Sunday, 20 April 1986: St. Barnabas – South Africa’s First Multiracial School

22 April 1986, 3:45 PM, Hillcrest Community, Halfway House  

I am staying with the Hillcrest Community (north of Johannesburg) which I contacted through a networking organization in Denver.  Joan and Tony MacGreggor, two of the adults living here, invited me to spend a few days.  The MacGreggors both have professional jobs in Johannesburg and are probably in their mid-40s.  They have two kids: Sara, 10, and Chris who is about 15.  Chris attends St. Barnabas College, a private secondary school in Jo’burg which is affiliated with the Anglican Church.  St. Barnabas, founded in 1963, was the first multiracial school in South Africa.  It’s located in Bosmont, a coloured (mixed-race) neighborhood west of downtown.  The student body is predominantly black with a smattering of coloureds, Asian Indians, and whites.  Chris lives on campus and was home last weekend.  Tony and Joan invited me to come along with them this past Sunday night when they took him back to school. 

The MacGreggors, a wonderful white family quietly working against apartheid.

The campus is a modern group of brick buildings constructed on reclaimed swampland which was donated to the school.  Each of the 90 or so students who live on campus (out of the 300+ girls and boys enrolled) has his or her own room.  The tuition is high, but scholarships are available for needy students who are bright. 

Chris, who is very blond, seems to get along great with his non-white chums at the school.  Tony and Joan say he has blossomed here.  He never got along very well at the government schools partially because he criticized his white classmates when they made racial slurs. 

We attended a Festival of Lessons and Carols for Eastertide in the school chapel that evening.  Lots of lively songs from an ecumenical Australian hymnal.  Several students read bible verses and I was quite impressed with their excellent diction and flawless reading.  The student choir was nearly all black and quite spirited.  There was a cheerful, casual demeanor among the students who also exhibited healthy self-discipline for teenagers.  The service was optional and the students who attended had the option of wearing their uniforms or neat casual clothing (except for the uniformed choir).  If the group at the service was representative of the student body as a whole, then the school’s racial mix is fairly representative of the country’s population:  mostly black with a fairly even mixture of white, Asian Indian, and coloured students.  Actually, the Indians are probably over-represented.  They comprise only 3% of the South African population but at least 10% of the students I saw that night. 

It was refreshing to see a multi-racial group of young South Africans interacting so positively.  St. Barnabas proves the absurdity of apartheid’s underlying principle – the races are much happier when they are separated.  When dramatic change comes to South Africa, as it surely must sooner or later, it will be whites like Chris who will be the best prepared to live in a multi-racial society.  Chris will be used to interacting with blacks as friends and equals, a rare opportunity in present-day South Africa from what I’ve seen so far.  Plus, these kids are apparently getting an excellent education.  In order to graduate, they must take a special matric (exam) which is more stringent than the one required for graduation from government schools.

As inspiring as it was to visit St. Barnabas, I left that night with mixed feelings.  So what if those dignified, handsome young black men in the choir may someday make fine doctors, lawyers, or businessmen.  They may never have a chance in this society.  And even if they do make it, they represent such a small fraction of the teeming black population that their potential success will not only be a rare anomaly but almost a cruel injustice.  The white government can hold them up as examples of the opportunities for blacks in the “new” South Africa that is currently being packaged and sold to the rest of the world, while thousands of other bright black kids wind up digging ditches, etc.  Government education for blacks here is inferior to that for whites, so most blacks don’t have a chance.  An what good will it do to have a handful of white kids exposed to blacks as equals if most whites continue to see them only a “dumb kaffirs”?     

                                      

Source:  https://stbarnabas.co.za/?fbclid=IwAR2ES4uqaeB95NoDAsq3hzTOyxg0XyaqNEFI5ATFrpYhD7ASHoWM0cmOPYo

Still, I’m glad St. Barnabas exists and prospers.  If there is any hope for this country, it lies in institutions like this and the people who work and study here.  And, in fairness, I must continue to acknowledge the complexities of the South African situation.  These complexities defy simple solutions, but I would like to offer one simple observation:  What you have here is “First World” and “Third World” cultures trying to coexist.  They don’t do a very good job of it sometimes, but I wonder if we Americans would do any better.  The more I learn about this country, the more bewildered I become!