adminIt must have been very embarrassing for all the other boys and girls studying at Zimbawe’s oldest school. Inyathi Mission was established by Dr Robert Moffat of the then London Missionary Society (LMS) on 26 December 1859.
Everyone associated with that historic educational institution as either a teacher there or as a former student certainly felt let down by the reported sexually immoral goings-on as carried by Chronicle.
The teachers concerned will continue shrinking in apprehension and embarrassment because of their students’ unbecoming behaviour for the foreseeable future. It does not help the situation that two other students had earlier been expelled for being pregnant. Something has gone amiss at that formerly august centre of learning where, according to Chronicle, beer was also being smuggled into the student’s dormitories.
Had Inyathi Mission always been having that kind of despicable environment, it could not have produced educational luminaries such as Peter Sivalo Mahlangu (BA), Obadiah Mlilo (BA), the Rev Pute Nelson Ndlovu, The Rev A Mzilethi, Joshua Mpofu (BA), Micah Bhebe, Timothy Kumile Masola, the Rev J Danisa, D W M Kulube and a host of other prominent personalities whose contributions to this country changed its social, cultural, economic and political standing, rendering the lives of the people much better all round than they had been.
With the exception of Joshua Mpofu (the former Matabeleland Provincial Deputy Director of Education) all the others are deceased – may their souls rest in eternal peace.
They are certainly turning in their graves to learn that their Alma Mater’s current students have sunk to such low depths of immorality that they are turning some of their dormitories into virtual brothels.
Lest this article sounds painfully, one-sided in its condemnation of the students’ immoral behaviour, it is advisable to point out that today’s child’s behaviour is influenced by at least two social environments.
The first is the home environment. Its influence on the child’s character is much greater than that of the crèche, the school, the college and, ultimately, the university, all these being the second environment.
The home is the child’s cradle in more than that word’s literal meaning in that what parents teach their children through the word as well as by their behaviour is more than 70 to 80 percent reflected by their children’s behaviour, characters in effect.
There is also the aspect in some cases of heredity (nhodza, ufuzo), a rather controversial aspect of the study of child behaviour (child psychology).
We can say without any doubt, however that children by and large temperamentally take after one or the other of their parents. Cases of children being genetically what their parents are, of course, very well known.
In the United States, there is a well known school of thought that holds the view that alcoholism is hereditary. Some insurance companies there ask people wishing to take life insurance policies with them whether one or both of their parents or grandparents are or were alcoholics.
In Zimbabwe from about the late 1930s to about the early 1960s, there was some conviction or some sort of theory among some school teachers that girls born of women whose first-borns were born before they were actually legally married were most likely to have their first children also before they were married.
This was probably a baseless theory but a mini research by the author of this opinion article in 1957 seemed to support it. Well, if it is a truism that sons behave like their fathers (life father like son); it must also be true that daughters tend to take after their mothers (like mother like daughter).
Talking about parents’ influence on their children’s characters should not blind us to the fact that some children rebel against their parents. This seems to be quite common among children of prominent religious leaders.
Some daughters and sons of some pastors and their eminent Christian leaders have been known for being the most sexually promiscuous, the worst drug addicts and the least controllable drunkards in their respective communities.
Some psychologists think that such children tend to seek their own personal social identities by choosing the exact opposite of their parents’ passions and hobbies, usually ending up either as social dregs or most embarrassing misfits.
In a learning environment, there are always pupils or students who are more vocal and more extroverted than others. Their opinions usually carry much more weight than those of reserved, rather docile ones.
In each class, that situation prevails. In addition to this social fact, small friendship groups also show a similar tendency with one or more of its members being more influential than others.
Referred to generally as “peer pressure”, that influence can either build, moderate or destroy the academic or professional future of some of the members of wither the friendship group, the class or the school (the entire student population) depending of the issue or behaviour at stake.
Children with a strong, enlightened family upbringing always show wisdom in such situations by rejecting the rule of the mob (mobocrcy) for respect for the school and other authorities whom they undertook to obey in the first place as a condition for admission to their school.
It takes a great deal of courage to reject evil for that which is virtuous, respectful, respectable, lawful, righteous, responsible and constructive. The reason for this is that evil is initially usually associated with pleasure and thrills of joy. But more often than not it ends in misery, tragedy, regret and much wailing, gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands.
That is precisely what sexual intercourse before marriage invariably leads to, so does the consumption of alcoholic beverages.
These are pleasures enjoyed at the risk of the enjoyer: the first shows its unwarranted efforts after nine months and the other either sooner (economically) or much later in both physical and mental health terms.
A relatively important factor in the moulding of the character of children are the general social and cultural values of the community in which they live and grow up. A child who lives in a violence-dominated community such as various parts of South Africa is likely to be violent.
Similarly, a community in which sexual immorality is not frowned upon will inevitably breed sexually immoral children. Schools should guard against this, a socio-cultural weakness characterised by teenage pregnancies.
In the mid-1940s, Dombodema Mission School experienced an alarming spate of pregnancies among its girls. School boys were largely to blame.
Located 24km west of Plumtree, the school was founded in 1895 by the Rev George Cullen Harvey Reed of the then London Missionary Society (LMS). It is a sister-school of Inyathi Mission both of which are now owned and run by the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA), since about August 1967.
In 1943, Dombodema School was headed by Amos Dambe Tjuma from the then Bechuanaland Protectorate, now Botswana.
He left during the course of the year because he had impregnated one of the teachers whom he later married. His place was briefly taken over by the Rev Pute Nelson Ndlovu who was replaced by Timothy Kumile Masola the following year.
Meanwhile, girls were dropping out of school because of pregnancies like tree leaves in winter. In 1945, Masola left and Daniel Hilton Dube (DHD) became the head. The pregnancy “disease” (for lack of a better term) which had become endemic to Dombodema School seemed to turn into a pandemic as it spread to schools under its superintendence in the southern, northern and western of the then Bulilimamangwe district
At the end of 1946, DHD left and in came Dlamini Wilson Muwutshiwa (DWN) Kulube who had been teaching at Hope Fountain with Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe (Ngwenya). He took over what was widely considered to be a morally rotten school. The previous year an extremely talented athletic sports girl had died as she was trying to abort.
In the same year, another girl had committed suicide by throwing herself into a deep well following her boyfriend’s death. He died, it was alleged, after he had had sexual intercourse with her a couple of days after she had aborted.
During his first year at Dombodema, DWN Kulube closely monitored the school’s social goings on, secretly recording down who was in love with whom. The following year, he had a meeting with the school committee comprising representatives of the community and the resident missionary, Rev WW Anderson, plus the Rev Pute Nelson Ndlovu who was the superintendent of all the outlying schools in the Dombodema circuit.
The school committee gave him the green light to cleanse the situation without fear, favour or hesitation.
After that DWN Kulube pounced with the ferocity of a leopard on an unprotected pigsty full of unsuspecting piglets. He called and asked all those boys and girls who were in love to tell him one by one what they did to each other, where and when. He recorded all the sordid details.
Mr Kulube was a no-nonsense man, and he used a sjambok most plentifully to coerce those who were pig-headed into giving him as much information as he demanded about their love making.
During the unforgettable campaign, not a single parent or guardian intervened.
At the end of the exercise Mr Kulube assembled the whole school in the school hall (Arthington Hall) and told us who was whose lover, calling each couple onto the stage one after another.
He ended by telling the entire school that schools were meant for learning and not for love-making. It had turned out during Mr Kulube’s marathon investigation that most of the lovers, had told him that they made love at night whenever there was a concert at Dombodema.
Following that, the missionaries and the school committee cancelled the staging of concerts forthwith not only at Dombodema but throughout the circuit. Incidentally, that decision was soon adopted by the Methodists at nearby Tegwane Mission and by the Roman Catholics at Empandeni and Embakwe Missions a little further to the south of Plumtree.
Although I was fairly young at that time, I thought that those drastic measures significantly reduced the incidence of school pregnancies at least at Dombodema for few years, it certainly appeared.
This story is narrated here to show that desperate social, cultural or other problems, just like desperate illness need desperate corrective medicines.
In the Inyathi Mission case, it is obvious that the school authorities, in close consultation with those of the Ministry of Education, Arts, Sports and Culture as well as parents and guardians of the students should take and implement decisions that will be both corrective and punitive on the errant people, that is to say on students as well as staff members.
It would also be most advisable for the school to hold regular and not occasional counselling sessions for the students but in their respective gender groups.
Such counselling can help many young people as a whole, but particularly (particularly does not mean exclusively) girls to know that reckless sexual behaviour can change a person’s hopefully bright and promising future into hopeless, distressful one.
l Saul Gwakuba is a Bulawayo-based retired journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734328136 or on email [email protected]
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