Founders High School

From 1952

Also known as Founders, Founders High.

Opened in January 1952 at the Herbert Stanley Hostel in Barham Green as the country's first government high school for Asian and Coloured pupils; motto 'Truth is ever simple'.

Founders High School was created because, in the colonial order of things, there was nowhere else for its pupils to go.

When it opened in January 1952, Southern Rhodesia’s government schools were divided by race. White children went to schools like Milton and Eveline. African children were educated mostly by missions and in separate government schools. Asian and Coloured families, the communities the system classified between those two, had no government high school at all. Some had sent their children south to schools in South Africa, but after 1948 South Africa all but closed its schools to Asian pupils.

Founders was the answer. It was, as its Silver Jubilee magazine put it, “the first Government High School for these communities in Rhodesia.”

Beginnings

The school opened in January 1952 at the Herbert Stanley Hostel in Barham Green, on Dundee Drive, with 120 pupils, 49 of them in the high school, and a staff of seven. In the headmaster’s account, two things brought it about:

• the Beadle Commission, which had investigated the social conditions of the Coloured community and recommended a high school in Bulawayo;
• South Africa’s “virtual ban on the admission of Asian pupils” after 1948, which made the need urgent.

When the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was formed in 1953, children came from Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland as well. For some years Founders was the only school of its kind in all three territories. At first every entrant had to pass an entry test. Later the test was kept only for boarders, and boarding pressure eased when Morgan High School opened in Salisbury. Nashville High School in Gwelo was built to relieve Founders too, but because it took only boarders from the Midlands and Fort Victoria, it made little difference to the numbers.

The first headmaster, Mr F. W. Baldock (1952–1960), had his own idea of what the school should be. Correspondence from those years, the jubilee history notes, shows that “what the Educational top brass had in mind and the Headmaster’s objectives for the School were not identical. Happily the Headmaster won.” Founders would offer both academic and practical education, like any other high school. In 1977 I. H. Grant, who had spent his boyhood in Bulawayo and had “close ties with three of the city high schools,” wrote that Baldock “quickly established a school which took its place as an equal alongside other Rhodesian schools.”

The hostels opened in 1953 and were named Georgia House and Violet Rhodes House, after Cecil Rhodes’s nieces, Miss Georgia Rhodes and Miss Violet Rhodes, who opened them. In 1966 the Anglican Diocese of Matabeleland gave St Elizabeth House to the Government for the school. From 1955 to 1959 Founders also trained Asian and Coloured primary teachers. The headmaster later wrote that, “inadequate as this arrangement was,” its teachers became “among our best teachers and headmasters.”

Growth

The planners of 1958 expected a maximum of 850 pupils. By 1966 there were more than a thousand, and in 1977 there were 1,353 pupils and 71 staff. In its first twenty-five years the school admitted 10,874 pupils.

A 1976 survey printed in the jubilee issue shows how varied the school was. Pupils’ home languages included Afrikaans, Gujarati, Hindi, Ndebele, Portuguese, Shona, Tamil and Urdu. Sixty per cent of staff spoke at least one language besides English.

The school’s motto is Truth is ever simple.

In the school’s own words

The magazines are frank about the colour bar. In his 1973 report, the headmaster, Mr G. C. Solomons (head from 1961), wrote that “in some quarters prejudice and ignorance continue to be barriers to opportunity for Asian and Coloured school leavers.” He hoped economic pressure would teach employers to train and use skilled people “irrespective of racial and colour considerations.”

The same issue has more cheerful firsts. In 1972 the school’s Prehistory Society excavated an Early Iron Age site at Shemara Farm near Odzi and found, the headmaster reported, “the first evidence of domesticated dogs found in Rhodesia.” An expedition to the Nata River in Botswana collected birds, fish and mammals for the National Museum.

The jubilee issue also prints short notes from old pupils. One of the first, Dolleirai Kaudas, “attended Founders High School in January 1952, being one of the first pupils.” Others became doctors, teachers, accountants, nurses, a qualified steam-locomotive driver and business people, in Bulawayo, Salisbury, Rusape, Livingstone, Botswana and beyond. Together they amount to a portrait of a community.

After independence

Today Founders is a government day and boarding high school on Dundee Drive. According to Wikipedia, it began at the Herbert Stanley Hostel there, in the Barham Green area. Most of its pupils come from Emganwini, Nketa, Tshabalala, Southwold, Bellevue and Nkulumane. Former pupils named on Wikipedia include the educationist and cabinet minister Fay Chung, the surgeon Edwin Muguti and the politician Fortune Chasi.

What we don’t know yet

• The name. Ian Grant’s 1977 message speaks of “the finest traditions of those men after whom it is named,” and the Secretary for Education says the school’s badge marks it as “a pioneer venture.” Who were the founders in the name?
• Founders after 1980: how the school changed, and who led it.
• The Old Foundarians. The 1977 magazine says ex-pupils had just “for the second time formed an Old Foundarians Association.” Does it still exist?
• Your story. If you were a Foundarian, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, or your family sent children south before 1952, we would very much like to hear from you. The story of Bulawayo’s Asian and Coloured communities is told far too rarely, and it is not ours to tell without you.