Chapter 2 - Burning Bethel in 1953: Changing Educational Practices and Control

Summary

At 11:15 on the night of 14 May 1953, the district commandant of the South African Police force based at Lichtenburg in the Transvaal received a report that trouble was brewing among the African students at Bethel Training Institute, situated between Ventersdorp and Coligny. Nine constables, five white and four African, were immediately dispatched to the scene, arriving about an hour later. En route, they noticed that buildings were ‘on fire and burning seriously’. Upon arrival they discovered that approximately 200 students were in uproar, and called for police reinforcements. By 2:30 a.m. a further 18 white and 12 African police officers had arrived to help quell the uprising. By that stage the school had already been reduced to glowing embers. The police moved to the dining hall where the students had gathered, held a roll call, and searched the students as well as the dormitories. They found pamphlets stating their grievances: inadequate diet, bad accommodation, and the unjust expulsion of a student. In all, 184 students were arrested, of whom 69 were female and 115 male, with ages ranging from 16 to 39. The students were charged with arson, alternatively public violence or malicious injury to property. They appeared in court on 16 May, when all but two pleaded not guilty to the charges. The case was remanded to 29 May. The entire school and pump house had been destroyed, as well as the homes of the headmaster and two teachers.

The events of that night, as well as the underlying reasons and the consequences, are important for a number of reasons. First, there is the timing: this event happened one month before the reading of the Bantu Education Bill in Parliament and in the context of the Defiance Campaign that had been launched across the country in 1952 in protest against the new apartheid laws. Fire had played a role in the campaign too in the burning of passbooks by Nelson Mandela and other activists. Second, the event provides insight into the relationship between the mission and the state at that point, and the conditions under which the transition from mission to apartheid education and control occurred within institutions more compliant than others to the state and yet still wishing to retain a degree of control.