya
wa al-Taalim (Education and Teaching), the cultural association of Constan-
tine that pioneered the AOMA schools. Selected by the Sheikh as a promis-
ing student, he continued his studies at the mosque-university of Tunis, the
Zaytuna, and obtained his degree in 1932. He then taught in AOMA schools in
various cities including, for a year or two, in the association’s groups in Paris.
In his memoirs he recalls his first years of training in rural zawiyas. Despite
an absence of a family educational background, he was guided by the advice
of others, without having any reference points. He describes visiting educa-
tional contexts where everything revolved around the sheikh of the zawiya, his
household and his service. The students sometimes spent more time ­shopping
for the sheikh and working in his fields than studying. The story highlights
the young man’s great frustration. Studies done on religious education in
rural Algeria corroborate this account. Both Fanny Colonna in the Aurès, and
Mohamed Brahim Salhi for the Kabylie, make the same observation about the
use of affiliates by the sheikhs of the brotherhood for the harvest or the daily
work on the zawiya’s land, although it is also important to consider the peda-
gogical goals of such manual labour as part of the desire to incorporate the
ethic of humility through work.40 On the other hand, the financial resources of
the tolbas (plural of taleb) who were teaching the Qurʾan in the zawiya-s were
at the time very limited, so they often added to their income by offering many
religious “services”, such as exorcism, or the making of talismans, which pro-
vided extra income. These practices were followed among those opposed by
the Ulemas Association. Thus, Ben Atiq’s work highlights the value of teaching
in the association’s schools, which he contrasts with the negative experiences
in rural zawiyas. He compares this unstudious atmosphere that he first experi-
enced with the investment and modern method of Ben Badis in Constantine.

39 Muḥammad al-Ṣāliḥ IBN ʿATĪQ, Aḥdāṯ wa mawāqif fī maǧāl al-daʿwa al-iṣlāḥiyya wa

l-ḥaraka al-waṭaniyya al-ǧazāʾiriyya (Events and Positions in the Field of the Daʿwa for
the iṣlāḥ and the Algerian National Movement) (Algiers: Dahlab, 1990).
40 Fanny Colonna, “Les versets de l’invincibilité: permanence et changements religieux dans
l’Algérie contemporaine”; Mohamed Brahim Salhi, “Etude d’une confrérie religieuse
­algérienne: la Rahmania à la fin du XIXème siècle et dans la première moitié du XXème
siècle” (PhD thesis, Paris EHESS, 1979), 111; Ware III, The Walking Qurʾan: Islamic educa-
tion, embodied knowledge, and history in West Africa, 42.
Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria 247

Ben Atiq praises Ben Badis’s modern teaching method: Badis encouraged
dialogue with students instead of simply imparting information, and he
welcomed spontaneous questions. He had the students study poetry, noted
its moral aspect, and explained its form, detailed points of grammar, and
­commented on eloquent formulas. The sheikh spent all of his time with his
students during the day and part of the night. The subjects offered were also
richer: instead of learning commentaries on medieval treatises, the students
were given exercises to do in Arabic (grammar, expression) and they studied
history.41 The teaching of the Ulemas, like that of its leader Ben Badis, was in
fact greatly inspired by two models for modernising Islamic education: the
French state schooling and the Egyptian school, which was itself derived from
the model of the former British colonial power. The methods and material
conditions were adapted to this modernised model, and Egyptian textbooks
were even used. The particular dual nature of this method, in turn made this
educational system and its actors in fact intermediaries in the colonial society.
The shift from traditional teaching, based on memorization, to teaching based
on rationality, which was characterised by the importance given to questions
of hygiene and comfort in teaching, and the teacher-pupil relationship, where
interactions are encouraged, are all elements that were seen to be positive
means to bring Ulemas’ schools closer to the French republican model. At the
same time, the status of the pupils, who were, on the one hand, “subordinated”
as colonised and on the margins of the official school system, but also of “high
status” as scholars in Muslim society and as part of the bourgeois elites, albeit
subaltern in colonial society, was the result of this model’s hybrid inspirations.42
It is important to emphasise here the differences between urban and rural
environments at the time. Ben Badis’s modern education was provided in
schools in Constantine, a préfecture (one of the three administrative regional
headquarters up to 1955) in eastern Algeria. These urban schools and their
actors had more access to other models of education and to the means of
communication. They also had more resources than did schools in rural areas.
Therefore the madrasa-s (AOMA schools) expanded greatly in the 1940s to pro-
vide an educational curriculum more relevant to contemporary society than
that offered by the zawiyas’. The AOMA schools were not the only ones to ben-
efit from the ripple effect because zawiya-s in cities were also influenced by

41 IBN ʿATĪQ, Aḥdāṯ wa mawāqif fī maǧāl al-daʿwa al-iṣlāḥiyya wa l-ḥaraka al-waṭaniyya

al-ǧazāʾiriyya, 55 ff.
42 J. Becker, ed., European Missions in Contact Zones: Transformation Through Interaction in
a Post-) Colonial World, 10–11; Wodianka, and Behrens, eds., Chaos in the Contact Zone:
Unpredictability, Improvisation and the Struggle for Control in Cultural Encounters, xx.
248 Courreye

these changes and were able to be renewed and modernised. These changes
that were evident in urban schools thus led to increased competition in some
cities between brotherhoods’ zawiya-s and reformist schools (madrasa).

2.2 Growing Competition within Private Muslim Education in Major

Urban Centres
In the 1940s and 1950s private Muslim education was expanded in Algeria, espe-
cially in the big cities. These teaching systems depended on local resources and
were financed by the community for the Ulemas, among which were wealthy
donors – sometimes among the families of the association’s executives – or
subsidised by the personal fortune of the sheikh, and sometimes by donations
or by aid from the Administration for the zawiya schools which had adopted
officially approved curricula and programs. These institutions also depended
on the goodwill of the authorities, which could close them down if they were
regarded as being too political, and it was thus necessary to manoeuvre skil-
fully in order to avoid closure. Therefore, competition became strong between
brotherhoods’ and reformists’ schools, both of which were seeking to attract
students not only by promoting the teaching they offered, but also by their
social actions: the student residences financed by these institutions consti-
tuted a major attraction to encourage enrolments.
In Constantine, for example, the Kulliyya kittaniyya, run by the ­Rahmaniyya
brotherhood, opened in 1946, and this was followed in 1947 by the Ben Badis
Institute of AOMA. While the Ulemas were suspected by the administration
of inciting nationalism and promoting anti-colonial propaganda, the comple-
mentary institutions of the Rahmaniyya were supported by the French authori-
ties. These Rahmaniyya institutions aimed to train administrative and judicial
civil servants in Koranic law in the same way as the official Médersas, created by
the colonial authorities to provide higher education for future civil servants in
the judiciary and the Muslim faith, did.43 As early as 1947, the Kulliyya kittani-
yya arranged the secondment of two teachers from the rectorat, administrative
headquarters of the Académie of Constantine, to introduce into the curricu-
lum French courses, while the Ulemas had to wait until 1953 to sign an agree-
ment with the Recteur for this subject to be taught.44 At the same time, further

43 See Charles Janier, “Les médersas algériennes,” Mémoire Vive 46 (2010).

44 Mohamed El Korso, “Structures islahistes et dynamique culturelle dans le mouvement
national algérien, 1931–1954,” in Lettrés, intellectuels, et militants en Algérie, 1880–1950, eds.
Carlier Omar, Colonna Fanny, Djeghloul Abdelkader, and El-Korso Mohamed (Algiers:
OPU, 1988), 54–106; Salhi, “Etude d’une confrérie religieuse algérienne: la Rahmania à la
fin du XIXème siècle et dans la première moitié du XXème siècle.”
Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria 249

south in Biskra, the same Rahmaniyya brotherhood, which, since 1950 had been
promoting “dual French and Muslim cultureˮ in its Mohammadia madrasa (a
former zawiya with renewed programs), organised a second inauguration to
rival the ceremony organised by the Ulemas when the AOMA in turn opened a
madrasa in the town in January 1951.45 The AOMA had introduced inspections
to check school compliance with the association’s teaching charter.46 Therefore
the brotherhoods in the 1950s had to structure their own education movement.
Finally, a third actor, Messali Hadj’s party, emerged during this reformist decade,
along with the strengthening of the pro-independence tendency at that time.47
This party attempted to set up its own network of madrasa-s which were often
quickly closed down by the government because of their assumed political
orientation. Messali Hadj’s party also resorted to infiltrating the brotherhoods’
madrasa’s boards of directors and even infiltrating those of the AOMA s, thus
contributing to the political tensions within the Muslim educational institu-
tions a few years before the outbreak of the war of independence. While AOMA
teachers advocated teaching in Arabic for Algerians, they did not forget, as we
have seen, the importance of French in terms of social capital. Therefore, part of
the teachers’ families in this private education system also sent their children to
French schools when they could, in order to have their children tutored in the
use of the political weapons which could promote their own conception of Alge-
ria.48 The Ulemas promoted thus an elite who was both literate in Arabic and
able to work in French, a combination of skills that prepared their students for
the coming world of independent Algeria.49 As a matter of fact, this was useful
in the context of Independence, where the ideological choice of Arabisation

See also Nadjib Achour, “Entre tradition et réforme: L’expérience de l’Association

des oulémas dans le département de Constantine (1940–1954)” (Thesis, Université Paris
­Diderot, Paris, 2014); FR ANOM 93/4497, Préfecture de Constantine, SLNA. ­Renseignement.
Constantine, 24 May 1952.
45 BMQI, March 1951, p. 46, quoted by Korso, “Structures islahistes et dynamique culturelle
dans le mouvement national algérien, 1931–1954,” 67.
46 Muḥammad al-Ḥasan Fudalāʾ, Al-Masīra al-rāʾida li-l-taʿlīm al-ʿarabī al-ḥurr bi-l-Ǧazāʾir
(The Pioneer Course of Free Arabic Education in Algeria) (Algiers: Dār al-Umma, 1999), 34.
47 See Rahal Malika, L’UDMA et les Udmistes. Contribution à l’histoire du nationalisme
algérien (Algiers, Barzakh, 2017).
48 Thus the children of Sheikhs Ibrahimi and Kheireddine went at least in part to French
schools, just as scholars outside AOMA made this choice for their children, as did the
young Malek Bennabi. Taleb-Ibrahimi, Mémoires d’un Algérien, 29–30; FR ANOM 93/4497.
Prefecture of Constantine, SLNA. 23 February 1953. Information; Bennabi, Mémoires d’un
témoin du siècel, 1re partie, 20.
49 See Courreye, L’Algérie des Oulémas, une histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine (1931–1991)
(Paris: Editions de la Sorbonne, 2020).
250 Courreye

has been slowed down indeed by the reality of the means to accomplish it.
The French-speaking structures had to be retained in order not to necessitate
­starting from scratch in organising a new school year from October 1962. Being
bilingual was from that date an asset in this context.

3 Preparing a National Education?

The private Muslim experimental education systems had initially never been
thought of as a model for a national education system. However, this model
contributed to the ideological formation and structuring of Algerian education
in the 1950s as this system was widespread by the time the war of independ-
ence began. The colonial administration was not mistaken in seeing the impor-
tance of this Ulemas’ schooling system, as the administration itself organised
the restructuring of educational provision for the indigenous people at that
time along the same lines.50 During the independence war most Muslim
schools had to close or were requisitioned by the authorities. The challenge for
Independent Algeria at the end of the war in 1962 was to rapidly organise a new
school year in a few months on the basis of the independence project. The first
post-war years were therefore marked by a certain strategic pragmatism and by
the maintenance of a pre-existing education system and its structures, within
the framework of a policy of active cooperation with France.51 Nevertheless,
from the first school year in 1962, Algerian political leaders wanted to show
their desire to arabise education in Algeria in line with what was advocated by
the nationalist and independence parties. It was therefore necessary to recruit
and train Arabic-speaking teachers. Most of these teachers were initially drawn
from the free schools and private Muslim institutes that we have mentioned.

3.1 1 962: Lack of Staff and Infrastructure in the Face of the Programmed
Massification of Education
In the literature on the challenges of independent Algeria, questions of the
language of instruction and the Arabisation policies are regularly raised.52

50 See above, and Desvages, “La scolarisation des musulmans en Algérie (1882–1962)
dans l’enseignement primaire public français, étude statistique.” See also the article by
­Christine Mussard « Demander l’école, approcher l’État. Les familles algériennes et l’école
primaire française à Blida (1944–1954) », Mondes arabes, no. 3, 2023, 61–78.
51 Jean-Robert, Henry, and Jean-Claude Vatin, éds., Le temps de la coopération. Sciences
­sociales et décolonisation au Maghreb (Paris: Karthala-IREMAM, 2012).
52 Ahmed Djebbar, “Le système éducatif algérien: miroir d’une société en crise et en muta-
tion” in L’Algérie face à la mondialisation, Council for the Development of Social Science
Research in Africa, ed. Tayeb Chentouf (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2008), 174–207.
Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria 251

These issues remain hotly debated today, and the consequences of the policies
put in place at the time of decolonisation are being felt strongly in contempo-
rary Algerian society. While the maintenance of French was essential to ensure
continuity of education in the early years of Independence, several Arabisa-
tion policies at different levels of education were attempted in the 1970s. They
led, at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, to the total Arabi-
sation of education and administration. These Arabisation policies took lit-
tle account of the question of the spoken language and imposed the use and
learning of an academic language at school that children never spoke sponta-
neously in any Arab country, namely literary or standard Arabic. The issue of
Berber-speaking school populations emerged on the political scene in opposi-
tion to Arabisation policies through the voice of Berber cultural movements
opposed to the Algerian regime in the 1980s. While the Algerian Arabic dialect
was necessarily used in everyday language, and thus in informal interactions
at school as well, this language still had no official status in Algeria.53 The chal-
lenge of recruiting teachers to teach French and Arabic was therefore immense
at the dawn of decolonisation. In this context Algeria made extensive use of
Arab-speaking and French-speaking monitors in the early years, to compen-
sate for the lack of trained teachers and the departure of French teachers dur-
ing the year 1962. In 1962–63, this poorly trained and poorly regarded teaching
corps of the monitors accounted for 50 per cent of primary school teachers,
decreasing to about 37 per cent in 1969–70, and about 13 per cent in 1976–77.54
Recruited, based on a decision by the education inspector, according to need,
this corps immediately suffered from its high degree of heterogeneity, their low
level of education led to a deficit image among the population, an image which
they themselves ended up taking on board, or internalising.55 However, the
primary school teachers, the instituteurs, had benefited from better training
than had the moniteurs, and enjoyed a better image.
Teachers from AOMA often fared better than their counterparts who had
trained in the zawiya-s. They became instituteurs either because they were
­better trained or because they had placed more emphasis on obtaining recog-
nised and respected diplomas, both in Algeria and abroad. The association had
sent its best students to the Middle East to continue their studies in Arabic,
and it provided a structure for the teachers in such a way that the network was

53 Khaoula Taleb-Ibrahimi, “L’Algérie: coexistence et concurrence des langues,” L’Année du

Maghreb I (2004). https://doi.org/10.4000/anneemaghreb.305; Khaoula Taleb-Ibrahimi,
Les Algériens et leur(s) langue(s): éléments pour une approche sociolinguistique de la société
algérienne (Alger: Ed. El-Hikma, 1997).
54 Mustapha Haddab, “Les moniteurs de l’enseignement primaire en Algérie,” Actes de la
recherche en sciences sociales (30 November, 1979): 19–30.
55 Mustapha Haddab, “Les moniteurs de l’enseignement.”
252 Courreye

able to function almost like a trade union in 1964, including being able to advo-
cate with the ministry for the seniority of AOMA teachers in terms of salary.
AOMA cadres who had risen to representative positions in the National
Liberation Front abroad (in Cairo, Tunis, Damascus) could, once placed in
the ministries, make use of their powerful network, one derived from their
membership of AOMA. They provided many senior officers in the ministries
of education and religious affairs, precisely because they were in large part
Arab and French speakers, a legacy of their elite status acquired during the
colonial period. Few in the Algerian elite at this time mastered literary writ-
ten Arabic. The teacher Ben Atiq, mentioned above, was appointed Regional
Inspector of Religious Affairs at the Ministry des Habous at the time of inde-
pendence. He participated in the creation of the Instituts Islamiques (Islamic
education centres organised by the State), and subsequently took up a post
in 1966 in a lycée (state owned secondary school) to teach Arabic until his
retirement in 1972.56
It thus appears, from the process described above, that the structuring of the
Muslim education system served as a model for Algerian national education.
However, its deficiency in terms of personnel, material resources and content,
prevented it from existing in its own right. The continuation of the French edu-
cational model in the early years after independence thus made it possible
to prioritise the massification of education in a country where illiterates, in
French as well as in Arabic, still constituted the majority of the population.

4 Conclusion

Frederick Cooper has pointed out that, if the binaries coloniser/colonised and
domination/resistance allow us to “open up questions of power”, they “end
up constraining the search for precise ways in which power is deployed”.57
The history of education in colonial Algeria demonstrates, as Spencer Segella
highlighted with regard to Morocco, how colonial education led paradoxi-
cally to the reinforcement of nationalism.58 Whereas the French Protectorate
in Morocco promoted authenticity and Islam with the purpose of defining

56 Muḥammad al-Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAtīq, biography in Fuḍalāʾ Muḥammad al-Ḥasan, Min aʿlām

al-iṣlāḥ fī l-Ǧazāʾir (The great names of reformism in Algeria), 2, p. 42.
57 Cooper, “Conflict and connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” 1517.
58 Segalla, The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim Resistance,
1912–1956.
Education for and by the Indigenous in Colonial Algeria 253

an identity worth preserving as Moroccan, and one distinct from the French
identity, the French colonial authorities in Algeria insisted on producing
indigenous acculturated teachers. These authorities realised that those teach-
ers should nevertheless not be completely acculturated. This was in order to
ensure that they remained in the role of intermediaries, instead of being com-
pletely assimilated into the French elite. For those indigenous teachers, the
hopes of assimilation were gradually destroyed by the persistent civil rights
inequality. The indigenous teachers in the French system were attacked by
the Muslim free schools teachers because of the distance they had created
between their culture of origin and their everyday life. Indigenous teachers
in the French schooling system could not find a comfortable place in colonial
society, although they claimed to be “the best intermediaries” between indig-
enous people and the colonial authorities in their society. And indigenous
students remained few in number until the 1950s. What could have been a
“contact zone” then came to be a zone of misunderstanding and a widening
gap between the populations.
The Muslim free schools tried to compensate for the lack of public state
schooling under French rule and to promote an Arab and Muslim identity,
especially in the AOMA schools, in fierce competition with traditional Koranic
schools. The shift from memorization as a pedagogy to teaching based on
rationality brought their teaching closer to the French schooling model, even
though they were promoting an authentic Algerian identity that differed sig-
nificantly from the French acculturated one. The structuration of this free
Muslim teaching system in the 1950s reveals the nature of the role of Muslim
free schools in Algerian cultural nationalism, and explains the imprint they left
in postcolonial Algeria.
Analyses of the accounts of teachers and students who testified to their
activist experiences through memoirs, and their descriptions and experi-
ences of the educational structures during the colonial period allow a deeper,
more nuanced understanding of the issues facing Algerians at independence.
The pre-existing activist networks enabled the formation of work teams that
were ready to function quickly and efficiently in independent Algeria, even
if those Arabic-speaking personnel were clearly in a minority in the French
based educational system at independence. Although the country took up
an immense challenge in rapidly organising a new school year in October
1962, and this allowed the entire population to have access to school, the fact
remains that the question of the language of instruction and the contradictory
decisions that were taken in this regard significantly hindered a sustainable
evolution of the independent Algerian school.
254 Courreye

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 Chapter 10

Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation

and the Extension of the Status of Département
The Testimony of the Normaliens of the Reunion Island in the Post-Colonial
Period

Pierre-Éric Fageol and Frédéric Garan

When Réunion became a French département in 1946 after 300 years as a colony
of France, it ratified a process of “intra-French decolonisation,1 one in which
school teachers played a leading role. France’s belief in a policy of assimila-
tion in the name of progress explains the dynamics involved in the training of
teachers, and in the country’s educational project to promote the integration
of this former colony into the rest of the French nation. From the beginning
of the Third Republic in France, teachers’ training and supervision had been a
focus of attention. We propose to analyse the nature and effectiveness of this
training in our study. For France, following the example of their other colonial,
and former colonial, territories at the time,2 it was a question of proposing
and implementing a model of acculturation, and of “norming” the principles
of teaching in ways which would develop an elite devoted to the civilising mis-
sion of France.3
We see this model guiding the promoters of what was in fact a forced
assimilation from the end of the 1950s onwards, and the setting up of the
means considered by these promoters necessary for the ‘democratization’ of

1 Yvan Combeau, ed., L’île de La Réunion sous la quatrième république, 1946–1958: Entre colonie
et département (Saint-André: Océan Éditions, 2006).
2 Gardelle, and Jacob, Schools and National Identities in French-speaking Africa; Jean-Hervé
Jézéquel, “«Les Mangeurs de craies ». Socio-histoire d’une catégorie lettrée à l’époque
­coloniale. Les instituteurs diplômés de l’École normale William Ponty” (PhD dissertation,
Paris, EHESS, 2002); Labrune-Badiane, and Smith, Les hussards noirs de la colonie: institu-
teurs africains et « petites patries » en AOF, 1913–1960; Malika Lemdani Belkaïd, Normaliennes
en Algérie (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998); Ly Boubacar, Les instituteurs au Sénégal de 1903 à 1945
(Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009).
3 Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–
1930; Pierre-Éric Fageol, Identité coloniale et sentiment d’appartenance nationale sur les bancs
de l’école à La Réunion (Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires Indianocéaniques, 2020).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_011

258 Fageol and Garan

education and training.4 Our paper focuses on the testimonies of a generation

of Normaliens who actively participated in this process from the time of the
founding of the École normale de Bellepierre in Réunion in the early 1960s.5 In
the absence of certain archival sources,6 the use of interviews7 enables us to
establish a portrait of a generation, one that is, according to Wilhelm Dilthey,
“a fairly narrow circle of individuals who, despite the diversity of other fac-
tors, are linked together in a homogeneous whole by the fact that they were
all influenced by the same major events and changes that occurred during
their period of receptivityˮ.8 This period of receptivity, a period during which
these young people were receptive to certain ideas or ideologies, was largely
linked to départementalisation and the political debates that départementali-
sation may have sparked at the time, and which constitute a “date-generating
event [because] it struck young people who were in the process of awakening
to political consciousnessˮ.9
Once we had opted for a qualitative approach, the semi-structured inter-
views allowed us to ask a variety of questions that, while based on predefined
themes, would be flexible and would be based on what would emerge ‘natu-
rally’ from the actors’ responses, and would not be rigidly preconceived. The
purpose of this qualitative approach, based on a flexible interview guide, is to
allow the witnesses of the events to “see themselves as the subject of their own
livesˮ,10 as Axel Honneth puts it. In order to follow a single trajectory, and to
understand what constitutes the universe of reference (impacted by cultural,

4 Évelyne Combeau-Mari & Yvan Combeau, “Réflexion sur la démocratisation de l’ensei-

gnement: Analyse des politiques scolaires à La Réunion au tournant des années soixante.”
Outre-Mers. Revue d’histoire 316–317 (1997): 3–29.
5 Frédéric Garan, and Pierre-Éric Fageol, De la collecte d’archives orales à la diffusion grand
public’: Pratiques contemporaines de l’histoire orale. De l’entretien aux archives orales
(­Lecture, Paris Campus Condorcet, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales EHESS,
11 and 12 April 2019).
6 In accordance with the legal provisions governing the classification of, and access to, the
most recent archival sources, recourse to administrative sources is becoming rarer. To
compensate for this absence, private collections, or those in the process of being classi-
fied, is sometimes able to provide valuable information, as does the mobilization of the
press, which is becoming an essential source of official information.
7 All transcriptions were made by Juliana Payet, as part of a Master 2 thesis, History of
­teaching in Reunion in the 1960s, under the direction of Pierre-Éric Fageol, 2020, University
of Reunion/ESPE.
8 Wilhelm Dilthey, Le Monde de l’esprit, t. 1, Histoire des sciences humaines (Paris:
­Aubier-Montaigne, 1947), 42, author’s translation.
9 Michel Winock, L’effet de génération: une brève histoire des intellectuels français (Paris: Thi-
erry Marchaise, 2011), 9.
10 Axel Honneth, La société du mépris (Paris: La Découverte, 2006), 133, author’s translation.
Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation 259

political, educational and other factors) of the Normaliens in the context of the
1960s, a study of the discourse of the Normaliens allows us to interpret their
responses from both their individual and collective perceptions and memo-
ries, and from the motives that guided their paths. The focus of the analy-
sis is on the reasons that motivated them to enter the institution, as well as
on the organization of their professional training and communal life on the
Bellepierre site (boarding school, community life, sports and leisure activi-
ties, union and political involvement, etc.). Another focus is the openness and
receptiveness to, the world outside of their local communities and of Reunion
(excursions / prestigious visitors from France, such as Paul Emile Victor) and
their entry into this world, together with their experience of the teaching pro-
fession on the occasion of their first posting. We also wished to explore the
place of the École normale in the imaginations of the people of Reunion. An in-
depth exploration of all of these elements makes it possible to paint a “typicalˮ
portrait of these Normaliens in Reunion in the post-colonial period.
The analysis is based on a corpus of 17 semi-structured interviews con-
ducted between October 2018 and December 2020 with a sample of Norma-
liens who were trained in Reunion from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, when
the boarding school was finally abolished, i.e., the first generation of teachers
trained at the École normale de Bellepierre in Saint-Denis from shortly after the
island became a département. The study highlights the strengths and effective-
ness of a body of teachers conceived by the founders of the École normale de
la Réunion as a formal group that recognised itself as sharing a common mis-
sion. We examine the ways in which the École normale de la Réunion created an
imaginary link between the desires and dreams of Reunionese teachers and a
shared republican political ideal, and, in so doing, created a functional and
ethical link with the assimilative values of the metropolis.11
The first part of the study, focusing on the 1875–1946 period, describes
teacher training from the beginnings of its creation during the colonial period
up to départementalisation, a unique form of decolonization compared to that
of the other territories of the French Empire. In this context, the demands
for social equality and the desire to promote the island’s economy led to the
construction of numerous kinds of infrastructure, particularly in the field of
education and professional training. The inauguration of a new teacher train-
ing college in 1958 in Saint-Denis made it possible for a generation of teachers
to be welcomed and to become involved in a process of modernisation and

11 Gilles Gauvin, “Michel Debré et La Réunion: la force des convictions jacobines,”

­ utre-Mers. Revue d’histoire 324–325 (1999): 259–292.
O
260 Fageol and Garan

democratisation of education. From the 1970s onwards, they formed a new

elite that was ready to become involved in civil society.

1 Reunion: a Special Teacher Training Site in the Empire and the

Republic (1875–1946)

The setting up of a teacher training college on Reunion Island was charac-

terised by announcements of ambitious promises, unfulfilled commitments,
and internal political quarrels.12 The great achievement of the Third Repub-
lic (1870–1940) is seen to be the construction of a republican school system
in Reunion, one of the components of which was the École normale for boys
and girls, and whose stated purpose was to train the “Black Hussars of the
Republicˮ13 who were intended to be the pillars of the new regime. However,
Reunion’s path towards the fulfilment of this was not a smooth one, to say the
least. Its status as a colony at that time is not unrelated to this fraught jour-
ney. For Reunion the problematic issue was applying republican principles to
a context that was discriminatory in principle.14 The colonial situation15 thus
limited the capacity for reform and truncated the ambitions of the “colonial
republic”.16
In 1875 a Cours normal was established by the colonial government. If one
examines the existing infrastructures in France, this can be seen as an early
initiative, one shared in the French colonial world only by Algeria.17 It was
attached to the secondary school of the commune of Saint-Paul, but was not a

12 Raoul Lucas, Bourbon à l’école 1815–1946 (Saint-André: Océan Éditions, 2006).

13 This expression originates from a novel by Charles Péguy in which he describes the teach-
ers of his childhood as soldiers engaged in consolidating the Republic: “Our young teach-
ers were as beautiful as black hussars. Slender, stern, strapped, serious and a little trembling
with their precociousness, with their sudden omnipotence.” In Charles Péguy, L’Argent, ed.
1913, Œuvres en prose complètes (Paris: Gallimard, vol. III, 1992), 786.
14 Let us simply recall that Reunion Island was a plantation colony, using slaves (from
East Africa, Madagascar and India) until the abolition of slavery in 1848. As soon as the
slave trade was banned, and on an increasingly large scale after the abolition, the col-
ony resorted to hired workers (Indians, Chinese, Africans and Madagascans). Reunion
remained a colony until 1946, when it became an Overseas Département (DOM).
15 Georges Balandier, “La situation coloniale: approche théorique,” Cahiers internationaux
de sociologie 11 (1951): 44–79.
16 Myriam Cottias, “Le silence de la Nation. Les vieilles colonies comme lieu de définition
des dogmes républicains (1848–1905),” Outre-mers 338–339 (2003): 21–45.
17 Ferdinand Buisson, Nouveau dictionnaire de pédagogie et d’instruction primaire publique,
“École normale” (Paris:, Librairie Hachette, 1911).
Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation 261

success. It was therefore transferred in 1879 to the heart of the colonial author-
ity in the capital, Saint-Denis, the structure and the personnel of the Lycée in
particular being judged more suitable for this mission. It was precisely at this
time that the major school laws introduced by Jules Ferry were adopted. In this
context, it seems logical that the course be replaced in 1881 by an École nor-
male. When it opened on 16 January 1882, the École normale of Reunion Island
was assimilated into the Écoles normales of metropolitan France by decree the
following year. Everything now seemed to be in place for the training of teach-
ers who would follow the same path as those in metropolitan France. This was
automatically assumed without taking into account the tensions within the
local elites, and particularly those tensions between members of the General
Council. The majority of the members of the General Council did not accept
their loss of power in the field of education, a loss represented by a teacher
training college which had been established, not under their authority, but
under a vice-rector, and under the direct supervision of the governor.
The question of financing this teacher training college was also a source of
tension and blockage, particularly on the part of certain influential members
of the General Council. How then could the situation in metropolitan France
be transposed onto the island when the teaching and training aspect depended
very explicitly on the Ministry of the Colonies and not on the M­ inistry of Public
Instruction? Finally, and undoubtedly the most important element of this ten-
sion, there was the particularity of Reunion in terms of its link with the Church,
and more especially with the two teaching c­ ongregations, the ­Lassalians and
the Sisters of Cluny.18 The secular school was seen by the Church as of little
value, and as unwelcome competition to “those educators of the people who
are the congregations”.19 Moreover, it seemed to these congregations illusory,
even dangerous, for the government to have the power to replace religious
teachers with lay teachers.
All these elements contributed to the sacrifice of the École normale which
was judged to be unsuited to the situation in Reunion. The decree of ­September
23, 1897, marked the abolition of the school and re-established a Cours Normal
at the Lycée under the sole supervision of the headmaster of the establish-
ment. In terms of the training of teachers, Reunion returned to its status as
a colony. The Cours Normal was mobilised according to teacher recruitment
needs. At the end of the decade, in 1900,

18 Raoul Lucas, “Des écoles congréganistes aux écoles libres de La Réunion, 1815–1905,” in
Écoles ultramarines Univers créoles, vol. 5, ed. Tupin Frédéric (Paris, Économica, 2005).
19 Henri Froidevaux, L’œuvre scolaire de la France aux colonies (Paris: Augustin Challamel ed,
1900), 73.
262 Fageol and Garan

… the public school of the colony had a teaching staff greater than that of
the normal number ... several former teachers, tired of waiting for posi-
tions that the administration was not able to give them because of the
overcrowding, left the colony or found jobs in other services.20

The reopening of the school in 191121 was marked by a significant innova-

tion: the course became co-educational and welcomed female students. The
primary inspector, under the authority of the head of the Public Education
Department, was specifically charged with the monitoring and direction of
this course. The course consisted of two years of preparation for the higher
diploma, and a third year for the pedagogical preparation common to both
male and female teachers, and for the professional preparation provided for in
the 1905 metropolitan programmes adapted to local needs. The three years of
study led to the Brevet Supérieur. This Certificate of Teaching Ability consisted
of a practical and an oral test. The practical test consisted of a three-hour class
observation and the oral test took place after the practical test. Candidates
were questioned on school administration, on their preparation documents
(“daily homework books, monthly homework books, and workbooksˮ22), and
finally on “practicalˮ pedagogical subjects such as class organisation, teaching
methods, and procedures.
In 1930 Hippolyte Foucque,23 head of the Reunion Education Department,
introduced a boarding school system for scholarship holders: the boys were
housed at the Ecole centrale in Saint-Denis, and the girls at the Juliette Dodu
College in the same town. The social promotion of young Réunionese women
was already at the heart of the system’s concerns. The only thing missing from

20 ‘Annual report on primary education’ Bulletin de l’enseignement primaire de l’île de la

Réunion, December 1909, Archives Départementales de La Réunion (ADR), 2PER224/1,
authors’ translation.
21 ‘Decree on the reorganisation of the Cours normal annexed to the Lycée Leconte de Lisle
for the recruitment of primary school teachers of 11 January 1911’, Bulletin de l’enseigne-
ment primaire de l’île de La Réunion, January–February 1911, ADR 2PER224/1.
22 ‘Notice concerning the entrance examination for the Cours normal,’ Bulletin de l’enseigne-
ment primaire de l’île de La Réunion, 1922, ADR, 2PER224/2.
23 Hippolyte Foucque (1887–1970). Born in Sainte-Marie, he began his studies at the Lycée
Leconte de Lisle in Saint-Denis before continuing them at the Sorbonne between 1904
and 1910. He was awarded the Agrégation de Lettres in 1913, was mobilised during World
War One, and returned to his island in 1917 to teach at the Lycée Leconte de Lisle. He
became headmaster in 1930. At the same time, Hippolyte Foucque was head of the public
education department on the island. Foucque was appointed Inspector of Education and
Vice-Rector of Reunion Island in 1947, shortly after the départementalisation. He held this
position until his retirement in 1952.
Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation 263

the training was for the school to become a full-fledged normal school with
its own buildings and trainers dedicated to the training instead of a so-called
‘­normal’ course within another institution. The Vichy regime during World
War II stopped this development in its tracks. Indeed, the end of the Cours nor-
mal in its traditional form on 11th July 1941 came after the passing of the law of
18th September 1940 which put an end to the Écoles normales in Metropolitan
France. However, the Cours normal in Reunion “never had the character of a
‘secular primary seminary’ and a ‘school of sectarianism’ that the metropolitan
École normales were so often accused of, and which justified their immediate
and complete suppressionˮ.24 In order to allow certain students to prepare for
the higher diploma, the courses were continued, but exclusively for scholar-
ship holders. Non-scholarship students joined the second-year classes of the
lycée. It was not until 1945, when the last session of the Brevet Supérieur was
to be held in metropolitan France, that the Cours normal de La Réunion was to
close its doors.
Paradoxically, with the départementalisation25 in March 1946, and the
end of the island’s colonial status as part of the French empire, the people
of Reunion could in theory have expected the automatic alignment of edu-
cational standards with those of metropolitan France. However, this was not
the case, despite the island’s enormous education needs and a situation that
had changed ­radically compared with that which existed at the end of the 19th
century. Thus, in the case of Reunion Island, since 1946, a French département,
appears to have been neglected in terms of teacher training in comparison
with those territories of the former colonial empire, such as the French West
Indies or Madagascar.26 One can only emphasise that it was not until the end
of the Union Française in 195827 that the training systems in Reunion Island
were aligned with those in metropolitan France.

24 Hippolyte Foucque, “Report of the Public Education Service 1940–1941,” ADR 1M4164.
25 Départementalisation is the process by which the former colonies of the French Empire
acquired the status of département in the same way as other territories in metropolitan
France acquired this status. It is the culmination of the process of assimilation of the
colonies into the metropolis.
26 Pierre-Éric Fageol, and Frédéric Garan, “Roman national et histoire régionale dans l’océan
Indien. L’enseignement de l’histoire à Madagascar et à La Réunion depuis 1960,” in Dis-
ciplines scolaires et cultures politiques: des modèles nationaux en mutation depuis 1945,
eds. Jérémie Dubois, and Patricia Legris (Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018),
45–58.
27 The French Union is an organization provided for in the Constitution of the Fourth French
Republic. It is supposed to participate in the new policy promulgated for the French col-
onies, which have become Overseas départements and Territories, and the territories and
264 Fageol and Garan

Figure 10.1  ellepierre teacher training college, built between 1959 and 1962
B
Journal de l’île de la Réunion, 14 October 1961, ADR, 1PER94-13

In 1958, after a sixty-year hiatus, the teacher training college was re-estab-
lished in the capital, Saint-Denis. This time the college had its own premises
on the Bellepierre site, a district on the fringe of the city centre. The first class
joined the boarding school for the school year 1959–1960. The following school
year the classrooms were operational. It was no longer necessary, except in
exceptional cases, for the boys to go to the Lycée Leconte Delisle, or the girls to
the Collège Juliette Dodu. Another reform which distinguished the Normaliens
from the high school students of Saint-Denis, was that teaching at the École
normale was again mixed and open to female students. The microcosm of the

countries that wish to join this. Claude Liauzu ed., Dictionnaire de la colonisation française
(Paris: Larousse, 2007).
Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation 265

Normaliens could finally develop in Reunion according to the same principles

as those at teacher training institutions in metropolitan France.

2 The First Classes of Normaliens after the Establishment of

Départementalisation: a Portrait of a Generation

The official inauguration of the new Teacher Training College took place on
13 October 1961 in the presence of the Minister of National Education, Lucien
Paye. Immediately on arrival on the island, the Minister undertook to “place
the youth of Reunion - which is part of the French youth - at the forefront
of [his] concernsˮ.28 Accompanied by the Prefet Jean Perreau-Pradier and the
Vice-Recteur André Bergèze, the Minister was welcomed by the President of
the General Council, Roger Payet. The ceremony took place with great pomp
and ceremony, and to the sound of the Marseillaise, before a presentation to
Lucien Paye of the staff and the 264 pupils enrolled for this first official start to
the school year at Bellepierre.
The speeches were part of a well-worn republican rhetoric of assimilation
and equality. The Minister evoked the “necessity of an intellectual and ‘carnal’
union between metropolitan France and southern Franceˮ. In his speech, the
director, M. K’Rault, evoked the idea of a “cultural and human formationˮ,
while reminding the students that they were “accountable for the destiny of
their islandˮ.29 The conditions were thus considered to have been met for
training a generation of young Reunionese committed to a civilising process,
at that time seen as ‘catching up’ with metropolitan France.
This first generation of Normaliens was intended to be first and foremost
made up of the chosen ones of the republican meritocracy.30 They were first
and foremost to be academically superior students who had passed the dif-
ficult entrance exam to the École normale, the concours de recrutement des
élèves maîtres (CREM 131), a highly demanding qualifying test. The average suc-
cess rate for this exam until its disappearance in 1975 was around 10% for all
candidates.32

28 Journal de l’île de la Réunion, 14 October 1961, ADR, 1PER94-13.

29 Le Progrès, October 14, 1961, ADR, 1PER82-39.
30 Jérôme Krop, La méritocratie républicaine: Élitisme et scolarisation de masse sous la IIIe
République (Rennes: PUR, 2014).
31 CREM: ‘concours de recrutement des élèves maîtres’: Competition for the Recruitment of
­Student Teachers.
32 Statistics compiled from the École normale’s entry registers, Archives de l’Université de La
Réunion (AUR), 158W8.
266 Fageol and Garan

Figure 10.2 Cohort of student teachers (1966), AUR, 158W9

Even if some of them already had a vocation for teaching, they were often
pushed firmly in this direction by their teacher. In fact, almost all of them
were at the time in the upper primary classes, and had not attended secondary
school, the “royal roadˮ to continuing their studies in seconde (High School).
One of the students in the school, Roger Ramchetty, recounted the difficulties
of entering higher education:

To go to high school, you have to find a boarding school. That’s the dif-
ficulty. And my father tells me ‘I don’t have the money to pay for your
boarding, but I learned from my boss that there is a competitive exami-
nation that you have to take and that a scholarship is given to those who
pass’.33

A certain form of fatalism, coupled with a strong sense of family duty, some-
times led some Normaliens away from the “teaching vocationˮ and towards
a focus on the opportunity for subsidised studies which would lead to an

33 Former pupil Roger Ramchetty, ‘Pers.com’, 2018.

Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation 267

alternative profession. For instance, as reported by Georges Thiaw Wing,

another student at the school:

I didn’t want to be a teacher. We didn’t talk much with the parents, we

didn’t have a say, and we were rather subjected to it. You had to go to
school, work hard and do your best. …] But we had no vision for the
future, so the CREM fell upon me like that.34

They came from modest, sometimes very poor backgrounds. For some of them,
the prestige of their profession and the desire to serve the children of their
communities had been the driving force from a very early age: “Since I was
very young, I wanted to be a school teacher. And so I remember, since the fifth
grade, I told myself I would be a teacher one dayˮ.35
In this context, the teacher training college was the only route to pursu-
ing studies up to the baccalaureate, an academic level which until then was
reserved for those who attended the only high school in Reunion, the Leconte
de Lisle high school in Saint-Denis. The financial discrimination discouraged
many families, given that a young person had to be a boarder if they did not
live around Saint-Denis, and given that the school fees were relatively high.
Secondary education was therefore inaccessible for almost all young people in
Reunion, given the socio-economic situation of the island in the early 1960s.
The development and socio-economic gap was very wide at that time, with
most of the population living in dire poverty.
In terms of the quality of the island’s education, the infrastructure was
basic and the policy of catching up being implemented by the local authori-
ties by means of building “écoles z›éclair” (flash schools)36 was struggling to
bear fruit in the early 1960s. Travel was still difficult and slow. Thus, whether by
road, or by the “ti’trainˮ (little train), reaching the main town from the south
of the island, and even more so from the highlands or the interior cirques, was
still a major expedition and took all day. Given these persisting conditions,

34 Former pupil Chantal Nicoli, ‘Pers.com’, 2019.

35 Former pupil Chantal.
36 With a view to economy, simplicity, efficiency and speed, the “flash classes” are built
according to grids, or even prefabricated in a factory, and assembled on the spot, rather
like the “Tomi huts” that are being developed elsewhere. The classrooms were designed
to be independent of each other, linked by covered galleries. The style of the buildings
is generally derived from the modern architectural movement, which favours abstract,
white forms, forming long masonry elements and large glazed spaces. The classrooms
are built in a row, along a corridor, with a staircase at each end for those schools built on
several floors.
268 Fageol and Garan

Figure 10.3 « École lontan»,37 [s.n.], 1956–1958- b/w photo; size cm. Coll Privée
Jeanne André38

attending high school in Saint-Denis was reserved for the children of the eco-
nomic and social elite. The establishment of the Bellepierre Teachers’ ­Training
College was therefore an unattainable dream for those young people from
modest backgrounds who came from all corners of the island, and from all
the communities that had contributed to the settlement of the island (“petits
blancsˮ, “malbarsˮ, “z’arabesˮ, “sinoisˮ, “cafresˮ39). Roger Ramchetty explained
how a competitive examination, the concours de recrutement des élèves maîtres
(CREM) had helped him to gain entrance to the college.40

37 In Reunionese Creole, this expression means “schools of the past”.

38 This school is a “wooden hut under sheet metal”, i.e. a wooden structure that has been
solidified with the arrival of unrolled metal drums and sheet metal. If the structure and
the frame are made of wood, the walls are made of wood or sheet metal. The absence of
windows suggests a dark and poorly ventilated space, in contrast to the hygienic concep-
tions of the educators of that period. The absence of a clearly delimited playground does
not allow for a precise definition of a school compound.
39 These terms are regularly used to refer to idle former settlers of European origin,
­populations of Indian origin and of Hindu or Muslim faith, the Chinese diaspora and
populations of African origin resulting from slavery and indentured servitude.
40 Former pupil Roger.
Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation 269

Their successful completion of the CREM gave youth access to paid studies
(they became civil servant students), in a school that took them to baccalaure-
ate level, and ensured them a place in a boarding school. Many young students,
however, found this to be a challenge, particularly because of the school’s
mixed gender intake. Christiane and Chantal recounted their experiences of
a mixed gender school:

My arrival at the École normale was the discovery of a boarding school,

mixed. I had been at the school of the Sisters of Providence in S­ aint-Pierre
where there were only girls.41
At the beginning, I was afraid; I had never been in a mixed school. We
were at the college at La Saline, there was the girls’ college and the boys’
college.42

In 1966 a report was aired on French television on the youth of Reunion who
were called the “220 000 young people in Reunion”.43 In addition to farmers,
high school students, union activists, and young people were ready to leave for
the metropolis because of the island’s economic difficulties, Bellepierre stu-
dents were also interviewed, giving us a first-hand account of their situation
and, above all, of their expectations.
The young people interviewed declared themselves fully committed to
the republican project of integrating Reunion as a fully-fledged département
of France, particularly on the question of language, and presenting a vision
closer to that of Reunion under Jules Ferry, rather than being committed to
the emerging Fifth Republic.44 They were of the view that there was a “lan-
guage problem” among Reunion children,45 due to the practice of Creole as
medium of instruction at the expense of French. They defined their role in
terms of a commitment to “redressing a French that is still disadvantaged,
[because their] mother tongue is Creole, [and that] they must begin by learn-
ing to speak French”.46 They had a position in relation to their parents whom
they described as very intrusive on the question of language; they saw their

41 Former pupil Christian Limpens, ‘Pers.com’, 2019.

42 Former pupil Chantal.
43 In the series Seize millions de jeunes, by Alain de Sedouy and André Harris, La Réunion, 220
000 jeunes, ORTF, 1966, 31mn, INA.fr.
44 Pierre-Éric Fageol, “Dire l’indiaocéanité dans les manuels d’enseignement de La Réunion’,
in Dire l’océan Indien, ed. Yvan Combeau, Thierry Gaillat and Yvon Rolland (Saint-André:
Épica Éditions, 2017), 467–483.
45 Seize millions de jeunes.
46 Seize millions de jeunes.
270 Fageol and Garan

parents as competitors, or contesters, even underminers of the teachers’ role in

‘civilising’/ ‘modernising’ the citizens of Reunion] because they “speak Creole.
We teachers teach the children to speak well, but back in the family environ-
ment, they speak Creoleˮ47 They also considered that they were in a way able
to substitute for their parents because the latter “are not aware of their child’s
future, they are illiterate, ignorant. They would like to educate their children,
but they often neglect it”.48
The students were aware of the reality of the situation on the ground, the
economic situation in particular. Thus, they affirmed their attachment to free
(or even compulsory) school canteens because children “must have at least
one meal a day [because there are some who] do not eat enoughˮ.49 These
young Normaliens came from working-class backgrounds, and were aware that
the studies they were pursuing would change them and their socio-economic
status. They were motivated by the desire to give back this knowledge to their
relatives: “We want to teach in our native village. We know what’s going on.
We know what’s going on. The parents have more confidence”.50 However,
they were well aware that things were not likely to go smoothly. If teaching in
their home town was a militant act, it was also a form of security, a probable
guarantee that it would be easier to enter the profession: “We Normaliens will
teach but people will look at us and say they are proud ... In one’s village, one is
integrated to the maximum. If we teach in a place we don’t know, we are badly
judged.51
They had an intimation that they would be able to move the lines in Reun-
ionese society, while being careful not to upset or destabilise it too much.
If, on the question of the Creole language, the certainties seemed to be well
established, they were much more cautious when a journalist asked them
about their attitudes towards, and relationship with, the priests. The latter
the students saw as competitors and a “handicap for the teachers. They too
would like to educate. The role of the church and that of the teacher is almost
similar”.52 Reunionese society in the early 1960s was very different from that in
metropolitan France at that time. They knew this and there could be no ques-
tion of opposing the head of the Church on this issue and possible conflict. If
there was “opposition, the parents would take the side of the priestˮ.53 These

47 Seize millions de jeunes.

48 Seize millions de jeunes, author’’ translation.
49 Seize millions de jeunes.
50 Seize millions de jeunes.
51 Seize millions de jeunes.
52 Seize millions de jeunes.
53 Seize millions de jeunes.
Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation 271

aspiring students were indeed the “Black Hussarsˮ of the Republic overseas,
but with less anticlericalism than their elders of the Third Republic. Moreover,
in the testimonies we collected the memory of chaplaincy activities was still
very present, and often mentioned, in the same way as leisure activities were,
such as the cinema, without being as immediate and powerful as everything
revolving around sport.54
At the time of the television report, the young Normaliens were perfectly
aware of the opportunity they had been given to study. However, they did not
project themselves beyond the role of teacher for which they were being pre-
pared. For the time being, the École normale represented above all a formida-
ble place of openness to the world through the courses being offered, but also
through new leisure activities: radio, television, cinema, outings on the island,
and the end-of-year trip which took some of them to Madagascar, Kenya or
even the United States. Lylian participated in a trip to Madagascar:

For Madagascar ... It was Mr Boutier (the director), a wonderful man ...
who had organised a trip to Madagascar so that we could discover a pop-
ulation not too far from us, and so that we could discover the reality of
this country in relation to its proximity and perhaps have another look
at these countries. [We had] contacts in Madagascar with Malagasy stu-
dents at the time, and then there were also conferences with the people
in charge of education in Madagascar. ... It was great. It was the first time
I was in the air, in the plane, because we hadn’t had that opportunity ...
The École normale was an extraordinary period ... yet some Normaliens
say that they didn’t live well at the École normale! We were fed, housed,
and dressed properly, and we had a little bit left over from our scholar-
ship because we didn’t spend it all, we gave it back to our parents, I think
that’s great.55

Sports activities were generously offered, among which volleyball was of

­particular importance to students:

I was captain of the volleyball team. It allowed us to get out of the École
normale, because we had tournaments with the different towns and even
with Saint-Denis; we played matches at the ASPTT, the association of
postal workers. When we played matches, we were obliged to join forces

54 The Normaliens talk about the links they had with the priests of a chapel adjacent to the
École normale.
55 Former pupil Lylian Payet, ‘Pers.com’, 2019.
272 Fageol and Garan

with the high school, because we didn’t have enough players, and we
played against the ASPTT, who had their own team.56

The financing of education and sport infrastructure was a major investment for
the island which at the time had only a few public sports facilities for educa-
tional purposes.57 The construction of a swimming pool to the highest stand-
ards was a luxury in contrast with the nautical water sport facilities at the time:

The arrival of the swimming pool was a wonderful thing, but the problem
was that we didn’t know how to swim. Coming from Étang-Salé where
there was no swimming pool, I didn’t know how to swim and I wasn’t the
only one.58

Finally, the chores and collective discipline were described to underline the
ésprit de corps that permeated the establishment at the time. Roger Ramchetty
explained:

We had chores at the École normale. Each student had a chore. I had to
clean the refectory in the morning, at noon and in the evening. At the
beginning it was a burden, but in the end it was almost a pleasure. There
were three or four of us cleaning a 100 square metre refectory, and we did
it, I don’t know, in two or three minutes because we were well trained.
Every day, after lunch, after cleaning the dining hall, we went straight to
the gym to play volleyball. After dinner, we would go to the TV room and
watch the news, I think from 7 to 8 p.m.; after the news, we would go to
the dormitory.59

It was also an opportunity for these students from all over the island to mix
with the society of Saint-Denis. The École normale ball can be seen as a symbol
of this. It remains in the memories of all the students who together constituted
the linchpin when they were in their first or second year. It was one of the great
social events of Saint-Denis, and in all their testimonies, the Normaliens report
the ball as one of the highpoints of their schooling.

56 Former pupil Christian.

57 Évelyne Combeau-Mari, “Les associations sportives dans l’histoire de La Réunion au XXe
siècle. La liberté d’association à La Réunion: une liberté sous surveillance,” in Le mou-
vement associatif dans l’histoire de La Réunion, ed. Sudel Fuma (Saint-André: Graphica
Imprimerie, 2001), 87–103.
58 Former pupil Georges Claude Thiaw Ling, ‘Pers.com’, 2019.
59 Former pupil Roger Ramchetty, ‘Pers.com’, 2018.
Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation 273

Figure 10.4 «Bal des Normaliens, 1961,» ADR, 1704W26

The historical context, together with those development policies which

affected Reunion Island, offered opportunities to these young Normaliens
beyond their expectations. In fact, the 1960s were also the time when Reun-
ion, after having built a network of primary schools covering almost the entire
island, began to develop secondary education. A second secondary school was
opened in Le Tampon in 1965, and others were to follow.
Of course, many more teachers were needed. Some of them came from met-
ropolitan France, others were assigned or seconded as part of their national
service, or as VAT (Volontaire de l’aide technique).60 The State also turned to the
students of Bellepierre, who, instead of being assigned as primary teachers,
were offered the opportunity to do specialising courses at the university centre
to qualify as secondary school teachers:

After the baccalaureate, the logical continuation was the fourth year of
the Ecole normale. But the director of the teacher training college told
some of us, ‘If you pass your baccalaureate, I’ll send you to university to
train as a PEGC,61 a general education teacher in secondary schools’. So
we went to university, and at the same time we were preparing for the
special CFEN, which means that we were training for the CFEN and at

60 An acronym for Technical Assistance Volunteering, i.e. a civilian service which enters into
the modalities of the national service in France instead of the military service.
61 An acronym for general secondary school teacher.
274 Fageol and Garan

the same time for university. So we had unbelievable hours, 40, 42 hours
a week.62

This is just one of many opportunities that allowed this first generation of
­students to become the vanguard of a new Reunion Island elite.

3 The Creation of a New Reunionese Elite

The École normale proved to be a springboard for these young people, one
which carried many of them, in terms of career, well beyond the sole func-
tion of teacher.63 For a certain number of them there was a possible open-
ing to secondary education. This opportunity required a university education
instead of the teacher training college fourth year. This route via the institution
offered them an additional training that in turn offered them access to these
new positions. Moreover, the context was particularly favourable at the time.
Indeed, at the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s, Reunion Island was finally
beginning to build a network of secondary schools, with the construction of
numerous colleges,64 and the creation of new lycées (Roland Garros’ lycée in
1965 which completed the training already offered by the former Leconte de
Lisle lycée). The Normaliens who had undergone university training to become
PEGC s (general secondary school teachers) taught the subjects they had stud-
ied at the École normale (French, English, mathematics, science, physical edu-
cation) as well as new subjects for which they received specific training. They
thus found themselves in the front line when management positions, such as
those of head teacher, educational advisor or inspector, opened up. For exam-
ple, Aristide Payet who, after initial training as a maths/science PEGC, went
on to train to become a high school Economics teacher and was subsequently
appointed headmaster of an Ecole normale in metropolitan France before
returning to Reunion. For those who continued their studies beyond the bach-
elor’s degree up to doctorate level, the doors of the University of Reunion were

62 Former pupil Christiane Limpens, ‘Pers.com’, 2018.

63 It was possible for some students to reimburse the state for the cost of their education at
the École normale, so that they could start a career in the private sector. The Normaliens
we met mentioned the career paths of their fellow students who went into banking, law
and finance. However, in the context of this study, we have not yet met directly with any
of the Normaliens who have “bought back” their years at Bellepierre.
64 In France, the collège precedes the lycée. Teenagers go to collège between the ages of
11 and 15.
Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation 275

also opened when it was established in 1982.65 Thus Guy Fontaine, recruited as
a lecturer in Geography, became a university professor, and ended his career as
dean of the faculty of Humanities.
In addition to their teaching career, the Normaliens, through their initial
training, and the diversity of population and activities they discovered and
experienced in their school, were well prepared to play important roles in
social action movements and sports associations. In this way, several of them
began political careers in parallel with their professional lives. Lylian Payet,
whom we discovered as a young Normalien in the television documentary,
pursued a political career as a senator for Reunion Island between 1996 and
2001.66 Aristide Payet and his wife Jacqueline, who met at the École normale
(they formed the first couple of Normaliens, and did not remain an isolated
case), became involved in ‘the associative world’.67 Aristide Payet, among other
roles, is presently the president of the UDAF (Union départementale des asso-
ciations familiales à La Réunion), having served for many years as deputy mayor
of Saint-Denis,68 departmental secretary of the RPR69 from 1978 to 1983, and
regional councillor of the Reunion Region.70 At the opposite end of the politi-
cal spectrum, and in the secular associative field, Roger Ramchetty has worked
in a wide range of capacities in the world of associations and sports. Among
other functions, he was the delegate of the département of the Union sportive
de l’Enseignement de 1er degré ; general secretary of the Ligue réunionnaise de
la Fédération des œuvres laïques (FOL), delegate for the Jeunesse au plein air,
president of the Conseil de la culture, de l’ éducation et de l’environnement, Gen-
eral Delegate of the Indian Ocean Communication University, President of the
Board of Directors of the Centre régional de l’éducation physique et des sports
(CREPS), President of the Centre d’éducation populaire et de sport de la Réun-
ion, and a member of the CROS, the Comité régional olympique et sportif.

65 University training was previously provided by a “university centre” belonging to the

­ niversity of Aix-Marseille.
U
66 He was Pierre Lagourgue’s deputy, whom he replaced after the latter’s death.
67 ‘The assosiative world’ refers to the world of associations consisting of members who
come together for the purpose of common cultural, social or other activities, or to defend
common interests.
68 Under the mandates of Auguste Legros (1977–1983 and 1983–1985), he was deputy ­delegate
for sports.
69 The Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) is a post-gaullist right-wing political party
that existed between 1976 and 2002.
70 He was then Chairman of the Committee on Vocational Training, Culture and Leisure
(1982–1985).
276 Fageol and Garan

The Ecole normale de Bellepierre thus proved to be a crucible for the creation
of a new elite in Reunion. This was an elite which marked a break with the pre-
vious elites, whose members were mainly planters, ‘notables’71 and administra-
tors. For the first time Reunion Island generated an elite whose origins were the
working classes and whose members came from all regions of the small island.
The democratization of education thus generated a new elite within the teach-
ing staff, without their having to wait for the arrival of the first generation of
students who were the products of this democratization.72 This process, which
began in the 1960s, has profoundly modified the organization of Reunion’s
schools and their capacity to democratise and equalise the attendance, selec-
tion, and success of students, as well as the recruitment of qualified teaching
staff who are now trained in the Académie. It is the need for recognition of
this achievement that the testimonies of former Normaliens finally highlights.
The difficulty in interpreting the testimonies lies in the articulation between
“personal memoryˮ and “collective memoryˮ. However, both kinds of memory
make it possible to explore and highlight the creation of a new elite at odds
with those traditional (colonial) elites which took shape through exceptional
careers in teaching, in the associative world or/and in political life.

4 Conclusion

The history of the École normale de Bellepierre in Reunion is inextricably linked

to the democratization of education. The logic and principles of the training
were based on a unitary and unifying doctrine which encountered major dif-
ficulties in finding its application during the colonial period, but, from 1946
found its power and persuasive force during the process of départementalisa-
tion. The training provided in this institution had long conveyed an ideal for
young people with aspirations. In addition to being given disciplinary and pro-
fessional training, the young men and women who attended the school were
made aware of educational principles and values that went beyond the frame-
work in the classroom. The Ecole normale thus offered, as elsewhere in France
and its other territories, a broader model of training that took into account all
the social roles of schoolteachers.
While the Normaliens represent a generation that arrived at the right time,
it would be short-lived, its life limited to the decade of the 1960s. Nevertheless,

71 A ‘notable’ is a person whose social position demands a certain authority in public affairs.
72 Évelyne Combeau-Mari, “Les associations sportives dans l›histoire de La Réunion au XXe
siècle. La liberté d›association à La Réunion: une liberté sous surveillance.”
Teacher Training during the Process of Assimilation 277

this youthful generation brought about a profound transformation of Reunion

Island. The group, formed between 1959 and 1971, also marked the official end
of the boarding school, although this model had significant influence.
In fact, so-called ‘normal’ training found its originality and strength in its
collective way of life, which was sometimes solemn, often austere, but which
forged an esprit de corps at least until the 1970s and the end of the boarding
school system. The end of recruitment to teacher positions at the end of the
third year of school also changed the profile of teacher candidates, who became
more open to, and inclined towards, other careers. This loss of an initial profes-
sional identity was not without its critics. As early as 1972, a report by the head-
master of the school stated that “the teacher training college is slowly being
transformed into a professional self-service centre that trains good technicians
in adapted teaching methodsˮ.73 The esprit de corps that the boarding school
had both created and allowed for was therefore breaking down. Commitment
to Reunion society was no longer perceived as a shared political and social
condition. So-called “socio-educational activitiesˮ were suggested as part of
the training at the beginning of the seventies in an attempt to compensate for
the supposed loss of this spirit. This marked the beginning of a new era char-
acterised by the disintegration of a coherent model and the beginning of the
process of the university’s taking over teacher training, a development which
led to the creation of the Reunion university IUFM (Institut universitaire de
formation des maîtres) in 1991.
Finally, let us return to our sources, which are the interviews conducted
with people now aged 70 to 80, and called upon by this exercise to dive back
into the period when they were aged 15–20 years. We need to be aware of the
reality on one hand and the mental operations necessary for an understand-
ing of the world on the other. There exists a gap between the content and the
experience lived by the witnesses, the configuration of this experience in the
accounts they were able to give, and the reconfiguration that the use of their
accounts implies for the perspective of research or a diffusion to a public. An
epistemological question that has long been raised is about the links between
oral testimony and other sources in history, their regime of historicity and
both the links and the tension between individual and collective biography.
In our research which relied heavily on oral testimony, it is necessary to take
this complexity into account: “this desire of historians for oral testimony and

73 Report by the headmaster of École normale de Bellepierre, (1972), 158W7.

278 Fageol and Garan

its practice covers a field of plural naming, an object of interrogation and

­confrontation, a reason for debate, hope and uncertaintyˮ.74

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74 Vincent Duclert, “Archives orales et recherche contemporaine. Une histoire en cours,”

Sociétés & Représentations 13 (2002): 69, author’s translation.
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Archival Sources
Archives départementales de La Réunion:
Bulletin de l’enseignement primaire de l’île de La Réunion, 2PER224/1.
Journal de l’île de la Réunion, 1PER94-13.
Le Progrès, 1PER82-39.
Iconothèque, FRAD974 93FI67.

Archives de l’Université de La Réunion:

Report by the headmaster of the school (1972), 158W7.
Statistics compiled from the École normale’s entry registers, 158W8.
280 Fageol and Garan

Institut national de l’audiovisuel:

Seize millions de jeunes, by Alain de Sedouy and André Harris, “La Réunion, 220000
jeunes”, ORTF, 1966, 31mn, INA.fr

Oral Sources
Former pupil Georges Claude Thiaw Ling, ‘Pers.com’, 2018.
Former pupil Lylian Payet, ‘Pers.com’, 2018.
Former pupil Christian Limpens, ‘Pers.com’, 2018.
Former pupil Chantal Nicoli, ‘Pers.com’, 2018.
Former pupil Roger Ramchetty, ‘Pers.com’, 2019.s
 Chapter 11

The ‘Open’ Performance: Institutional Autonomy

over Academic Freedom in the 1950s Academic
Freedom Campaigns
Rehana T. Odendaal

From the outset, Wits was founded as an open university with

a policy of non-discrimination - on racial or any other grounds.
This commitment faced its ultimate test when the apartheid-­
government passed the Extension of University Education Act in
1959, thereby enforcing university apartheid. The Wits community
protested strongly and continued to maintain a firm, consistent and
vigorous stand against apartheid, not only in education but in all its
manifestations.1

∵
The Academic Freedom protests against the Extension of University Education
Act of 1959, were the first coordinated and publicised opposition to Apartheid
state policy by South African universities. This chapter explores the different
actors and actions involved in the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) and
the University of Cape Town (UCT) public protests against the de jure imple-
mentation of “university apartheid” between 1957 and 1959. While university
apartheid came to an end in the 1980s2 its legacy continues to have a lasting
impact on South Africa’s contemporary Higher Education landscape. Through
an analysis of newspaper articles and University documents directly related
to these protests, this chapter asks how the discussions, debates and protest
action that emerged from the open universities in the 1950s shaped the public
imagination of respectable university protest within South African academia.

1 University of the Witwatersrand, “History of Wits” (2019), 8. https://www.wits.ac.za/about

-wits/history-and-heritage/ Date Accessed: 1 November, 2020.
2 Mervyn Shear, Wits: A University in the Apartheid Era (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand
­University Press, 1996), 79.

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_012

282 Odendaal

A historical understanding of the public imagination of legitimate pro-

test is increasingly important as South African universities continue to face
regular protest action in the post-apartheid context. This chapter argues that
the visibility of the 1950s Academic Freedom protests, and the legacy of open
­universities as sites of anti-apartheid resistance are consequential for how
public opinion responds to contemporary protests. The historically established
norms of university protest carry over into contemporary student protests
despite critical differences in the substantive motives behind protest action.

1 The Shaky Foundations of a Progressive Legacy

The “open universities” – a label applied to predominantly white, English-

speaking universities without codified policies of excluding non-white stu-
dents - imagined themselves as racially inclusive leaders in an increasingly
segregated South Africa public sphere. This study of their protests against the
extension of University Education Act (1959) highlights how, despite the anti-
segregation visions expressed in the Academic Freedom campaign, the institu-
tions simultaneously legitimated and normalised a sense of racial and class
hierarchy that centered the experiences of white South Africans. This centring
of white experience is expressed, not only through the notable absences of
Black voices in the campaign, but also the centrality of “Western civilization”
to the mission of the open universities.3 By positioning the Academic Freedom
campaign under a critical lens, this chapter contributes to a growing body of
literature that complicates the “protest only” legacy of white (predominantly
English speaking) liberal anti-apartheid institutions. Doing so provides histori-
cal context for contemporary calls by students, some faculty, and workers to
radically reform the culture and practices at South African universities.4
This chapter draws on a mix of primary and secondary sources. Archival
sources include the Wits Student newspaper 1957–1959, a monthly student

3 Open Universities in South Africa: Conference of representatives of the University of Cape

Town and the University of Witwatersrand, Cape Town, (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand
­University Press, 1957), 21–22 discusses the centrality of Western civilization, and the legacy
of Cape Liberalism, both of which limited the vote to educated and land owning men: “What
concerns us as universities is not the colour of a man who is the bearer of civilization, but the
quality of the civilization which he represents.”
4 Leigh-Ann Naidoo, “Contemporary Student Politics in South Africa,” in Students Must Rise:
Youth Struggles in South Africa Before and Beyond SOWETO ’76, ed. Anne Heffernan, and Noor
Nieftagodien (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2016), 180–189.
Institutional Autonomy over Academic FREEDOM 283

run publication, with editorial ties to the Student Representative Council.5

Speeches, memos, pamphlets, and newspaper cuttings collected in the Wits
University Central Records archive provide insight into the University’s cura-
tion of its’ institutional record of the Academic Freedom Campaign. Published
material such as official university histories and the memoirs of notable aca-
demics and alumni have also been utilised. The most oft cited definition of
Academic Freedom in the South African context is taken from UCT Vice Chan-
cellor T B Davie’s address at a Wits’ graduation ceremony in December 1950,
where he defined Academic Freedom as “freedom from external interference
in (a) who shall teach, (b) what we teach, (c) how we teach and (d) whom
we teach… Our lecture theatres and laboratories shall be open to all who …
can show that they are intellectually capable of benefiting by admission to our
teaching…”.6 While definitions of Academic Freedom often include these “four
essential freedoms,” they rarely include equitable and open access referenced
in the second half of this quote.7 Rather, in the 1950s Wits and UCT s’ official,
institutional acts of protest, represented by the Academic Freedom marches
(1957) and the general assembly (1959), focus almost exclusively on the idea of
Academic Freedom as institutional autonomy from the state. This approach
emphasised the need for academic self-government without any critical exam-
ination of the exclusive and paternalistic conditions embedded in the institu-
tional cultures of these nominally open universities.
Despite its limitations, what became known as the Academic Freedom
Campaign was one of the first campaigns that drew international attention to
the National Party’s entrenchment of apartheid in a pre-Sharpeville8 moment.
The coverage and international solidarity that the Campaign received9 can
be considered to have been successful in establishing “magnificent national

5 Bruce Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1997),
337–338.
6 Davie cited in Howard Phillips, UCT Under Apartheid: From Onset to Sit-In: 1948–1968 (Jacana
Media [Pty.] Limited, 2019), 24.
7 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 306.
8 The Sharpeville Massacre took place on 21 March 1960 in Sharpeville in today’s Gauteng
Province. 5000 protesters responded to calls for non-violent protest through burning their
passbooks outside police stations. Police opened fire on the crowds, killing 69 people at
Sharpeville, with other protests taking place around the country. https://www.sahistory.org
.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960
9 This included an article in the journal Nature as well as letters of solidarity from SRC s and
academics from the USA, Europe and Africa. Congress of the Universities of the Common-
wealth, “Universities in South Africa,” Nature 179 (April 1957): 745; “World-Wide Support for
Non-Segregation”, Wits Student, Vol IX 1st edition (March 1957). Also “From five continents
protests have come.” Wits Student: Special Edition (16 April, 1959), 4.
284 Odendaal

and international support.”10 However, a central argument of this chapter is

that the open universities’ choice to focus on the maintenance of institutional
autonomy rather than on the defending of equal access or non-discrimination
has contributed to the normalization of institutional acquiescence in the face
of the reality of social inequality. The institutional inheritance of this culture
of acquiescence has continued from at least the 1950s into the first two dec-
ades of the 21st century. An example of contemporary manifestations of this
legacy is the emergence of respectability politics governing what forms of
non-violent protest are appropriate or not in the pursuit of student demands.
Chumani Maxwale’s 2015 use of human faeces to deface the Rhodes Statue and
UCT students’ 2016 “Shackville” protests, are recent examples where protests
centered on a principle of disruption, were critiqued as unbefitting of univer-
sity students despite their symbolic salience to the issues at hand.11
The open universities were also contact zones between different racial
groups at a time where the hardline de jure segregation of public institutions
was coming into effect under the Apartheid government. Black alum of both
Wits and UCT view the multiracial academic experiences as foundational to
their politics of nonracialism, even though interracial contact at open univer-
sities in the 1930s and 1940s was minimal. This ambiguous character of interra-
cial contact in the early decades of the open universities is well summarised by
one of Wits’ most famous alum, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela when he reflected:

Despite the University’s liberal values, I never felt entirely ­comfortable

there. Always to be the only African, except for menial workers, to be
regarded at best as a curiosity, and at worst as an interloper, is not a
­congenial experience. My manner was always guarded, and I met both
generosity and animosity. Although I was to discover a core of sympa-
thetic whites who became friends and later colleagues, most of the whites
at Wits were not liberal or colour-blind.12

10 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 311.

11 Chumani Maxwele, “Black Pain Led Me to Throw Rhodes Poo,” BusinessLIVE, March
2016, https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2016-03-16-black-pain-led-me-to-throw
-rhodes-poo/; Ashleigh Furlong, “UCT Shackville Protesters Effectively Expelled,”
GroundUp News, May 2016, https://www.groundup.org.za/article/uct-shackville-protesters
-effectively-expelled/
12 Neo Lekgotla Laga Ramoupi, “The Black Man in the White Man’s Court: Mandela at Wits
University, South Africa, 1943–1949,” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies 39, no. 2 (2016):
177. Citing Mandela, N. R., Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
(Randburg: Macdonald Purnell, 1994), 83.
Institutional Autonomy over Academic FREEDOM 285

The Academic Freedom Campaign of the late 1950s serves as an example of

how, even in these contact zones, while protesting Apartheid segregation,
South Africa’s white, liberal educational institutions marginalised Black voices.
This type of unequal engagement speaks to the depth of coloniality embedded
in the practices and histories of apparently progressive social institutions. It
shows how the paternalistic, racialised logics of meritocracy, assimilation and
rationality shaped protest-actions intended to defend “non-white” rights. Evi-
dence for this argument is in part supported by the low levels of participation
in, and commentary on, the Academic Freedom Campaign from Black political
publics at the time, despite the campaign’s ostensive support for Black stu-
dents’ education.
This chapter utilises key moments of the open universities’ protests in
support of Academic Freedom between 1957 and 1959 as a lens through
which to analyse how Wits and UCT helped fashion an idealised model for
­university-public relations. While this historical moment continues to play a
role in contemporary debates about the nature of academic freedom within
public higher education, this chapter does not engage with that intellectual
genealogy at length. Instead, using Charles Taylor’s concept of the “social imag-
inary,” I argue that the protests modelled by the open universities in the 1950s
continue to dominate the collective imagining of legitimate political engage-
ment of South African universities and their students up until the ­rupture
associated with the 2015 RhodesMustFall and FeesMustFall protests. Taylor
defines the social imaginary as “that common understanding that makes pos-
sible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.”13 This sense
of public performance, and its impact on the collective social imagination,
matters because it comes to govern how “serious conflicts and mobilizations
happen.”14 I argue, that the precedent set by the Academic Freedom campaigns
contributed to the high levels of social critique about how students protested
in 2015, despite recognition from Higher Education experts that the problems
protestors raised were legitimate and far reaching.15 The alternative modes
of protests adopted by university protestors between 2015 and 2017 against
the state and their own institutions has been argued by some authors to be

13 Charles Taylor, “Modern Social Imaginaries,” Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 91,
doi:10.1215/08992363-14-1-91
14 Sudipta Kaviraj, “Filth and the Public Sphere: Concepts and Practices about Space in
­Calcutta,” Public Culture 10, no. 1 (1997): 83, doi:10.1215/08992363-10-1-83
15 Saleem Badat, “University Turmoil: Beginning of a Social Movement,” The Journalist, April
2014, http://www.thejournalist.org.za/spotlight/university-turmoil-beginning-of-a-social
-movement/; Adam Habib, “Transcending the Past and Reimagining the Future of the
South African University,” Journal of Southern African Studies 42, no. 1 (2016): 35–48.
286 Odendaal

the result of a socio-economic and racial shift in the student demographics of

historically white institutions (HWI).16 I draw on this frame, seeing the institu-
tional culture, and respectability politics represented by HWI as having come
into increasing contact with the protest cultures of mostly, but not exclusively,
Black students who span the socio-economic spectrum in ‘the new South
Africa.’ The idea of contact zones helps to explain the social discord experi-
enced on university campuses between 2015 and 2017. HWI s and the open
universities have played an important role in shaping dominant public imagi-
nations of legitimate protests, especially in spaces that have historically been
coded as white. These imaginations of legitimate protest were disrupted and
clashed with the protest cultures introduced to HWI campuses by their grow-
ing Black student populations.

2 South African Universities in the 1950s

Elected into power on the basis of Apartheid policies of racial segregation,

the National Party quickly identified education as a key starting point for
their policies of ‘separate development.’17 The doctrine of separate develop-
ment argued for racial segregation of social and institutional life and sought
to implement this by excluding non-whites from the public life of white South
Africa. Establishing ghettoised educational and administrative institutions,
through policies akin to policies of indirect rule deployed by colonial powers.
While its first policy focus was the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which targeted
schools, the recognition of Rhodes University (est. 1951), Potchefstroom Uni-
versity for Christian Education (est. 1951) and University of Natal (est. 1948)
as independent of the University of South Africa (est. 1916) marked the begin-
ning of a rapid expansion of racially segregated higher education institutions,
a process which was escalated after the passing of the Extension of University
Education Act (1959).
Rhodes and Natal expanded the ranks of South Africa’s English medium
universities namely, the University of Cape Town (est. 1918) and the U­ niversity
of the Witwatersrand (est. 1922), while Potchefstroom became the third
­Afrikaans language university alongside the University of Pretoria (est. 1930),

16 Rekgotsofetse Chikane, Breaking A Rainbow, Building a Nation (Johannesburg: Picador

Africa, 2018); Nomusa Makhubu, “Art-Rage and the Politics of Reconciliation,” in Babel
Unbound: Rage, Reason and Rethinking Public Life, ed. Lesley Cowling, and Carolyn
­Hamilton (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2020), 215–259.
17 Phillips, UCT Under Apartheid: From Onset to Sit-In: 1948–1968.
Institutional Autonomy over Academic FREEDOM 287

and Stellenbosch University (est. 1918). University institutions mirrored many

of the political tensions of white minority power that had shaped the politics
of the Union of South Africa since 1910. Specifically, these tensions were articu-
lated in linguistic-ethnic terms between culturally British, liberal institutions
and more nationalist, conservative Afrikaans orientations. This political split
became entrenched within the university sector in 1933 with the succession of
three Afrikaans colleges from the ‘multiracial’ National Union of South African
Students (NUSAS) to form the Afrikaans Nationale Studentebond.18 The term
“open” universities originally referred to Wits and UCT because their found-
ing charters allowed them to admit students “with no distinction of class or
wealth, race or creed.”19 In practice neither Wits nor UCT was particularly wel-
coming to aspirant Black students, and by the time that “university apartheid”
was implemented Black students made up only 6% and 5% of the universi-
ties’ student bodies respectively. Both institutions began admitting some Black
­students from the 1930s under a policy of “social segregation with academic
non-segregation.” This meant that, although most classes outside of the medi-
cal schools were racially integrated, residences, and social and recreational
activities at these universities maintained a colour bar.20

3 The Extension of University Education Act 45 of 1959

The Extension of University Education Act passed into law on 11 June 1959
after two years of heated parliamentary and media debate. Initially proposed
as the Separate Universities Education Bill, the Act made provision for “the
establishment, maintenance, management and control of university colleges
for non-white persons; for the admission of students to, and their instruction
at, university colleges; for the limitation of the admission of non-white stu-
dents to certain university institutions...”21 While Chapters I and II outline the

18 Note, multiracial in this context referred to the inclusion of English and Afrikaans ‘races’.
The split was further entrenched in 1935, when the Wits SRC proposed (and failed) to
have the predominantly Black University College of Fort Hare admitted to NUSAS. Bruce
Murray, Wits: The Early Years (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1982), 342.
19 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 298.
20 Open Universities in South Africa. Conference of representatives of the University of Cape
Town and the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University
Press, 1957), 2.
21 Union of South Africa, “Extension of University Education Act, Act 45 of 1959” (June
1959), 484, University of KwaZulu-Natal Digital Innovation South Africa, https://disa
.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/leg19590619.028.020.045.pdf
288 Odendaal

procedures for the establishment of what became colloquially known as “Bush

Colleges”22 in the 1960s and 70s, Chapter III explicitly barred the new registra-
tion of any “non-white” students at universities designated as white.23 Between
1959 and 1961 the only Black students allowed at white universities were those
who had registered for their degrees prior to the passing of the Act, or those
who received special approval by the Minister of Arts, Science and Education
to pursue a degree not offered at racially segregated institutions. Proclamation
434 of 1960 further limited the scope of this ministerial exemption, effectively
stopping new Black students registering until the 1970s.24
Recognising the social reproductive power of universities, apartheid legis-
lators argued that segregated higher education was necessary so that “future
leader[s] … remain in close touch with the habits, ways of life and views of
members of his population group.”25 Advocates of the Act argued that it was
a mechanism to enhance academic freedom and university accountability
by creating “fuller freedom for each university in its own context [and] the
life of its own nation and as an important step on the road to increasing self-
determination.”26 Like much of the Apartheid legal system, the Extension of
University Education Act was framed as an opportunity to provide non-white
South Africans with a separate, but equal level of development to their white
counterparts. Apartheid legislators took this position despite the USA’s Brown
vs. Board of Education 1953 decision indicating an international move away
from a philosophy of separate by equal education, as well as an international
boom in demand and access to higher education in the years following World
War II. At home, even the state-sponsored Holloway Commission (1954) found
that the idea of creating separate but equal institutions was beyond the scope
of the South African state.27

4 The Importance of Rhetoric

In May 1956 the Wits Student Representative Council (SRC) held a G

­ eneral
Meeting of students who voted 614 to 15 to oppose the implementation of

22 Main Report of the Van Wyk de Vries Commission of Inquiry into Universities (including
the Minority Report by Professor G.R. Bozzoli) (Pretoria: Govt. Printer, 1974), 3.
23 Union of South Africa, “Extension of University Education Act, Act 45 of 1959.”
24 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 232.
25 Charles Robinson Mandlenkosi Dlamini, “University Autonomy and Academic Freedom
in South Africa” (PhD dissertation, University of South Africa, 1996), 160.
26 Main Report of the Van Wyk de Vries Commission of Inquiry into Universities, 38.
27 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 303.
Institutional Autonomy over Academic FREEDOM 289

the proposed Act and maintain the University’s policy of “academic non-
segregation.”28 On 16 September 1956, 600 students held an hour class-boycott
after the SRC’s proposed boycott was vetoed through the executive action of
the University’s acting principal.29 A mass meeting of approximately one-
thousand students followed the boycott. By February 1957, Principal Sutton
had officially registered Wits’ opposition to the Bill,30 although convocation
had already established its opposition by May 1956.
There is some evidence of Black student and alumni involvement in the
Academic Freedom protests. This includes the participation of Black students
at the 22 May 1957 march and an address by Dr. W.F. Nkomo at a University
protest meeting on 7 December 1956.31 Dr. William Frederick Nkomo gradu-
ated from Wits’ Medical School in 1947 and was the first black African to be
elected to the Wits SRC. His political career extended beyond student poli-
tics and included being a founding member of the African National Congress
Youth League in 1944 and membership of the Black People’s Convention (BPC).
In 1972 he was elected the first African president of the South African Institute
for Race Relations.32
Despite the small proportion of Black students that attended the open
universities before the passing of the Act, many of those who, like Nkomo,
attended were politically active in anti-apartheid work.33 The extent to which
this politicization extended beyond the scope of individual relationships and
organising requires more nuanced research into the experiences of Black stu-
dents at the open universities. Another gap in Wits’ rhetorical commitment to
“academic integration” was its apparent lack of direct engagement with peers
at Black educational institutions, particularly the University College of Fort
Hare.34 This implicit acceptance of the separation between academic publics
became the basis for a much stronger critique of white liberal politics from the

28 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 303; Shear, Wits: A University in the Apartheid Era, 22.
29 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 304.
30 “Interview with” the University Councils deputation and the Hon. Minister of Education,
Arts & Science.04/01/1957; the interview transcript is part of the Wits Archives History,
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in South Africa.
31 Shear, Wits: A University in the Apartheid Era, 28.
32 Anne Digby, “Some Early Black Doctors: A Very Politically Active Cohort 1941–1954,” South
African Medical Journal 97, no. 8 (2007): 578.
33 Anne Digby, “Some Early Black Doctors: A Very Politically Active Cohort 1941–1954,” 577–580.
34 Graeme C. Moodie, “The State and the Liberal Universities in South Africa: 1948–1990,”
Higher Education 27, no. 1 (January 1994): 1–40, doi:10.1007/BF01383758
290 Odendaal

1960s onwards with the emergence of the Black Consciousness Movement and
a much more militant form of student protests on Black campuses.35
In 1957, however, it does seem that the institutional conceptualization of
multiracialism was still grounded in an assimilationist approach to education.
Correspondence between the Wits University Council and the Ministry of Edu-
cation, Arts and Science in 1957 records the Wits Council’s objections to the
Ministry’s Hansard parliamentary report. The report claimed that Chancellor
Richard Feetham had said that Wits would “never have more [Non-European]
students than … today” and had reaffirmed that “the admission of students,
European and Non-European, should depend on the application of academic
criteria.”36 This was a sentiment strongly echoed by the students’ Academic
Freedom Committee Chairperson. Bastomsky wrote in a special edition of
Wits Student “that if the student body were to be 90% non-white it would
not make one iota of difference so long as its academic standards remained
constant or were improved.”37 The sentiment carried in The open universities
of South Africa booklet (1957), demonstrates the largely paternalistic ideal of
the open universities serving an essentially ‘European’ public. While the lan-
guage around race and diversity is somewhat ambiguous, the booklet sees it as
the duty of the open universities “to train the leaders of the people whatever
the colour of their skins” in spreading “our Western civilization” through “the
majority” of South Africa.38 In the booklet the open universities are explicit:
they “do not wish [the] universities to become ‘Black’”, and “there is no evi-
dence to suggest that the racial composition of the open universities might
so change, in the foreseeable future.”39 This ambiguity was partly a counter
to conservative concerns that Black South Africans would ‘overrun’ the open
universities. Still, they also highlight the limitations of thinking about the open
universities as inclusive or supportive contact zones for Black staff and stu-
dents – even if they did allow for a higher degree of cross-racial engagement
than did other public institutions.
Building in intensity over two years, the University’s “solemn protest”
against the Act culminated in two significant protest events, accompanied
by a series of smaller statements, meetings, and declarations. The two events

35 Moodie, “The State and the Liberal Universities in South Africa: 1948–1990.”
36 University of the Witwatersrand, “Papers Relating to the Interview between the Universi-
ty’s Council’s Deputation and the Hon. The Minister of Education, Arts and Science on 1st
April 1957 on the Matter of the Separate University Education Bill,” 1957, 7. Wits Central
Records.
37 Saul Bastomsky, “Why We Protest,” Wits Student, Special edition (April 1959).
38 Open Universities in South Africa, 21.
39 Open Universities in South Africa, 22.
Institutional Autonomy over Academic FREEDOM 291

with the most prominent public visibility were the 1957 march to the City Hall
and the first General Assembly of the University in April 1959.40 A highlight
of Wits’ and UCT’s collaborative efforts was the joint publication of The open
universities in South Africa booklet, a recording of a conference that included
members of Council and senior academics from the two open universities
from 9–11 ­January 1957. The conference proceedings were circulated to all
South African parliamentarians, all universities in the British Commonwealth,
Commonwealth governments, the president of the United States of America,
and several international academics.41 The booklet was commemoratively re-
published by Wits in 1974. Both Wits and UCT also formed staff and student
academic freedom committees.
The Wits SRC’s Academic Freedom Committee was mandated to “politi-
cise students against university apartheid.”42 This student committee differed
from the University Liaison Committee, an academic faculty subcommittee of
Council that acted as the University’s official representative in engagements
with government and colleagues at other universities. The SRC’s Academic
Freedom Committee organised small-scale residence and faculty discussion
groups aimed at political education, organised student rallies, and regularly
contributed opinion pieces to the Wits Student. University historian Bruce Mur-
ray identifies two aspects of the Liaison Committee’s work that distinguished
its roles and responsibilities from its student counterpart. Firstly, the Univer-
sity Liaison Committee’s mandate was that of “[u]niting the University against
the Bill, and thereby of forming the solid basis for the magnificent national
and international support received”.43 Secondly, that “those on Council and the
academic staff who urged a principled stance held few illusions about their
ability to force the government to retreat”.44 Prof. J.S. Marais, Chairman of the
open universities Liaison Committee, conceded that there was no prospect of
victory, but that the principle “could not be allowed to go by default.”45 This
example of protest without a real sense of the possibility of change operates as
a significant limitation on the various protest actions undertaken as part of the
Academic Freedom Campaigns of the 1950s. Interestingly, both Nelson Man-
dela’s article “Bantu Education goes to University”46 and Wits Student echo

40 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 374.

41 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 308.
42 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 305.
43 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 311.
44 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 306.
45 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 306.
46 Nelson Mandela, “Bantu Education Goes to University,” Liberation 25 (June 1957).
292 Odendaal

this attitude of resignation to the potential efficacy of such protests. The Wits
­Student article noted:

Many students, as well as members of the public may often have asked
themselves what the purpose of our protests is, for it seems quite obvious
that the government takes little or no heed of our demonstrations, reso-
lutions, and statements. WHY THEN DO WE PROTEST? [sic]

The answer again is one of principle rather than demonstrating a substantive

belief in the Campaign’s efficacy. The Wits Student argued that the University
sought to avoid the historical condemnation that had confronted German
­universities in the post War era, where according to the article’s author “the
Universities of Nazi Germany” chose to “remain silent.”
While the “Bantu Education goes to university” article shows some engage-
ment by the contemporaneous Black literary public with the Academic Free-
dom campaign, the Campaign is conspicuously absent in two significant
Black-English language publications of the period. Neither The Bantu World
newspaper nor The Africanist mentions the protests between 1958 and 1959.
This silence suggests a lack of meaningful engagement between the Campaign
and those the Bill was most likely to impact. That these different groups all saw
the eventual passing of the Act as an unfortunate inevitability reflects a con-
temporary consciousness of the limitations of the open universities’ capacity
to challenge its relationship to the state. These universities, although they were
sites of protest, remained financially dependent through the Apartheid years.

4.1 The Academic Freedom March

The SRC’s Academic Freedom Committee and the Joint Staff and Student
Committee organised a march from the Wits central campus to the Johan-
nesburg City Hall on 22 March 1957. The march was envisioned as an act of
symbolic protest, choreographed to present the voices of various university
constituencies in opposition to the proposed Bill as a united front. The route
from campus to the City Hall emphasised the link between the University and
Johannesburg’s civic culture.47 Participants wore academic gowns, university
blazers, and medical coats, and consisted of “well over 2000 academic staff,
students, and members of Convocation.”48 Die Transvaaler estimated that

47 Elizabeth Louw, “Voicing the Archive: Documentary Film Making and the Political
Archive in South Africa” (PhD dissertation, University of Witwatersrand, 2014), 104.
48 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 309.
Institutional Autonomy over Academic FREEDOM 293

“some 100 of the students in the march were Natives, Coloureds, Indian and
Chinese.”49 While this observation was likely intended to scandalise conserva-
tive white sensibilities, it also illustrates the limits of Wits’ ‘open’ status. The
estimate of 2000 participants represented less than half of Wits’ student body
in 1957, and even within the body of protestors, people of color were margin-
ally represented.
Protesters assembled behind a single placard at the front of the march,
which read, “Against the Separate Universities Bill.” This singular and non-
specific slogan served to paper over the intra-university political differences
about the specifics of the Bill being opposed. The Wits Student in April 1957
described the march as “a step in the right direction” where “the participation
of the whole university … will be a conclusive demonstration to the govern-
ment and public of the university’s total rejection of the bill; it will be par-
ticularly effective now when public support for the universities is becoming
more articulate, and the parliamentary opposition is intensifying.”50 Rather
than assuring readers that the University’s concern was limited to Academic
Freedom, the Wits Student explicitly linked the Academic Freedom march to
“the general opposition to the Nationalist Government”.51
The march structure - with participants in full academic dress, in well-
ordered and silent lines - hoped to emphasise a link between the University’s
protest and the idea of academics as benevolent, dignified experts acting in
the public’s interest.52 For both participants and observers, there were strong
parallels between the march and a graduation ceremony.53 Unlike a gradua-
tion ceremony, however, the mood of the march was deeply solemn with no
agitation, singing, or shouting. This created an acoustic difference between
this march and the unruly or disruptive norms associated with student pro-
tests.54 The then-president of the SRC, Michael Kimberley, emphasised this
“solemn and dignified” nature of the march in its planning. Writing in the
Wits ­Student newspaper, the SRC hoped that “a solemn procession of the intel-
lectual and professional elite of this country … will instil new courage in the

49 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 309.

50 Wits Protest, Wits Student, Vol IX 2nd edition (April 1957).
51 Wits Protest, Wits Student.
52 Louw, “Voicing the Archive: Documentary Film Making and the Political Archive in South
Africa,” 136.
53 Lauw, “ Voicing the Archive:,” 141.
54 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 304. One example of this includes the mass meeting held
on 16 September 1956 where the key speaker Rev. Ambrose Reeves was shouted down and
the meeting reportedly devolved into a “noisy farce”.
294 Odendaal

waning self-confidence of the South African public.”55 Kimberley’s sentiments,

reiterated by several student leaders in the Wits Student, suggest the growing
self-confidence of the young university members in its elite authority.
The march’s audience reached well beyond members of Wits University. The
Star newspaper reported that “local and overseas pressmen, newsreel photog-
raphers and television cameramen” covered the event, amplifying the protest’s
message well beyond the physical audience able to witness the march in per-
son.56 This dynamic was enhanced further by a similar march of staff and stu-
dents of the University of Cape Town on 7 June 1957.57 Since first being utilised
against the Separate Universities Bill, the aesthetic of the Academic march,
mainly symbolised through the wearing of academic regalia, has resurfaced
regularly in South African protest culture as a symbol of collective, unified, and
peaceful protest.58 This form of protest is invested in embodying the idea of
the University qua institution, acting as a unified and dignified voice deserving
of respect and both intellectual and moral public authority. Looking forward,
it is meaningful to reflect how the respectability politics of this silent, ordered,
and distinctly elite example of university protest has influenced the forms of
engagement with social issues considered appropriate for university students.

4.2 The 1959 General Assembly

On 16 April 1959, the University of the Witwatersrand held its first General
Assembly in the Great Hall. Although parliament had already decided the fate
of the Extension of University Education Act, this was Wits’ final act of public
protest against the Bill. Protestors hung a declaration on the pillars of the Great
Hall, which reaffirmed Wits’ commitment to equal treatment of “men and
women without regard to race and colour” and to opposing all “those who have
sought by legislative enactment to curtail the autonomy of the University….”

55 “Enthusiastic Support for Procession,” Wits Student, Vol. IX 1st edition (March 1957).
56 Louw, “Voicing the Archive: Documentary Film Making and the Political Archive in South
Africa,” 141.
57 UCT Newsroom, “Timeline: UCT during the Apartheid Years,” (2015), https://www.news
.uct.ac.za/article/-2015-04-23-timeline-uct-during-the-apartheid-years; Phillips, UCT Under
Apartheid: From Onset to Sit-In: 1948–1968, 457.
58 University of the Western Cape (UWC) during the 1980s, Alumni eNewsletter Issue 11:
December 2014. “Hek Toe” marches in 1980s. The UCT’s “Enough is Enough” protest in 2013
in response to gender-based violence, and the proposed university march to parliament in
2015 in response to FeesMustFall protests. Protest against the excessive use of force by police
on campus at UCT (2015): https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2015-10-23-academics
-march-in-solidarity-with-students
Institutional Autonomy over Academic FREEDOM 295

After Principal Sutton’s reading of the declaration that hung across the
entry to the hall, the “University stood in silence … in protest against the loss of
what it declared to be its most cherished position – the right to admit, without
regard to race and colour, all who would join in the acquiring and advance-
ment of Knowledge.”59 Professor I.D. MacCrone then delivered the assembly’s
main address.60 MacCrone’s speech provides the clearest evidence that, while
the assembly was only attended by members of the university, the University
imagined the event as a form of public spectacle, emulating private mourning.61
In his speech MacCrone outlined the University’s history of opposition to
the Bill, thanked the University’s supporters, and recognised the intellectual
and spiritual impoverishment that the University now faced.62 The supportive
publics that MacCrone thanked included opposition parliamentarians who
put up a “spirited” twenty-six hours debate at the second reading of the pro-
posed Bill63 and supporters such as UCT students and Black Sash64 who held a
continuous vigil outside parliament during the marathon debate.65 MacCrone
described Wits’ own SRC as the University’s watchdog, although he thought at
times that they were “over-exuberant and a bit too vociferous.”66 He also men-
tioned influential men and women, like Chancellor Richard Feetham who later
had a series of academic freedom lectures named in his honour.

59 Louw, “Voicing the Archive: Documentary Film Making and the Political Archive in South
Africa,” 142.
60 Prof. I.D. MacCrone was a professor in the Department of Psychology who served as a
senior Senate representative on Council. He was the head of the Council’s Academic Free-
dom Subcommittee and, given the reluctance of Principal Sutton (then head of Wits)
to engage in political affairs, MacCrone regularly represented the University council and
academic stuff in protests. Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 153.
61 I.D. MacCrone. “Speech Delivered at General Assembly of the University,” commented
that “There is also a need for the University to meet together by itself, for all its m
­ embers
to come together as at a family gathering, to take stock and to consider the situation
­created by its loss.”
62 I.D. MacCrone, “Speech Delivered at General Assembly of the University,” April 16, 1959,
Wits Central Records. “the lamps of tolerance, of understanding, of learning how to live
with one another in a multiracial South Africa,” were gradually dimming.
63 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 326.
64 The Black Sash was a civil society organization founded by white women in 1955 to protest
the removal of Black people from the voters’ role. After this campaign they continued
to support anti-segregationist policies and continue to exist today. “Black Sash: History
of the Black Sash,” https://www.blacksash.org.za/index.php/our-legacy/history-of-the
-black-sash
65 Wits Student, Special Edition: Academic Freedom (April 1959).
66 MacCrone, ‘Speech Delivered at General’.
296 Odendaal

MacCrone critiqued the condition of South Africa’s democratic process,

lamenting that the state had ignored universities’ attempts to engage through
formal channels. His emphasis on the idea that open universities could coexist
with universities of “another type” conveyed Wits’ willingness to operate in a
segregated society. His final remark carried a tone of both defeat and hopeful-
ness; “Thought shall be more resolute, Courage the keener, Spirit the greater,
as our strength decreases.”67 This institutional self-confidence and assertion
of the value of the University’s independence is part of why Wits has man-
aged to maintain a prominent voice in public discussions beyond the sphere
of academia.
The assembly closed with the dousing of “the flame of academic free-
dom in a big copper urn on the steps in front of the Central Block on the
Main Campus,” continuing the mourning metaphor,68 and aesthetically link-
ing this protest to UCT’s parliamentary protest in 1957.69 Students invited
Professor Phillip Tobias, another active member of the Academic Freedom
Committee, to perform this symbolic ritual of defeat.70 For him, the failed
protests of the 1950s were “the saddest and most unpleasant period” in his
time at Wits.71
The 1959 assembly served as a moment to contemplate the university’s past,
present, and future. The dedication called for an annual affirmation of its prin-
ciples. In so doing, it issued a mandate for future generations of the institu-
tion. It provided a ritual to mark the “ancient, honourable and widely accepted
University tradition” which had until then been “taken for granted”.72 This
future-orientated discourse also set a precedent for how Academic F­ reedom
and universities’ public engagement would be addressed long after the rights
removed by the Act were reinstated. The General Assembly has become a
highly ritualised tradition, re-enacted at select moments at Wits and other
South Africa’s Higher Education institutions since 1959.73 With statements
from the Chancellor of the University, Council, Senate, Forum, Convocation,

67 MacCrone, ‘Speech Delivered at General’.

68 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 326.
69 “The Origins of the Torch of Academic Freedom,” UCT News, September 2002, http://
www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2002-09-23-the-origins-of-the-torch-of-academic-freedom.
70 Louw, “Voicing the Archive: Documentary Film Making and the Political Archive in South
Africa,” 144.
71 “Voicing the Archive:”, 144.
72 MacCrone, ‘Speech Delivered at General’.
73 Hylton White, Why the Wits University general assembly failed: An anthropological
view (2016), https://www.ujuh.co.za/why-the-wits-university-general-assembly-failed-an
-anthropological-view/
Institutional Autonomy over Academic FREEDOM 297

and the Student Representative Council – each represented through a desig-

nated chairperson or president - the constituencies at this first General Assem-
bly modelled a stylised form of institutional discourse which remains part of
the University’s repertoire.74 The dedication read by Principal Sutton at the
first General Assembly in 1959 was inscribed on a plaque in the same hall two
years later and is still there today.75 To date, excluding the failed University
Assembly scheduled for 16 April 2016, Wits has only held nine General Assem-
blies since 1959.
The dedication emphasised the danger of external intervention and over-
looked any reference to Wits’ internal practices of discrimination, whether in
medical classrooms, university socials, residences and sporting endeavours. In
doing so, the commemoration of the Academic Freedom protests silenced the
small but significant group of Wits members who criticised the limitations of
this early conceptualization of Academic Freedom76 and established a strong
base for the protest-only narratives of the open universities. Philosophy lec-
turer F.S. McNeilly’s article in the November 1956 Forum articulately captures
the problem with conflating the defence of institutional autonomy and the
fight for social justice and equality:

Once more, the liberal forces of South Africa are on the march. Once
more, they have raised the wrong flag, grappled furiously with imaginary
enemies … The ‘non-Europeans’ of our universities have been badly done
by also. We shall miss them if they go, and they will miss us. But it is their
rights that should have been defended, and not the imaginary rights of
universities.77

This self-critical view of Wits’ engagements in the Academic Freedom pro-

tests is noticeably lacking in the protest-only narrative that dominates the

74 Wits University, “General Assembly of the University of the Witwatersrand,” https://www

.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/general-news/2016/feesmustfall2016/statements/general
-assembly-of-the-university-of-the-witwatersrand.html; White, Why the Wits University
General Assembly Failed: An Anthropological View.
75 We affirm in the name of the University of Witwatersrand that it is our duty to uphold
the principle that a university is a place where men and women, without regard to race
and colour, are welcome to join in the acquisition and advancement of knowledge; and
to continue faithfully to defend the ideal against all those who have sought by legisla-
tive enactment to curtail the autonomy of the University. Now, therefore, we dedicate
ourselves to the maintenance of this ideal and to the restoration of the autonomy of our
University.
76 Wits Protest, Wits Student.
77 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 321.
298 Odendaal

mainstream public image of Wits up until calls for the decolonization of South
African universities in 2015.78 This protest only narrative emerged out of Wits’
alignment with Liberal anti-Apartheid political and social institutions such
as the official parliamentary opposition party, the Liberal Party, and related
organizations like the Black Sash and the National Union of South A ­ frican
Students.79

5 A Flawed but Influential Blueprint for University Protest

The forms of protest discussed in this chapter describe Wits’ most well-
remembered actions against implementing the Extension of Universities Act,
1959. The Academic Freedom campaign marked a significant shift in Wits’ self-
positioning from an earlier identity as an institution of nation-building and
cultural reproduction to a site of opposition and state critique, one that was
aligned with an international academic community, in turn aligned to Western
liberal values of freedom. This shift, together with the public performances of
protest detailed in this chapter, helped to entrench ideas of English-­speaking,
white institutions as bastions of liberalism and progressive race relations
under apartheid. This image carried significant political weight into the post-
1994 democratic period. Given this legacy, this chapter argues that the strong
emphasis on the “dignified and solemn” character of protests, combined with
the demonstrated willingness by open universities to accommodate racial
­discrimination - before and after the passing of the 1959 legislation - has mod-
elled a long-standing tradition of symbolic, but ultimately ineffective, protest
culture within historically white institutions. These practices stand in con-
trast to more disruptive and antagonistic forms of university protest that were
largely dismissed as illegitimate by main stream public discourse until the 2015
#­RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall protests.80
Although the university’s efforts did not stop the legal implementation
of University Apartheid, they did succeed in making a “strong public state-
ment or protest.” While ineffective in the short term, this rhetorical move set

78 Leigh-Ann Naidoo, “Contemporary Student Politics in South Africa,” 180–189.

79 The gains and limitations of Liberalism in South Africa are explored in relation to
­universities in: Glenn Moss, The New Radicals: A Generational Memoir of the 1970s
(­Johannesburg: Jacana, 2014); Teresa Barnes, Uprooting University Apartheid in South
Africa: From Liberalism to Decolonisation (New York: Routledge, 2019).
80 Busani Ngcaweni, and Wandile Ngcaweni, We Are No Longer at Ease: The Struggle for
#FeesMustFall (Auckland Park, South Africa: Jacana Media, 2018), 60; Chikane, Breaking A
Rainbow, 122.
Institutional Autonomy over Academic FREEDOM 299

a precedent for future generations of white students at both UCT and Wits to
develop more effective engagements with the anti-Apartheid struggle, particu-
larly in the late 1970s and 1980s.81
While it is tempting to critique Wits’ Academic Freedom campaign as self-
interested, liberal window dressing, this chapter reminds us of the challenges
involved in ascribing a shared sense of purpose to institutions like universities
which serve multiple constituencies simultaneously. It is also clear from later
sanctions against the open universities, such as those resulting from the Van
Wyk der Vries Commission of Enquiry into Universities (1968), and from the
presence of spies and surveillance on campus, that the Nationalist government
continued to see the open universities as obstacles to Apartheid policies. By
focusing on the universities’ institutional rights to autonomy, the Academic
Freedom protests asserted a particular positionality for Wits and UCT in the
South African public domain.
In 1972 I.D. MacCrone effectively summarised the impact of the academic
freedom protests on the University’s publicness when he observed;

… the University, although in the end defeated, had never been more
united in its history – it had secured a wider degree of public support
than ever before, it had retained its own self-respect as well as the respect
of the international community of universities and it had, in a sense,
acquired a soul, rather than just being a body with an intellect.82

The sense of unity, public support, international attention, and self-respect the
protests of the 1950s generated led to a decisive shift in Wits’ self-perception of
its role and significance in the public life of South Africa. The staff’s Academic
Freedom Committee’s view of its work as mostly symbolic,83 however, intro-
duced a vital tension that continued to exist between the progressive, non-
discriminatory self-imagination that the Universities’ claim and their limited
approach to defending the rights of Black South Africans during this period.

81 Phillips, UCT Under Apartheid: From Onset to Sit-In: 1948–1968, 452; Rehana Odendaal,
“Wits Imagined: An Investigation into Wits University’s Public Roles and Responsibili-
ties, 1922–1994” (Master of Arts in Historical Studies, University of Cape Town, 2019), 120;
Glenn Moss, The New Radicals: A Generational Memoir of the 1970s.
82 The Golden Jubilee of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, p. 57.
83 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 306. Prof. J.S. Marais, chairmen of the Open University
Liaison Committee “conceded there was no prospect of victory, but the principle could
not be allowed to go by default.”
300 Odendaal

6 Conclusion

This chapter has shown that the official voices of Wits, which coordinated these
landmark protests, decided both how and whose Academic Freedom was to be
defended. Academics such as the Department of Philosophy’s F.S. McNeilly84
demonstrate that the limits to Wits’ defence of Academic Freedom were not
merely a product of ignorance or an underdeveloped sense of justice. Instead,
they were actions shaped by Wits’ idea of public accountability anchored in
the English-speaking, white, liberal public that had helped to establish the
University at the turn of the twentieth century.
The case of South Africa’s Academic Freedom campaign illustrates how the
discussions, debates and protests which take place in what is imagined as an
inclusive ‘public sphere’ can perpetuate the types of exclusions that inclusive
democracies are meant to avoid. By paying attention to the details of the Aca-
demic Freedom campaign it is easier for one to understand what contempo-
rary students like #RhodeMustFall activist Ntokozo Dladla mean when they
say “ The systems and the processes in place here have worked in such a way
to exclude us from feeling as though we are part of this university. We feel
alienated”.85
This alienation stems, in part, from the persistence of a protest-only narra-
tive, despite repeated critiques of an exclusionary institutional culture from
Black staff and academic research. These critiques highlight the fact that the
same institutions that supported anti-apartheid protest also accommodated
segregationist and racist practices.86 Although numerous texts about the
­University exist – formal academic publications, journal articles, newsletters,
opinion pieces, memoirs – different texts circulate among various publics. The
apparent inability of the more critical perspectives to permeate popular mem-
ory of Wits, at least until the 2015 protest, suggests producers of mainstream
public discourse have not utilised these texts.
Isaac Kamola argues that the interdependent relationship between various
groups of South Africa’s white minority in terms of political and economic
power meant that universities like Wits were more protected from state inter-
vention in the 1970s and 80s because of the predominantly white communities

84 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years, 321.

85 Ntokozo Dladla, cited by Paul Herman, “Rhodes Must Fall: Students Have Their Say,”
News24, April 2015, https://www.news24.com/News24/Rhodes-Must-Fall-Students-have
-their-say-20150402
86 Murray, Wits: The “Open” Years; Shear, Wits: A University in the Apartheid era; Phillips, UCT
Under Apartheid: From Onset to Sit-In: 1948–1968; Barnes, Uprooting University Apartheid
in South Africa: From Liberalism to Decolonisation.
Institutional Autonomy over Academic FREEDOM 301

they served.87 Given the speed at which Apartheid policies were implemented
post 1948, it was perhaps difficult for institutional decision makers at Wits to
estimate how far the influence of the University as a core institution for white
South African publics could protect the University from further government
interference. Potential interpretations for Principal Raikes’ and Sutton’s rela-
tively conservative attitude towards the Academic Freedom protests include
institutional reluctance to provoke an unpredictable state as well as an effort
to ensure continued support from university funders embedded in dominant
networks of political and economic power.
The protest legacy of the open universities, even if exaggerated, is not fic-
tional. However, the work of this chapter is to problematise a romanticised
view of the open universities as racially inclusive contact zones before the
institution of the Extension of Universities Act (1959). It further highlights how
the decisions regarding modes of protest by two institutions in the 1950s con-
tinue to have ramifications 60 and 70 years later. Nomusa Makhubu’s “­Art-rage
and the Politics of Reconciliation”,88 and Ramabina Mahapa’s “An end to
assimilation, the right to self-determination”89 are two examples of contem-
porary illustrations of these ramifications. Engaging with the nuance of these
institutional histories enables a better understanding of how the progressive
politics of the past have influenced the high levels of unrest and discomfort in
contemporary post-colonial universities.

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 Chapter 12

“We all went to school”: Women’s Narratives of

Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s)

Maria da Luz Ramos and Pedro Goulart

1 Introduction

Postcolonial theories have brought a critical reflection to the history of

European domination in Africa. New approaches have emerged as well as new
perceptions, together with the voices of previously ignored social actors who
have now gained prominence by revealing certain realities suppressed in the
narratives outlined in the discourses of former colonisers.1 Women are often
forgotten and invisible in the colonial period of the history of Africa since they
existed at a distance from power-centres led by a patriarchal system.2 Various
studies have been carried out about women’s social roles during this period,
but their voices remain marginalised in much of the literature.3 In this chap-
ter we focus on the education of girls in colonial Cape Verde, an archipelago,
located off the coast of Africa, and under Portuguese administration from 1460
until 1975. In our project to bring Cape Verdean women from the margin to
the centre stage of studies on colonial education, we developed an exploratory
research approach. In this chapter we analyze women’s narratives, perceptions,

1 Homi Kharshedji Bhabha, “The Other Question: differences, discrimination and the discourse
of colonialism,” in Literature, Politics and Theory: Papers from Essex Conference 1976–1984, eds.
Francis Barke, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iversen, and Diana Loxley (London: Routledge, 1986),
148–172; Walter Mignolo, Histórias Locais/Projetos Globais: colonialidade, saberes subalternos
e pensamento liminar (Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2003); Patrick Williams, and Laura
Chrisman, eds., Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994); Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1977).
2 Helen Bradford, “Women, Gender and Colonialism: Rethinking the history of the British
Cape colony and its frontier zones, c 1860–1970,” Journal of African History 37, no. 3 (1996):
351–370, Doi:10.1017/S0021853700035519
3 Jear Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyieke Musisi, eds., Women in African Colonial Histories
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); Hunt, “Placing African Women’s History and
Locating Gender,” 359–379; Diana Jeater, “African Women in Colonial Settler Towns in East and
Southern Africa,” in Oxford Research Encylopedia of African History, ed. Thomas Spear (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.665

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_013

306 Ramos and Goulart

and their experiences of primary schools in Cape Verde during the last decades
of the colonial period and the beginnings of independence.
Throughout the colonial period the presence of women and girls in schools
appears in official statistics and reports, on the surface, to be insignificant,
which would be consistent with a society characterised by male domination.
This reflects the subaltern position of women imposed since the beginning of
settlement of the islands by Portuguese, and which lasted over time. Conse-
quently, it is interesting to read and analyze the experiences of those female
pupils who actually went to school during this period, based on five questions:
a) were female pupils from predominantly rural or urban areas?, b) why and
how did they become pupils?, c) what kind of perceptions did female pupils
have about the educational model and curriculum contents?, d) what kind
of social interactions did they experience?, e) did female pupils face gender
issues related to schooling?
We resorted to the reconstruction of memories related to us by twelve Cape
Verdean women (in Portugal and in Cape Verde) to find out what they ­remember
of the time when they attended primary school, and to record their memories
of social and family dynamics surrounding the schools . Semi-­structured inter-
views were carried out in the context of interactions between the researcher
and the respondents. Fundamental to the success of this endeavour was to cre-
ate a context which would minimise possible constraints, or reluctance to fully
share these memories. To achieve this we followed certain ethical considera-
tions, such as informed consent, confidentiality, and privacy. The participants
are given fictitious names in the presentation of the data.
In addition to the in-depth interviews, we had informal conversations with
former teachers. These were male teachers who had attended primary school
after independence. We also spoke to Cape Verdean researchers who were
­conducting research on educational issues. The purpose of the collection of
the data was to throw new light on the women’s narratives about education
in the archipelago, both during colonialism and in the wake of independ-
ence. Since our approach was a qualitative one, the focus is not on a search for
­generalization or representativeness, but on understanding and interpretating
social processes related to the childhood memories of a group of Cape Verdean
women.
Besides oral sources, we used statistical reports to acquire a nuanced and
in-depth vision of schooling and of the gross enrolment rate at the time. In
this way we attempt to cross reference official information with women’s
­perception about education in Cape Verde during the colonial period.
The official narrative was constructed by the Portuguese government and
settlers with the help of a small local bureaucratic elite of mestizos whose
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 307

school achievement, along with an assimilation process, made possible

their recruitment as civil servants able to work in other colonies. By occupy-
ing such positions, they became cultural mediators capable of establishing
bridges and preventing attrition between the colonial administration and the
­indigenous population.4 However, in the meantime, Cape Verdeans had some-
times to face criticism and even tension in their relations with those indig-
enous people who perceived them as an extension of the colonial power.5
Although Cape Verde was considered by the Portuguese government to
be an example of a successful assimilation process, the local elite possessed
a lower status and were paid lower salaries than other Portuguese civil serv-
ants with similar functions.6 This distinction was a way of demonstrating that
this local elite did not belong to the same social, cultural or power position
or group. Notwithstanding this historical context, the women involved in our
research do not talk about school as an ideological instrument used by the
colonial administration, but as a way of generating better life expectations for
their future.

2 Education and Gender

The diverse origins of the Africans taken as slaves to the Cape Verdean islands
made the continuity of their cultural practices unfeasible.7 Too few conditions
existed which would have facilitated the reproduction of traditional educa-
tion and instruction of children descended from African slaves, which thus
promoted the monopolisation of education by the Portuguese administra-
tion. Although few scholars mention the coexistence of traditional and formal
education, European colonial administrations in fact ignored the traditional
ways in which Africans had been educating boys and girls and transmitting
knowledge about their surrounding world.8 While the educational models and

4 José Carlos Anjos, “A Condição de Mediador Político-Cultural em Cabo Verde: intelectuais e

diferentes versões de identidade nacional,” Etnográfica VIII 2 (2012): 273–295.
5 Daniele Ellery Mourão, “Guiné-Bissau e Cabo Verde: identidades e nacionalidades em
­construção,” Pro-Posições 20 (2009): 83–101.
6 Gabriel Fernandes, A Diluição de África: Uma Interpretação da Saga Identitária Cabo-verdiana
no Panorama Político (Pós) Colonial (Florianápolis: Editora UFCS, 2002).
7 António Carreira, Formação e extinção de uma sociedade escravocrata (Praia: Instituto de
­Promoção Cultural, 2000).
8 Bob W. White, “Talk about School: education and colonial project in French and
British Africa (1860–1960),” Comparative Education 32, no. 1 (1996): 9–25, https://doi
­
.org/10.1080/03050069628902
308 Ramos and Goulart

curricula implemented at that time did not include any cultural inheritance
which made gender distinctions in that domain, the consistently low level of
participation of girls in school during the colonial time is commonly described
by authors such as Chilisa and Ntseane, together with how this placed girls in a
space of socialisation and sociability quite distinct from boys and men.9
Regarding education in African territories under British administration,
Whitehead argues that, during the 20th century, and after independence of
these territories, there exists no evidence during this period of any type of
negligence related to the possibility of women attending school.10 He claims
that the real obstacle was the scarcity of resources to for the British adminis-
tration to respond to all social and economic demands, especially after World
Wars I and II. In his article he cites various sources to explain that the debate
conducted by organizations of the British government about the participation
of girls and women in education was framed according to European contexts,
and from the points of view of the colonial administration. What stands out in
Whitehead’s literature review is his account of the indigenous peoples’ resist-
ance to female schooling and the preservation of their traditional roles.
Approaches of the colonial administration concerning girls’ and women’s
education in Africa followed European logic and organization which was based
on the domestic division of work reproduced in the colonies. The centrality
of motherhood, and of family dynamics and needs, together with the tradi-
tional private nature of girls’ and women’s social position, created barriers that
prevented them from attending formal school, while boys were encouraged
and enabled to acquire the knowledge and skills for working both in manual
activities and in commerce and bureaucratic services.11 This provided condi-
tions for the formation of African elites consisting of assimilated men who
later launched the independence movements.12 Focusing on Zanzibar’s con-
text, Corrie Decker presents a different perspective of the country’s approach
to female education during the 1930s and 1940s, one that transformed them

9 Bagele Chilisa, and Gabo Ntseane, “Resisting dominant discourses: Implications of indig-
enous, African feminist theory and methods for gender and education research,” Gender
and Education 22, no. 6 (2010): 617–632, https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2010.519578
10 Clive Whitehead, “The Education of Women and Girls: As aspect of British Colonial P
­ olicy,”
Journal of Educational Administration and History 16, no. 2 (1984): 24–34, https://doi
.org/10.1080/0022062840160203
11 Gwendolyn Schulman, Colonial education for African girls in Afrique occidentale
française: A project for gender reconstruction, 1819–1960 (MA Dissertation, McGill
­University, Montreal, 1992), 6.
12 Remi P. Clignet, and Philip J. Foster, “Franch and British colonial education in Africa,”
Comparative Education Review 8, no. 2 (1964): 1991–1198.
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 309

into modern girls with a visible, rather than solely domestic, social role.13 This
is as example of how schooling could reposition women within African colo-
nial society, and how education and gender prejudices in traditional contexts
could easily disintegrate. As in Europe, while female participation in public life
– such as that of school – was often uneven and sporadic, they gradually came
to be included in the debates about policy and / or social dynamics.
The European Missions’ role in education in colonial Africa, even before the
emergence of public schools, and their role in educating women, is particularly
relevant to our study.14 In addition to formal and academic content, the forma-
tion of a “good character” and future “good wives” in accordance with Christian
and European values was essential. Learning domestic tasks was considered
crucial for women to be able to fulfil their social roles as spouses or maids.15
Education was seen by missionaries to enable young women’s social mobility
and detach them from the anathema of a harsh and uncertain rural life. Kath-
leen Sheldon’s research shows the contribution of nuns to the education of
girls in Mozambique, where there was a lack of teachers, as was often the case
in Portuguese colonies.16 She raises the issue of “gender ideology” regarding
the different contents of curricula taught to boys and to girls respectively. Both
genders were expected to learn to read and write, but male pupils had access
to academic subjects such as mathematics and to practical training, such as
that required by agriculture and carpentry, while girls learned tasks like sew-
ing, washing clothes, or cooking. So, men tended to give classes to male pupils,
and women taught girls. This deepened the social division among the genders,

13 Corrie Decker, “Reading, writing, and respectability: How schoolgirls developed modern
literacies in colonial Zanzibar,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 43,
no. 1 (2010): 89–114.
14 Kallaway, The Changing face of Colonial Education in Africa. Education, Science and
Development; Francisco A. Gallego, and Robert Woodberry, “Christian Missionaries and
Education in Former African Colonies: How Competition Mattered,” Journal of African
Economics 19, no. 3 (2010): 294–329, https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejq001; Leon P. Spencer,
“Church and State in Colonial Africa: influences Governing the Political Activity of Chris-
tian Missions in Kenya,” Journal of Church and State 31, no 31 (1989): 115–132; Feliz Meier
zu Selhausen, “Missions, education and conversion in colonial Africa,” in Globalization
and the rise of mass education, eds. David Mitch, and Gabriele Capelli (Cham: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25417-9, 25–59.
15 Nakanyike B. Musisi, “Colonial and Missionary Education: Women and Domesticity in
Uganda, 1900–1945,” in African Encounter with Domesticity, ed. Karen Tranberg Hansen
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992).
16 Sheldon, “‘I studied with the Nuns, Learning to make Blouses’: Gender Ideology and
­Colonial Education in Mozambique,” 595–625.
310 Ramos and Goulart

as was the case of metropolitan Portugal and other European countries at that
time.17
In their examination of the post-colonial demand for schooling, Shailaia
Fennell and Madelaine Arnot are of the view that gender equity associated
with the purposes of democratization of education after African independ-
ence “are in danger of being both the symbol of progress and the vehicle of
contemporary neo-colonialism”. Since the premises of this argument originate
in the so-called developed countries, the idea of providing access to school-
ing for all according to the standards of developed countries standards, can
be seen to have ignored the specific needs and cultural patterns of boys and
girls.18 In this sense, those African independent States seem to have continued
to follow European education perspectives and models. Along the same lines
Bagele Chilisa and Gabo Ntseane advocate the importance of deconstructing
the erroneous idea of a universal gender theory, as well as those narratives that
do not explain contextual peculiarities.19
Education has been presented as a strategic resource throughout both the
colonial and post-colonial periods. On the one hand, educated Cape ­Verdeans
helped Portugal to ensure the fulfilment of public service places in other
­Portuguese colonies in Africa, while on the other hand, the technical and aca-
demic skills of individuals seem to have been relevant to the development and
economic growth of the islands after their independence.20 Even though the
colonial government did not formally place education at the top of its political
priorities for the islands, it was in the archipelago that the return on invest-
ment in school attendance became most pronounced in comparison with
other colonies, especially after the abolition of the slave trade in the 19th cen-
tury. This scenario generated a vigorous discourse on Cape Verdean’s access to
education, a debate that is not always consistent with the reality. In fact the

17 Helena Neves, “Meninos e meninas ao seu lugar: a segregação no ensino primário do

Estado Novo, Revista de Humanidades e Tecnologia 3 (2000): 55–60; Maria Filomena
Mónica, Educação e Sociedade no Portugal de Salazar (Lisboa: Editorial Presença, 1978);
Felicity Hunt, Lessons for life: The schooling of girls and women, 1850–1950 (London:
­Blackwell, 1987). Rogers, “L’éducation des filles: un siècle et demi d’historiographie,” 37–79.
18 Shailaia Fennell, and Madelaine Arnot, “Decentric hegemonic gender theory: The impli-
cations for educational research,” in Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and
Poverty, Working Paper nº 21 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, February 2009).
19 Chilisa, and Ntseane, “Resisting dominant discourses: Implications of indigenous, African
feminist theory and methods for gender and education research.”
20 Claúdio Furtado, Génese e (Re) Produção da Classe Dirigente em Cabo Verde (Praia: ­Instituto
Caboverdeano do Livro e do Disco, 1997); David Atchoaréna, Patrícia Dias da Graça, and
José Manuel Marquez, “Strategies for post-primary education in small Island developing
states (SIDS): Lessons from Cape Verde,” Comparative Education, 44 no. 2 (2008): 167–185.
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 311

poverty of the archipelago, along with the consequent lack of schools or family
resources for providing education for their children, is at odds with a dominant
idea alluding to the relevance of education for the local population during the
colonial period.
Christel Adick has demonstrated the lack of evidence of defined systematic
and consistent educational policies in Africa before World War I, and Cape
Verde was no exception.21 Indeed, statistical reports, along with academic
research, and even unofficial reports, clearly indicate that, during the colonial
period, the majority of the population was not involved in schooling, a clear
sign of the lack of commitment by the Portuguese Government to provide offi-
cial education for children.22 Gaining access to education was considerably
more difficult for women once they were socialised for domestic workloads
and housewifely duties. Nonetheless, it remains relevant to look at girls’ school-
ing experiences during the period under study to gain a more comprehensive
and nuanced insight into the role of women in colonial society.

3 Colonial Education in Cape Verde

From the beginning of the Cape Verde settlement the Portuguese colonial
government started an evangelization process that was later allied to school
education. This had much to do with the fact that teachers were mostly mis-
sionaries interested in transmitting Roman Catholic and European values to
the African slaves for them to become docile, obedient, and to behave accord-
ing to both Portuguese social standards, and to Christian beliefs and patterns
of behavior.23 Not only did the assimilationist practices characterise the edu-
cation of Cape Verdeans at this time, but also the traditional vision of women’s

21 Christel Adick, “Education in the modern world system: An attempt to end the mythology
of the concept of education as a colonial heritage,” Education: A biannual collection of
recent German contributions to the field of educational research 40 (1989): 30–48.
22 Barros, “Génese e Formação das Elites Politico-administrativas Cabo-verdianas: 1975–
2008” (Phd Dissertation, Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, 2012); Maria A ­ driana
Carvalho, A Construção Social do Discurso Educativo em Cabo Verde (1911–1926) (Praia:
Instituto da Biblioteca Nacional e do Livro, 2007), 66–72; Alcides Fernandes Moura, “O
Sistema Educativo Cabo-verdiano nas suas Coordenadas Socio-históricas,” Revista Bra-
sileira de História da Educação 16, no.1 [40] (2016): 79–109, https://periodicos.uem.br/ojs
/index.php/rbhe/article/view/40769
23 Daniel Pereira, Estudos da História de Cabo Verde (Lisboa: Alfa Comunicações, 2005),
207; Ousma Diop, “Decolonizing Education in Post-independence Sub-Saharan Africa:
The case of Ghana” (MA dissertation, Ohio University, 2013), 43, http://rave.ohiolink.edu
/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1385073171
 312 Ramos and Goulart

70000
64794
60000
50000
40000 42691

30000
20000
10000 8416
5420 5823 5392 6314
0 373 249 391 679 1165 799 2614
1938 1945 1950 1955 1960 1970 1975/76
Primary School Secondary school

Figure 12.1 Number of students at official schools in Cape Verde

Sources: Anuários Estatísticos do Ultramar, INE
(Annual Official Statistics Reports)

role in society as mothers and spouses, a vision communicated by religious

missionaries. Another concern of the colonial power was that settlers’ children
should have a similar education to that offered in the Metropole.
Cape Verdeans played a special role in the Portuguese colonial labour struc-
ture, occupying middle-level ranks. This meant that schooling in Cape Verde
included more natives than in other colonies, who were specifically trained
to be useful to the colonial administration.24 Nonetheless, for most of the
­colonial period, many Cape Verdeans were excluded from school as can be
seen in Figure 12.1.
This would change in the 1960s, with the number of students at primary
schools in Cape Verde steadily increasing. Pressured by the international com-
munity and by independence movements that launched independence wars,
Portugal felt the need to expand these public services both to justify the colo-
nisation and to win the hearts and minds of the colonised. Propaganda and
schooling were instrumental for that purpose. In 1964 schooling became com-
pulsory for children in the 6 to 12 years age group who were expected to reach
4th grade.25 In 1972–73, compulsory attendance was extended to the 5th and
6th grades, now with a larger lag to the metropolis. Not being very different
from the laws in metropolitan Portugal, particularly for primary schooling,

24 Pedro Goulart, “Child labour, Africa’s colonial system and coercion: The case of ­Portuguese
colonies, 1870–1975,” Economic History of Developing Regions, in press.
25 Direcção-geral de Ensino de Cabo Verde, “Decreto-lei nº 45.908,” in Boletim Oficial 44
(1964).
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 313

Table 12.1 Compulsory schooling during colonial period

Cape Verde Metropolitan Portugal

4th grade 1964 1956 (boys); 1960 (girls)

6th grade 1972–73 1964

Source: Cape Verde: See footnote 23; Portugal: Goulart and Bedi (2017)26

suggests both the backward nature of the dictatorship and the character of
exceptionality of Cape Verde – see table 12.1.
The distance between legislation to practice was wide, and had undeniable
obstacles in the form of the lack of schools and teachers, weak pedagogic strat-
egies, and the poverty that particularly affected rural areas.27 Most families had
to fight for survival and to ensure enough food for their children. Thus, the Cape
Verdean elite’s narrative about the importance of education was not always
convincing or effective in relation to the poorer members of the community.28
Even if families understood the role and importance of education, it was not
easy for them to send their children to school due to material constraints.
Despite the evident difficulties in implementing formal education due to
poverty and the consequent lack of resources, families responded more eas-
ily to the challenge of providing education for boys than for girls. Girls were
expected to be oriented to dealing with domestic affairs - considered very
important for a family’s economy - as well as the kind of home management
which ensured husbands and children would be the centre of women’s and
girls’ future lives. Even if males were socialised for roles involving leading and
taking care of their families from a material point of view, the truth is that the
islands’ poverty offered few choices of conditions or ways of life to the most
disadvantaged population. In this context, for most families, their children
attending school was not a priority. In addition, girls were under strong social
and moral control which could diminish if they strayed from, or remained out

26 Pedro Goulart, and Arjun S. Bedi, “The evolution of child labor in Portugal, 1850–2001,”
Social Science History 41, no. 2 (2017): 227–254.
27 Carvalho, A Construção Social do Discurso Educativo em Cabo Verde (1911–1926), 75.
28 José Carlos Anjos, “A Condição de Mediador Político-Cultural em Cabo Verde: intelectuais
e diferentes versões de identidade nacional,” 273–295, http://hdl.handle.net/10961/1243;
Maria Manuela Afonso, Educação e Classes Sociais em Cabo Verde (Praia: Spleen Edições,
2002); Barros, “Génese e Formação das Elites Politico-administrativas Cabo-­verdianas:
1975–2008”; Carvalho, A Construção Social do Discurso Educativo em Cabo Verde
(1911–1926).
314 Ramos and Goulart

Table 12.2 Number of schools in Cape Verde

1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960

Total 192 75 86 102 111 136

Source: Anuário Estatístico (Official Statistical Reports)

of the range of the radar of their relatives and neighbours. While it remains
true that teachers used to live in the communities and kept an eye on the chil-
dren, there were in fact few schools (Table 12.2) and usually these were far from
home, forcing students to travel several kilometers along often perilous paths
due to the inhospitable orography and the hot climate of the Islands.
In 1866, when secondary education emerged in Cape Verde in the form of
the ecclesiastical school São Nicolau’s Seminary, women were automatically
excluded. Despite the agreement between the Catholic Church and colonial
administration to allow this school to receive young people who did not want
to follow a career in the priesthood, girls were still left out because they could
not become part of the clergy.29 The possibility for women to access second-
ary education arose in 1917, when the Portuguese government abolished the
São Nicolau’s Seminary, and gave in to civil society’s (both settlers and indig-
enous population) pressure to create a secular education open to all.30 The
law that allowed for the installation of a Lyceum on the island of São Vicente
was approved and women were admitted as students and teachers to its first
academic year, although the numbers of these were low31 In addition to this
lyceum, the Portuguese colonial administration created technical schools as
a strategy to educate young people for work. There were “practical schools”
in areas such as agriculture, industry, commerce, and administration. Private
schools managed by missionaries also provided apprenticeships related to dif-
ferent kinds of labour, such as carpentry for boys, and sewing for girls.
Table 12.3 compares the variation of enrolment by gender. The presence of
female individuals in schools in Cape Verde was negligible in comparison to
that of males, although it improved towards the end of the colonial period.

29 Baltazar Soares Neves, O Seminário-Liceu de São Nicolau: o contributo para a História do

ensino em Cabo Verde (Porto: Edições Electrónicas CEAUP, 2008), 92–95.
30 Afonso, Educação e Classes Sociais em Cabo Verde.
31 Henrique Teixeira de Sousa, “Septuagésimo Aniversário do Liceu de São Vicente em Cabo
Verde,” in Comemorações do 75º Aniversário da criação do Liceu de Cabo Verde (Lisboa:
Associação dos Antigos Alunos do Ensino Secundário de Cabo Verde, 1992), 47.
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 315

Table 12.3 Number of enrolled students in public and private schools

Years Number of enrolled Gender Population % of population

students indicators at school

TOTAL Male Female M/F F/T TOTAL M/F

1912 5 920 4 675 1 245 3.8 21% 159 675 3,7

1920 7 701 5 364 2 337 2.3 30% 142 552 5,4
… n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d.
1960 9 383 5 628 3 755 1.5 40% 201 156 4,6
1972/73 68 900 37 219 31 671 1.2 46% 271 843 25,2

Sources: Anuários Estatísticos do Ultramar 1912, 1920, 1960, and 1972/3

(Annual Official Statistics)

In 1912, for each female in school, there were approximately four males, i.e.
females accounted for 21% of the students. By 1960 more females were attend-
ing school, but continued to lag behind males in numbers. By the last years of
the regime, student numbers had increased exponentially: the students had
increased sevenfold, and female students had increased at a faster rate than
previously.
We need to be aware that data collected by Portuguese officials do not
include information about informal education. This informal education was
education offered at some parishes where there were no schools and where
missionaries and priests prepared children to sit the annual exams in formal
state schools for purposes of certification.32
School improvements had come too late and the Cape Verdean was deter-
mined that progress would not be further delayed. When the archipelago
gained its independence in 1975, the Cape Verdean government prioritised
the struggle against illiteracy as an essential element of its educational policy.
The improved educational figures of the late colonial period were deceiving
as these concealed the large numbers of illiterate people. While there was an
effort to create schools in every village, there were several constraints in terms
of material and human resources, in particular the lack of buildings, furniture,
books, and teachers.33 These barriers were gradually overcome as a result of

32 Barros, “Génese e Formação das Elites Politico-administrativas Cabo-verdianas: 1975–2008.”

33 Ângelo Neves Correia, “Análise Sectorial da Educação e Desenvolvimento em Cabo Verde.
Que Intervenção?” (MA Dissertation, Universidade Aberta, 2008), 100–102.
316 Ramos and Goulart

a strategy based on the development of human resources. The importance of

education became a powerful aspect of nationalist ideology, spearheaded dur-
ing the independence war by Amílcar Cabral, the leader of the independence
movement, among others.34 For Cabral, schooling was essential for human
emancipation and Cape Verde’s development needed a literate population
who were able to understand the social, economic and political situation of the
islands in order for them to make their own choices regarding public interests.35
Cabral, himself, was the face of this movement. Born in Guinea-Bissau but
of Cape Verdean descent, went to Cape Verde to study, before heading to Lis-
bon to become an agricultural engineer. He took an administrative colonial
post in Guinea-Bissau before leading the independence movement. He did not
live to see independence as he was assassinated in 1973.
After independence the Cape Verdean Government defined education for all
as a priority for development, and essential to the consolidation of the archi-
pelago’s economic, political and ideological autonomy.36 The increasing num-
ber of primary schools helped to reduce not only asymmetries between rural
and urban contexts, but also between boys and girls. According to a census in
1974–75, there were 49,004 students enrolled in school up to grade 6.
Recent leading figures within post-colonial reality have stressed the impor-
tance of education, along with local academics, who in fact benefitted from
the Portuguese policy of school attainment.37 This scenario generated a potent
discourse on Cape Verdean access to education, but one that represented only
part of the reality of the archipelago. In fact, while the islands’ achievements
in developing education are noteworthy in comparison with other former Por-
tuguese colonies, this did not reflect a significant school enrolment, especially
in rural areas.

34 Amílcar Cabral, Alguns Princípios do Partido (Lisboa: Seara Nova, 1974); Amílcar Cabral, “A
Propósito da Educação,” Cabo Verde – Boletim de Propaganda e Informação 2, no. 21 (1951).
35 Bartolomeu Varela, “A Educação, o Conhecimento e a Cultura na Práxis de Liber-
tação Nacional de Amílcar Cabral,” Revista Desafios 1 (2013): 115–132, http://hdl.handle
.net/10961/1650
36 José Brito, Apresentação do I Plano Nacional de Desenvolvimento à 4ª Sessão Legislativa
da II Legislatura da Assembleia Nacional Popular (Praia, 1982).
37 Cláudio Furtado, Génese e (Re) Produção da Classe Dirigente em Cabo Verde; Barros,
“Génese e Formação das Elites Politico-administrativas Cabo-verdianas: 1975–2008”;
Afonso, Educação e Classes Sociais em Cabo Verde.
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 317

4 School as a “contact zone”

The fact that the archipelago was uninhabited when navigators reached the
islands meant that a unique social structure was generated within the context
of Portuguese colonization. Since the archipelago was an important stopover
for slave commerce, there was a constant flow of people from the African con-
tinent and Europe. Europeans shipped black Africans to the archipelago and
this fostered a biological and cultural miscegenation with an important impact
on the make-up of the local population. In this sense the whole social context
can be clearly identified as a “contact zone” between social agents, who played
various roles and represented formally hierarchical social interactions, in turn
representing the co-presence of different groups in the same space of symbolic
exchanges and social representations.38
Differences of ethnicity and cultural origins of the slaves favoured assimi-
lationist policies and subordination to Portuguese standards. However, Mary
Louise Pratt’s notion of “contact zone” does not emphasise the cleavage among
various groups; on the contrary, she points to the “co-presence, interaction,
interlocking understandings and practices, often within radically asymmetri-
cal relations of power”.39 These ‘interlocking’ features were evident in the
school context in Cape Verde in the colonial period. Interactions between
social actors in that space reflected the socio-cultural diversity existing in
the islands. This mix included European (mainly Portuguese) teachers, white
students (settlers’ children), some mulatto and black students who gradually
gained access to education, students living at urban centres, and students from
rural areas.40
During the colonial period schools in Cape Verde could be considered con-
tact zones where hierarchies involved not only teachers and students but also
the variety of contents taught, as well as the experiences of those social actors.
The domination of European culture and social systems, along with the Catholic
religion, were clearly reproduced by students who assimilated the knowledge,
way of life, symbols, and beliefs of the coloniser, starting with the enforced
use of the Portuguese language. Language was a strong element of colonial

38 Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” 33–40.

39 Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Traveling writing and transculturation, 7.
40 Afonso, Educação e Classes Sociais em Cabo Verde; Mesquitela Lima, A Poética de Sérgio
Frusoni. Uma Leitura Antropológica (Lisboa: Instituto da Cultura e Língua Portuguesa,
1992); Carlos Manuel, and Neves Cardoso, “The Colonialist View of the African-origin
«Other» in the Portuguese Society and its Education System,” Race Ethnicity and Educa-
tion 1, no. 2 (1998): 191–206, https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332980010204
318 Ramos and Goulart

power, particularly in Cape Verde, where the sociolinguistic diversity of slaves

was annihilated, although they resisted by creating their own language: creole.
The linguistic issue would eventually become a distinctive identity attribute of
Cape Verdean culture. While Creole was not allowed in classrooms, it became
commonplace among students in the playground.41
After independence another contact zone affiliated to education emerged
outside the archipelago. The lack of a local university forced students to go
abroad for their under-graduate degrees.42 Although they were no longer
under colonial government, most of them went to European countries and
continued to occupy a culturally subordinated position vis-à-vis the hegemony
of the Western world. As a result, they acquired what Martin D. Munk, Panu
Poutvaara and Mette Foged define as “transnational cultural capital”.43 Democ-
ratization, access to education, and social changes after independence enabled
women to apply for scholarships on a par with their male peers, although rela-
tively few of them, along with their male peers, also went to foreign countries
to attend university.44 The multiplicity of social interactions would eventually
raise awareness on the part of the local population of an emancipatory process
regarding social, cultural, and even political influences in education over in the
course of the colonial and post-colonial period.

5 Women Narratives about Schooling

To understand the educational practices in Cape Verde during the colonial

period, we conducted twelve in-depth interviews, seven of these in Portugal,
and five in the archipelago, with women over 50 years of age who had spent
their childhood in rural and urban areas in four of its nine islands: Santiago,
Boavista, São Vicente, and Santo Antão. We interviewed women ranging in age
from 52 to 83 years old. They had different economic and social origins and
their parents had been civil servants, rural workers, a tradesman, domestic

41 Luís Batalha, “The Politics of Cape Verdean Creole,” in Los Criollos de Base Ibérica, edited
by Mauro Férnandez, Manuel Férnandez-Ferreiro, and Nancy Vásquez Veiga (Madrid/­
Vervuert: ACBLPE, 2004): 101–110, https://doi.org/10.31819/9783865278555-008
42 Maria da Luz Ramos, “O capital Cultural e o Perfil dos Altos Funcionários Públicos
Cabo-verdianos: um estudo sobre os directores-gerais” (Phd Dissertation, ISCSP-­
Universidade de Lisboa, 2016), 164–165, http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/12737
43 Martin D. Munk, Panu Poutvaara, and Mette Foged, Transnational Cultural Capital,
­Educational Reproduction, and Privileged Positions (Paper presented at Politisk Sociologi
Seminar København, 2012).
44 Ministério do Ensino Superior, Ciência e Inovação, Anuário Estatístico (Praia, 2011/12).
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 319

employees, a dressmaker, trade employee, and housewives. Some of the inter-

viewees had obtained university degrees outside of Cape Verde, a fact which
indicates a continuing investment in education on the part of those women,
while others had not made the effort to obtain a higher level of education,
and one of them had only reached Grade 3 at primary school. This particular
woman lived in a rural context where a patriarchal environment acted as an
obstacle for girls interested in schooling. She explains that in these contexts,
women were supposed to be socialised to take up domestic roles, and thus
reading and writing skills were not considered crucial to their future roles as
mothers and spouses.
The reconstruction of childhood memories by the interviewees focused on
their lived experiences and on local circumstances. In general, their reports
did not reveal negative perceptions of their school attendance; in fact, the
respondents described pleasant memories and talked about them with liveli-
ness and nostalgia.
One possible explanation for this lack of negativity is that the Portuguese
presence in Cape Verde was not marked by strong conflicts or strife,45 as was the
case in other Portuguese colonies in Africa, such as Angola, São Tomé e Prínc-
ipe or Mozambique, where the indigenous workforce was widely exploited.
Mining, plantations, settler farming or even public works competed for African
labour, a situation which generated ongoing tensions.46 Given the general lack
of resources, the extractivist tension was lower. In the case of Cape Verdeans
one of scholars’ most important criticisms of the colonial administration was
the absence of measures to avoid or overcome famine and the consequent
mass migration of local population.47 According to Cape Verdean authors
such as Mariano48 or Anjos,49 widespread miscegenation and incorporation
of Portuguese culture, together with Christian values, made Cape Verdeans
more docile and cordial, and less predisposed to direct conflicts and struggles

45 Gabriel Fernandes, A Diluição de África. Uma Interpretação da Saga Identitária Cabo-­

verdiana no Panorama Político (Pós) Colonial.
46 Rosa Cabecinhas, and João Feijó, “Collective Memories of Portuguese Colonial Action
in Africa: Representations of the Colonial Past among Mozambicans and Portuguese
Youths,” International Journal of Conflict and Violence 4, no.1 (2010), 28–44; Goulart, “Child
labour, Africa’s colonial system and coercion: The case of Portuguese colonies, 1870–1975.”
47 Alexander Keese, “Managing the Prospect of Famine: Cape Verdean Officials, Subsistence
Emergencies, and the Change of Elite Attitudes during Portugal’s Late Colonial Phase,
1936–1960,” Intinerario 36, no. 1 (April 2012): 49–70.
48 Gabriel Mariano, Cultura Cabo-verdiana: ensaios (Lisboa: Ed. Vega, 1991).
49 José Carlos Anjos, Literatura, Intelectuais e Poder (Praia: Instituto Nacional de ­Investigação
e Património Cultural, 2002).
320 Ramos and Goulart

against the colonial power. Nevertheless, Almada claims that the assimilation
process may be considered a “symbolic violence” against Cape Verdeans for
trying to annihilate their African heritage.50This would become an important
argument to bolster the independence movement during the 1950s.
We attempted in the interviews to structure the women’s narratives in terms
of how they recalled the ways in which they developed their daily routines
related to school. As a way of conveying a clear vision of those women’s memo-
ries, their “voices” illustrate the perceptions and experiences reported by them.

6 Access to School

As previously stated, the number of girls attending school in Cape Verde was
lower than that of boys during colonial times and even at the beginning of
independence, regardless of the fact that education had become mandatory
for all children by that time. According to the women we interviewed, while
education was accessible to everyone, many constraints persisted. Avelina,
from an urban setting, told us that she and all of her five siblings went to school:
“We all went to school. Me and my brothers”.51 Joaquina focused on her grand-
mother valuing schooling: “She was an illiterate woman, but very wise. She
was happy to see us studying”.52 In Gabriela’s street “everyone went to school”.53
Ana remembered girls and boys attending school even though they came from
distant villages: “They had to walk quite a bit to get to school on time ... They
were good students even if they did not have the same economic conditions
as me”.54 Belmira, living in a rural context, remembered a man who arrived in
their village to tell them that “all children were obliged to go to school”.55 As far
as she recalled, “everyone went to school”, but not all completed Grade 4.
It is not only the reduced number of schools at the archipelago that con-
tests the perceptions of the women participants in this research about general
access to school, but the statistical reports related to the low school enrol-
ment rate also question this, as we previously demonstrated. So, why did these
women believe education was accessible to everyone? There are some aspects

50 David Hoppfer Almada, Pela cultura e pela identidade: Em defesa da cabo-verdianidade

(Praia: Instituto da Biblioteca Nacional e do Livro, 2006).
51 Avelina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
52 Joaquina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
53 Gabriela, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
54 Ana, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
55 Belmira, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 321

that could support their perception: a) probably those women were not aware
of what was happening outside their own villages. This would be emphasised
by spatial fragmentation of the country and the distance between neighbour-
hoods; b) children who did not attend school could be working, that is, outside
the daily lives of most of women who took part in this research; c) informal
education, mainly developed by missionaries, strengthened the notion of the
number of individuals with access to schooling; d) acceptance of the elite’s
narratives based on the social mobility of a Cape Verdean due to the Portu-
guese education policies; e) the existence of mandatory schooling when most
of the interviewees attended school; e) the majority of the interviewees are
currently living in Portugal, which adds a social and spatial distance to the
time distance in terms of their memories about school experiences. It is also
important to underline that at the time of the study all of them had achieved a
better social position – or even a higher academic level – that might contribute
to the self-valorisation of their own school education.
Apart from a self-centred perspective, they seemed to follow a socially con-
structed notion that schooling was a distinctive feature of Cape Verdeans in
comparison to other former Portuguese colonies during Portuguese adminis-
tration.56 In fact, in 1950, the illiteracy rate amongst the islands of the archipel-
ago was 78,5%, while it was 96,7% in Angola, 98,9% in Guinea-Bissau and 97,8%
in Mozambique.57 The sub-text could be that there is an exalted, and idealistic
perception of colonial educational policy, and its apparent ­effectiveness, as
demonstrated by the formation of a group of Cape Verdean civil servants work-
ing side by side with white settlers in colonies like Guinea-Bissau and Angola
in spite of the disparities of salaries and differing social status among them.58
In sum, the interviewees did not seem to have been involved or affected by the
debate after the archipelago’s independence that questioned Portuguese poli-
cies and strategies about education as “part of an ideological State apparatus”.59

56 Cláudio Furtado, Génese e (Re) Produção da Classe Dirigente em Cabo Verde; Gabriel
­Fernandes, A Diluição de África. Uma Interpretação da Saga Identitária Cabo-verdiana no
Panorama Político (Pós) Colonial.
57 Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Anuário Estatístico (Portugal, 1950), 44–45.
58 Elisa Andrade, As Ilhas de Cabo Verde. Da «Descoberta» à Independência Nacional
(1460–1975) (Paris: L’Hermatan, 1996); Carreira, Formação e extinção de uma sociedade
­escravocrata; Gabriel Fernandes, A Diluição de África. Uma Interpretação da Saga Iden-
titária Cabo-verdiana no Panorama Político (Pós) Colonial.
59 Henry A. Giroux, “Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition.”
(South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1983).
322 Ramos and Goulart

Even for those who had access to education, their social conditions were
variable and led to notorious inequalities among younger and older siblings
because of economic constraints, together with intermittent absences from
school even when educational facilities were available close to their homes.60
Increasing the number of schools along with the mandatory schooling for all
children from 1964 onwards may somehow have minimised such disadvantages
for older siblings. According to Manuela, “At that time, those of my age and
younger than me were able to study and complete the 11th grade and higher
education, but with great effort”.61 Celeste reported that she and her younger
brothers and sisters attended school and attained university degrees with the
help of their older brothers who “attended school but had to drop out because it
was very far from home”.62 Apart from poverty and scarcity of resources, when
families embraced the responsibility of providing education for their children,
they tried to assure school supplies for them. Joaquina remembered that her
grandmother “made a great effort and sacrifices to buy the pens, pencils, note-
books”, and that they even borrowed from older neighbours.63 She recalled the
beautiful dress her mother made for her first day at school: “I was barefoot, but
I went to school very happy with my beautiful dress”.64 Some families received
help from other relatives, particularly those who were emigrants, to get books
and other school materials. Filomena recalled that her uncle in America sent
clothes, shoes, money and other things.65 Avelina remembered that, as she was
the oldest among the siblings, she got new things whereas her younger sis-
ters and brothers got her castoffs.66 Alberta also recalled that “School supplies,
especially books, were passed hand-to-hand among siblings, cousins, neigh-
bours … briefly that was our strategy for dealing with economic limitations”.67
Natália felt privileged remembering, “It was just my father and me; he was a
tradesman. I always got my own books, notebooks and pencils”.68
While obviously, any generalization from the interviewees’ perceptions and
experiences is inappropriate, nevertheless, the allusion to the endeavours of

60 Barros, “Génese e Formação das Elites Politico-administrativas Cabo-verdianas: 1975–2008,”

233–234.
61 Manuela, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
62 Celeste, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
63 Joaquina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
64 Joaquina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
65 Filomena, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
66 Avelina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
67 Alberta, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
68 Natália, ‘Pers.Com’ (2014).
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 323

mothers to provide all the materials their children needed for school cannot
be ignored. There is also evidence that men contributed to the provision of
resources for education. In some cases, male-out emigration forced moth-
ers to become heads of their own families, which still remains a feature of
Cape ­Verdean culture and social structure.69 Barros claims that in Cape Verde
the family core has been structured around the maternal figure. When men
are absent from the household, due to a father’s incapacity for providing their
­family needs, the mother’s network of relatives assist her in supporting her
children’s education expenses.70
An idea often expressed during the interviews had to do with a certain
notion that schooling would be an important element of upward social mobil-
ity, which could explain the widespread interest in education. The afore-
mentioned emergence of secondary schools in the archipelago at the end of
nineteenth century allowed young people to be recruited to the bureaucratic
elite instead of being exposed to the vulnerabilities and uncertainties of agri-
culture and commercial activities.71 Despite this appreciation of the impor-
tance of education, some women reported that encouragement to attend
school was not always clearly expressed by their families. Other families were
strongly motivated, or believed that education could give their children the
chance to have a better life in the future. Gabriela’s mother used to say to her:
“Education is the key for your future”.72 Filomena referred to several adults in
her neighbourhood making children aware of the importance of schools: “even
the priest and nuns at my village encourage us to be good students”.73 Natália
felt pressured by her father to “get good results”.74 Even though Belmira’s
mother made sure they did not skip any classes and had school supplies, she

69 Celeste Fortes, and Elizabeth Chalinnor, “Women in Cape Verde,” in Oxford Research Ency-
clopedia of African History (2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.575
70 Barros, “Génese e Formação das Elites Politico-administrativas Cabo-verdianas: 1975–
2008”; Elizabeth Chalinnor, “Caught between Changing Tides: Gender and Kinship in
Cape Verde,” Ethnos, 82, no.1 (May 2015): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015
.1042489
71 Andrade, As Ilhas de Cabo Verde. Da «Descoberta» à Independência Nacional (1460–1975);
Cláudio Furtado, Génese e (Re) Produção da Classe Dirigente em Cabo Verde; Timothy J.
Finan, and Helen K. Henderson, “The Logic of Cape Verdean Female-headed House-
holds: Social response to economic scarcity,” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural
Studies and World Economic Development 17, no. 1 (1988): 87–103, https://www.jstor.org
/stable/40553127
72 Gabriela, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
73 Filomena, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
74 Natália, ‘Pers.Com’ (2014).
324 Ramos and Goulart

did not experience any other signs of support.75 Conceição was not supported
in any way and had to take care of her own education as an adult:

My father didn’t want my sisters and me to attend school. Only my brother

was encourage to go school. I wanted to emigrate, so when I was sixteen
I went to adult school … I knew it was important to be literate. I paid my
own education because I was already working.76

This interview extract underlines a gender issue, one representing a particular

experience that highlights male domination and the devaluation of women in
Cape Verdean society. This patriarchal context was not explicitly mentioned by
most women in the interviews. A few of them, however, reported that they did
not consider the possibility of continuing to attend school, because it was the
common view of the society that women only needed to acquire basic knowl-
edge: reading, writing and some mathematics. At least three of them revealed
that they did not expect to reach a higher level of schooling. Joaquina wanted
to finish school after Grade 3, but again she referred to her grandmother forc-
ing her to get educated: “She encouraged me. It seemed that she felt sorry for
not having the chance to go to school”.77 For Alberta, continuing after Grade
6 was not an option, even though her brothers attended secondary school: “I
believed it was not necessary. Besides that, there was no secondary school on
my island and going to São Vicente island was out of question”.78 Conceição,
who came from a poor family, was pleased that she had become literate: “I was
happy for not being illiterate as my mother and aunts”.79 Natália was initially
not ambitious about going to university, but then she applied for a scholarship
and received her education at a University abroad.80
Gender inequality access to education was evident during colonial times,
but after independence the presence of girls at school increased measurably,
owing to a substantial campaign to reduce the illiteracy rate which was close to
65% in 1975, and, of the newly 51,112 literate from 1979 in Cape Verde, 58% were

75 Belmira, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).

76 Conceição, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
77 Joaquina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
78 Alberta, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
79 Conceição, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
80 Natália, ‘Pers.Com’ (2014).
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 325

women.81 This achievement was supported by public investment in education

and a positive response from the population.82

7 School as a Space of Training and Social Dynamics

Public education established in Cape Verde from the eighteenth century

boosted the spread of Portuguese culture and this focus was clearly defined by
the school curriculum, which omitted all cultural aspects or knowledge about
African reality, in general, and about Cape Verde, in particular.83 This school
configuration spread throughout the twentieth century in the archipelago and
took on certain characteristic features. During this time the curriculum for
Cape Verdean students focused on Portuguese History, Geography, Literature,
and so on.84
The interviewees did not express a critical attitude regarding this physi-
cal and cultural distance of school curricula from their own local culture and
demography. For them, at a certain point, being at school implied learning
whatever was taught by teachers, and the contents represented an abstract
and collective imaginary place. Avelina was fascinated by her acquisition of
new knowledge beyond her immediate local context: “I really enjoyed study-
ing and for me school allowed me to get to know the world.85 Joaquina said:
“I was there [at school] and I knew that I have to learn as much as I could,
otherwise I could be punished. That’s it. I was not aware of the importance of
the contents”.86 For Celeste, the most important thing was the opportunity to
go to school instead of doing domestic tasks and for her content was also not
that important: “I have never asked myself why I was not learning things about
Cape Verde”.87 Ana’s comment about her travel to Portugal is an illustration

81 João Paulo Mendes Furtado, “Evolução da Educação em Cabo Verde Antes e Depois da
Independência” (Batchelor’s degree, Universidade de Cabo Verde, 2008), http://hdl.handle
.net/10961/2688
82 Carlos Rodrigues, “Reflexões em Torno de Investimentos na Educação em Cabo Verde,”
Revista de Psicologia e Educação On-Line 2, no. 2 (2019): 33–39.
83 Elias Alfa Moniz ma Moniz, “Percalços do Ensino Colonial em Cabo Verde: seculo XVI aos
anos 40 do século XX,” Revista E-Curriculum 3, no. 1 (2007).
84 Neves, O Seminário-Liceu de São Nicolau: o contributo para a História do ensino em Cabo
Verde, 142–145.
85 Avelina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
86 Joaquina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
87 Celeste, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
326 Ramos and Goulart

of the assimilationist approach to education in Cape Verde: “When I came to

Portugal, my greatest curiosity was to go and see some of the places I had heard
about”.88 At that time she thought it was great to learn about Portugal.
The school environment, one in which most childish games took on a care-
free and liberating form, was configured as a space for childhood accomplish-
ment, distinct from the domestic sphere, where authority, obedience and
consistent social control were part of children’s daily life routine. Ana looked
forward with longing and curiosity to starting school when she saw her older
brothers go to school:

I used to watch my brothers going to school with their books, and note-
books and, I wanted to go along with them. I was always asking them
about school; how it was. I think all my interest was curiosity and for me
it was more like as a space where I would find a lot of fun than a space for
having classes. That was what I enjoyed the most, so I couldn’t wait to be
able to go to school too.89

Belmira felt free to play and be with friends at school, whereas at home “I had
to help my mother at home and the [social] control was permanent.”90
As previously mentioned, sometimes children had to walk several kilom-
eters to get to school, especially in the less inhabited islands like Fogo, Brava,
and Sal; in Santo Antão, São Nicolau, Santiago the mountainous terrain added
to the challenges of getting to school . Notwithstanding these obstacles, the
interviewees described pleasurable memories when they recalled their rou-
tines on the way to school. For Natália, walking to school was like being in a
playground: “Fortunately, or unfortunately, my school was not very far from
my home, but I took full advantage of it to play and have fun on the way”.91
Joaquina also had good memories of walking to school with friends from her
neighbourhood; “We used to play on the way to school; we did many things
along the way; we used to tell stories. Sometimes we stole papayas. It was a
good time. We were poor, but it was the best time of my life”.92 With her friends,
Arlinda both played and did homework on the way to school: “The path to
school was very nice, because it was an opportunity for being relaxed with my

88 Ana, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).

89 Ana, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
90 Belmira, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
91 Natália, ‘Pers.Com’ (2014).
92 Joaquina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 327

friends. Sometimes we used to study along the way. Specially multiplication

table, the name of the rivers, cities and mountains of Portugal”.93
In a community where social control was tight, the School, latu sensu, could
be considered at that time as a place of liberation and even of girls’ emanci-
pation, especially for those who had many tasks and domestic assignments.
Even if the learning outcomes were not always very useful to girl pupils, school
was a space for playing, relaxation and sociability among peers, which, in
other environments, was hampered by the constant presence of adults. Filom-
ena remembered: “At school I was not controlled as I was at home, although
the teacher was always attentive to our behaviour”.94 Manuela also referred
to these different environments and the comparison between them: “It was
always quite lively. We used to wait for each other… We were always laughing
and making jokes and pranks. Sometimes, when we did something wrong, I
don’t know how, but my mother always knew what was going on”.95 Ana also
mentioned the social control: “I was a bit rebel. I did not usually skip classes,
because I liked it a lot. But once or twice I went for a walk with colleagues,
boys and girls. Of course, when I got home, my mother already knew, because
someone from the neighbourhood had seen me”.96
Generally, the school space was shared by boys and girls. There were, how-
ever, times when they were separated according to gender:

The classes were mixed at primary school and [we] played together.
When I went to secondary school it was different. The classes were mixed
but we entered through one door and the boys through another. At play-
ground we were also separated. There was even a fence. However, during
classes we were together.97

In Avelina’s school boys had class in the morning whereas girls had their classes
in the afternoon.98 In Manuela’s school, however, everybody was together in
one classroom, but they did not usually play together with the boys.99
Although the subjects taught were identical for boys and girls, there were
extra-curricular activities related to gender roles assigned to girls and related to
skills they would be expected to have as future wives and mothers. Therefore,

93 Arlinda, ‘Pers.Com’ (2014).

94 Filomena, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
95 Manuela, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
96 Ana, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
97 Ana, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
98 Avelina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
99 Manuela, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
328 Ramos and Goulart

some schools provided embroidery and sewing classes. Joaquina described

the embroidery classes that she liked: “There was always a teacher who taught
embroidery on Saturday. And it was mandatory. I liked it. And it was useful...
The boys … I don’t know, but I think they only had regular classes”.100Ana, how-
ever, was irritated with these classes: “I remember that at primary school what
really irritated me were what they called “lavores” [sewing and embroidery].
We - girls - had to keep embroidering while boys were outside at the play-
ground. I thought it was very unfair”.101 Like Joaquina, Gabriela appreciated
learning embroidery:

Sometimes girls stayed inside the classroom to learn sewing and embroi-
dery while boys were outside playing. I didn’t mind because I enjoyed it
a lot. I also learned with my mother at home. Me and my sisters. And we
used to be very competitive. I ended up being very good on embroidery.102

According to the interviewees, especially the older ones, contact between boys
and girls was always under close surveillance, both inside and outside school.
However, they had their own codes to deal with that. Sometimes interactions
between them were more common on their way from home or to school, par-
ticularly when they had to travel long distances. These women had different
perceptions about the respective school performances of boys and girls in
the classroom and how teachers treated both genders. According to Belmira
“Boys who were good students were applauded. That didn’t happen so often
when a girl stood up”.103 Ana, however, was recognised by her teacher: “I always
wanted to read aloud. I was a good reader, so I always volunteered and my
[male] teacher used to say, “very well”. In general I was a good student. There
were good and bad students among boys and girls”.104 According to Manuela,
boys and girls were treated the same: “I don’t remember if there were differ-
ences in the classroom. Bad students were punished. It didn’t matter if they
were a boy or a girl”.105 Joaquina reported that boys got better results than girls
and that she and other girls got help from a boy in the neighbourhood who
was more advanced.106 Arlinda thought that “sometimes teachers were more
condescending with girls”.107

100 Joaquina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).

101 Ana, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
102 Gabriela, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
103 Belmira, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
104 Ana, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
105 Manuela, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
106 Joaquina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
107 Arlinda, ‘Pers.Com’ (2014).
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 329

The experiences and perceptions of the interviewees regarding their teach-

ers were variable. In the case of Portuguese teachers, the interviewees often
referred to their distant relationship with them, but they also noted that some
Cape Verdean teachers were also distant. Alberta remembered one of the male
teachers: “He was Portuguese. I think he was quite regular. I don’t remember
anything in particular about him. For me, it was someone who I had to obey”.108
Manuela had a Cape Verdean male teacher from her own village: “At the time
I felt that he was more severe with girls, but I don’t know. Probably it was just
my perception”.109 Joaquina looked upon the teacher as a person different from
other people: “I mean, with different habits, traditions … I don’t know; for me
he was not like us [Cape Verdeans]”.110 Celeste saw her female Cape Verdean
teacher as a role model: “She was patient but authoritarian. I admired her.
Sometimes I used to dream of being a teacher just like her”.111
The interviewees’ voices represent the school as a space stripped of friction,
a place of encounters that implicitly represented a happy ending to a scenario
of sacrifices associated with an achievement. Most of them tended to have a
romanticised perception of their learning experiences. They did not perceive
schooling as a colonial strategy for assimilation, but as an emancipatory instru-
ment for improving their social conditions and status. Nevertheless, a few of
the interviewees demonstrated a certain perception of the existing hierarchies
in which the profiles of distinctive teachers emerged as individuals who were
positioned at the top. In reality, teachers had two types of power: formal and
symbolic. Both were characterised by socio-cultural peculiarities based on
the colonial administration’s interest in Cape Verdeans educated according to
a Portuguese matrix. At another level of that hierarchy, gendered inequality
can be found, sometimes subtly expressed. The co-presence of all these social
actors configures itself as a contact zone.112

8 Final Considerations

This chapter aimed to analyze the narratives, perceptions and experiences of a

group of women who attended primary schools in Cape Verde during the last
decades of the colonial period and at the beginning of independence. Through
the narratives of twelve women we can identify their childhood period as a

108 Alberta, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).

109 Manuela, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
110 Joaquina, ‘Pers.Com’ (2020).
111 Celeste, ‘Pers.Com’ (2019).
112 Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Traveling writing and transculturation.
330 Ramos and Goulart

time of precious memories centered on school and domestic life. In the inter-
views, they highlighted the existence of tensions with the settlers whom they
described as individuals who held powerful positions in the archipelago,
and with whom they did not interact. From this socially constructed cleav-
age emerged a social distance between Cape Verdeans and Portuguese, one
which emphasised the idea of “us” and the “other” that intersect in the same
space without underpinning social ties. Even the curriculum contents taught
at school accentuated the distance between “colonial” and “local”, i.e., the theo-
retical knowledge acquired by the students referred to an abstract space that
did not correspond to their everyday life or their experiences from social inter-
actions. It should be noted that most of the teachers were Portuguese and who
were prepared to implement the model outlined by the colonial government.
This was reproduced both in the metropole and in the colonies. In fact, the
colonial administration had no interest, nor did they have sufficient knowl-
edge, to integrate aspects of the African continent’s cultural diversity into
school curricula.
The social actors’ interdependence in this case is not perceived by the inter-
viewees as the recognition of an emotional linkage among them, but only as
a material relationship with unbiased purposes. Reverting to Pratt, it should
be underlined that social ties are generated and expanded within hierarchical
structures, regardless of the existence of shared or opposite assumptions.113
In the process of reconstructing the scenario of their experiences, these
women described and explained the variety of social dynamics triggered by
the routine of going to school. This context allowed for the expansion of their
space of socialisation, apprenticeship, and sociability, and simultaneously pro-
moted a latent process of identity redefinition which comes to highlight the
idea of an “educated woman” who could aspire to a more favourable social
position. Emigration, mainly to Europe, and its social remittances, might have
contributed to that social representation of school by the interviewees, espe-
cially among those who had lived in Portugal or acquired a university degree
abroad.
Directly or indirectly, the women participating in this study expressed an
acceptance of the Portuguese educational model, one which did not integrate
any elements of Cape Verdean culture, history or social reality. They learned
about the coloniser’s country, and the content114 was internalised without any
questioning, while they appropriated the Portuguese language in a natural
way and used it at school and in other formal circumstances. At home, among

113 Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone.”

114 Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone.”
Women’s Narratives of Education in Cape Verde (1930’s–1970’s) 331

family and friends, the use of Creole language was common. It was considered
an oral dialect created by slaves to communicate among them and remains
adequate to the domestic sphere.115
The representation of the value of schooling in the archipelago is based on
both colonial discourse and on the perspectives of Cape Verdean elites who
had attained a powerful social position due to their cultural capital.116 Their
transnational professional experience in other Portuguese colonies was con-
sidered to be a sign of the success of the assimilation process which aimed to
encourage better dialogue with indigenous populations in the last phase of
colonial domination.117 The achievement of social prestige by the elite at this
time partly supports social representations about the success of education in
Cape Verde during the colonial period and has an echo in the post-colonial
time. Women narratives in this study are aligned with these insights, but they
do not represent all the realities and contexts. Their rhetoric is far from debates
regarding deconstruction of discourses and the purposes behind education
policies implemented by the Portuguese government in its former possessions
in Africa, particularly in the Cape Verdean islands.118
It should be noted that the women we interviewed lived their experiences
at school in different periods ranging from the 1940s to the beginnings of Cape
Verde’s independence. Over that time social contexts changed and the school
population increased. Initially, schools received children from privileged eco-
nomic groups; however, schooling began gradually to include students from
more vulnerable social and economic backgrounds. Teachers also ceased to
be exclusively Portuguese and European missionaries, as Cape Verdeans came
to take on this role. In short, this study attempts to raise questions about the
role of the school and of education in general in relation to the complexity and
diversity of education in Cape Verde during the colonial period, and attempts
also to locate this within the domain of women’s education under colonialism.

115 Márcia Rego, The Dialogue Nation of Cape Verde: Slavery, Language and Ideology (Lanham:
Lexington Books, 2015).
116 Andrade, As Ilhas de Cabo Verde. Da «Descoberta» à Independência Nacional (1460–1975);
Barros, “Génese e Formação das Elites Politico-administrativas Cabo-verdianas: 1975–2008.”
117 Anjos, “A Condição de Mediador Político-Cultural em Cabo Verde: intelectuais e difer-
entes versões de identidade nacional.”
118 Afonso, Educação e Classes Sociais em Cabo Verde; Lourenço Ocuni Cá, “A Educação
Durante a Colonização Portuguesa na Guiné-Bissau (1471–1973),” EDT – Educação
Temática Digital 2, no. 2 (2000); Mendes Furtado, “Evolução da Educação em Cabo Verde
Antes e Depois da Independência”; Varela, “A Educação, o Conhecimento e a Cultura na
Práxis de Libertação Nacional de Amílcar Cabral.”
332 Ramos and Goulart

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Portuguese Foundation for Science and
Technology (FCT) under the project: PTDC/IIM-ECO/5303/2014 for their
support.

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 Chapter 13

The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of

Castilho Soares

Antónia Barreto and Clara Carvalho

1 Introduction

This paper focuses on the reform of Portuguese colonial education in the early
1960s, which was part of a restructuring of the colonial policy of the Estado
Novo (New State), of the dictatorial regime that ruled Portugal from 1933 to
1974. From 1945 onwards, the colonial policy of the Portuguese government
was the target of harsh criticism at the international level, both at multilat-
eral institutions, mainly the United Nations (UN), and within regional inter-
national meetings. At the same time, this policy was confronted on the ground
with the emergence of the emancipation movements and, from 1961 onwards,
with the liberation wars in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique. The
Portuguese government’s reaction to these confrontations was to design and
implement various development plans and a set of reformist campaigns. These
covered new strategies of political, economic, and social interventions, includ-
ing those in education. To understand the key orientations of the 1960s reforms
in education, we focus on the work of one of the mentors of the public-school
reform, Amadeu Castilho Soares, who designed the Development Plan for the
Education System in the Overseas Provinces in 1961–1962.1 Soares’ proposal
included a comprehensive study of the situation of education in the colonised
territories, as well as a reform plan, and presented a revealing and concern-
ing picture of basic education at the end of the colonial occupation. Given
the difficulty of accessing a range of official resources, and the limited num-
ber of such sources on colonial education, Castilho Soares’s manuscript shed
new light on the subject and helps answer our questions: what were the main
features of Portuguese colonial education in the late colonial period and how
operative were they? And what was the extent of the reforms implemented
in the 1960s, a period of late colonialism marked by government support to

1 Amadeu Castilho Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias
Ultramarinas, typescript, 1962. Reference: 8781 BCEA (Central Library for African Studies,
ISCTE-IUL).

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004690172_014

The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 339

settlers’ migration and their refusal of independence, while denying the causes
and impact of the nationalist wars contesting the Portuguese domination?
This analysis is based on the original manuscript of Soares’ plan, held at
the Centre for African Studies (CEA) at ISCTE-IUL. It delineates in detail colo-
nial education policies implemented in Angola in 1964. Soares later published
an article in the journal Episteme, in 2002, which presented the main ideas
and conditions of the implementation of the development plan.2 The origi-
nal manuscript contains both the plan’s draft and an unpublished study of
colonial schooling in the early 1960s. In this chapter, based on documentary
research, we analyze the data presented in the manuscript and consider the
proposal in its historical context, a proposal which explores the conditions and
context of its own elaboration. We start with a brief literature review on the
educational colonial policies of the Estado Novo, focusing on the developmen-
tal interventions of the 1950s and 1960s. This is followed by a presentation of
the details of the main historical setting of the educational reforms in Angola
in the 1960s, reforms that set the stage for a comprehensive understanding of
Castilho Soares’ proposal. Although the reformist proposal was intended to
include all the territories under the Portuguese administration, only Angola
and Mozambique were considered settler colonies and the main setting for
implementing colonial policies.

2 Portuguese Colonial Policy

The colonial policy followed by the Portuguese government in the late colonial
period was determined by the establishment of the Estado Novo, the political
regime endorsed by the military coup of 26 May 1928, and the dictatorship
which followed, a government inaugurated with the approval of the Con-
stitution of 1933, and which come to its end 46 years later with the military
revolution of April 25, 1974. Until the institution of the Estado Novo, a consist-
ent colonial policy had never been put in place, despite the propagandised
“­historical rights” based on five centuries of overseas commercial trade. Owing
to the lack of state capacity and dubious interest in the colonies3 during the

2 Amadeu Castilho Soares, “Levar a Escola à Sanzala: Plano de Ensino Primário Rural em
Angola, 1961–62,” Episteme: Revista Multidisciplinar da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa
10–12 (2002): 138–141. http://memoria-africa.ua.pt/Library/ShowImage.aspx?q=/geral/A
-00000001&p=1
3 The interest of the colonies in the metropole was the subject of several debates during the
late 19th century. See Jerónimo, The ‘Civilising Mission’ of Portuguese Colonialism, 1870–1930.
340 Barreto and Carvalho

monarchic (until 1910) and republican (1910–1928) periods, the Portuguese

colonies were not the metropolitan government’s focus of systematic policy.
Colonial territories, which included Cape Verde, Guinea, Angola, São Tomé
and Príncipe, Mozambique, Timor, Macau, and the regions of India, enjoyed
administrative autonomy and the regional governments were permitted to
establish agreements with international companies. This earlier policy was
quite the reverse of the Estado Novo approach towards the overseas territo-
ries, one which affirmed their dependence on the metropolis. The empire was
designed as a single body, headed by the metropolis which had full control
over the colonies. Centralised domination was originally announced in the
Colonial Act, first published in 1930, and included in the Constitution of 1933,
which defined the “Organic Bases of Colonial Administration”.4 This document
reiterated Portugal’s territorial integrity, an integrity shaped by the metropo-
lis and the overseas territories and justified by the ostensible importance of
Portugal’s civilising mission. According to the Colonial Act, the overseas ter-
ritories, under the strict dependence and economic control of the metropo-
lis, were considered by Portugal to be an integral part of the country as well
as the expression and repository of its preordained, or self-proclaimed, “his-
torical mission”. Together, Portugal and the overseas territories constituted the
Portuguese colonial empire. The administration of the colonial territories was
placed under the authority of the Minister of Colonies and the Government
of Lisbon, to whom local governors were obliged to report. The Estado Novo
colonial policy was characterised by administrative centralization, imperial
economic integration and equilibrated balance payment over development
policies.5 After World War II, and due to external criticism and internal pro-
tests, a constitutional revision was implemented in 1951. This changed the
denomination of “colonies” to “overseas territories” and envisaged a reformist
economic policy of repressive developmentalism characterised as “a particular
combination of enhanced coercive (symbolic and material) repertoires of rule,
programmed developmental strategies of political, economic and socio-cul-
tural change, and processes of engineering of socio-cultural differentiation”.6

4 Acto Colonial, July 8, 1930, Decree 18.570.

5 Cláudia Castelo, “O modo português de estar no mundo”: luso-tropicalismo e ideologia colonial
portuguesa (1933–1961) (Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 1999), 46–47.
6 Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, and António Costa Pinto, “A Modernizing Empire? Politics,
Culture, and Economy in Portuguese Late Colonialism,” in The Ends of European Colonial
Empires, ed. Miguel Jerónimo, 51 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 341

3 Education in Portuguese Colonies

The colonial education policies undertaken by the Estado Novo regime can
be divided into two distinct periods in the context of the colonial policies
described above. The first period (1930–1951) corresponds to the implementa-
tion of a colonial policy regime and includes an imperial education system
based on the idea of the differentiation of the colonised subjects and the
understanding of the Portuguese empire as “one country with many races”7
with unequal rights and duties. The second period (1951–1974) relates to the
implementation of a new colonial policy following the creation of the UN and
the international and internal pressure to denounce Portuguese colonialism.8
This period is characterized by the promotion of the Portuguese language as
the language of instruction in schools in order to “raise the race” and com-
bat the influence and values of instruction dispensed by foreign Protestant
churches in overseas territories which was seen to threaten the continuation
of the “indigenous status”.9 During this period, elementary primary education,
offered by the missions and with Portuguese as the language of instruction
became more accessible to the indigenous populations and was justified by a
developmental vision and no longer by pious desire.10
The implementation of an educational system was based on the segrega-
tion of the various local populations where the indigenous were taught by mis-
sionaries or African teachers and the settlers went to state schools, if available.
This system, although implemented at a later date, is similar to the educational
policies followed in the French and English colonies from the end of the 19th
century, and which began to be contested in the 1930s.11 Within this broader

7 João Carlos Paulo, “Vantagens da Instrução e do trabalho: ‘Escola de massa’ e imagens

de uma ‘educação colonial portuguesa’,” in Educação Sociedade & Culturas, ed. S. Stoer
(Revista da Associação de Sociologia e Antropologia da Educação 5, 1996), 99–128.
8 Maria Luisa Marroni, “Os outros e a construção da escola colonial portuguesa no Boletim
Geral das Colónias, 1925–1951” (Master’s dissertation, Faculty of Letters of the University
of Porto, 2008), 31–39.
9 Paulo, “Vantagens da Instrução e do trabalho: ‘Escola de massa’ e imagens de uma
‘­educação colonial portuguesa’.”
10 Rui Gomes, “Percursos da Educação colonial no Estado Novo (1950–1964),” in Para uma
História da Educação Colonial: Hacia una História de la Educación Colonial, eds. António
Nóvoa, and Marc Depaepe (Porto, Sociedade Portuguesa de Ciências da Educação, Educa,
1996), 153–163.
11 Ana Isabel Madeira, “Comparing Colonial Education Discourses in the French and Por-
tuguese African Empires: An essay on hybridization,” Revista Española de Educación
Comparada 31, no. 31 (2018): 130. Works by historians Ana Isabel Madeira on education,
Cláudia Castelo and Miguel Jerónimo, together with Hugo Gonçalves Dores and António
342 Barreto and Carvalho

panorama, Portuguese colonial education was differentiated from that of

countries colonised by other imperial powers by the limited investment made
in education, the creation of a category of “rudimentary education”- later
called adapted education- with the same segregationist purpose of training
a workforce for the colonial enterprise which characterised the French and
British policies, and gave over the complete responsibility for rural education
to Church missions. These new trends in colonial education policy were put
in place later than in the other colonial administrations. Finally, territories
under the Portuguese administration were widely spread and, on the African
continent, only Angola and Mozambique received minimal investment in
education.
The first stage of the implementation of the Estado Novo educational pol-
icy was built around the legislative framework designed within the Colonial
Act, which legally confirmed the historical relationship between the State and
the Catholic Church. Throughout the colonial process, the Catholic Church
was one of the main instruments of domination and control of the African
populations, over whom they exercised and justified their power to “civilise
and evangelise”,12 as they were granted the exclusive power of instruction in
relation to the African populations in Portuguese colonies. The Colonial Act
confirmed, framed, and prescribed the current practice of differentiated edu-
cation for colonisers and colonised in legislation.13 The monopoly of teach-
ing for Africans allocated to the Catholic missions was later reinforced by the
agreements signed between the Holy See and the Portuguese government in
1940 (Concordat) and 1941 (Missionary Agreement), which institutionalised
partnerships and distributed responsibilities.14 The task of education was
therefore conflated with evangelization. The objectives and the instruments
used by the missions to both educate and evangelise were the same: to model
the spirits and the bodies of the Africans for obedience to the Europeans. This
entailed the devaluation and /or neglect of local cultures, and amounted to an
assimilationist policy that reflected some aspects of French colonial education
policy. The state assigned the responsibility for rudimentary education to the
Catholic church and committed itself to financial support to Catholic mission

Costa Pinto, have shed new light on the similarities, differences, instances of cooperation,
and the divergences, amongst the policies of these colonial powers in Africa.
12 Paulo, “Vantagens da Instrução e do trabalho: ‘Escola de massa’ e imagens de uma
‘­educação colonial portuguesa’.”
13 Colonial Act, art. 24.
14 Art. 15 Concordat, art. 15.
The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 343

schools.15 The Catholic Church was also in charge of both professional and
domestic education, the latter being intended to prepare indigenous women
to be housewives and mothers. The missions’ responsibilities included vari-
ous other activities, such as health care for the indigenous populations, as well
as carrying on scientific studies of historical, geographic, and meteorological
scope.16
The regime of differentiated education for colonisers and colonised was part
of a broader policy of dual legislation enshrined in the Statute of Indigene-
ity, created in 1917, reiterated by regulations in 1926, 1942, and 1954, and only
revoked in 1962. The Indigenous status, according to the legislation of Estatuto
do Indigenato, was not applied to all overseas territories: it was introduced in
the colonies of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea, as a mechanism to control
local populations. Indigenous people were Africans, blacks, and people consid-
ered uncivilised, and whose mother tongue was not Portuguese.17 Estado Novo’s
policies did not consider the indigenous population groups as subjects with
rights, but as objects of a rule or regime in which they did not participate, and
whose aim was the creation of a rural labour workforce, one that should be
seen as being free, submissive, and evangelised in the Catholic religion. In the
light of this policy, full citizenship was an individual status, and not transmissi-
ble from parents to children. To request Portuguese citizenship, the indigenous
individuals had to apply to a local court, declare that they wished to become
assimilated, and abandon their traditional native customs. One of the main
requirements for acquiring the status of “assimilation ”or “civilization” was
the correct use of the Portuguese language. However, this linguistic skill was
dependent on the accessibility of the school and an individual evaluation made
by the local authorities. Only evangelization could be conducted in the local
languages.18 The State intervened in the education through the development of
educational policy, curriculum plans and examination certificates.19
A policy for the education of rural African populations was officially ­created
in 193020 and comprised rudimentary primary education, vocational ­education,
and normal education. The normal schools for the training of indigenous

15 Organic Statute of the Portuguese Catholic Missions of Africa and Timor (decree 12:485 of
October 13, 1926) art. 21.
16 Organic Statute of the Portuguese Catholic Missions of Africa and Timor art. 21, p
­ aragraph i.
17 Decree-Law 39:666 of 1954, art. 2. See Manuel Golias, Education Systems in Mozambique,
p. 23.
18 Missionary Agreement, art. 16.
19 Rafael Ávila de Azevedo, Subsídios para a História do Ensino Ultramarino (Lisboa: Agência
Geral do Ultramar, 2006).
20 Decre-Law 238 of 16 May 1930
344 Barreto and Carvalho

teachers were later called “post-schoolteacher qualification schools”. “Indig-

enous education” for native populations was designated as official education
under the responsibility of the Catholic missions, alongside the private educa-
tion provided by the Protestant churches throughout the colonised territories.
It was subsidised by the state, but the teachers were never considered public
servants.
For Europeans, mestizos, and assimilated people, primary education was
available in public or private establishments, confined to urban centres. These
schools copied the structure and programs of the metropolis and classes were
taught by primary school teachers trained in Portugal since the first teacher
training schools for primary education in the colonies only appeared in 1962
and did not meet the needs for more teachers. Even these students attend-
ing primary school had limited opportunities to continue their education
within the colonial space. Secondary education was offered in lyceums, which
were opened in Cape Verde in 1917, in Angola and Mozambique in 1919, and
in Guinea as late as 1958. Technical and vocational education was even fur-
ther delayed: the first commercial and industrial institutes were only opened
in Angola and Mozambique in 1961. Scarce both in the number of establish-
ments and available teachers, secondary, technical, and vocational education
never fully corresponded to the needs of the various populations, nor to the
economic requirements of the labour market for trained workers.

4 Colonial Education Reform in the 1950s

The aftermath of World War 2 (WW2) promoted a significant reformulation of

colonial policies, already announced by the reformist policies of French and
British colonial administrations of the late 1930s.21 At this time colonial pow-
ers espoused a coercive developmental policy which included education. After
WW2, these policies were reformulated as part of an effort to align colonial
education policy and education with new investments, with the expansion
of the education offered – and through scholarship programmes seeking to
encourage the shaping of future elites.22 This international initiative set the

21 Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, and António Costa Pinto, “Introduction: The Ends of Empire:
Chronologies, Historiographies, and Trajectories,” in Ends of European Colonial Empires,
eds. Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and António Costa Pinto (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015), 4.
22 See Matasci, Jerónimo, and Dores, “Introduction: Historical Trajectories of Education and
Development in (Post) Colonial Africa,” 1–28.
The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 345

stage for the reforms implemented in education in the Portuguese colonies

from the 1950s onwards – with a delay of two decades if compared with other
colonial enterprises.
The Portuguese government insisted on maintaining the colonial ter-
ritories and devised a new policy of domination implemented both at the
internal level and in external relations. The reforms were framed in terms of
a ­constitutional revision (1951) in which the term “colonies” was replaced by
“overseas provinces”, and with the definition of Portugal as a country with dif-
ferent integrated provinces that stretched “from Minho to Timor”. This revi-
sion process included the adoption of the Luso-tropical theory of the Brazilian
sociologist Gilberto Freyre, the implementation of “foment” or development
plans in the settlement colonies, Angola and Mozambique, and the revocation
of the Indigenous Statute in 1962. This meant that Portugal’s accession to the
UN and participation in the Non-Aligned Conference in Bandung (Indonesia)
in 1955 made clear, at the international level, the incongruity of maintaining
the ­colonial regime. The Minister of Overseas Territories, the reformist Sar-
mento Rodrigues, invited the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre to visit and
report on the Portuguese empire where colonialism was meant to be a form
of “­affective domination”, rather than an exploitative system. Books written
by this sociologist23 throughout the 1950s, on the long journey undertaken in
1951–1952 to the corners of the colonial empire, attempted a “scientific” justi-
fication of the exceptional character of Portuguese colonialism, based on the
so-called “luso-tropical features” of the Portuguese enterprise. Freyrian theory,
developed to justify Brazilian national identity in the 1930s, was freely adapted
to the Portuguese colonial territories. This theory proposed the uniqueness
of Portuguese colonization based on miscegenation, the flexibility and toler-
ance of the colonisers, and the creation of a Christocentric ecumenical com-
munity in the colonial empire.24 Colonialism in Portuguese terms was held to
be an initiative of civilization and evangelization based on the integration
of the native populations, not on their domination as was the case in colo-
nial enterprises led by European overlords. This attitude towards the mainte-
nance of colonial rule was in conflict with the right to self-determination of
peoples enshrined in the UN Charter, and was designed to side-step dialogue
with those movements which contested colonial rule. It led to armed uprisings
in the colonised territories. The liberation wars that began in 1961 in Angola,

23 These books include: Aventura e Rotina, 1953; Um brasileiro em terras portuguesas, 1953;
Integração portuguesa nos trópicos, 1958; O luso e o trópico, 1961.
24 Cláudia Castelo, “O modo português de estar no mundo”: luso-tropicalismo e ideologia
­colonial portuguesa (1933–1961), 46–47.
346 Barreto and Carvalho

followed by Guinea in 1963, and Mozambique in 1964, and which only came
to an end after the 1974 revolution in Portugal, were the expression of inter-
nal contestation and the direct reaction to the autocratic autism of the dic-
tatorial government. The regime insisted on maintaining the colonial fabric
and undertook a series of modernization plans that belatedly replicated those
implemented in the colonies under French and British domination from the
1930s onwards, as mentioned above.25
During the 1950s the Estado Novo regime adopted an overseas policy aimed
at fostering the rapid social, economic, and cultural development of the colo-
nies, and integrating some principles of human rights. These developmental
policies went along with efforts made by other colonial powers after WW2, in
a belated effort to develop the kind of welfare and educational activities in the
African territories that would encourage economic investment. The main
expression of the new developmental policy was the adoption of a planned
economic and social intervention, implemented within the framework of the
six-year development plans, which were enforced from 1953 until the end of
the regime. These plans were intended to foster the economic integration of
all territories and to encourage studies and research that allowed for a bet-
ter understanding of the economic and social context of the territories.26 The
­creation of the Political Affairs Department in Lisbon in 1959,27 as well as the
studies led by the Ultramarine Research Council from 1951 onwards,28 pro-
moted a more comprehensive colonial policy, while gathering the intelligence
information urgently needed to deal with local contestation.
The Development Plans were implemented following the development of
the idea of a “Great Portugal”, a country or nation which was seen to include
both the metropolis and the colonies, and laid the ground Portuguese single
market implemented in 1961.29 In the first Development Plan (1953–59) only
30% of the public funds were allocated to the colonies, and most of these were

25 Cláudia Castelo, “Novos Brasis” em Africa: desenvolvimento e colonialismo português

­tardio, Vária História 30, no. 53 (2014): 507–532, 514.
26 Cláudia Castelo, “Novos Brasis” em Africa: desenvolvimento e colonialismo português
­tardio, 516.
27 Jerónimo, and Pinto, “A Modernizing Empire? Politics, Culture, and Economy in
­Portuguese Late Colonialism,” 54.
28 Cláudia Castelo, “Ciência, estado e desenvolvimento no colonialismo português tardio,”
in O Império Colonial em Questão (Sécs XIX–XX): Poderes, Saberes e Instituições, ed. Miguel
Bandeira Jerónimo (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2012), 362.
29 Jerónimo, and Pinto, “A Modernizing Empire? Politics, Culture, and Economy in
­Portuguese Late Colonialism,” 64.
The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 347

directed towards infrastructure implementation.30 The second Development

Plan (1959–64), the Interim Plan (1965–67), and the third Development Plan
(1968–73) were the only ones to include substantial allocations for education.
The importance of education in the budgets for these plans is indicated by the
funding allocation, increasing from 7.2% (Education and Health in the second
Development Plan) to become the second most funded sector third Develop-
ment Plan.31 The plans for investment in education and for the improvement
of the living conditions of the population were aimed at countering the appeal
of the liberation movements and nationalist wars to colonial populations. The
implementation of a new educational system was carried out in this context
and was characterised by the expansion of the network of primary education
in urban centres and in some rural areas, the expansion of secondary educa-
tion, the creation of a system of adapted education relevant to the needs of
rural communities (1957), and the institutionalization and curricular stand-
ardization of the educational system.32 Primary education was expanded and
appropriate education for indigenous people was integrated into the school
system through the creation of adapted education to replace rudimentary edu-
cation aimed at the native population in rural settings. The establishment of
the Council for Adapted Education in 195733 can be seen as a landmark for a
new perspective or vision of African education. The Council’s mission was to
formulate educational policy; decide on the location of the adaptation schools;
define relevant pedagogy; and identify the teaching staff needed to run the
schools. From 1959, those adaptation schools aimed at local populations liv-
ing in rural settings were integrated into the overall design of official educa-
tion.34 The programs of primary education were the same in both the overseas
provinces and the metropole.35 The first schools for Overseas Primary Teachers
were created to train teachers for the urban centres.36

30 Jerónimo, and Pinto, “A Modernizing Empire? Politics, Culture, and Economy in

­ ortuguese Late Colonialism,” 62.
P
31 Cláudia Castelo, “Novos Brasis” em Africa: desenvolvimento e colonialismo português
­tardio, 520.
32 Ermelinda Marques da Silva, “O papel societal do sistema de ensino em Angola colonial,
1926–1974,” Revista Internacional de Estudos Africanos 16–17 (1994).
33 Decree no. 41 472, 1957.
34 The same reorientation of educational policies from the sphere of the Church to that of
the state were conducted in British and French colonies after the Great War. See Matasci,
Jeronimo, and Dores, “Introduction: Historical Trajectories.”
35 Ministerial Dispatch no. 17 883 of 5 August 1960, which applied to the overseas provinces
the programmes in progress in the metropole, approved by Decree no. 42 994 of 28 May
1960, a situation reinforced by Dispatch no. 20 380 of 19 February 1964.
36 Decree nº 44 240, of 17-3-62.
348 Barreto and Carvalho

The modernist and expansionist trends of instruction in the overseas

­ rovinces were both defended and implemented by civil servants in those ter-
p
ritories. In Angola, the colony most favoured for investment, Ávila de Azevedo
(1911–1985), as Director of the Public Instruction Services of Angola (1947–1957)
and then a member of the Legislative Council (1956–1957), proposed the coun-
try-wide establishment of pre-primary education, the increase of the school
network, the training of African teachers, the production of proper textbooks,
and the abolition of adapted education. In his own words, “the teaching of
adaptation is not accepted willingly either by the ecclesiastical entities, to
which it was entrusted nor by the indigenous themselves, who prefer primary
instruction of a European type”.37 This had also been the lesson learned dec-
ades earlier in British and French colonies.
However the reformist ideals of the 1960s were never put in place. ­Funding
intended for the colonies in the development plans went to support the
war efforts, the European settlements, such as colonates in Angola and
­Mozambique, and to improve the educational infrastructures and availability
of education in urban centres.38 The reforms pledged by education experts
came too late. The proposal for the introduction of the so-called “Veiga Simão’
reform”, named after the then Minister of Education, which envisioned the pos-
sibility of integrated education for both settlers and colonised, was planned for
1974–75.39 In April 1974 the regime of the New State ended in Lisbon, and the
path towards independence of the colonised territories became a reality.

5 Amadeu Castilho Soares: Creating a Development Plan for

Education

Amadeu Castilho Soares (1930–2021), a graduate in Ultramarine Administra-

tion from the Superior Institute of Overseas Studies (Instituto Superior de
Estudos Ultramarinos, ISEU), integrated the group of teaching civil servants
who assumed administrative responsibility in the colonies. Castilho Soares
grew up in a small village in central Portugal, where his father worked as a

37 Azevedo, Subsídios para a História do Ensino Ultramarino, 156–157. Author’s translation

38 See Jerónimo, and Pinto, “A Modernizing Empire? Politics, Culture, and Economy in
­Portuguese Late Colonialism.”
39 Joana Quinta, and Teresa Almeida Patatas, “The Historical and Political Contexts that
Led to the Educational Reforms in Angola,” Educational Reforms Worldwide, 109 BCES
­Conference Books, Vol. 18 (Sofia: Bulgarian Comparative Education Society, 2020), 110.
The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 349

railway functionary and his mother as a primary school teacher, a childhood

experience that would lead his interest and commitment to education as a
social trigger for development. On the invitation of Adriano Moreira, Min-
ister of Overseas Territories and a professor at the ISEU, he took part in the
Study Missions on the Attraction of Large Cities and Rural Welfare in Overseas
Territories,40 set up by the Ultramarine Research Council to inform interven-
tion policies. Soares was provincial secretary of Education, Health, Work, and
Social Providence in Angola for one year, from 1961 to 1962, and designed the
plan for the expansion of rural primary education in Angola, under the slogan
“Taking school to the Sanzala”41 which aimed to expand basic schooling for
the rural and peri-urban African population. The proposed measures focused
on increasing the number of schools with and without buildings, increas-
ing the number of teachers, including school monitors and primary school
teachers, and the publication of manuals for the teaching of the Portuguese
language. Soares did not have the opportunity to implement this plan due
to his removal from office in 1962 for political reasons. The regime was con-
tested from inside and reforms were difficult to implement. The provincial
governor, Venâncio Deslandes, who wanted to implement a higher educa-
tion system in Angola without the authorization of the National Assembly,
was dismissed in 1962, leading to the dismissal of all his close collaborators,
including Soares. However, the plan for the expansion of rural and peri-urban
primary education was eventually implemented in 1964, when the Reform
of Primary Education in Overseas Angola, based on Soares’s proposals was
approved.42 This reform included compulsory and free primary education
for children between the ages of 6 and 12, the creation of primary schools,
and the training of monitors, and “school regents” for teaching in rural areas.
A programme for post-school General Studies were also implemented in
Luanda in 1963, a prelude to the future University of Luanda, which dates
from 1968.43 Soares’ manuscript represents the first conception of an inte-
grated education system in Angola.

40 Missão Estudo Atracção das Grandes Cidades e Bem-Estar Rural, 1957, led by the Junta de
Investigação do Ultramar. Author’s translation.
41 Sanzala is a Quimbundu term meaning a local setting or village, synonymous with African
villages in Angola.
42 Decree-Law No. 45908 of September 10, 1964.
43 Ermelinda Liberato, “Advances and setbacks of education in Angola,” Brazilian Journal of
Education, 19, no. 59 (2014): 1003–1031.
350 Barreto and Carvalho

6 Analysis of the Development Plan

The document prepared by Amadeu Castilho Soares, titled Interim Devel-

opment Plan for the Education System in the Overseas Provinces (hereafter
the Interim Development Plan),44 consists of an in-depth quantitative and
­qualitative study of education in the provinces between 1955 and 1962, and a
proposal of reformation, setting out what Soares calls the Fomentation Plan,
or ­Development Plan.45 This document is divided into two sections, the first
consisting of a critical quantitative analysis of the education landscape in
the colonies, based on statistical data presented by the General Directorate
of ­Education on an annual basis (referring to December 31 of each year). The
data presented is indicative of the situation in education at the beginning of
the 1960s and is a unique documentation. Both this analysis, and the proposals
for the future, in the short and long term, are of particular interest to histori-
ans of education as they express the global vision of someone who, although
representative of the political regime in power, identifies the limitations of the
educational system and makes proposals to improve and actualise it with a
view to the development of education in the colonised territories.

7 Quantitative Characterization of the Overseas Education System

Soares calculated the school-age population (from 7 to 14 years) to be 18% of

the total population of each province, with the exceptions of São Tomé and
Príncipe, where the calculation was 12% of the total population based on the
increase in the average adult age due to the immigration of workers. Statistical
data was based on the annual maps of the General Directorate of Education
referring to December 31 of each year.
The disparity of primary education (4 classes) in the different provinces is
remarkable. The archipelagos of Cape Verde, São Tomé, and Príncipe stand
out, due to more than half of the youngsters having access to primary educa-
tion. In the remaining territories, where the population was significantly larger,
only a minority had access to school. Also worth noting is the extremely low

44 The designation “Fomento” had the connotation of “development”. See Cláudia Castelo,
“Novos Brasis” em Africa: desenvolvimento e colonialismo português tardio.
45 Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramarinas,
typewritten dossier, consisting of two files: I-primary education; II-secondary and middle
education. Authors’ translation.
The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 351

Table 13.1  rimary and secondary education: enrolment rates (relative to 1962) in
P
Portuguese Overseas Provinces.

Overseas provinces Population % primary Population % attendance at

7–14 years old school aged secondary school
attendance 15–19 years

Cape Verde 37.746 51% 25.697 5,4%

Guinea 99.900 13,3% 38.528 1,5%
S. Tome and Principe 7.728 58,7% 4.628 7,5%
Angola 887.00 15,2% 406.240 4,0%
Mozambique 1.210.600 35,3% 461.620 3,9%
Macau 28.900 ____________ _________ ______
Timor 83.500 15,3% _________ __________

Source: A. C. Soares, Interim Development Plan, p. 3

attendance in secondary education (7 classes) in all the colonised territories.

When one analyses the situation by type of education, the disparity between
provinces is further accentuated, as illustrated in Table 13.2.
Thus it can be seen that most of the school population attended the adap-
tation schools, which were headed and managed by the Roman Catholic mis-
sions, and private schools, which were under the aegis of the foreign missions,
usually Protestant Christian churches. As shown in table 13.2, the number of
pupils attending the official schools in Cape Verde is noteworthy when com-
pared to those of Angola and Mozambique. Until 1960 the adaptation teach-
ing system consisted of just two classes. Even if students within this system
were able to continue their education in the official school, only a limited
number did it: 10% in Angola and 6% in Mozambique. Soares considered the
yield of the adaptation teaching to be very small: “ ... it should be around 10 to
20%, which after all, largely corresponds to the volume of subsidies granted
by the State to the Catholic missions that took responsibility for this type of
teaching”.46 In other words, the system of discrimination between official edu-
cation (for the Portuguese and assimilated population), and the education for
Africans (conducted by the missions in rural areas), was maintained during
that decade.

46 Amadeu Castilho Soares, Interim Development Plan, p. 4.

352 Barreto and Carvalho

Table 13.2 Primary education by type of education and province in 1962

Overseas province Total number of students State school

(public, private and adaptation students
schools)

Cape Verde 12.299 7.729

Guinea 13.534 1.061
S. Tomé and Príncipe 3.097 1.759
Angola 123.029 17.167
Mozambique 395.806 15.486
Macau 46.716 972
Timor 6124 271

Source: A. C. Soares, Interim Development Plan, adapted by the authors

Table 13.3 Number of official primary school teachers

1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962

Cape Verde 151 151 154 174 185 192 215 47

Guinea 30 30 31 35 32 41 39 53
S. Tomé 23 36 32 36 42 57 41 –
Angola 304 323 381 481 513 690 702 1.366
Mozambique 310 310 414 467 519 657 745 926
Macau 35 38 45 43 52 40 50 50
Timor 3 3 5 7 7 7 34 60

Source: A. C. Soares, Interim Development Plan, p. 9

The high number of teachers in Angola and Mozambique is surprising, as the

first magisterial schools in the colonies were only opened from 1962 onwards.
According to Soares, most of these teachers were recruited from among the
group he calls “suitable people” to meet the particular teaching needs. Thus,
from this evidence, we conclude that the number of teachers presented in this
table corresponds to people without specific training. This formal preparation,
although limited in its aims, was conducted in Normal Schools, also called
post-teacher schools, created from 1930 onwards (see above).
The Plan presents the numerical increase of students attending secondary,
high school, and technical education, excluding São Tomé and Timor, where
The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 353

Table 13.4 Number of Normal Schools, teachers, and pupils in 1962

Number of schools Number of teachers in normal Number of

schools students

Angola 2 13 242
Mozambique 7 31 545

Source: A. C. Soares, Interim Development Plan, p. 11

Table 13.5 Secondary and technical schools in Cape Verde

Year Number of Number of Number of Number of Number of Number of

secondary teachers students technical teachers students
schools schools

1956 1 33 892 1 2 127

1957 1 36 888 1 7 113
1958 1 31 954 1 6 203
1959 2 30 1.031 1 11 139
1960 2 46 1.137 1 15 197
1961 2 44 1.013 1 18 241
1962 2 50 1.05 1 23 318

Source: A. C. Soares, Interim Development Plan, doc. II, p. 4

this level of education did not exist until 1962. In Cape Verde, where the first
Lyceum dates from 1917, and the first technical school from 1956, students’
attendance numbers were much lower in technical education than in second-
ary education.
In the case of Angola and Mozambique technical education predominated
over secondary education. Note that the data presented by Soares only con-
cerns secondary and technical education. The data on the arts and crafts
schools, and on agricultural education, education aimed at the African popu-
lation, are not included here, nor are those on the ‘middle institutes’, which
included the school for training civil service personnel and the commercial
and industrial institutes.
In Guinea the numbers are similar for both secondary and technical educa-
tion. In 1962, 259 students attended the lyceum that opened in 1957, and 308
attended the technical school opened in 1959.
 354 Barreto and Carvalho

Table 13.6 Secondary and technical education in Angola and Mozambique

Years High Teachers Students Technical Teachers Students

schools schools

Ang Mz Ang Mz Ang Mz Ang Mz Ang Mz Ang Mz

1953 2 2 – – 1162 928 4 2 55 65 950 1828

1954 2 2 – – 1283 1000 4 6 71 115 1362 2114
1955 2 2 47 58 1510 1106 4 6 112 127 1769 2285
1956 5 2 88 58 1954 1106 7 6 155 127 2052 2779
1957 5 3 98 85 2395 1831 9 6 200 139 2468 3124
1958 5 3 124 100 2844 2052 9 6 227 187 3002 3858
1959 5 3 132 106 3523 2251 9 8 248 209 3582 4.521
1960 5 3 140 112 3878 2062 9 8 286 216 4477 5416
1961 7 5 165 132 4515 2926 13 10 314 297 5742 6550
1962 9 6 193 175 5820 3497 13 13 397 308 7373 7700

Source: A. C. Soares, Interim Development Plan, doc. II p. 7 – 8, adapted

8 Qualitative Characterization of the Overseas Education System

Soares provides a comprehensive qualitative analysis of primary education

and lists the multiple constraints that contribute to the low level of success
of the system, although he assumes ignorance of the success rates. The main
problems identified in this Plan, from the supply-side, are the lack of sufficient
numbers of qualified teachers and the absence of an inspection system. Other
key obstacles to the implementation of education plans were in the form of
the overcrowded classrooms, lack of teaching materials,47 and poor infrastruc-
ture.48 The author recommends the creation of specific classes ‘for mentally

47 Soares notes that schoolbooks and other materials were insufficient or non-existent,
as well as not being adapted to the contexts. Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o
Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramarinas, 12.
48 The number of classrooms was also insufficient and those that existed did not offer the
minimum conditions. Basic resources for the time, such as blackboards, notebooks, and
pencils, were also lacking. Finally, school timetables were unsuitable to the climatic con-
ditions. Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultra-
marinas, 14, 16.
The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 355

retarded children or those with other abnormalities’.49 Castilho Soares argued

that the programs were inadequate for the local conditions, and summarise
Castilho Soares’ position as follows:

From the theoretical point of view the design of the system is inadequate
from the base, being a system of education that does not recognise
the particularities of the mental and social environment for which it is
intended and in which it develops, and, by ignoring these factors, it fails
to include them. In addition, from a practical point of view, the content
and purpose of those programs would seem to conform to certain new
didactic techniques which had no meaning or value in the existing tradi-
tional processes of education, since they are generally informed by Euro-
pean ideas of education and teaching methods.50

In the case of the qualitative analysis of secondary education, Castilho Soares

recognises similar problems, including the lack of teachers’ preparedness and
pedagogical guidance, inadequate facilities, and the inappropriateness of the
courses to the local needs.51 These deficiencies, he argued, explained the sys-
tem’s failure to achieve its objectives. He points to the limits of the system of
vocational education, which represented one of the regime’s main investment
targets. Castilho Soares emphasises the argument that, “As regards technical
education, there is a profound maladjustment of its organization to the needs
of the economic life of the province, and that this fact is likely to seriously
compromise its development prospects”.52

9 Planning the Education System

Once the quantitative analysis and identification of problems of the education

system had been carried out, Soares presented proposals for its development
in an integrated way. He emphasised the need to achieve a balance between

49 Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramari-
nas, 12.
50 Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramarinas,
1. Author’s translation.
51 Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramari-
nas, 13.
52 Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramarinas,
15. Author’s translation.
356 Barreto and Carvalho

Table 13.7 General trends in primary schooling

Provinces Enrolment Expected annual School Expected

rate in 1962 increase in the enrolment year of schooling
schooling rate rate in 1975 rate 100%

Cape Verde 51% 7% 100% 1974

Guinea 13,3% 11% 44,8% 1985
S. Tomé 58,7% 6% 100% 1975
Angola 15,2% 11% 48,5% 1985
Mozambique 35,3% 7% 63% 1985
Timor 15,3% 11% 48,2 1985

Source: A. C. Soares, Interim Development Plan, p. 22

economic development and the types and grades of education needed to sup-
ply the need of professionals in the colonies:

… the Metropolis must serve as a support to each of the provinces, each

of which on its own does not have the possibilities of recruiting and
­maintaining the body of technicians necessary for this purpose ... the
plans must be designed according to a certain regional complementarity
existing between the provinces ... (for example) concerning schoolteach-
ers, Cape Verde could be the source of recruitment in the very short term
of the teachers needed for Guinea and even Angola, in addition to pro-
viding for its own needs.53

This interim development plan, he argued, should be based on three key issues:
gradual universalization of primary education over the following twenty years,
“large-scale” adult education programs, and the upgrading of secondary and
middle education. His main objective was to reach a school attendance rate of
100 during the period 1974 to 1985.
Soares drew up a forecast of the total primary schooling of the overseas
population as presented in Table 13.7.54

53 Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramarinas,
19. Author’s translation.
54 The data presented exclude Macao as there were no statistical data for that territory at the
time.
The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 357

The implementation of an interim development plan was considered a pri-

ority for primary education.55 The objective was to “create and develop peda-
gogical research” whose purpose would be to improve curricula and teaching
structures by better adapting them to the social, cultural, and geographical
conditions of the provinces,56 to train teaching staff,57 and to improve peda-
gogical materials and institute proper pedagogical surveillance which would
be conducted by education inspectors.58
Besides primary education, which should be accessible to the entire popu-
lation, he also prioritised the promotion of secondary education aimed at a
limited group. Whether or not the same conditions existed for the establish-
ment of this, as had been the case for primary education, – namely the need
of teachers, infrastructure, and pedagogical materials-, Soares stated that the
provinces should be allowed to create “their pyramid of appropriate education,
according to a political criterion, for example, 30% of the pupils who complete
primary education in a province should be admitted to secondary schools”.59
The author adds that education is a development trigger, and a commitment
to the region’s progress should go hand in hand with the education provided,
both in secondary schools and technical and vocational establishments.60
The detailed data presented by Soares draws a comprehensive picture of
education in the colonial territories in the early sixties. Besides the universal
feature of the low number of students having access to primary education, the
differences between the colonies are striking. In Cabo Verde, and São Tomé and
Príncipe these numbers are over 50%, but the two archipelagos had small pop-
ulations and shared a long history of settlement. São Tomé and Principe, taken

55 The financial burden of this planning for primary education up to 1975 is calculated by
assigning a cost per monthly pupil of 828$00 in Guinea, 968$00 in Angola, and 1.136$00
in Mozambique.
56 Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramarinas, 30.
57 School monitors who would constitute 45% of teachers, school regents who would
­constitute 45% of teachers, and primary school teachers only 10%.
58 The author advocated the need to create pedagogical guidance bodies in the provinces,
Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramarinas, 30.
59 Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas Províncias Ultramarinas,
14, doc.II.
60 Soares stated that “modern specialists in matters of education in Africa have understood
that in rural areas, the school, even the one providing secondary education, should be
integrated as much as possible into the life of the community and education should
try to imbue pupils with the mystique of the land. General education itself must not be
detached from the need to create attitudes of mind which are favourable to this mystique”
(Author’s translation). Soares, Plano de Fomento Intercalar para o Sistema de Ensino nas
Províncias Ultramarinas, 14, doc.II.
358 Barreto and Carvalho

together, constituted mainly a producer of cocoa and coffee and depended for
a long time on a plantation economy. An emergent state scheme for corpo-
rate responsibility inspired the main plantations to provide their workers with
basic healthcare and education services, thus helping to raise the local indica-
tors in education. Cape Verde’s geographical location was crucial for becoming
a bridge between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. For centuries it was used as
a trade center, and in the 19th and 20th centuries, and as a result of its relatively
modern economy and infrastructure, it become a provider of both technicians
and a labor force to other colonies. Most of the middle and low colonial func-
tionaries within the Portuguese African colonies were of Cape Verdean origin
and were able to take advantage of their colonial subalternity, i.e., they were
both colonised, and were part of the colonial administration at the same time.
To become an operational and effective support to the colonial investment,
the Cape Verde population needed to be educated, and until the end of the
colonial period (1974), the level of trained population in that archipelago was
equal to, or even surpassed, these numbers in the metropole.
As identified by Soares, the main challenge for the education system was
that of addressing the need for a trained workforce in Angola and Mozam-
bique. The numbers of students and facilities were surprisingly low, consid-
ering that these two territories, Angola in particular, were characterised as
settler colonies, in contrast with Guinea, which was always an administrative
territory. Both the quantitative analysis and solutions proposed by Castilho
Soares have an echo in today’s supply-side initiatives for education in develop-
ing countries, namely the need for more trained and qualified teachers, better
facilities and pedagogical materials, the importance of continuous evaluation
of the system conducted by school inspectors, and the need to adapt to local
conditions. His plan can be seen as the foundation of the education reform
in the colonies, a process that started to be implemented in 1964 but never
reached the optimal results that Soares envisioned.

10 Conclusion

Colonial education under the Portuguese Estado Novo was characterised by a

segregationist policy that had initially deprived African subjects of their rights
to modern forms of education. Their limited education was relegated to the
Christian missions, particularly to Catholic missions. The African population
were seen as subject of a simultaneously civilising and evangelising mission,
one which was clearly set down in the Portuguese Constitution of 1933 which
included the Colonial Act. While the state’s pledge was political, economic,
The Promotion Plan for Overseas Education of Castilho Soares 359

and cultural integration of local populations, it enforced policies of indigenato,

forced labour, and demonstrated non-investment in social support, including
education, all of which led to the increasing alienation of local populations.
The rise of welfare colonialism,61 which emerged from the reforms of the 1950s,
including the Constitution revision of 1951 and the Development Plans set in
place from 1953 onwards, presented the occasion for the implementation of an
integrated educational plan, implemented in 1964, based on the study and pro-
posals of Amadeu Soares Castilho. His detailed analysis points out the main
consequences of the lack of investment in education in the colonies, where
only two small archipelagos, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Principe, reached a
level of slightly over 50% of primary school attendance. Within the new devel-
opment plans, education should have been a priority whose purpose would be
to ensure a modern and trained workforce, and Soares pledged for the need of
an integrated educational program, including both secondary level and techni-
cal and vocational schools – the last aimed at the African population. Although
he was removed from his post before the plans could be implemented, the
plans were the basis of future reforms at the end of the colonial period. These
plans were eventually partially implemented in Angola and Mozambique, the
main Portuguese settler colonies during the last couple of decades of colonial
domination. However, their reach was limited, as African unskilled labour was
still demanded in plantations or on the mines in Tanganyika, Rhodesia, Nyasa-
land, and South Africa,62 and investment went to support both the war effort
and settlers’ social revindications, and not to the support and benefit of the
local population.
We evaluate Soares’ proposals in the light of the events that have taken
place over the last 60 years in terms of the evolution of the education systems
of the African Portuguese Speaking Countries (PALOP). If one looks at, and
based on, Soares’ estimates, the populations of these former colonies would
long since have access to basic education. If his recommendations had been
implemented the population of the overseas territories would have been pro-
vided with full access to mass education. However, this did not occur, and both
the lack of investment and the wars of liberation interrupted further attempts
at educational reform up until the era of independence. Even at the present
time the former Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique are victims
if the educational legacy of the colonial era. Most of the problems identified

61 Jerónimo, and Pinto, “A Modernizing Empire? Politics, Culture, and Economy in Portu-
guese Late Colonialism,” 59.
62 Jerónimo, and Pinto, “A Modernizing Empire? Politics, Culture, and Economy in Portu-
guese Late Colonialism,” 62.
360 Barreto and Carvalho

by Soares in primary and secondary education remain. These include the dis-
parity between education in urban and rural centres, a shortage of qualified
teachers, lack of school materials, a deficit in the supervision and monitoring
of the system, lack of school spaces, insufficient programs, and educational
materials that are ill-suited to the specific or local contexts. The proposals for
reform identified by Soares in the 1960s are in many ways indicative of the cur-
rent problems identified in the school system in these countries, as expressed
by the policy documents of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries
(CPLP), which includes Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP). The
parallels which show a complementarity between the educational systems in
these countries, then and now, call for more attention to their common prob-
lems. The relevance and timeliness of Castilho Soares’ study remain important
today.

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 PART 4
Two Way Round Circulations

∵
 Chapter 14

Swedish Evangelical Mission, Popular Mobilization

for Schooling and Egalitarian Ideals in Ethiopia
1868–1935
Lars Folke Berge

The intellectual elite that emerged in Ethiopia in the decade before the
1936-Italian occupation was, according to historian Bahru Zewde, “one of
the most articulate groups of intellectuals that Ethiopia has ever seen.”1 They
argued for the development of education, the rationalization of central and
regional administration, the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, the
improvement of conditions for the peasantry, modernization of the judicial
system and the military, and the guaranteeing of freedom of conscience.2 In
many African contexts during this time, mission organizations were key actors
who had a significant impact on educational policy and African elites were
educated through mission educational structures.3 In a previous study, I dem-
onstrated that a fairly large proportion of the Ethiopian elite before 1936 had a
background as church members and school pupils in the Swedish Evangelical
Mission (SEM). No less than one third among those of the first generation of
members of the educated intellectual elite, those who came of age before 1925,
were Swedish-educated or, in one way or another, associated with the SEM.
In the much larger second generation, the proportion of Swedish-educated
is not as remarkable although they still stand out, if not in numbers, then in
prominence.4

1 Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the early Twentieth
­Century, 209.
2 Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the early Twentieth
­Century.
3 Kallaway, The Changing Face of Colonial Education in Africa: Education, Science and Devel-
opment. See for instance the case of Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi and Donald Guy Sydney
M’timkulu, both educated in mission schools, described in this book: Christiaens, Goddeeris,
and Verstraete, Missionary Education: Historical Approaches and Global Perspectives. For the
case of Protestant elites in Madagascar during the 1920s and 1930s, see Ellen Vea Rosnes’
contribution in this book.
4 Lars Folke Berge, “The Swedish Evangelical Mission and the Formation of Reformist Elite in
Ethiopia c. 1868–1935,” in State Institutions and Leadership in Africa, eds. Irma Taddia, and
Tekeste Negash (Padova: Libreria Universitaria, 2017), 76. The prominent role of the SEM

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_015

366 Berge

In previous research, I traced the careers and lives of some of these leading
intellectuals of the SEM tradition. Among them were Tayyä Gäbrä-Maryam
(1860–1924), a prominent linguist and author of the first history of Ethiopia,
Heruy Wäldä-Sellasé (1878–1938), poet, author, and the leading government min-
ister until 1936, and Onésimus Näsib (1856–1931), the famous translator of the
complete Bible into Oromo. Yet a great many others were linguists, translators,
editors, educationalists, and – a surprisingly large number – central or regional
government officials in key positions. From humble conditions, they advanced
socially through the SEM schools, to be counted among the leading social reform-
ers of the pre-1936 Ethiopian modernization and nation-building process.5
Yet, we still do not know much about the SEM-connection and the SEM
school experience: what was so special about the Protestant background in
general, or the Swedish evangelical setting in particular? This chapter explores
how nineteenth century modernization ideals in Sweden were transferred to
SEM mission schools in Eritrea and Ethiopia as well as how a return trans-
fer of knowledge resulted in an increased global connectedness in Sweden.
How were egalitarian and democratic ideals of the nineteenth century pop-
ular movements in Sweden transmitted to students in the SEM schools? To
what extent can the SEM emphasis on literacy be seen as a prime mover in
the spreading of modernising values? Furthermore, was this transfer only a
one-way flow, or did it in any way contribute to new knowledge related to the
modernization of Sweden?
The chapter is indebted to two authors. One is Bahru Zewde, mentioned
above, who both inspired and provided the research problem. The other is
Gustav Arén, a former SEM missionary and the author of the SEM history in
Eritrea and Ethiopia, who provided me with a comprehensive background.6
However, given his partisan approach to the SEM, his narrative is often biased,
in particular, regarding his views on Ethiopian Orthodox and Roman Catho-
lics, and should be read with caution.7 In relation to empirical sources, my

alumni is stressed in the post-1936 resistance to Italian rule, see Bahru Zewde, “The Ethiopian
Intelligentsia and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1941,” The International Journal of African
Historical Studies 26, no. 2 (1993), 294.
5 See Berge, “The Swedish Evangelical Mission and the Formation of Reformist Elite in Ethio-
pia c. 1868–1935.”
6 Gustav Arén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus
(Stockholm: EFS-förlaget, 1978), and Gustav Arén, Envoys of the Gospel in Ethiopia: In the steps
of the evangelical pioneers 1898–1936 (Stockholm: EFS-förlaget, 1999).
7 Aasulv Lande, “Evangelical Mission in Ethiopia: Why an Ecumenical Failure?,” in The
­Missionary Factor in Ethiopia: Papers from a symposium on the impact of European missions
on Ethiopian society, eds. Haile Getatchew, Aasulv Lande, and Samuel Rubenson (Frankfurt
am Main: Peter Lang, 1998), 193.
Swedish Evangelical Mission, Popular Mobilization 367

research draws on the huge collection of source materials including the SEM
journal, Missionstidning (MT), and its Biblicist offshoot, the True Friends of the
Bible, Nya Wäktaren. A feature common to Arén’s work, and to the articles that
appear in the mission journal, is their claim to having limited interest in social
developments. This is very much in line with their Evangelical-Lutheran and
Pietist tradition. Their perspective is captured in the view stated by the editor
of a similar journal: “We do not understand politics and we believe it brings
more evil than good”.8 This apolitical stance was spelled out by the SEM leader
in Eritrea: “Our mission is and should be apolitical and in every way appear
loyal towards the authorities and, according to the word of God, we urge our
natives to obey the law and obey the powers that be.”9 Despite this perspec-
tive or view, as I will try to demonstrate in this chapter, it is the relationship
between the mission and surrounding society that runs as a common thread
through much of the SEM activities.
Beyond the West, concepts such as modernization and the modern are highly
controversial and often related to ideas of colonialism and oppression or, as in
the case of Ethiopia, the colonization of the mind.10 Nevertheless, as argued
by Bahru, each country must be studied in relation to its own unique context.
Hence, Ethiopia, in the period under consideration, still independent but
threatened and surrounded by colonial territories and cut off from the sea,
provides an example of a country where modernization, in the sense of learn-
ing from, and competing with, the West, became a matter of survival.11 Donald
Crummey argues that modernization does not necessarily imply an uncriti-
cal copying of the West. He is of the view that modernization in Ethiopia was
more a question of adaptation than the wholesale supplanting of indigenous
culture by Western culture. While the introduction of modern education, as in
most of Africa, coincided with the arrival of Western missionaries, a strong
characteristic of modernization in the Ethiopian case is its association with
religion.12 This is also the dominant feature of the leading SEM intellectuals

8 Quoted from Berge, “The Swedish Evangelical Mission and the Formation of Reformist
Elite in Ethiopia c. 1868–1935,” 79.
9 Jonas Iwarson, “Från vår mission i Ostafrika. Vår missions läge i Eritrea,” in Missionstid-
ning 94, no. 1 (1927): 3–6.
10 Messay Kebede, “From Marxism-Leninism to Ethnicity: The Sideslips of Ethiopian
­Elitism,” Northeast African Studies 10, no. 2 (2003): 163–186.
11 Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the early Twentieth
Century, 209.
12 Donald Crummey, “The Politics of Modernization: Protestant and Catholic Missionaries
in Modern Ethiopia,” in The Missionary Factor in Ethiopia: Papers from a symposium on the
impact of European missions on Ethiopian society, eds. Haile Getatchew, Aasulv Lande, and
Samuel Rubenson (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1998).
368 Berge

at the time. As I have described in previous studies, all of them were actively
involved in translation work and the promotion of vernacular languages. But, in
their activities, they went far beyond a narrow copying of Western ­modernity.13
Of particular interest to this work, Crummey also points out that, although
Christian missionaries came to influence Ethiopia in the fields of education
and health, that influence did not represent a one-way process. He mentions
instances where Catholic missionaries influenced French and Italian govern-
ments, and Protestant missionaries influenced American, British, and Swedish
governments.14
The present article is inspired by the findings of Global History and the
spatial turn, which has also impacted on research on the history of educa-
tion in Africa.15 “Space” may not necessarily be understood as “container”, but
rather as a number of transcendent relations between people, environments,
cultures, and societies. Actors, and ideas, both in Sweden and in Eritrea and
­Ethiopia, may in this way be regarded as nodes: nodes for global connection
and transfer of knowledge and ideas. In the case of my work, this process
evolves around questions of how disparate regions have been subject to a
number of cross-cultural and long-distance influences – the proliferation of
knowledge, expertise, and ideas between regions and areas. As part of such
global entanglements, Swedish missionaries and their counterparts in Africa
can be said to have functioned as “portals of globalisation”, serving as entrance
points for cultural transfer and global connectedness. Interestingly, historians
Mattias Middell and Katja Naumann go one step further when they argue that
interaction between societies instead of a country’s internal development –can
increasingly be seen as the most important aspect when identifying a process
of development and modernity, in both the past and the present.16 In my case,
as I have argued elsewhere, in the 1930s this applies to both Eritrea-Ethiopia
and Sweden.17

13 Berge, “The Swedish Evangelical Mission and the Formation of Reformist Elite in Ethiopia
c. 1868–1935.”
14 Donald Crummey, “The Politics of Modernization: Protestant and Catholic Missionaries
in Modern Ethiopia.”
15 Bagchi, Fuchs and Rousmaniere, eds., Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational
and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post)Colonial Education; Matasci, Jerónimo, and Dores,
“Imperialism, internationalism, and education in Africa,” 221–227.
16 Matthias Middell, and Katja Naumann, “Global history and the spatial turn: From the
impact of area studies to the study of critical junctures of globalization,” Journal of Global
History 5, no. 1 (2010), 158.
17 Lars Folke Berge, “Ethiopia in Swedish Press during the Italo-Ethiopian Conflict 1934–36,”
in Locating the Global: Spaces, Networks and Interactions from the Seventeenth to the
­Twentieth Century, ed. Holger Weiss (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg), 2020.
Swedish Evangelical Mission, Popular Mobilization 369

1 The SEM in Sweden

The SEM and its missionaries were naturally influenced by their particularly
Swedish background. From the time of the Protestant reformation in the early
sixteenth century, the teachings of Martin Luther had provided a powerful tool
for social control and popular mobilization in the hands of kings and a nation-
alised church. The Protestant emphasis on individual Bible reading as the only
way to faith and salvation was seen as imperative, and the Lutheran confes-
sional writings supplied a foundation for the state involvement in education.
Beginning with the 1686 Ecclesiastical law, the clergy became responsible for
promoting and controlling the reading abilities of all parish members. Social
conformism in every village led to a remarkable and evenly spread literacy,
amongst both men and women, and across the social spectrum. Catechetical
records preserved from the 1750s suggest a literacy rate of up to 70 or 90 per-
cent in Sweden at the time.18 For the period 100 years later, E. J. Hobsbawm
says, “A poor and overwhelmingly rural country like Sweden, with no more
than 10 percent illiteracy in 1850 would be hard to imagine elsewhere than in
the Protestant zone of the world.”19
Both literacy and Bible reading were important when Sweden became reli-
giously pluralistic in the 19th century. Anglo-Saxon influences spurred an early
evangelical revival and a broad mobilisation for foreign missions. In 1856 the
SEM was founded as a Lutheran, distinctly low-church popular movement
within the state church. Religious changes during the nineteenth century were
accompanied by social changes, and by the 1850s resulted in the first phase
of industrial revolution, and the second phase in the 1890s. Over this period,
a mostly rural society was gradually transformed into a monetary economy
and an increasingly industrialised, urbanised, and globally connected country.
In response to this, the already literate citizen was organised from below in
a broad spectrum of social movements. In this way, a popularly broad-based
mission society, such as the SEM, from a small, still rather poor country in the
periphery of Europe, came to involve itself in the Horn of Africa.
Those in the revival movements wanted to renew religious life but they
also represented a protest against the worldly state church. They shared with
Pietism the belief in individual conversion, visible in an ethical life, and not
aimed at this world but rather at eternity. It was largely a culturally adverse

18 For a useful overview, see Egil Johansson, “The history of literacy in Sweden,” in Literacy
and Historical Development: A Reader, ed. Harvey J. Graff (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 2007), 238–271.
19 E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875–1914 (London: Cardinal, 1989), 23.
370 Berge

Christianity, where the goal was to transform individuals, not society. Although
the SEM shared in this Pietism tradition, it had a stronger emphasis on grace
and forgiveness, which could be preached by both priest and lay people. It
was precisely this egalitarian ideal that brought about a tension in relation
to the more hierarchical state church – within which the SEM still belonged,
although as an independent missionary movement. From the very beginning,
however, the focus of the SEM was equally on the homeland and the outside
world. The goal was to win souls, regardless of colour of skin, whether they
lived in Sweden or in Ethiopia.
As a child of the Revival, the SEM can be seen as part of a broad, popular
mobilization that included the labour- the temperance- and the cooperative
movements. Together they were instrumental in bringing about the democrati-
zation and modernization of society, leading eventually to the modern welfare
state. But it was also a protest movement against established, vertical society.
Having emerged in the space between the individual and the state, the many
associations within the movement were based on voluntarism and coopera-
tion. With the many changes of the nineteenth century, these voluntary asso-
ciations turned out to be a substitute for the social control previously exercised
by the village community or the rural parish. Beginning in the mid-century,
as identified by historian Ronny Ambjörnsson, a mentality of “orderliness”
in attitudes and behaviour spread. This can be summed up as a concern for
individual cleanliness, hygiene, order at home, high morale, and hard work.20
The SEM missionaries, coming mainly from the 19th century emerging classes
of central and northern Sweden, personified much of this popular mobiliza-
tion: almost all were lay, several were schoolteachers, others were evangelists,
but there were also bakers, carpenters, and workers. Before leaving Sweden,
all went through a four-year training programme at Johannelund Theological
Institute in Stockholm.21

2 Ethiopia

Ethiopia has a long history dating back to the transition to Christianity in the
fourth century with the Orthodox Church schools teaching religious texts in
the sacred language of Ge’ez. Arriving with the trading caravans 300 years later,

20 Ronny Ambjörnsson, Den skötsamme arbetaren: idéer och ideal i ett norrländskt sågverks-
samhälle 1880–1930 (Carlsson bokförlag: Stockholm, 1988).
21 Tore Tafvelin, and Gustaf Lundmark, Ut i all världen. Evangeliska fosterlandsstiftelsens
­mission i Afrika och Asien 1966 –1973 (Stockholm: EFS-förlaget, 1974).
Swedish Evangelical Mission, Popular Mobilization 371

Islam was established in the cities of the east. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and
Mecca provided contacts with the outside world. In the 16th century, Ethio-
pia barely survived a devastating Muslim occupation and was then confronted
by the Portuguese and their attempts to establish Roman Catholicism. From
the middle of the 19th century, a united Ethiopian empire took shape under
Téwodros II (1855–1868). Europeans’ interest in Ethiopia had been almost non-
existent until the beginning of the 19th century. Catholic and Protestant mis-
sion societies had failed to establish themselves permanently, and it was not
until the 1860s that the SEM, as a pioneer among Protestants, was able to gain a
foothold on the Red Sea coast. In the north, war and severe social and economic
problems had undermined the resilience of the people. This is a main reason
why Italy in 1885, a latecomer to the scramble for Africa, was able to establish a
base in the port city of Massawa. Soon thereafter, however, the Italians moved
to the cooler highlands and founded the colony of Eritrea in 1890. The wars in
the north led to a religious nationalism, and under the rule of Emperor John IV
(1872–1889), all missions were expelled from the country. He himself fell in the
fight against the Muslim Mahdists in the West. Meanwhile, his rival for power,
Menilek (1889–1913), whose aim was the colonising and strengthening of the
state’s tax base, made significant conquests among the Oromo in the south.
After the 1896 battle of Adua, while Ethiopia remained independent, it was
still dangerously close to the strategically important Suez Canal, had lost its
coastline, and was surrounded by colonial powers. It was Menilek who con-
cluded that the only way to survive was to modernise the country, partly by
recruiting foreigners from non-colonising countries, among them Swedish spe-
cialists.22 Under Menilek’s rule a variety of new initiatives were undertaken. A
customs office, post office and telegraph, a national bank, and health care were
established, and the railway to the coast in Djibouti was constructed and com-
pleted in 1917. The cornerstone of Menilek’s reforms was a modern and public
primary school. The emperor is said to have stated, “We need educated people
in order to ensure our peace, to reconstruct our country, and to enable it to
exist as a great nation in the face of the European powers.”23 In October 6, 1907
Menilek issued an edict on general education for all children above the age of
six, which urged parents to make sure their children were educated.24 In 1908,

22 See Viveca Halldin-Norberg, Swedes in Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia 1924–1952: A study in early
development co-operation (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1977).
23 Quoted in Richard Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia 1800–1935 (Addis Ababa: Haile
Sellassie I University Press, 1968), 674.
24 Arén, Envoys of the Gospel in Ethiopia: In the steps of the evangelical pioneers 1898–1936,
131–132; Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the early
Twentieth Century, 24.
372 Berge

École Impériale Menilek II, the first state school offering modern Western edu-
cation, was opened. Out of concern for foreign religious interference, and as a
concession to the Orthodox clergy, the school only appointed Egyptian Coptic
teachers. By 1924, about 3,000 students had graduated, many of them becom-
ing civil servants. In 1925, the country’s second state school, the Tafari Makon-
nen School, was initiated. In his opening speech, Ras Tafari said that Ethiopia
was in dire need of education without which it would not be able to maintain
its independence. He argued that proof of true patriotism was to be found in
a country’s schools and in its encouragement of education. In the years before
the Italian invasion there was considerable educational development, in the
course of which schools were founded in almost every corner of the country
with inspiration from the Tafari Makonnen school.25

3 The SEM to Eritrea and Ethiopia

The missionary interest in the Horn of Africa had its origins in the notion that
this region was a path to the interior of Africa. Thus, when the SEM in 1865
decided to send missionaries, the target was not Ethiopia but the ­non-Christian
Oromo peoples further south. Wars and Egyptian slave raids, however, closed
the envisioned way and kept the missionaries at Massawa, which became their
base for continued operations. It was the 1890 Italian conquest of the Ethio-
pian shoreline that enabled the SEM to establish itself in the highlands, and
soon thereafter most of the work moved to Asmara, the capital of the new
Italian colony.
Heading for the south, in 1904 the SEM established itself in the capital Addis
Ababa, then by far the most important marketplace in East Africa with approx-
imately 50,000 inhabitants. This would prove to be strategically important for
the SEM. After only three months, missionary Karl Cederqvist (1854–1919) was
granted an audience with Menilek, who inquired about his assistance in the
reformation of the Ethiopian educational system. As early as 1905, or possibly
1906, Cederqvist founded the first Western school in Addis Ababa. The school
came to be known as “the English school” because the medium of instruction
was English.
Finally, the SEM reached its original goal destination, the Oromo in the
south. By that time, the Oromo had been conquered by Ethiopia, which was
now in the process of economically exploiting the area and, with the help of

25 Zewde, Pioneers of Change: The Reformist Intellectuals of the early Twentieth Century, 26.
Swedish Evangelical Mission, Popular Mobilization 373

the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, ideologically tying the Oromo closer to the
central power in Addis Ababa. The presence of the SEM among the Oromo
came to be marked by ambivalence. By propagating Christianity among the
oppressed Oromo, the SEM was contributing to the Ethiopian centralization
process, while the Protestant inalienable demand for literacy in the vernacular
encouraged a separate Oromo identity. The question is, what other ideals the
Swedish mission transmitted.

4 A Swedish Popular Movement in Ethiopia

From the very beginning, when the missionaries set foot in Massawa, they
founded a school for girls, established a printing house which published lit-
erature in many languages, worked among freed slaves and refugees, and
established health care facilities that were soon extended to the Ethiopian
highlands. After the conquest of Eritrea by Italy, the SEM also established an
extensive network of basic schooling which included village schools and a
teacher training programme. They became pioneers in adult education. Ortho-
dox schools were for boys, not for girls, writes Arén. When special day schools
were started in Beleza for women, this represented a revolutionary change in
Ethiopia through the offering of literacy and the opportunity for further stud-
ies for women in rural areas.26 The purpose of this was to evangelise, but since
literacy was a requirement for membership in the Evangelical Church, school
and education characterised a large part of the SEM activities. A one hundred
percent literacy rate was achieved among the SEM graduates in the Eritrean
Highlands, a phenomenon never seen before in this part of Africa.27 In connec-
tion with this, however, significantly, Arén notes that a recurring observation
in the SEM materials is the emphasis on literacy that sometimes led to purely
nominal Christianity - at the expense of the “true faith”.28
In Eritrea, the Lutheran obligation of reading the Bible in the vernacular
was fulfilled by the SEM through teaching in several languages: Tigré, Tigrinya,
Bilèn or Kunama. However, when, in 1909, the Italian government began to
demand the teaching of Italian language and the history and culture of Italy,
this posed problems for the missionaries, who responded rather reservedly
and slowly to these new rulings. They were accused of being anti-Italian and,
after Mussolini’s takeover in 1922, their loyalty to fascist Italy was questioned

26 Arén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, 318.
27 Arén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, 70.
28 Arén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, 24.
374 Berge

This was one of the reasons why the “Missione Svedese” was finally expelled
from Eritrea in 1932.
In addition to missionary work in the form of spreading the Evangelical-
Lutheran form of Christianity, it is the ambition to modernise society that col-
ours much of the missionaries’ reports. The missionaries were social reformers
who, in addition to their commitment to providing education and health care,
had also come to spread what they perceived as “Western civilization”. From
the SEM school at Geleb, in the Eritrean highlands, missionary Tekla Nilsson
narrated a scene that comes close to the orderliness ideal of the Swedish popu-
lar movements:

At the mission station, the school bell tolls - even though it is Sunday
morning. But pay attention to the boys! They do not look sad. They know
very well what is to come. During the school week, the bell is not always
so willingly obeyed by some as it is today. It is time for the clean Sunday
clothes to replace those worn during the week. The past Wednesday, the
boys had washed them themselves. In the early morning they had set out
for the water hole to have their white shirts and trousers as clean as pos-
sible. It is an honour most people strive for. Now the everyday clothes
will be repaired and tucked into everyone’s little bag on which everyone’s
neat number can be seen. Dividends and exchanges take place quickly.
The whole atmosphere shines with happy smiles all round.29

It was nevertheless their zeal for modernization, their aim to create literate,
independent, emancipated individuals, that had contributed to the expul-
sion of the SEM from Eritrea by the fascist Italian government. And it was for
exactly the same reasons that they were welcomed by the modernising and
nation-building regent of the still-independent Ethiopia. At the end of 1923,
in a speech at a dinner to which the Protestant missionaries were specially
invited, he expressed his appreciation:

Respected teachers: In your highly admired work you provide the children
of the country with both intellectual and moral education. You teach the
children of my country not only reading, arithmetic, and writing, but you
raise them to be good citizens who understand the sanctity and benefit
of work. In your resourceful upbringing of them, you teach them that it is
selfishness that hurts and brings sorrow to humanity and that this needs
to be uprooted. You also teach them how each and every one of them can

29 Tekla Nilsson, “Små söndagsbilder från Gheleb,” Missionstidning 89, no. 15–16A (1922), 216,
author’s translation.
Swedish Evangelical Mission, Popular Mobilization 375

serve humanity by serving their fellow man, and by acting and judging
according to the law of truth and justice. You have in your selfless labour
of love, through great patience and much sacrifice, in a wonderful way
perfected this principle. The Biblical word that says ‘He who gives to the
poor, lends to God’ may well be applied to you. You: who give out in your
daily work without an ulterior motive of receiving anything in return.30

The SEM schools were not limited to teaching literacy. At the school in Addis
Ababa, Amharic, English, Geography, History, Arithmetic, Science, Hygiene
and Singing were taught. Among the Oromo in the south, Athletics was intro-
duced to the schedule from 1926.31 After a four-year period of education at
Asmara, the students were examined. Signe and Daniel Berg reported:

One must marvel at the results, which are very good, especially when one
considers that most pupils did not know anything when they first arrived.
[Now] they can calculate the amount of water in a cylindrical well, they
know how to calculate the surfaces of all geometric quantities, and they
also know, in large part Italian grammar and understand and speak this
language well. To have learned so much in four years, and in two foreign
languages, from originally only being able to read very poorly in their
own language, must be regarded as a good result.32

Christian knowledge was also included in the curriculum, although, at least

among some of the students in the city of Addis Ababa, there appeared to be
a greater interest on their part in the other subjects. Missionary Olle Eriksson
wrote: “There is really nothing to complain about the students’ behaviour, apart
from their reluctance to do homework. I have also thought that they were too
one-sidedly interested in Arithmetic and English and too little in Christianity.”33

30 Per Stjärne, “Från vår mission i Ostafrika. På bjudning hos Abessiniens riksföreståndare,”
Missionstidning, 90, no. 24A (1923): 350–351, author’s translation.
31 Onésimos Näsib, “Pastor K. Cederqvists eftermäle,” Missionstidning 86, no. 4A (1919):
46–47; Per Stjärne, “Från vår mission i Ostafrika. Från skolarbetet i Addis Abeba,” Mis-
sionstidning 94, no. 12A (1927): 179–181; Signe Berg, and Daniel Berg, “Från vår mission
i Ostafrika. Något om arbetet på Asmara missionsstation,” Missionstidning, 88, no. 23A
(1921): 307–309; Nordfeldt Ingeborg, and Martin Nordfeldt, “Från skolarbetet i Nakamte,”
Missionstidning 92, no. 16 (1925): 229; Martin Nordfeldt, “Examen i Nakamte,” Missionstid-
ning, 93, no. 16 (1926): 222–223.
32 Berg, and Berg, “Från vår mission i Ostafrika. Något om arbetet på Asmara missionssta-
tion,” 307–308, author’s translation.
33 Olle Eriksson, “Något om arbetet i Adis Abeba under det flydda året,” Missionstidning, 92,
no. 15 (1925): 217, author’s translation.
376 Berge

Another significant feature of the SEM education was the encouragement

of practical skills. Elementary school education was combined with vocational
education, e.g., carpentry, rope making, bricklaying and gardening for boys,
and housework, in the form of weaving, sewing, embroidery and wickerwork
for girls. Although the purpose of girls’ education was their becoming “good
Christian wives”, from the outset girls’ education was considered as important
as that of boys.34 It is not far-fetched to imagine that the model was based on
the egalitarian ideals that characterised Sweden’s popular movements. In the
same way as the Swedish revival - and popular movements - had been mobi-
lised from below and become vehicles of modernization and democratization
in Sweden, the missionaries tried to work towards this ideal in Ethiopia. The
women who attended SEM schools had “not only broadened their perspec-
tives: they had [also] gained a new dignity. By their mere revelation, they fore-
shadowed a future, a new kind of Ethiopian woman, educated, well-mannered,
equal to men.”35 Already in the first years, when the SEM established itself
in Massawa on the Red Sea coast, outsiders were amazed at how Ethiopian
women and men, Swedish missionaries and Ethiopians, all got along freely and
easily with one another. “In principle, no one enjoyed special privileges. Every-
one was equal, regardless of appearance.”36
Egalitarian principles were also promoted in the SEM work among the
oppressed Oromo people. After the conquest of the Oromo, however, the
strictly hierarchical, Ethiopian social order was introduced, which meant that
literacy was something reserved only for the nobility and the clergy. The SEM,
with an extensive network of self-sufficient village schools, where poor and
homeless both boys and girls learned to spin and weave to make a living, lit-
eracy was spread to even include these previously enslaved peoples.37 From
the SEM southern mission field, one of the missionaries reported the sharp
distinction between rich and poor, and how an Ethiopian nobleman would
never even sit in the same room as a poor Oromo. For the SEM, however,
­equality was a non-negotiable principle: “it must necessarily permeate all mis-
sionary work.”38 Such propagated values were obviously gratefully received by
the Oromo, who hoped that education and literacy would bring about

34 Arén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus,
220, 218.
35 Arén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, 252.
36 Arén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, 252.
37 Arén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, 398,
401–402, 406.
38 Per Stjärne, and Erik D. Söderström, “Från vår mission i Ostafrika. En återblick på
­verksamheten i Nakamte,” Missionstidning 92, no. 13–14 (1925): 196–199, author’s translation.
Swedish Evangelical Mission, Popular Mobilization 377

revolutionary changes. “The Oromo have begun to understand that knowledge

and education are superior to ignorance,” wrote the above-mentioned Onési-
mos Näsib. “Long-term slavery has oppressed people and there is plenty of
hatred and contempt for everyone these years … those in power cannot help
but call us slaves and we no longer want to endure this … all these forces have
been active since the end of the World War.”39
In 1936, when Ethiopia was conquered by Mussolini’s Italy and everything
seemed to be lost to the SEM, Jonas Iwarson, one of the leading missionaries,
summed up what he believed the SEM had meant to Ethiopia. Through the
mission schools and their emphasis on literacy, a broad education had spread
to large areas and resulted in improved vocational skills and social and eco-
nomic development.40 Literacy was the fundamental theme throughout the
SEM activities, at times even overshadowing the religious side of the outreach.
In 1935, Axel Jonsson, director of the school in Addis Ababa, discussed the SEM
influence in Ethiopian education. Towards the end of the article, he senses in
the reader a question that requires an answer: but what spiritual result has all
your schoolwork led to? The real result, he said, answering his own question,
will not be revealed until the Day of Judgment: “We hope and pray that the
Spirit of the Lord will work in the heart of each and every one.”41

5 Ethiopia in Sweden

Returning to a question both difficult and rarely treated by colonial and mis-
sion historians, that of a two-way transfer of knowledge not only from north
to south but also to the north.42 In what way did SEM activities in Ethiopia
bounce back to Sweden, bringing new knowledge about the outside world –
and thus contributing to the modernization of Sweden?

39 Onésimos Näsib, “Från vår mission i Ostafrika. Budskap från Galla,” Missionstidning, 87,
no. 23A (1920): 251, author’s translation.
40 Jonas Iwarson, “Vårt sjuttioåriga missionsarbetes betydelse för Etiopiens folk,” Missionst-
idning, 103, no. 11 (1936), 146, author’s translation. Cf. Arén, Envoys of the Gospel in Ethiopia:
In the steps of the evangelical pioneers 1898–1936, 145.
41 A. Jonsson, “Skolarbetet i Addis-Abeba,” Missionstidning, 102, no. 49 (1935): 579–580,
author’s translation.
42 Marianne Gullestad has contributed with an important study of how Norwegian mis-
sionary activities and photographs from Cameroon, beginning in the 1920s until today,
conveyed meanings, perceptions, and beliefs in Norway, in Picturing Pity: Pitfalls and
pleasures in cross-cultural communication – image and word in a North Cameroon mission
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2007).
378 Berge

Crucial to the entire mission enterprise was the continuous financial sup-
port of the mission supporters in Sweden. The SEM Mission journal was
the indispensable lifeline between Sweden and Ethiopia. Financial issues
were always given prominence by the SEM and the mission journal had exten-
sive and regular reports on the voluntary gifts, no matter how small these were.
The mission journal was also the main communication channel between mis-
sion field and supporters, and the missionaries were required to write regularly
about their activities. As a rule, the articles were written in an easily accessible
and popular style that can be assumed to have suited most of the readers. Little
more than 100 years ago, mission journals were among the most widely read
publications in Swedish popular literature. With a circulation of 25,000, the
SEM journal was one of the largest and most widely distributed publications
in Sweden. One can compare this with a national daily newspaper like Dagens
Nyheter, which also had a circulation of 25,000, even though it was published
and distributed on a daily basis, in comparison with the SEM journal, pub-
lished once a fortnight.43 Nevertheless, mission journals, like other religious
publications at the time, were often not only read by an individual subscriber
but shared and read multiple times, both privately and at public meetings.
During the years around 1900, the journal may have had an actual readership
of up to 100,000. The wide social spectrum of people involved is striking. The
Swedish author Anders Ehnmark writes:

Africa, as is America, is close. The upper class in Sweden has [tradition-

ally] turned itself towards the European great powers, [such as] Germany,
France or England, but the people have turned to America, due to the
emigrants, and to Africa, due to the missionaries. There has always been
an Aunt Eleonora in America, and a cousin Agnes working for the mis-
sion in Congo. The upper class [has] turned to the South [and] the people
to the West, but also to the South, although with their eyes set beyond our
continent. That is the old pattern.44

43 Harry Lenhammar, Budbäraren, Pietisten och Församlingsbladet: studier i svenska religion-

speriodika (Uppsala: Avd. för litteratursociologi, Litteraturvetenskapliga inst., Uppsala
univ., 1981); Robert Odén, Wåra swarta bröder: representationer av religioner och m
­ änniskor
i Evangeliska fosterlandsstiftelsens Missions-Tidning 1877–1890 (Uppsala: Uppsala universi-
tet, 2012), 11, 20; Sven Tollin, Svensk dagspress 1900–1967: en systematisk och kommenterad
kartläggning (Stockholm: TU:s förl., 1967), 22.
44 Anders Ehnmark, Resan till Kilimanjaro: en essä om Afrika efter befrielsen (Stockholm:
Norstedts, 1993), 17, author’s translation.
Swedish Evangelical Mission, Popular Mobilization 379

It is not an exaggeration to talk about a massive popular education and trans-

fer of knowledge. Thousands of mostly lower- and lower middle-class mission
supporters in Sweden expanded their horizons and achieved a sort of direct
communication with contemporary international events. People in faraway
countries were mentioned and identified with as fellow human beings.45 The
mission project linked mission friends in Sweden with church members in
Africa, creating emotional bonds between continents and lifelong learning
across generations. Through the mission publications, such as those for Sunday
school children, and through the custom among mission supporters to “adopt”
and support an Ethiopian pupil, many years later adults in both countries may
have shared the fate of each other’s lives since primary school.
The pedagogical role of the Mission journal as a popular educator cannot be
overestimated at a time when the media and public opinion had barely begun
to show an interest in the outside world. As a country on Europe’s northern
periphery, with few international contacts and no colonial heritage, Swedish
newspapers – at least until the end of the First World War – paid very limited
attention to foreign affairs.46 In contrast, the mission supporters were both
more informed and received a more nuanced picture of world events. The SEM
missionaries and their supporters back home came to significantly influence
Swedish public opinion. Two examples can be given. The very first time the
Swedish public was engaged in a campaign for international emergency aid
was as a result of the SEM missionaries’ reports on the devastating famine in
northern Ethiopia from 1889 to 1892. Sweden was not a rich country, but by the
end of 1891 missionaries had raised a significant sum of money, almost half of
the entire annual budget for the SEM mission in Eritrea and Ethiopia. This,
according to Arén, “was an important step towards a new attitude of commu-
nity and solidarity with people of other faiths and races”.47 A second exam-
ple concerns one of the most significant but forgotten expressions of public
opinion in Sweden: the huge popular manifestations of solidarity with Ethio-
pia before and during the Italian-Ethiopian conflict 1935–1936. This was long
before the 1960s, and the demonstrations during that period against the U.S.
in Vietnam and against Apartheid in South Africa. Mussolini’s threats, and his
subsequent invasion of the militarily inferior Ethiopia (similar at this time to

45 Åke Holmberg, Världen bortom västerlandet [1] Svensk syn på fjärran länder och folk från
1700-talet till första världskriget (Göteborg: Kungl. Vetenskaps- och vitterhets-samhället,
1988).
46 Gunilla Lundström, et. al. Den svenska pressens historia 3 Det moderna Sveriges spegel
(1897–1945) (Stockholm: Ekerlid, 2001).
47 Arén, Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, 322.
380 Berge

Sweden, a member of the League of Nations) led to what I have elsewhere

described as a first Swedish awakening of international solidarity. Unlike the
subsequent 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War, there was an incomparable popu-
lar mobilization in Sweden, reaching from left to right on the political spec-
trum: from political parties, trade unions, peace and women’s organizations
to churches and denominations, sports clubs and Esperanto associations. In
Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city, more than 40,000 people gathered
at the Heden common, in the largest demonstration to date in the city’s his-
tory, to protest against the Italian aggression. Harald Åkerberg, Social Demo-
cratic Member of Parliament and editor of the daily Örebrokuriren, began his
speech: “Anyone who says that Ethiopia’s fate does not concern us, does not
understand the course of history.”48 The long-term contacts between the two
countries, and the strong commitment of the mission-engaged sections of the
Swedish population, were crucial to the formation of public opinion. Regard-
ing this somewhat unexpected and sudden flare-up of solidarity with a coun-
try in faraway Africa, historian Sven Rubenson says: “My impression is that
a sense of belonging and, in most cases, sympathy with the Ethiopians, had
developed to an extent that did not exist with regard to any other African or
Asian people.”49
The Swedish commitment to Ethiopia contributed to a new Swedish self-
image that was characterised by an ethical view of the colonial world order
together with a new, more modern worldview and a view of Sweden as an
active participant in world politics. In 1935 this image of Sweden was entirely
new. While such examples of global connection and cultural transmission need
more research, they strongly suggest that this connection may signify that it
could be the interplay between societies, rather than internal development,
that proves to be the most important force when identifying trends towards
development and modernity.50

48 Lars Folke Berge, “Den bortglömda Afrikasolidariteten. Svenska manifestationer inför det
italiensk-etiopiska kriget 1935–36,” in Kulturell reproduktion i skola och nation. En vänbok
till Lars Petterson, eds. Urban Claesson och Dick Åhman (Hedemora: Gidlunds förlag,
2016), 163.
49 Sven Rubenson, “Sweden and the Italo-Ethiopian crisis 1935,” Scandia 51, 1 (1985), 132.
50 Middell, and Naumann, “Global history and the spatial turn: From the impact of area
studies to the study of critical junctures of globalization,” 158.
Swedish Evangelical Mission, Popular Mobilization 381

6 Concluding Remarks

The SEM emerged as a part of the broad, popular mobilization from below, a
vehicle for democratization and a carrier of the idea of the modern Swedish
welfare state. In addition to the individualism, moralism and otherworldliness
of the Evangelical revival, the SEM shared several features which can be related
to an ambition to modernise society - despite the mission’s self-­perception that
it did not deal with politics and social issues. Above all, the SEM concerned
schooling and a strong emphasis on literacy, which sometimes even tended to
overshadow the propagation of the Gospel. Likewise, adult education, not least
of women, was revolutionary in Ethiopia. The wide range of subjects offered at
the SEM schools went far beyond the framework of Christian knowledge, along
with practical vocational education, the focus on gender equality, and equality
between social and ethnic groups. All of these point to a project that extended
beyond the pure preaching of Christianity.
In Eritrea and Ethiopia it was education and health work that gave the SEM
credibility and reputation. In Italian and fascist-ruled Eritrea, the SEM schools
were successful until the missionaries were expelled in 1932. In Ethiopia, an
emphasis on literacy at the expense of religion, along with the Swedish pietis-
tic tradition of refraining from political engagement, suited both emperors.
Both saw the need for modernization and the promotion of Western educa-
tion but were cautious of any foreign religious or political influence that could
jeopardise political stability.
Christian work among the Oromo did, of course, suit the Addis Ababa
government in its attempts to centralise the country. In the source materials
before 1936, parallels to the language struggle between the SEM and the Italian
government in Eritrea can only be hinted at among the Amhara-conquered
Oromo. It may, however, be assumed that the seeds of future Oromo national
identity had already been sown.
Through the SEM mission journal, the Swedish mission supporters became
involved in some of the most important contemporary international affairs.
Bonds were initiated which transgressed both time and space. People in dis-
tant Africa were mentioned and referred to as fellow human beings. Research
on the long-term consequences of these transient relations between peoples,
environments, cultures, and societies, and between two grassroots movements
in different continents, is still in its infancy. However, this research can be said
to have generated at least two internationally motivated popular mobilizations
in Sweden: the campaign for aid to Ethiopia in the 1880s, and that in support
of Ethiopia in the conflict with Fascist Italy 1935–36. While education and
382 Berge

modernization can be said to have originated in the broad popular movements

for religious, social and political change in Sweden, and spread to Eritrea and
Ethiopia, developments there bounced back to Sweden, contributing to that
peripheral European/Western country eventually becoming internationally
conscious and a part of a more modern, global world.

Acknowledgements

Part of this chapter has been published in Lars Folke Berge, ”Den nya, mod-
erna människan i det globala samhället. Svensk mission i Sverige och Etiopien
ca. 1880–1936,” in Den nya människan, eds. Tomas Axelson and Torsten Hylén
(Hedemora: Gidlunds förlag, 2022), 77 – 100.

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 Chapter 15

Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural

Zones of Contact: the Visual Representation of a
Congolese Leprosy Village in the 30’s
Eva Van de Velde and Pieter Verstraete

In the summer of 2020 the Belgian missionary Father Damien, canonised in 2009
for his aid to leprosy patients in Hawaii, came to be caught in the eye of a media-
storm.1 According to Belgian newspapers in that year, the democratic US politi-
cian Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had accused the missionary priest of “patriarchy
and belonging to a white supremacist culture”.2 The reason for her accusation was
to be found in the Capitol’s national Statuary Hall where Father Damien is one of
two statues representing the state of Hawai’i. Several action groups and cultural
institutions, such as the spokespersons of the Belgian Damien Museum, immedi-
ately raised their voices to emphasise the Christian values of sacrifice and equal-
ity upon which father Damien had founded his missionary work in the leprosy
colony of Molokai’i between 1873 and 1889.3 Although Belgian investigative jour-
nalists for newspapers, such as Apache.be, attempted to show that Ocasio-Cortez’
words had been misunderstood, the media-attention created by this dispute
illustrates the sensitivity surrounding colonial heritage.4 This is not a stand-alone
case: at this time, in several countries around the world, statues of colonial power
figures – for instance statues of slave trader Milligan in the UK, monuments to
Māori subjugator Nixon in New Zealand, or statues of King Leopold I in Belgium
– have recently became subjects of public debate and even vandalism.5

1 The authors are thankful for the valuable feedback on earlier drafts of the chapter they
received from Raoul Kahuma and the editorial team of the edited volume.
2 For the twitter discussion triggered by Ocasio-Cortez’ tweet, see https://twitter.com/MBVD
/status/1289267023587885057 (consulted on Wednesday 9th September 2020).
3 A critical account of Father Damien’s life in general, and his activities in the leprosy colony of
Molokai’i, can be found in Pennie Moblo, “Blessed Damien of Moloka’i: The critical analysis
of contemporary myth,” Ethnohistory 44, no. 4 (1997): 691–726.
4 https://www.apache.be/gastbijdragen/2020/08/05/de-opgeklopte-non-rel-tussen-aoc-en
-damiaan/ (consulted on Friday 21st August 2020).
5 See for example https://theconversation.com/removing-monuments-to-an-imperial-past-is
-not-the-same-for-former-colonies-as-it-is-for-former-empires-140546 or https://www.scmp
.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3088740/statues-colonial-figures-including
-winston (consulted 23rd October 2020).

© Koninklijke Brill bV, Leiden, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004690172_016

386 VAN DE VELDE and Verstraete

Inspired by the emergence of this national and international protest against

racial discrimination and against its colonial roots, this chapter offers a reflec-
tion on the ways in which historians of education have used historical source
material dating back to the colonial era, with a particular focus on Belgium
and its former colony Congo. In addition to referencing the existing body of
research done on the history of formal education in the Belgian Congo, this
chapter focuses on a somewhat neglected domain of colonial education,
namely that which took place in leprosy villages. The chapter represents a con-
tribution to the History of Education in colonial Africa, one which attempts
to go beyond the schoolhouse building to an investigation of nonformal
­education.6 Based on a concrete case study in the form of a visual represen-
tation of one Congolese leprosy village in a film, directed in 1938 by the Bel-
gian medical assistant and filmmaker Gérard de Boe, we demonstrate how the
portrayal of disabled Congolese people by the missionaries played an integral
part in the construction of dichotomic and hierarchical difference between
the ‘inferior Congolese’ and the ‘superior white Belgian coloniser’.7 In this
chapter the reader is first introduced to the existing literature on the history
of leprosy and Congolese education, together with an explanation of the rel-
evance and value to historians of education of studying leprosy villages in the
colonial context. The second section presents an argument for historians of
colonization and colonial education to consider colonial visual propaganda as
transcultural contact zones.8 This argument introduces the reader to two dif-
ferent analyses of visual colonial source material which contains representa-
tions of persons with disabilities. The third section of the chapter offers a close
reading of the 1938 de Boe documentary. Although the documentary obviously
includes many intersectional representations that at the time served, and, it
can be argued, continue to serve, colonial and discriminatory purposes, we
argue that traces of local Congolese culture and resistance can be clearly iden-
tified in the documentary.

1 Leprosy, History of Education and Intersectionality

The history of Belgian colonial education has been substantially developed

since the 1980s, mainly due to the work of educational historian Marc Depaepe

6 Rury, and Tamura, “Introduction: A Multifaceted and Flourishing Field,” 12.

7 Throughout the chapter, inverted commas will be used to accentuate dominant notions in
colonial language that are questioned in the present-day language.
8 See Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Traveling writing and transculturation, 7.
Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural Zones 387

and his team. The main focus of existing studies has been, and remains, the his-
tory of formal education. Formal education in the former colony was mainly
organised by missionary congregations, often supported by the Belgian state.
As numerous studies have pointed out, the Congolese educational system
privileged and emphasised moral decency/education over intellectual knowl-
edge: obedience, gender norms and conversion to Christianity were of central
importance.9 While these generalizations about the moral emphasis applied
mainly to boys’ education, an even stronger emphasis has been found to apply
to the education for girls’ and to non-formal education.10 While the major
impact of formal education on the construction of unequal power relations
between colonisers and the colonised has been shown in existing research,
many scholars tend to gloss over the role played by other educational sites in
the creation of these hierarchical relationships. In this context, the leprosy vil-
lage can be considered as one of those informal educational institutions, one
that separated ‘at risk’ individuals from their society and re-educated them
through strict discipline and evangelization.11
Leprosy is a degenerative nervous disease which causes numbness and skin
deformities, leading to incurable wounds and loss of extremities. In recent
years, the social and cultural history of leprosy has been attracting increas-
ing attention. An important line of thought in these studies is the stigmati-
zation surrounding leprosy: while being recognised as a physical condition,
leprosy has always been a social phenomenon bearing connotations of racial
inferiority, poverty, and sub-humanity. This is undoubtedly due to its engen-
dering what were seen by colonisers as animal-like features, such as facial
ulcers (facies leonina), claw fingers and collapsed nose, and due to this popular

9 e.g. Marc Depaepe, “Ejes de la politica educativa colonial en el Congo Belga (1908–1960),”
Historia De La Educación, 30 (2012), 33–44; Marc Depaepe, Between educationalization
and appropriation: Selected writings on the history of modern educational systems (­Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 2013); Sarah Van Ruyskensvelde, Karen Hulstaert, and Marc
Depaepe, “The cult of order: In search of underlying patterns of the colonial and neo-­
colonial ‘grammar of educationalisation’ in the Belgian Congo: Exported school rituals
and routines?,” Paedagogica historica 53, no. 1–2 (2017), 36–48.
10 Marc Depaepe, and Annette Kikumbi, “Educating girls in Congo: An unsolved pedagogi-
cal paradox since colonial times?,” Policy Futures in Education 18, no. 8 (2018): 936–952;
Pierre Kita, “L’éducation féminine au Congo belge,” Paedagogica Historica 40, no. 4 (2004):
479–508.
11 Rod Edmond, Leprosy and empire: A medical and cultural history (Cambridge: ­Cambridge
University Press, 1996); Lauren Wilks, “Missionary medicine and the ‘separatist tradition’:
An analysis of the missionary encounter with leprosy in late nineteenth-century India,”
Social Scientist (New Delhi) 39, no. 5/6 (2011): 48–66.
388 VAN DE VELDE and Verstraete

conception, placing patients on the boundaries of humanity.12 Although the

existing social and cultural studies touch upon the role played by education in
the construction of the stigmas related to leprosy, few scholars have ­examined
the way childhood and informal educational settings were problematised
in the emergence of discriminatory attitudes towards leprosy patients. A
notable exception to this body of ‘common-sense’ perceptions is the work of
­Kathleen Vongsathorn who demonstrated the important place and role attrib-
uted to children suffering from leprosy in leprosy fundraising campaigns.13
Compared to the amount of attention paid to other tropical diseases, lep-
rosy has received significant Western medical attention, certainly since the
deaths of Father Damien and a few other European citizens in 1889–1890 from
leprosy, which served as evidence that the spreading of the disease was not
limited to the ‘inferior’ black race. The colonisers’ concern for a pandemic,
combined with the biblical connotation of leprosy patients as non-humans to
be excluded from society, prompted the colonial powers to take action against
the disease in their overseas territories.14 At the international leprosy confer-
ences of Berlin (1897), Bergen (1909) and Strasbourg (1923), doctors debated the
causes and possible solutions to the leprosy problem, including segregation in
separate colonies or villages.15 This practice had existed in the early Christian
world but was less common in non-Western cultures where leprosy sufferers

12 For an extensive account of the history of leprosy in Britain and its colonies, see Edmond,
Leprosy and empire: A medical and cultural history. Several reasons for the origination of
this large-scale stigmatization are described by Liora Navon, “Beggars, metaphors, and
stigma: A missing link in the social history of leprosy,” Social History of Medicine 11, no. 1
(2008): 89–105; see also Zachary Gussow, and George Tracy, “Stigma and the leprosy
­phenomenon: The social history of a disease in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,”
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 44, no. 5 (1970): 425–449.
13 Kathleen Vongsathorn, “Gnawing pains, festering ulcers and nightmare suffering: Selling
leprosy as a humanitarian cause in the British empire, c. 1890–1960,” The Journal of Impe-
rial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 5 (2012): 863–878; see also: Kathleen Vongsathorn,
“Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda’s Child Leprosy Settlement, c.
1930–1962,” in Childhood, Youth and Emotions in Modern History, ed. Stephanie Olson
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 56–75.
14 Sanjiv Kakar, “Leprosy in British India, 1860–1940: Colonial politics and missionary
medicine,” Medical History 40, no. 2 (1996): 215–230; Shubhada Pandya, “The first inter-
national leprosy conference, Berlin, 1897: The politics of segregation,” História, Ciências,
Saúde--Manguinhos 10, no. 1 (2003): 161–177; Jo Robertson, “Leprosy and the elusive:
Colonial and imperial medical exchanges in the nineteenth century,” História, Ciências,
Saúde--Manguinhos, 10, no. 1 (2003): 13–40.
15 Pandya, “The first international leprosy conference, Berlin, 1897: The politics of segre-
gation”; Valdemir Zamparoni, “Leprosy: Disease, isolation, and segregation in colonial
Mozambique,” História, ciências, saúde--Manguinhos, 24, no.1 (2017), 13–39.
Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural Zones 389

were often isolated in separate houses but could still take part in community
life.16 As was the case in Medieval Europe, reasons for segregation in the colo-
nies went further than the mere prevention of contagion: leprosy villages were
also seen by the colonial power as a solution to the disturbing appearances of
leprous beggars in the streets and proved effective in converting indigenous
peoples to Christianity or re-educating them into civilization. Thus, according
to Wilks,17 leprosy villages were conceived by representatives of the colonial
power as both medical and pedagogical institutions, and became known as
“the double cure”. Until an effective medical cure was discovered in the 1940s,
treatment included moral education as much as pain relief.18
In the period 1908–1960 Belgian authorities opened 23 leprosy villages
throughout Congo under the banner of the Father Damian association.19 Dur-
ing the colonial period (1908–1960), the history of these leprosy villages, as
well as the history of leprosy in Congo in general, remained unwritten, while
similar documented accounts exist for leprosy villages in the Portuguese and
English colonies.20 These studies show the paradoxical functions of the lep-
rosy village: on the one hand it created stigma by diagnosing and ­segregating
the sick, while on the other hand it proclaimed removal of the stigma as one
of its main goals. According to Vongsathorn, the image of the ‘poor ­stigmatised
sufferer’ was deliberately constructed by charity organisations in order to
increase donations.21 Although disproportional to the actual severity of the
disease, this image of leprosy has remained dominant to this day and con-
tinues to be f­ostered and spread through fundraising campaigns. Analyses
of films and photographs created for this dual purpose, whether historical

16 Navon, “Beggars, metaphors, and stigma: A missing link in the social history of leprosy”;
Zamparoni, “Leprosy: Disease, isolation, and segregation in colonial Mozambique.”
17 Lauren Wilks, “Missionary medicine and the ‘separatist tradition’: An analysis of the mis-
sionary encounter with leprosy in late nineteenth-century India,” Social Scientist (New
Delhi) 39, no. 5/6 (2011): 48–66.
18 Navon, “Beggars, metaphors, and stigma: A missing link in the social history of leprosy”;
Edmond, Leprosy and empire: A medical and cultural history; Robertson, “Leprosy and the
elusive: Colonial and imperial medical exchanges in the nineteenth century”; Zamparoni,
“Leprosy: Disease, isolation, and segregation in colonial Mozambique”.
19 Fondation Père Damien pour la lutte contre la lèpre au Congo Belge et au Rwanda-Urundi.
(n.d.). Fondation Père Damien.
20 e.g. Jane Buckingham, “The inclusivity of exclusion: Isolation and community among
leprosy-affected people in the South Pacific,” Health and History 13, no. 2 (2011): 65–83;
Kakar, “Leprosy in British India, 1860–1940: Colonial politics and missionary medicine”;
Zamparoni, “Leprosy: Disease, isolation, and segregation in colonial Mozambique.”
21 Vongsathorn, “Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda’s Child Leprosy
­Settlement, c. 1930–1962.”
390 VAN DE VELDE and Verstraete

or ­contemporary, demonstrate that the purpose of such images is to arouse

feelings of pity in the viewer.22 They create a balance between recognizability
(partially or empathetically identifying oneself with the portrayed encourages
one to donate) and distance (a sense of otherness necessary in order to feel
able to help), thus establishing a dichotomous relationship between the needy
passive receiver and the powerful viewer who actively decides when and what
to give.23

2 Shared Heritage, Participation and the De-Colonization of

Historical Methods

One of the first studies that looked into the history of colonial visual repre-
sentations of leprosy is described in a 1998 article, Representations of physi-
cal disability in colonial Zimbabwe: the Cyrene Mission and Pitaniko, the film
of Cyrene,24 written by disability scholar Patrick Devlieger, and published in
the journal Disability & Society. In his article Devlieger examines the semiotic
meanings attached to the representation of a disabled character in this 1946
Zimbabwean documentary Pitaniko. Devlieger shows the documentary to con-
tain a number of tropes, all of which he sees as aiming to transfer a binary con-
struction of the world to the viewer. The documentary, through its portrayal
of the voyage of a disabled person from a hostile and primitive environment
to an inclusive and productive missionary setting, has the visualised narrative
helping to shape and sustain contemporary hierarchical relationships between
‘powerful and helpful missionaries’ and ‘helpless and dependent local people’.
Although it can be argued that the analysis of Devlieger is useful in disentan-
gling the visual semiotics which have played an enormous role in the process
that led to the confirmation of the so-called inferiority of the local ­population,

22 e.g. Emma Hutchison, “A global politics of pity? disaster imagery and the emotional
c­ onstruction of solidarity after the 2004 Asian tsunami,” International Political Sociology
8 (2014): 1–19; Luc Vints, Kongo made in Belgium: Beeld van een kolonie in film en propa-
ganda (Leuven: Kritak, 1984); Vongsathorn, “Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions
in Uganda’s Child Leprosy Settlement, c. 1930–1962”; Bert Cans, “De representatie van
­personen met lepra doorheen de geschiedenis van de Damiaanactie: Een blik op de cam-
pagneweekends, 1964–2014” (Master’s dissertation, Leuven: KU Leuven, 2017).
23 Tatiana Titchkosky, “The ends of the body as pedagogic possibility,” Review of Education,
Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 34, no. 34 (2012): 82–93.
24 Patrick Devlieger, “Representations of physical disability in colonial Zimbabwe:
The Cyrene Mission and Pitaniko, the film of Cyrene,” Disability & Society 13, no. 5 (1998):
709–724.
Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural Zones 391

the analysis cannot, however, be said to stimulate researchers to consider

the documentary as a transcultural zone of contact. By a transcultural zone
of contact is understood a thing, an event, or a representation that contains
traces of different cultures which clash, criticise and contradict one another.25
An example of ways in which visual source material can be approached as a
transcultural zone of contact can be found in the 2016 article Writing disability
into colonial histories of humanitarianism by Paul Van Trigt and Susan Legêne.
In this article Van Trigt and Legêne analyse an early twentieth century
­photograph taken at the Bethesda Leprosy village in Suriname.26 On the basis
of their analysis Van Trigt and Legêne not only demonstrate the intricate rela-
tionships between the history of leprosy and the history of disability; they also
suggest a possible way to bypass some of the shortcomings associated with
historical methods of analysis, methods which carry the danger of reproduc-
ing the power-relations that were established between the colonial subjects
and the colonisers by appearing to aim for the contrary. Two types of historical
studies are critiqued by Van Trigt and Legêne. Firstly, those historical studies
that focus on the inferior status of leprosy and whose aim is to demonstrate
how the colonised leprosy patients were suppressed. Secondly, these authors
question an alternative procedure, informed by emancipatory processes, and
whose aim is to overcome the dangers inherent in the first approach by tracing
back to historical examples, moments or objects that demonstrate the resist-
ance, as well as the agency and autonomy of the human subjects involved.27
The idea of this approach is that, by making clear, or highlighting, the active
role that disabled or colonised subjects have played in, or their agency in cre-
ating, their own past, one would be less inclined to transfer historical ways
of interacting with others to contemporary situations. Instead of adopting a
binary view which focuses on either inferiority or agency, Van Trigt and Legêne
suggest adopting a Latourian point of view, one which would “write disabled
people into the humanitarian cloud” by emphasising the multiple interde-
pendencies between humans and the material world that surrounds them.28
By focusing on the objects that surround the leprosy patients in the picture,
according to the authors, the patients are neither reduced to inferior human
beings, nor are they celebrated as heroes. Instead, their equality with all human

25 See Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Traveling writing and transculturation, 7.

26 Paul Van Trigt, and Susan Legêne, “Writing disability into colonial histories of humanitar-
ianism,” Social Inclusion 4, no. 4 (2016): 188–196.
27 See also Pieter Verstraete, In the shadow of disability: Reconnecting history, identity and
politics (Opkampen: Verlag Barbara Budrich: 2014).
28 Van Trigt, and Legêne, “Writing disability into colonial histories of humanitarianism.”
392 VAN DE VELDE and Verstraete

beings is placed at the centre and seen as being dependent on and interacting
with what characterises at all human beings.
Although they do not explicitly mention this concept, we argue that Van
Trigt and Legêne have approached their visual representations of leprosy as
transcultural zones of contact. In other words, rather than considering these
historical photographs as mere traces of the imperialistic gaze that reduced dis-
abled people to helpless and pathological or sub-human beings, their analysis
encourages their readers/viewers of visual representations to look at the two-
dimensional source material as a transcultural space where different ­parties
negotiate with one another.29 In other words, they argue for a more complex
and detailed understanding of how the intersectional representations of race
and disability play a role in visual source material. This approach is explored
in the following section, where the reader is offered an introduction to, and a
detailed analysis of, Gérard de Boe’s 1938 documentary La lèpre.

3 Construction of Difference in Gérard de Boe’s 1938 Documentary

La lèpre

The subtitle of this documentary is “visit to a leprosy village in Belgian Congo”.

The short film takes the form of a journey towards and through one of the
leprosy villages in Belgian Congo. As if they were accompanying the mission-
aries themselves, the viewer is placed on a boat heading towards the distant
leprosy village. The ostensible purpose of the documentary is simply to pro-
vide an insight into daily life in a leprosy village. It shows, in sequence, the
villagers preparing food, making music, caring for their children, following
catechism lessons, and dancing around the fire. The Congolese landscape is
depicted as beautiful and promising but at the same time (as conveyed by the
voice-over) threatened by the horrible disease of leprosy. An important part
of the documentary is dedicated to the effects of leprosy on the daily life of
the people in the village. As declared at the beginning, and accompanied by
dramatic music, the documentary’s purpose is the glorification of the Belgian
remedial action against leprosy by showing the deep gratitude of the patients
when they receive their treatments. Being filmed in 1938, the imagery in the
film is in black and white and does not include sound. However, a constant
voice-over describes the scenes and offers additional background information,
continuing throughout to demonstrate the noble and philanthropic nature

29 See Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Traveling writing and transculturation, 7.

Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural Zones 393

of the actions taken by the Belgian colonial government for the well-being of
these ‘poor leprosy patients’, who are being pathologised.
As a documentary commissioned by the state, the film has a double func-
tion: it purports to ‘objectively’ register life in the leprosy village, but it also
offers an insight into the film makers’ perceptions of the leprosy patients and
the way they wish to present, or characterise, these patients to the public.
Although most of the footage offers insight into both of these, our analysis
mainly focuses on the latter as the purpose of this chapter is to offer insight into
the constructions of difference, and in turn, to open the educational possibil-
ity of a different way of looking at these constructions, and the ways in which
these are achieved. Based on four stills from the film, the following section
aims to demonstrate the construction of multiple differences through image
and spoken text. The chosen stills are the result of joint discussions that took
place within the diverse research team which participated in this analysis,30
and represent four lines of contrast, or binaries, against which the identity of
these Congolese lepers was construed or constructed at the time, namely the
black-white, civilised-uncivilised, human-animal and useful-useless contrasts
or binaries. These dichotomies are made visible through materials and objects
and the ways in which these are filmed: clothing, cutlery, soil, and hands. By
looking at such materials, our analysis invites the reader to move beyond the
dominant idea of power hierarchies in traditional colonial discourses and to
become aware of the mutual dependencies between the colonizers, the colo-
nised and the public in the construction of diverse but interlinked identities.
The aim of the analysis is to lead us towards two important findings. First of
all, difference in this movie is found to be not only constructed along the line
of race and gender, as is much of colonial cinema, but also along the line of dis-
ability. Secondly, we found that the local people portrayed in the documentary
do not completely comply with, or conform to, what is expected from them
from a stereotypical colonial pre-conception or point of view, nor do they excel
in some kind of productive and autonomous agency of their own. If one con-
siders the documentary film genre as a kind of transcultural zone of contact,
this reading reveals brittle gestures, uncertain gazes and delicate objects that
both confirm and question the various forces and influences at play.

30 Eight online meetings by the research team consisting of one Congolese and two B
­ elgian
researchers, both with and without experience in disease/disability. We collectively
watched the documentary several times and discussed how we - from our diverse back-
grounds - experienced the constructions of difference within the scenes. These in-depth
discussions led to the selection of several stills from the film, discussed within this
­chapter.
394 VAN DE VELDE and Verstraete

3.1 Clothing and the Black-White Dichotomy

The function of the leprosy village (as an informal pedagogical institution),
as explained by the voice-over, is not only to prevent contagion, but, most
importantly, according to the missionaries, to offer moral and physical relief
to these poor sufferers. At the same time, however, as the voice-over states, it
requires a lot of effort from the care providers to “psychologically convince the
sick to accept their new home with benevolence”.31 The Congolese had to be
convinced of the fact that leprosy was a harmful and contagious disease and
therefore the leprosy patients had to be secluded. In other words, the Congo-
lese seem to need moral relief in their sickness but do not recognise this need
themselves: they are dependent on the coloniser for both acknowledging and
receiving the enlightenment they lack – a double pedagogical function of the
leprosy village.
The acknowledgement of identifying oneself as a sick person is attained by
carefully influencing the lepers in a soft, religious, psychological way. Moral
enlightenment, then, is offered through catechesis lessons, an introduction to,
and modelling of, civilised behaviours, such as the use of a spoon or tooth-
brush, and regular visits from philanthropic visitors. The following still from
the documentary is chosen as being illustrative of the offering of enlighten-
ment because it touches upon one of the most important thematics regarding
education: the upbringing of children. It shows a Congolese woman seated in
front of the opening of a clay hut. She is wearing nothing but a loincloth. A
baby, also naked, is lying on her lap. They are approached by a white-skinned
nun completely dressed in white, holding a piece of clothing in her hands. The
scene from which this still is taken, shows how the nun hands over the gar-
ment, which, according to the voice-over, is a gift from Belgium to the baby.
Meanwhile the voice-over describes how children born in the leprosy vil-
lage are condemned to a future as patients themselves because of physical
contact with their parents. “Poor little ones”, it states, “the civilised world still
has a huge task to fulfil here”.32 The use of the words “civilised world” suggests
that what is being conveyed here not only concerns the transmission of the
disease, but equally concerns general care for these children. This is not only
textually but also visually represented: the Congolese mother is portrayed as
being quite indifferent towards her child: she shows no affection, she does

31 Own translation. Original voice-over in Flemish: “Er dient met zachtheid gehandeld, heel
langzaam en vriendelijk, om de zieken er psychologisch toe te brengen hunne nieuwe
woonplaats, hun nieuw midden, met welwillendheid aan te nemen”.
32 Own translation. Original voice-over in Flemish: “Arme kleinen. Ja, de beschaafde wereld
heeft hier nog een grootse taak te vervullen.”
Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural Zones 395

Figure 15.1  issionary sister gifting a dress to mother and baby; retrieved from La lèpre by
M
G. de Boe (06:00:00), 1938
Copyright 2020, Cinematek

not attempt to dress herself or her baby. She is waiting for the white skinned
and dressed nun to bring and provide care to her child. The composition of
the image reinforces this impression. The nun is standing and moving, lead-
ing the action, while the seated mother is pictured as dependent, passive, and
apathetic. Either she does not know how to properly treat her child (exteri-
orised in the ability to dress it) or she does not see the importance of this. In
both cases, intervention by the civilised world is needed to enlighten her so
that – again stated by the voice-over – both mother and child will have hap-
piness bestowed upon them. Other images show this contrast in composition,
for example a priest standing among passive seated listeners, or an inhabitant
kneeling in front of the white nun to clean the soil from her benefactor.
The presence/absence of clothing is a recurring theme throughout the
documentary, as becomes apparent in the following stills, and often creates a
visual distinction between the civilised and the not-yet-civilised. This leitmotif
is even stronger with relation to children: material-hygienic treatment of chil-
dren (including dressing them well/decently) was perceived as key to parental
quality in the 1930s in Belgium.33 In this image the difference/­contrast between

33 Michel Vandenbroeck, De staat van het kind Het kind van de staat: Naar een pedagogiek
van voorschoolse voorzieningen (Oud-Turnhout: Gompel & Svacina, 2018).
396 VAN DE VELDE and Verstraete

the naked and the clothed is even more visible because of the contrasting black
and white: the completely white coverage of the nun, combined with her light
skin colour, stress her purity and enlightenment, while the black skin colour
(absence of coverage) of both mother and baby encourages a perception of
obscurity and - to a certain extent - evil. This image reinforces preconceptions
which existed at that time of the clear differences between the black and the
white race, both by colour and by composition. This is, albeit not intended at
that time, reinforced by the film itself being in black and white. The voice-
over complements, this imagery. For example, in the introduction to the film,
the inhabitants of the leprosy village are named “bronze martyrs” in need of
the moral enlightenment brought by literally ‘light’ people, and related to skin
colour as well as coverage and clothing of the body. The imagery of dark and
light even extends beyond the racial to encompass disability/disease, and the
metaphorical use of language makes use of the dark-light contrast. Leprosy is
described as “a shadow over the land of sun”, a disease threatening the wellbe-
ing of the blooming colony towards which the Belgians are expected to feel
both attachment and responsibility.
Returning to the still, the nun is depicted, as morally superior to the ‘uncivi-
lised’ Congolese mother even though the nun will never have children herself.
She represents the Belgian public, also of light complexion, and thus invites
the public to become her, literally, through the donation of clothes for these
poor babies who are deprived of both ideals of health and civilization due to
their birth in a Congolese leprosy colony, at the intersection of disability and
race. In this concrete situation, the nun informally teaches the mother that
she is not able to properly care for her child and that she is in need of help
from competent others. The public/viewers are taught that it is they who are
competent to -indirectly- take over the care this mother cannot give her baby
by and through the means of the nun. While this construction of identity in
terms of power differences seems evident, and given that it is the most com-
mon interpretation in present-day research on colonial imagery, it is not the
only way in which identities are constructed, and differentiated, between the
depicted and the spectators.

3.2 Cutlery and the Civilised-Uncivilised Dichotomy

The function of the documentary as a pedagogical artefact used to inform and
educate the Belgian population carries a similar message for this public: the
Congolese in the leprosy village are dependent upon the Belgian public for
their enlightenment and upliftment. However, the film’s message can now be
interpreted in a more nuanced way, as the second and third stills show.
The second still presents three men sitting on the ground in front of a bush.
They are part of a larger group of about ten people, all men, seated in a half
Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural Zones 397

Figure 15.2 Men eating with a spoon; retrieved from La lèpre by G. de Boe (07:01:00), 1938
Copyright 2020, Cinematek

circle with their own terracotta food pot between their feet. Like the woman in
the previous still, each wears nothing but a loincloth, although some of them
have hats or bandages. A close look at their hands, legs and feet shows that they
are all maimed by leprosy: their legs are skin and bone and their e­ xtremities are
missing fingers or toes. However, this scene is explicitly not focusing on these
disabilities – as several other scenes do – but on the activity and practice of
eating. The voice-over emphasises what the image also shows: their use of the
spoon. “Look, they voluntarily use a tool that civilisation brought them. The
spoon seems to be very useful!”.34 The spectator is invited to feel a mixture of
pride and pity: thanks to the great Belgian action in Congo, these men can eat
properly even though their hands are almost too mutilated to carry a spoon.
However, insofar as the identity dynamics presented here are similar to the
ones described in the previous still, another dynamic comes into play in this
scene: the similarity between the lives of the Congolese lepers and the specta-
tors, specifically in terms of gender norms. Men are eating and smoking while
women prepare the food. Regardless of the otherness of colour and disease, as
presented before, the spectator can relate to the depicted people, as he or she
himself carries out the same chores in daily life. This experience of sameness

34 Own translation. Original voice-over in Flemish: “En zie, ze gebruiken gewillig een soort
gerief dat de beschaving heeft meegebracht. De lepel schijnt wel nuttig te zijn!”
398 VAN DE VELDE and Verstraete

helps to form a (limited) bond between them. Both along the lines of race and
disability, the otherness is minimalised while similarities are emphasised. This
also accounts for the emotions the men seem to display: the men are smil-
ing and the voice-over repeatedly refers to the happiness of the inhabitants,
in spite of their poor conditions. Throughout the documentary, and consist-
ent with other colonial films, the Congolese are positioned as optimistic and
strong people. This adds to the dynamic of relating since a member of the Bel-
gian public at this time would be likely to prefer the receivers of care to be
thankful and happy. As such, the identity of the viewer depends on, or is related
to, the viewed, as the gratefulness of the receiver is necessary for the giver to
feel useful.
On the one hand, the men in the still are dependent on the Belgian people
for useful utensils like cutlery to overcome the difficulties associated with their
disability, and to enter the civilised world. On the other hand, the Belgian peo-
ple are also dependent for their emotional well-being on the Congolese lepers.
The happiness and humanity of the depicted lepers give the public the feel-
ing of being important: because of the Belgian paternalistic intervention, the
Congolese are able to live a happy life, which in turn invokes the motivation to
donate money. In this context, the documentary can be seen as an element of
a transcultural contact zone without necessitating direct contact, but with the
meeting and even mutual dependence of two cultures.

3.3 Soil and the Human-Animal Dichotomy

The dynamic of othering, already visible in the first still, is again displayed in
the third still – although the othering dynamic here is directed more towards
disability than towards race. The still shows a man whose legs and feet are
maimed by leprosy: he no longer has toes and his shanks are covered in wounds.
His body is in a state of disequilibrium, displaced from the normal, standing
position; he is shuffling along on all fours, with his buttock resting on a piece
of cloth which he pulls forward using his hands. His head turns away from the
camera in an exclamation of pain caused by his disequilibruim. Together with
his fellow villagers, he is moving towards the entrance of the village where two
missionaries have arrived for a visit. The voice-over describes the tremendous
physical efforts these lepers are willing to make to welcome their visitors. Some
of the lepers still have the ability to walk, “while the unfortunate ones drag
themselves around on the ground on four legs, like animals, like sick animals”.35

35 Own translation. Original voice-over in Flemish: “Terwijl sommige ongelukkigen zich

werkelijk op den grond voortslepen op vier poten, zoals dieren, zoals zieke dieren”.
Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural Zones 399

Figure 15.3  an moving ‘on four legs’. Retrieved from La lèpre by G. de Boe (02:46:00),
M
1938
Copyright 2020, Cinematek

The description of the appearances and movements of the lepers as being

similar to those of animals confirms and consolidates the omnipresent image
of the Congolese as less enlightened, and remaining more animal than their
colonisers. More notably this Congolese man is filmed to make him appear
less than an animal: he is disabled and moving not only like an animal but like
a sick animal.
In his inability to stand upright, he is forced to stay close to the ground, a
place from which mankind has always tried to rise up by inventing air bal-
loons, airplanes and spaceships. The animal moves over the dirty soil, on all
fours, visibly confirming the essential difference between animal and man.
As such, this image others the Congolese leper: he is presented as fundamen-
tally different from the intended viewer of the film. Through the images, the
viewer is constantly reminded and further convinced that the Congolese lep-
ers are immensely inferior to Belgians, the latter having healthy bodies and
civilised behaviours. Although the relating dynamic discussed in the previ-
ous section invokes a feeling of pity within the viewers, the documentary
at the same time remains at a safe distance from the unpredictable other,
cementing a hierarchical power relation between the able and the intersec-
tionist disabled.
400 VAN DE VELDE and Verstraete

Figure 15.4  omen showing their hands. Retrieved from La lèpre by G. de Boe (03:37:00),
W
1938
Copyright 2020, Cinematek

3.4 Hands and the Useful-Useless Dichotomy

The last still shows a group of about fifteen Congolese women standing in two
rows. The fact that they wear almost no clothes attracts the viewer’s attention
towards their sagging breasts, which would be seen by Belgian viewers as a
subtle sign of primitivity compared to the chaste clothing norms for women
in Belgium.36 In addition, the viewer’s gaze is drawn to the hands of these
women. They smilingly wave them in the air while the voice-over comments:
“the camera man asked them to show their mutilated hands, and truly, you
would say that they willingly agree, as it is a balm to their soul to know that
their poor hands can still be of interest for someone”. 37
The visibility of these women’s disease culminates in their fingerless hands
which they hold up towards the camera. The image of the hands recurs through-
out the film. Elsewhere, while the film focuses on a leprous man playing music,

36 Jacqueline Herald, Mode uit de twintiger jaren (Gilze: Dahlgaard Media, 1995).
37 Own translation. Original voice-over in Flemish: “De cameraman heeft gevraagd of ze hun
verminkte handen wilden tonen, en waarlijk, men zou zeggen dat ze daar gemoedelijk in
toestemmen. Ja, is het niet een balsem te weten dat hun arme handen nog kunnen belang
inboezemen”.
Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural Zones 401

the voice-over, invites the viewer: “Look at these hands, mutilated but not yet
willing to accept their future unemployment”.38 Hands seem, for both film
maker and viewers, to be a symbol of work ethic, probably referencing the
manual labour the Congolese people are destined to perform for the Belgian
industries (this is quite ironic as a symbol: during the period 1885–1908, when
the vast territory of Belgian Congo belonged privately to the Belgian king Leo-
pold II and was named Congo Free State, cutting off hands was one of the main
punishments for workers who did not meet the work quota39). This focusing
on these leprous hands can be seen as designed to demonstrate that the peo-
ple living in these villages are of less use to the colonial apparatus compared
to their healthy compatriots. However, throughout the film, text and image
suggest that, despite their mutilations, these people continue with their daily
life: the women prepare food, and the musician plays the tam-tam. However,
as already mentioned, they do so as non- or sub-humans, almost animals, as
their human features slowly diminish due to the disease: these people live, but
they are no longer of use to others in ways expected from ‘good’ (strong, hard-
working) Congolese people. As the voice-over states, they are - and should be
- happy that at least someone is interested in them.
By requesting these women to show their hands, the cameraman – and the
viewers of the film - bestows on them the right of existence: their useless bod-
ies regain purpose by virtue of their importance and usefulness for the movie.
Their hands are hardly of significance to themselves nor to the colony’s eco-
nomic mission, but they have a value for the spectator, who – seeing the image
of these hands – is being sensitised to the consequences of leprosy, and will
hopefully donate some money having viewed these individuals. More gener-
ally, the (positive) identity of the Congolese lepers seems to depend on the
Belgian viewership: the lepers only become someone through the eyes and
‘sensitivity’ of the coloniser, as they (in casu: their hands) are not capable of
caring for themselves and their country. As delineated by race, the white colo-
nisers are the those who possess the brains to make the land flourish, while the
able-bodied black Congolese have the hands to practically realize this progress.
The line of disability intersects here: the lepers do not even have the hands
which make their people worthy of working for the coloniser. Consequently
their depicted identity is one of dependence in multiple ways: the perceived
racial inferiority of the Congolese intersects here with the perceived inferiority

38 Own translation. Original voice-over in Flemish: “Zie hoe die handen eruit zien: verminkt
en toch nog niet bereid tot de nakende werkeloosheid”.
39 David Van Reybrouck, Congo: Een geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Bezige Bij, 2010).
402 VAN DE VELDE and Verstraete

of disabled bodies, creating the image of benevolent but dependent people

whose identity is entirely dependent on the viewers of the film.
On the other hand, while creating this picture and identity of dependency,
the scene from which this still is taken also, in subtle ways, shows resistance.
While the voice-over draws attention to the willingness of these women to
be of use for his footage, one of the women refuses. She stares straight into
the camera while lowering her hands, in contrast to the other women and in
disobedience to the camera man’s command. This is the only moment during
the documentary in which the leprosy patients themselves show agency and
an identity that goes beyond the one the film makers deliberately construct.
This is remarkable as all scenes from this documentary were carefully staged –
to give the impression that de Boe was not aware of this construction while
filming and hoped this artifice would not be apparent to the audience. In the
midst of a scene portraying the women as dependent on the spectator(s), this
woman shows that she refuses to be the recipient of charity, which in turn
subtly questions the identity construction of the spectator/viewer as essential
and powerful.

3.5 The Educational Possibility of Transcultural Zones of Contact

This contribution aimed to show how the documentary La lèpre made by
Gérard de Boe constructed multiple identities of Congolese leprosy patients.
We have attempted in our analyses of the stills to show deliberate construc-
tions by the film maker of difference on the intersection of race and disability,
together with deliberate constructions of sameness, while at the same time
there are signs of agency and resistance – all of these together construct the
mutually dependent identities of both the viewers and the viewed.
One possible approach, often taken up in colonial histories, is to uncover the
power relations leading to unfair or unequal constructions of identity. Titchko-
sky, a present-day disability researcher, describes this as the racist gaze: look-
ing at bodies through their marks of race and disability, the viewer having no
interest in who these people genuinely are, but whose gaze is informed by, and
adheres to, fixed ideas about race/disability as doubling the inferiority.40 This
is one possible way to look at a historical artefact such as this documentary:
as a pedagogical space transmitting the racist gaze in order to confirm exist-
ing identity politics. Another approach, one taken up by Legêne and Van Trigt,
is to be attentive to glimpses of agency of the colonised, and to demonstrate

40 Titchkosky, “The ends of the body as pedagogic possibility.”

Disability, Colonial Propaganda and Transcultural Zones 403

how power is never located in one individual or group.41 This chapter proposed
a combination of both methodologies. By pointing out the dichotomies and
materialities along which difference was constructed, we have tried to show
how construction of identity is not solely a power/agency issue, but one medi-
ated by materials and objects (clothing, cutlery, movements, and hands). Being
attentive to these dichotomies and materialities opens up the possibility to
look at them in a different way. This process of looking is what Titchkosky calls
the pedagogic possibility, as opposed to the racial gaze: to steps beyond the
tempting gaze of inferiority – or, applied to our case study - trying to conceive
of the visual colonial propaganda as a transcultural zone of contact.42
This pedagogic possibility can usefully serve as a pedagogical space today,
inviting present-day viewers to relate to those presented, and in a broader
sense, to their colonial past, in a different way. Seen in the context of the colo-
nial era, the purpose of this documentary seemed to be to fix the leprosy village
inhabitants’ identity for the intended viewers/audience by presenting them as
dependent beings. Today, we wish to re/present this documentary, not with
the intention of confirming/fixing identities, but to reopen the academic and
public debate about colonialism. By simply removing the historical artefacts
connoting racism or othering, such as the statues of Father Damien or King
Leopold, we hide this painful episode inherently belonging to our past. The
way the Congolese, including those in leper villages, are presented in this 1938
documentary may no longer be politically correct, and this should be explicitly
acknowledged, but in a way that is characterised by being careful not to repeat
the establishment of a division or binary relationship between proponents
and opponents. We argue that identifying the dichotomies and nuances in a
documentary, such as Gérard de Boe’s and others, can help us ask ourselves the
question “what does it mean to be human?”
This case-study has opened an academic space for several pedagogical and
historical topics: the leprosy village as an informal educational institution, the
documentary as a historically and temporarily pedagogical instrument, and as
a progressive step beyond uncovering the racist gaze, and towards seeing con-
structions of difference as a pedagogic possibility. We hope the study may serve
as an inspiration for fellow researchers to further investigate these themes and
approaches, and for pedagogical practitioners to open up the debate about our
colonial heritage.

41 Van Trigt, and Legêne, “Writing disability into colonial histories of humanitarianism.”
42 Titchkosky, “The ends of the body as pedagogic possibility.”
404 VAN DE VELDE and Verstraete

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General Index

Academic freedom 17, 281–283, 285, Church Missionary Society (CMS) 31, 34, 40,
288–293, 295–304 42, 47, 60–63
Academic Freedom Campaign 17, 281–283, Church, Churches 31, 34–35, 40, 42–43,
285, 291–292, 298–300 46–48, 50–56, 60–63, 79, 85, 99, 101,
Academic Freedom Committee 290–292, 120, 129, 161–162, 169, 172, 182–183,
296, 299 185–187, 189–191, 194–202, 204, 206,
Africa Orientale Italiana 72, 86–87 261, 270, 309, 314, 336, 341–344, 347,
Afrikaans Nationale Studentebond 287 351, 361, 365–366, 369–370, 373, 376,
Agency 2, 4–5, 9, 20, 40, 51, 181, 391, 393, 379–380, 382
402–403 Citizenship regime 122, 128, 130, 132
Ahmadiyya 78 Civilization 43–44, 99, 108, 110–111, 114–116,
Algerian War of Independence 207–209, 118, 121, 233, 282, 290, 343, 345, 374, 389,
214 396
Anarandray 174, 180 Class 2, 11, 14, 18, 24, 26, 41–42, 48–49, 53,
Angola 2, 25, 319, 321, 338–340, 342–345, 55, 65–67, 73, 80, 87, 89–90, 94, 96, 101,
347–349, 351–354, 356–362 105, 134, 139, 143, 145–146, 148, 162, 164,
Apostolic Vicariate of Mogadishu 69, 79 167–168, 183–184, 188, 191–193, 195–196,
Assimilation 37, 233, 237, 241–242, 245, 200, 204, 212, 218, 220, 222–224, 241–
253–254, 257, 263, 265, 285, 290, 301, 242, 245, 254, 258, 262–267, 270, 276,
307, 311, 317, 320, 326, 329, 331, 342–343 282, 287, 289, 297, 309–310, 313–314,
Association des oulémas musulmans 316–318, 321, 323, 326–328, 331–332,
algériens 235, 237, 244 334, 344, 350–351, 354, 370, 378–379
Colonial 2–16, 19–28, 31–43, 45, 49, 52–53,
Bantu Education 182, 189, 204–205, 286, 55–57, 59–63, 65–66, 68–76, 78–86,
291–292, 302 88–89, 91–96, 99, 107, 113, 118–121,
Bantu Education Act 182, 189, 286 124–126, 128–129, 131–135, 138, 140–141,
Bantu Education Department 182 143–145, 149–152, 155, 157–163, 165–166,
Baptist 23, 183–184, 186, 194–197, 199–200, 170, 172–173, 175, 177–178, 181–184, 188–
203, 206 189, 195, 199–200, 203, 205, 207–217,
Benaadir 66, 95 225, 228–229, 233–245, 247–248, 250,
Black Consciousness 290 252–257, 259–261, 263, 276, 278–279,
Bombay Africans 47 285–286, 301, 305–321, 324–325, 329–
Brotherhoods 78, 235, 243–244, 248–249 336, 338–342, 344–348, 350, 357–362,
Buganda 32, 42, 48–49, 58 365, 367–368, 371, 377, 379–380, 383,
385–391, 393, 396, 398, 401–405
Cape Guardafui 83 Colonial education policy 80, 342, 344
Catholic Missionaries 8, 16, 65–66, 69–70, Colonialism 3, 5–6, 9, 21, 23–24, 32–33,
76, 78, 82, 89, 92–93, 367–368, 383 35–36, 41, 69, 73, 78, 81, 83, 88, 93–95,
Certificate of Teaching Ability 162, 262 99, 107, 118–121, 157, 178, 181, 184, 245,
Christian 2, 4, 12, 21, 26–27, 33–34, 40, 43, 305–306, 310, 331–332, 338–341,
45–51, 54–56, 58, 61–64, 74, 78–79, 85, 345–348, 350, 359–361, 367, 403
101, 138, 144, 160–162, 178–179, 186–189, Committee for the Protection and Defence of
191, 194–195, 197–200, 202, 204, 214, the Natives of Sainte-Marie 128
229, 234, 269, 272, 274, 280, 286, 309, Congregation of Oriental Churches 79
311, 319, 334, 336, 351, 358, 368, 370, Congrès des Notables party 138
372–376, 381, 385, 387–389 Consolata Fathers 69
408 General Index

Consolata Nuns 69, 75–76, 79, 87 Holloway Commission 288

Contact Zone 3–5, 7–9, 13, 20–26, 28, 35, 37,
55, 66, 98, 104, 121, 183, 193, 202–203, Identity, identities 3, 5, 11, 13, 15–16, 18, 23,
231, 233, 236, 238–240, 247, 253–254, 25, 32, 42–43, 46, 52, 56–58, 62, 85, 87,
256, 284–286, 290, 301, 317–318, 93, 99–101, 106, 109, 111, 117, 119, 125, 128,
329–330, 335, 386, 398 131, 140, 158–159, 162, 167, 171, 174–175,
Corporation (LUTATCO) 31 177, 183, 185, 194, 199–201, 203–204,
Creole 24, 125, 173, 268–270, 318, 331–332 225, 238, 242, 245, 253, 257, 277, 279,
Creole language 270, 331 298, 318, 330, 345, 373, 381, 391, 393,
Curriculum 18, 21, 66, 70–71, 88–89, 95, 396–398, 401–403, 405
99–106, 113, 119–120, 135–136, 181–182, Immigrant 184–188, 196, 199–200, 203,
187, 191, 200, 247–248, 306, 325, 330, 205–206
335, 343, 375 Imperial elite 122, 125–126, 141, 149
Independent Algeria 207, 209, 223, 227, 238,
Départementalisation 144, 151, 258–259, 249–250, 253
262–263, 265, 276 Indian Immigration Papers 184
Department of Native Affairs 182 Indian schools 186, 190
Domestic duties 188 individuation processes 145
Eritrea 16, 68, 72, 74–75, 81, 83, 87–88, 94–95, Institutional autonomy 281, 283–284, 297
107, 366–368, 371–374, 379, 381–383 Islam 2, 16, 21, 24, 51, 65–66, 69, 71, 74–75,
Ethiopia 2, 16–18, 22, 25, 68, 72, 77, 86–88, 77–82, 85, 87–89, 92–94, 234–235,
97–114, 116–121, 157, 365–368, 370–374, 237–238, 242–247, 252, 255–256, 371
376–384 Italian Colonial Institute 71
Extension of University Education Act 24, Italian Ministry of the Colonies 68
281–282, 286–288, 294, 303 Italy 65–66, 68–70, 74, 79, 81, 83, 85–90, 93,
96, 371, 373, 377, 381
Fascism 68, 74, 84, 94–95
Feminist scholarship 181 Jonanga 44
French citizenship 124–126, 128–129, 131, 134, Josomo 31, 50
148, 150, 240
French département 24, 257, 263 Kisii 34–35, 46
French education 3, 124–125, 128–129, Koranic Schools 23, 71–72, 74, 79, 81, 85,
133, 138, 148–149, 209, 234, 237–238, 88–89, 147–148, 207, 237–238, 242–243,
241–242, 252, 256 245, 253
Friar Minors 75–76, 83 KwaZulu-Natal 181, 183–184, 186, 189–190,
193–197, 200, 203, 205–206, 287, 303
Gender 2, 11–13, 18–19, 22, 25, 27, 37, 40, 51,
53–55, 59–62, 75, 80, 94, 98–99, 104, Legio Maria 55–56, 63
109, 113, 117, 120–121, 125, 137–139, 141, Leprosy 1, 9, 19–20, 25, 385–394, 396–398,
143–144, 163, 181, 183–189, 192–194, 401–405
200, 202–205, 210, 269, 294, 305–310, Libya 68, 72, 87–89
314–315, 323–324, 327–329, 332–334, Life stories 12, 14, 185, 190
336, 381, 387, 393, 397 Loyalty, loyalties 20, 22–23, 27, 106–107, 155,
181, 183–184, 189–191, 194, 199–204, 373
Higher Education 22, 57, 126, 134–135, Luhya 33–34, 43–46, 48–50
161, 201, 235, 248, 266, 281, 285–286, Luo 15, 21, 31–35, 37–38, 40–46, 48–50,
288–289, 296, 301–302, 322, 349 52–59, 61–63
Hindi 188 Luo Students League 57
Hindu 187, 268 Luo Union 57, 59
General Index 409
Lutheran 23, 158, 163, 165–166, 169–170, 176, Normaliens 257–259, 264–266, 270–276
183–184, 186, 189–194, 197–198, 201–202, North Betsileo 22, 158–171, 173, 175, 177–178
206, 367, 369, 373–374 Norwegian 8, 23, 28, 103, 129, 152, 160–162,
165, 170, 172, 180, 182–183, 185, 189–192,
Madagascar 2, 14, 22, 33, 63, 122, 124–126, 197, 205, 377
128–135, 137–138, 140–141, 150–152, Norwegian Mission Society 160, 185
157–166, 170–171, 177–180, 182, 260, 263, Nyore 43
271, 278, 365
Madio Ivelany 172–173, 176 Open universities 24, 281–287, 289–292,
Madrasa 122, 147, 237, 243, 247–249, 255 296–299, 301, 303
Maragoli 42–43 Oral sources 12, 100, 153, 169, 180, 182, 206,
Methodist 186–187, 195 280, 306, 336
Migration 12, 57, 122, 133, 138, 168, 184–187,
194, 199–200, 203, 205, 214, 228, 236, Papacy 74
319, 323, 330, 339, 350 Pedagogic possibility 390, 402–403, 405
Ministry of Italian Africa 68–69, 89, 91 Pedagogic strategies 74, 82, 313
Mission organisation(s) 4, 7, 182 Phelps-Stokes Commission 7, 52
Missionaries 5, 8, 13, 16, 21–22, 25, 32–33, Phelps-Stokes Fund 52
35–37, 39–40, 42–43, 45–46, 48–49, 51, Pim 41–42, 44–45, 53–55, 58, 60
58–60, 63, 65–66, 68–78, 80–83, 86, Piny Owacho 39, 52
88–93, 131–132, 143, 161, 165, 171–172, 177, Political scholarships 135–136
182, 184, 186–187, 189, 191, 194, 197, 199, Portuguese colonial policy 339
202, 204, 309, 311–312, 314–315, 321, 331, Protestant 8, 14, 33, 63, 83, 129, 157–158, 160,
334, 341, 367–370, 372–374, 376–379, 166, 177, 179, 182–183, 204, 341, 344, 351,
381, 383, 386, 390, 392, 394, 398 365–369, 371, 373–374, 383
Missions 4, 8, 11, 14–15, 17, 26, 32–33, 46, Protests 24, 53, 281–286, 289–290, 292–302,
49, 52, 129, 133, 150, 157, 160–162, 166, 340
170–172, 177, 182, 184, 186, 189, 191, 194, Pupils 1–2, 6, 8, 11–12, 16, 23, 77, 108, 124, 126,
199, 202, 247, 254, 309, 336, 341–344, 131–137, 146–149, 157, 161–164, 167–168,
349, 351, 358, 362, 366–367, 369, 371, 178, 182–187, 189–193, 198, 201–202, 208,
374–378, 382–384 212, 216, 221, 223, 237, 240, 245, 247,
Monza 66, 86, 94 265, 306, 309, 327, 351, 353, 357,
Mouvement populaire mahorais 138 365, 375
Muslim 3, 8, 16, 21, 23, 65–66, 68, 70–72,
74, 77–82, 84–85, 87–90, 92–94, 187, Qadiriyya 66, 78, 80
207–211, 214–216, 228, 230, 233–250,
252–253, 256, 268, 371 Race 2, 11, 13, 25, 39, 47, 52, 56, 64, 75, 81, 101,
Muslim Holy Men 65–66, 77–81, 87–89, 93 105, 124, 126, 133, 139–140, 149, 152, 162,
Mutilation 401 179, 183–185, 188, 193, 200, 203–204, 241,
287, 289–290, 294–295, 297–298, 317,
Narratives 1–3, 7, 10–12, 14, 16, 22, 24, 34, 39, 322, 335, 341, 366, 370, 379, 386, 388,
45, 55–56, 61, 63, 184–185, 194, 199–200, 391–393, 396, 398, 401–402
203, 245, 297, 305–306, 310, 318, Rahmaniyya 244, 248–249
320–321, 329, 331 Ramadan 87–88, 91–92
Natal 8, 12, 28, 181–197, 199–200, 203–206, Rome 16, 21, 67–69, 72–74, 80, 82, 88–89,
286–287, 303 93–96
Natal Education Department 187, 191
National Union of South African Sainte-Marian 124–128, 130–134, 136–139,
Students 287, 298 143–145, 149
410 General Index

Salihiyya 78 Textbooks 11, 32, 69–70, 82–83, 86, 88, 90,

Samia 43 93, 100, 131, 134, 146, 197, 239–241, 247,
Second Italo-Ethiopian War 77 348
Separate development 24, 286 Transcultural Contact Zone 8, 20, 35, 37, 55,
Siblings 128, 190, 210–211, 214, 216–217, 183, 193, 202–203, 386, 398
219–220, 222, 226–227, 320, 322
Somalia 2, 16, 21, 65–96 Union Française 263
South Africa 2, 12, 17, 23–24, 27, 37, 60, 113, Union of South Africa 182, 287–288, 298,
182, 185, 187–188, 193–198, 200, 204, 303
206, 281–303, 359, 379
South African Indian Mission 187 Van Wyk Der Vries Commission 299
Student migration 122
Sufi brotherhood 66, 78, 235 Wanga 43–44, 46–48
World of contact 8, 209, 239
Tamil 187–188
Tanindrazana 158, 167, 169–172, 174–175 Yao 42, 46
Teacher Training 1, 24, 46, 134, 137, Young Kavirondo Association 39, 52, 57
160, 162, 166, 170, 191, 198, 201, 257,
259–261, 263–265, 267, 273–274, 277, Zone of contact 391, 393, 403
344, 373 Zulu 8, 12, 28, 32, 36, 60, 181–186, 189–198,
Telugu 188, 195–196, 200 200–206, 287, 303
Index of Authors

Aggrey, James 52 Haile Selassie 49, 53, 97, 101–102, 104, 107,
Akang’o, Odera 50 109–111, 120–121, 186, 366–367, 371,
Akumu Aum, Blasto 34, 50–51 383–384
Almaz Haile-Selassie 109 Hannington (Bishop) 47
Aloo, Eba 54, 99, 121 Henry, Marcel 124, 137–138, 144
Aloo, Mary 54, 99, 121 Hobley, Charles 43, 60
Aluso, Ibrahim 45 Hodgson, Thomas 195
Andrianarivo, Samuel 166, 168, 175
Apindi, Ezekiel 34, 47, 50–52, 54, 64 Indaru, Peter 47, 50–51, 64
Arnesa, Abel 176
Auma, Musa 50, 368, 380, 384 Joss, Lydia 101, 103
Awich, Flora 54
Awori, Jeremiah Musungu 34, 49–50, 62, 64 Kayanja, Nathaneyo 48
Aydarus b. Ali, Sharif 80 Kebede Mikael 99, 102, 118, 120, 367, 383

Bamana, Younoussa 137 Lembede, Anton 37

Bébé, Juliette 22, 122–124, 136, 140, 146–147, Lessona, Alessandro 71–72, 82, 88
149, 152
Behava, Augustine 136 Mac Luckie, Hélène 136
Ben Atiq, Samah 246–247, 252 MacCrone, I.D. 295–296, 299
Ben Badis, Abdelhamid 245–248 Malo, Shadrack 34, 56–57
Berhané Yeraswerq 108 Mandela, Nelson 18, 284, 291, 302–303
Bezunesh Gezaw 114, 120 Mango, Alfayo Odongo 52
Brockway Thomas 160, 166 Marconi, Guglielmo 86
Burns, George 50 Mboya, Paul 34–35, 37–38, 46–47, 49, 56,
61, 63–64
Castilho Soares, Amadeu 25, 338–339, 348, Menen (Empress) 18, 22, 97–98, 100,
350–351, 355, 358–362 103–107, 109–111, 113, 117, 120
Corni, Guido 89 Meshak, Joel 47
Mumia, Nabongo 42, 44, 47
Davis (Ms) 109–110, 208, 228 Musiga, Isaiah 48–49
de Boe, Gérard 20, 386, 392, 402–403 Mussolini, Benito 16, 66, 68, 73, 85–86, 88,
93, 373, 377, 379
Father Damien 385, 388, 403
Feetham, Richard 290, 295 Nayambo, Peter 47
Ferry, Jules 129, 261, 269 Nkomo, W. F. 289
Filippini, Venanzio 74–75, 79–80, 86, 89, 91 Novou, Anne-Marie 22, 122, 124, 136,
Firinga, Joachim 128–132, 151–152 142–143, 147, 153
Foucque, Hippolyte 262–263, 279 Nyakakongo, Zacharia 48
Nyende, Simeon 52, 57
Gebru, Senedu 104–105, 107–109, 115,
120–121, 397 Obama, Barack (Senior) 40
Gorlani, Daniele 65–67, 75–77, 80–87, Obare, Nikanor 51
89–92, 94 Ochieng’, Paul 48
412 Index of Authors

Odaga, Asenath Bole 45, 50, 55, 61, 64 Randrianasolo, Alphonse 162, 175, 180
Odenyo, Zablon Sangoro 34, 46, 64 Rangiah, Kanakamma 185, 194–197,
Odindo, Daniel 45 199–200, 203, 205
Odinga, Oginga 15, 31, 37, 40, 54, 59, 64 Rangiah, Sungunamma 185, 194–197,
Ogot, Bethwell 40, 57 199–200, 205
Ogot, Grace 32, 39–44, 46, 50–51, 56–57, Rangiah, Theophilus 185, 194–197, 199–200,
62, 64 205
Ogutu, Manas 38, 51, 62 Rasoatahiana 163, 180
Okech, Lacito 32, 62 Razavaoelina 166
Okola, Zablon 56–57 Richards, Elizabeth 34, 43
Okoth, George Samuel 33, 50, 52, 57, Robertson (Miss) 105, 388–389, 404
59, 62 Robinson, Jacques 180, 288, 302
Okwiri, Jonathan 52, 57
Olang’, Festo 34, 47–49, 54, 64 Saïd Ahmed, Faouzia 136
Oloo, Sofia 54 Santini, Ruggiero 71–72, 82, 88
Ominde, Simeon 53–54, 62 Shayk Sufi 65–66, 78, 80, 235, 244
Omulo, Reuben 34, 46–50, 52, 57, 62 Sidandi, Isaac 48
Onduso, Mathayo 45 Simoncelli, Leonia 75, 81
Oneko, Achieng’ 40 Soualah, Mohammed 239–241, 256
Orau, Yona 45, 57 Sutton, William G. 289, 295, 297, 301
Otieno, S. M. 38, 62
Ouma, Joshua 47 Talbot, David A. 110, 119
Owen, Walter Edwin 38, 47–48, 53, 62 Tsehai Yitbarek 104, 109, 121
Owiti, Daniel 45, 57 Tucker, Alfred 42, 44, 64
Owuor Anyumba, Henry 53–54, 62
Uganda, J. J. 32, 42, 44–45, 47–49, 58–59,
Paye, Lucien 53, 136, 258, 265, 271, 274–275, 62–64, 309, 335, 388–390, 405
280
Payet, Michelle 136, 258, 265, 271, 274–275, Vedamuthu, Simon 188
280 Victor, Paul Emile 259
Péchin Emile 160, 166
Perreau-Pradier, Jean 265 wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ 5, 28, 53
Waiyaki, Wambui 38
Rabenja, Apela 166, 175 Weche, Barnabas 48–49, 56–57
Raikes, Humphrey R. 301 Weraga, Yese 48, 50
Rajohanesa, Philippe 165–166, 172, 179–180 Were, Michael 52, 56–57
Ralahamady, Joseph 168 Willis, John Jamieson 34, 42, 46
Ralaivao, Jean Pierre 168, 170–171, 173–174,
176, 179 Yadete, Belatcheo 100–101
Index of Schools

Afgoy (School of Agriculture) 76 Makerere University 34, 63

Avaradrova (Home Economic School) 135, Maseno (school of) 15, 31–35, 40, 42–43,
137, 139–141, 149, 163 45–54, 56–58, 60, 62–63
Merka (school of) 76
Baidoa (school of) 75–76, 79 Mogadishu (school of) 16, 21, 65,
Benjamin Escande School 160 68–69, 71–72, 74–76, 79, 82–83,
Brava (school of) 76, 326 85, 89, 92, 94
Buddo (school of) 32
Butere School 40, 50 Nambototo (school of) 48
Natal (University of) 8, 12, 28, 181–197,
Cape Town (University of) 1, 24, 281–282, 199–200, 203–206, 286–287, 303
286–287, 294, 299, 303 Ng’iya (school of) 40, 51, 54, 62
Cours normal 260–263
Potchefstroom University 286
École normale de Bellepierre 258–259, Pretoria (University of) 286
276–277
El-Flaye (school of) 14, 208, 211–214, Rabai (school of) 42, 47
216–218, 220–221, 223, 226–227, 230 Rhodes University 286
Empress Menen School 18, 22, 97–98, 100,
103–107, 109–110, 113, 120 Saint Louis College 162, 168
School for the Sons of the Local
Fort Hare (Black University College of) 287, Chiefs 89
289 School of Arts and Crafts in Mogadishu 76
Freretown (school of) 42, 50–51 Siwindhe 44, 53–55
South Africa (University of) 185, 204, 286,
Gallieni High School 137 288, 302
Gelib (school of) 76 St Paul’s Theological College 50
Stellenbosch University 287
Jonte (school of) 76
Juliette Dodu (Collège) 262, 264 Teacher Training 1, 24, 46, 134, 137, 160, 162,
166, 170, 191, 198, 201, 257, 259–261,
Kwa Mondi Primary school 190, 192, 197, 199 263–265, 267, 273–274, 277, 344, 373

Le Myre de Vilers High School 137, 139–140, Villabruzzi (school of) 76

157, 162, 167, 178–179 Witwatersrand (University of) 281–282, 287,
Leconte Delisle (Lycée) 264 292, 297, 302–303
 22 mm

A F R ICA-EU ROPE GROU P FOR

I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A RY S T U D I E S
33

Who were the actors involved in colonial and

post-independence education in Africa? This

Ellen Vea Rosnes, Pierre Guidi and Jean-Luc Martineau (Eds.)

HISTORY THROUGH NARRATIVES OF EDUCATION IN AFRICA
book on the history of education in Africa gives
special attention to narratives of marginalized
voices. With this original approach and cases
from ten countries involving four colonial
powers it constitutes a dynamic and rich
contribution to the field.
The authors have searched for narratives of
education ‘from below’ through oral interviews,
autobiographies, fi lms and undiscovered archival
sources. Throughout the book, educational
HISTORY
settings are approached as social spaces where
both contact and separtation between colonisers
and colonised are constructed through social THROUGH
interaction, negotiations, and struggles.
Contributors include Antónia Barreto,
Lars Folke Berge, Clara Carvalho, Charlotte NARRATIVES
Courreye, Pierre-Éric Fageol, Frédéric Garan,
Esther Ginestet, Pedro Goulart, Pierre Guidi,
Lydia Hadj-Ahmed, Kalpana Hiralal, OF EDUCATION
Mamaye Idriss, Mihary Jaofeno, Jean-Luc

IN AFRICA
Martineau, Rehana Thembeka Odendaal,
Roland Rakotovao, Maria da Luz Ramos,
Ellen Vea Rosnes, Caterina Scalvedi,
Eva Van de Velde, Pieter Verstraete.
Ellen Vea Rosnes, Ph.D. (2015), University Social Histories in
of Stavanger, is Professor of intercultural
communication and global studies at VID
Specialized University. She has published on
Times of Colonization
Madagascar and South Africa, including The
Norwegian Mission’s Literacy Work in Colonial and Post Independence
and Independent Madagascar (Routledge, 2019).
Pierre Guidi, Ph.D. (2014), Université Paris 1 (1920s - 1970s)
Panthéon-Sorbonne, is a historian at the Centre
Population et Développement (Université
de Paris Cité, IRD). He has published on the
history of education in Ethiopia, including
Éduquer la nation en Éthiopie. École, État et
identités dans le Wolaita, (1941-1991) (Presses
Universitaires de Rennes/IRD, 2020) which is Edited by
in the process of being translated into English
(forthcoming 2024).
Ellen Vea Rosnes
Jean-Luc Martineau, Ph.D. (2004), Université
Paris 7, is Assistant Professor at the Institut
National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales.
Pierre Guidi
His research is focused on yoruba obaship,
cultural changes, identity building processes and Jean-Luc Martineau
school policies in Nigeria (19th-20th C.). He is
the scientifi c editor of the Cahiers Afriques.

ISSN 1574-6925
brill.com/agis 9 789004 690165