Most of these children never went past the first six years and then returned to their tribes to forget most of that to which they had been exposed. The accusations of Beshir and others lose some of their sting when set in this context.
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The early years of missionary activity were long, difficult, and sometimes dangerous. The years before 1928 were devoted almost entirely to the daily challenges of winning acceptance from the inhabitants and simply getting along in an environment which: both the European and American missionaries found to be both physically and culturally hostile. By the late 1920s the challenges had been met; mission stations had been built, relations with local government officials and the indigenous peoples were satisfactory and the process of evangelizing the southern Sudanese was underway. As the previous chapter has shown, though, the work of the missionaries in the field of evangelization began to be overshadowed by growing government requirements for education. The increased effort devoted to education resulted in a diminished evangelizing capability. This conflict between mission goals and government requirements from the missions was never completely resolved. The shift to education led to the emergence' of splits within some of the missionary groups. The older members tended to reject the imposition of government criteria and the increased control over their activities while younger members accepted the educational role with little question. By the early 1940s all of the missions except the Sudan Interior Mission had professional educators on their staffs. [1] In 1940 a C.M.S. missionary |
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writing an article for readers in England explained the historical reasons for the shift and illustrated the persistence of the evangelization versus education conflict as follows: There has been some uneasiness among members of the C.M.S. at home and among missionaries in the field as to the wisdom of this policy. The aim of the Society is evangelization and the work of all its missionaries is to proclaim the gospel of salvation-on that we are all agreed. But some have deduced from it that education is outside our sphere, or may enter only as part of the aftercare of converts. It has been argued that to open schools in unevangelicized areas is to put the cart before the horse ... Bring up the children as the family of God and train them for citizenship of the Kingdom of Heaven. That is the policy of the C.M.S. in the Southern Sudan, and the policy endorsed and supported by the government. [2] In the small American Mission the shift appears to have had little effect on the outlook of its members as the following suggests: I went there (the South) not to cram religion down the throats of the Muslims as we often has been characterized by some U.S. citizens. I went with the evangelistic purpose--to tell them of Christ and let them make their own choice .... Our plans for a mission were to train both young men and young women to make them available in the country of the Sudan. I do not feel that our efforts ever impeded the process of creating a viable and independent nation. [3] As these quotations indicate, education was not the primary concern of some of the missionaries who served during the 1928-1946 period. As further discussion will show, these two missionaries expressed the attitude of a majority of those missionaries who saw service in the South during that period. However, even though most of the missionaries still remained devoted to evangelization first, as government developed its financial and oversight relationship to the mission schools the evolution of a government- |
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controlled mission-staffed system was inevitable. The decision in 1930 was to use the mission-schools to train Southerners for government service. That decision remained in effect until 1946 and the development of government schools was thus precluded on the grounds of economy and non-availability of suitable secular staff. [4] In 1926 there were a total of 13 elementary schools in the South, four for boys, the rest for girls. In 1932 this had increased significantly with 33 elementary schools enrolling over 3,000 boys and 11 for the 547 girls enrolled. In addition to these figures, the one trade school with ten pupils had increased to three with 128 pupils and the one intermediate school with 35 boys had grown to three enrolling 280 boys. By 1932 this growth had led to the establishment of two Teacher Training Schools enrolling 82 young men. [5] The growth of the educational system was steady but uncontrolled. The government did not establish any quotas or specific requirements. Consequently the mission-schools determined their own intake which was usually set more by evangelical needs than government requirements. Since this was a time of financial difficulty and the government subsidy was based on enrollment, the more students attending, the larger the subsidy would be. the components of the system as it evolved were: "bush" or outschools providing very basic instruction in literary skills, often criticized as being nothing but catechism centers; next were the elementary vernacular schools where the children from the bush schools were |
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taught in the local vernacular; the final step in the South were the intermediate schools. In addition to this foundation system, there were trade schools and teacher training schools. Curricula are discussed in Chapter VI. Statistically the growth of the system can be simply presented:
*No figures for war years. The figures reflect slow and steady growth except for the bush schools which were never accurately tabulated since they were opened and closed more or less at will. As government inspection became more effective and educational reforms were introduced in the late 1930s, the improved standards could not be met by these primitive schools. However, as the following section indicates, the steady growth of the number of schools operating in the South should not be interpreted as steady improvement. Several severe problems limited the effectiveness of the mission undertaking; the missionaries themselves were one of them. For the first several years of the formal relationship between |
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government and mission schools, the teaching duties were in the hands of a small group of Europeans and Americans, most of them not trained as teachers. As the number of schools grew, the mission staffs did not grow proportionally. In spite of this thinning of the missionary presence in the schools, as late as 1934 the government's report on education was lamenting the dearth of normal or teacher training schools. Until 1938 there were only two, both Roman Catholic, one at Mupoi, the other at Torit. [7] This thinning can be seen in the following table which illustrates the fact that the C.M.S. consistently lacked enough teachers to staff all C.M.S. schools. Since there was no C.M.S. normal school, the Society must have been entrusting a good deal of instruction to untrained missionaries, older students or untrained school leavers.
In his memoirs Sir Stewart Symes sets this evolving system Into the framework of the social and political conditions in the South. He points out that in 1934 there were 200 missionaries in the South, 171 of them Roman Catholics, and there were one million |
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"primitives" who inhabited an area of 240,000 square miles and were governed by 42 political officers. [9] The tremendous task this situation presented to the political officers and the missionaries resulted in a number of problems for which they were neither prepared nor qualified. The shift from evangelism to education did not result in a major change in the composition of the missionary community. Very few of them had been qualified by education as teachers before the Southern Policy went into effect in 1930 and this remained true throughout the period up to the end of World War II. It is difficult to make a concrete assessment of their qualifications for the new job they were undertaking, for, although they were professionally untrained, they were men of good will, strong character and dedication to the lot of the South. These personal attributes certainly offset some of their professional shortcomings. They muddled through the early 1930s doing a mainly poor job as Chapter VI will show, but there were some bright spots as the following suggests: The American Mission at Doleib Hill furnishes a notable exception...it is easily the most efficient and the most promising of the educational establishments in this part of the world. [10] A serious problem which developed during the Depression when government control was lax was the crystallization of opposition to the limits on evangelism in favor of education. The older generation of C.M.S. and Verona Fathers leadership had been essentially free to do as they pleased from 1929 on. When control was |
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tightened and the emphasis on teaching began to take effect, this veteran leadership became extremely difficult and recalcitrant. This difficultly focused around the personality of Archdeacon Shaw, head of the Anglicans in the South, and the issue of the Sphere System. The nature of the difficultly can be seen in the following comment: It appears to be the time that the autocratic rule of Archdeacon Shaw should come-to an end. There is very little to show for his 30 years work amongst the Dinka. He has become an anachronism, a modern Ulysses ... rushing madly about the country in a motorcar, generally by night, never stopping any reasonable length of time in one place, neglecting his correspondence and ignoring the Resident Inspector's reports. He is not only an Archdeacon but an archobstructionist and a past master in sophistry and the weaving of plausible excuses for his own and his mission's shortcomings. *[11 As it developed, the days of autonomy and autocracy enjoyed by Shaw and some of his Verona Fathers were to end with the sweeping reforms introduced by Sir Christopher Cox in 1938. [12] Many of the missionaries who made the transition from evangelizing in the field to educating in the classroom seem to have simply changed locations, not vocations. In the words of one of the Presbyterian missionaries: Our mission to the Sudanese was first and foremost to introduce them to Christ as the Saviour of all men. We did this thru our various lines of service to them but making them to understand that our purpose for our being there with them was to give them the knowledge that men are sinners and need the Saviour, and are lost without Him....As far as I could understand, while I know that the British were there for their own benefit first of all, but I felt that |
they were laying a good foundation thru education of the Sudanese .... There were complaints because of few schools but 1 felt that the British chose well for educating for leadership .... We might have anticipated a sooner Independence of the country .... We sort of felt that the helpful influence of our mission would always be there. [13] The most outspoken of the Verona Fathers and, for a long time, their Secretary of Education, indicated that some of the members of his order had accepted the shift to education dictated by the government: We were expected to produce a Christian African nearer to the British than the Muslim civilization... the government was very broad-minded and the curriculum was very loose .... The first missionaries were religion-minded, the newer ones interested in education .... During the War we were too near Ethiopia and some of the young Fathers had been indoctrinated with Fascism. [14] The Secretary of the C.M.S., with 24 years in the South, tends more toward the view expressed by the Presbyterian respondent--a continued commitment to conversion. We were expected to develop an educational system in the South...we were interested in literacy because unless the native were literate he could not read the Scriptures .... Although most of our schools never saw an inspector we adhered to the syllabus closely ... the standard of education would not get you too far and we ignored the Idea of educating toward Government employment for our graduates...the founding members (especially Archdeacon Shaw) felt that preaching was their job and time devoted to advanced education was wasted. [15] There were other problems affecting the transition from the evangelical to the educational focus of missionary work. These problems fall into three general categories: political, pedagogical, |
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and sectarian. The political problems were generated by the American Mission in Khartoum and the Roman Catholics in the South. The latter was such a persistent problem that it is treated separately as an aspect of the Government-Mission relationship which is the subject of the next chapter. The Americans had conducted home and school instruction in Khartoum throughout the first three decades of their presence in the Sudan, from 1900-1930. Combined Government and Muslim opposition ended these activities. By 1933 only one American school remained in operation in the Northern Sudan. The Depression dramatically reduced funds from the U.S. which forced the Mission to trim and reduce programs. This circumstance coincided with an increase in government educational facilities in the North and in 1933 all evangelical work was terminated in the North and transferred to the South. The Americans in the South then exerted pressure to extend the scope of their activities which resulted in their establishing a mission station among the Annuak tribe in 1935. [17] Not satisfied, the Americans in the following year suggested to the Province Governor that they be allowed to minister to all the Annuak. The significance of this lies in the fact that the Annuak tribe inhabited not only Sudanese but also Abyssinian territory. The Americans were asking permission to move into the newly conquered Italian colony, but their Province Governor advised them to delay, thus avoiding a serious political confrontation. [18] |
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The pedagogical problem category can be sub-categorized into two: texts and related materials, and finance. The Southern Sudan was and remains a linguist's paradise. The diversity of tribal languages and their assorted dialects stimulated a great deal of amateur translation and research, especially among the Roman Catholic missionaries. Grammars were compiled and religious texts reproduced in several of these languages. [19] The linguist's paradise proved to be hell for the educational efforts, both of the missionary educators and their government overseers. The government showed its concern by convening a language conference at Rejaf in 1928. Attending were representatives of all the mission societies, the Education Department, Professor Westermann, an African linguist, and mission society representatives from Uganda. The Rejaf Language Conference adopted six major group vernaculars which were to be used in the writing of textbooks for the elementary schools. [20] This decision simplified the educators' problems but they remained large. Although the missionaries had been engaged in educational activities for several years before the Rejaf Conference, fully ninety percent of the printed matter which had been translated into one of the southern vernaculars consisted of moral fables and books of the Bible. [21] This remained a problem for the next several years. The missions were the only sizable source of translation and they were often obliged to print their own materials which, understandably, betrayed a distinctly religious flavor. Throughout the 1930s the Resident Inspector of Southern Education commented on the Christian tone, narrow themes and limited number of the texts. It |
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was not until 1933 that a sufficient number of texts had been produced for use in the schools. [22] Problems of dialect variations and orthography limited the utility of these texts. In 1936 the Education Department felt obliged to point out that nearly all of these texts were still nothing more than religious tracts. According to the author of the Department's report, all secular literature was going to have to wait until the Bible had been translated into the several vernaculars. [23] He continued very critically in a later section of the same report with the following remarks: Progress is very slow in the matter of the provision of textbooks, as is clear from an inspection of the list of secular books so far translated .... Something might be done to speed matters up if there were better organization . . . and if there were greater cooperation among the parties concerned. But as long as, in the words of one British missionary, 'First things come first,' so that the secular has to wait upon the religious work . . . then the pace is likely to continue to be very slow. [24] The textbook problem was never really solved until the government stepped in and provided guidance, translations, and printing facilities of their own, but this did not happen until after 1946 and falls outside the scope of this work. The financial subcategory acted upon pedagogical problems in two main ways. The increasing fiscal dependence of the missions on the Government led to friction and disagreement across the whole spectrum of education. In addition, evaluation, selection and vocational assignment of mission personnel in the Sudan fell under |
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Joint control, especially during and after the Depression. The missions could not support themselves and satisfy the government requirements, so the government increased its support and, with little intention, became directly involved in the delivery of educational services not of its creation or reflecting its value system. Government support began on an ad hoc basis in 1924. In 1926 an Inspector of Education for the Southern Sudan was appointed. From 1927 a regular program of government subsidies to approved mission schools was initiated. [25] The conditions for these sub sidles were simple: (1) A European must exercise uninterrupted supervision over the school. (As
discussed earlier, this requirement must have been frequently overlooked.) As the following table illustrates, the missions were receiving an increasing amount of government financial support due to the loss of revenue from home congregations and agencies during the Depression. This increased dependence on the Government meant that they were becoming more directly involved in the conduct of the Southern Policy, especially the provision of trained clerical and medical staff. The increased involvement in specifically government concerns would have been at the expense of evangelical |
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work since the number of missionaries in the field did not increase substantially during these years. As government subsidies grew, so did government control. Therefore, the Depression and the consequent increase in government funding led to a missionary involvement in political concerns and a diminished evangelical drive. If the missionaries ignored these realities, they lost their subsidies.
The educational reforms instituted by Sir Christopher Cox (discussed in Chapter VI), explain the large increases in expenditure from 1938 to 1946. As can be seen, the Depression had a material effect on the schools. According to the annual reports, the effects were a reduction in enrollment due to a diminished demand for educated Southerners in the retrenched local government offices; a reduction in European staff due to attrition and lack of replacements; the consequent increase in native staff and a concomitant lowering of academic standards; a freeze on supervisory staff limiting the effectiveness of regulation; in general terms, a halt in progress and, in some respects regression in the effort. [28] |
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An extreme case was the American Mission. In 1931 it was awarded a IE.50 grant so the number of boarders could be increased. By 1933 the Americans were dependent on the government for free travel between Malakal and Juba and were receiving an additional L E.6 per person for "transport and other expenses." At the same time the funds from Pittsburgh had almost completely stopped. By 1939 almost all the operating capital and all the medicines used by the Mission were being provided by the government. [29] The Roman Catholics were the most independent and the C.M.S. fell somewhere in between. By 1945 new pay scales had been introduced and the missions received subsidies which were to cover seventy-five percent of the cost of the new salaries. [30] The Mission school teachers had become quasi-government employees. The final category of problems encountered is sectarian. This has probably been given more weight by critics than the evidence suggests is deserved. Both SPS personnel and Sudanese authors, Beshir being a good example, give the impression that the denominations were constantly in dispute over dogma, territory, and converts. An exhaustive examination of all the Inspectors' reports does not give substance to this impression. In the early years of mission activity there was a good deal of bickering among the SPS, the C.M.S., and the Roman Catholics over the limits imposed on them by the Sphere System. The latter seem to have been the worst violators of the system, being depicted as adhering to a universal rather than national dogma and recognizing no absolute limits on |
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their efforts to convert. From 1914 through the early 1930s they were a nagging but not a serious problem to the Government and their missionary colleagues. [31] In addition to this refusal to accept the Sphere System limits to their activities, the Roman Catholics appear to have also been involved from time to time in unauthorized corporal punishment of their charges, interference in civil affairs, obstruction of government activities, continued conspiracy to circumvent regulations, and other petty examples of poor relations with the SPS. [32] The Roman Catholics did not miss an opportunity to trespass outside their sphere. While the Stack Memorial School (the Government Intermediate School) was in opera Lion, it was staffed by Syrian Christians but, in order to protect the boys from the corrupting influence of Wau town life, the boys boarded with the Roman Catholic Mission in Wau. This led to constant friction between the teachers and the priests for control of the boys' activities and education. [33] After 1933 the official record notes few such incidents. What was to continue to plague the SPS was the question of inter-mission "poaching"--the penetration by one denomination of another's sphere. Once again, Roman Catholic rejection of the absolute limits explicit in the system was the cause. The problem of sectarian rivalry and violence which had plagued the British in Uganda was one of the fundamental reasons for this limitation on evangelism; as time faded the memories of that problem, increasing pressure from the Roman Catholic Bishop in Khartoum and the Anglican |
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Archdeacon in the South was brought to bear on the Sphere System with persistent complaint and poaching accompanying the pressure. [34] One question put to both SPS and missionary respondents during the interview phase of this research was, "How would you describe inter-Mission relations?" A sample of the responses gives substance to this sectarian problem of the 1930s. The Inspector of Schools in Bahr al-Ghazal responded that the C.M.S. were "more uncharitable" toward the Verona Fathers than was necessary. He felt much of the anti-Roman Catholic feelings manifested by the C.M.S. and the SPS were unjustified in light of their performance which he described in positive terms. [35]6 His superior, the Director of Education, felt that the C.M.S. was trying to "graft" new religion via education onto the tribal "trees" in the South while the Roman Catholics were described as attempting to "cut down" that tree and replace it with a completely European one. He also found fault with the attitude of the Roman Catholic leadership who often described the Southerners as "savages." [36] The C.M.S. Secretary of Education toward the end of this period felt that their relations with the Roman Catholics were "fairly hostile." He also felt that they were involved in encouraging their converts to subvert government policies distasteful to the priests. [37] The last English Anglican Bishop of the Sudan recalls an "awful lot of poaching in the 1930s." He felt that the Sphere System all but broke down by 1938 but that relations with the Roman Catholics began to improve about halfway through World War 11 and the early distrust and antagonism was dispelled. [38] The last English Director of |
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Education had to deal with a "good deal of body-snatching" and felt inter-mission relations were "pretty prickly." [39] It seems that the C.M.S. and Roman Catholic missionaries were not without fault both in their relations with each other and in accepting the governmental dicta. It does not seem, from the evidence at hand, that there were severe problems requiring the constant diversion of administrative attention from more important tasks. Only once during the period covered did a Province Governor become involved in a mission problem. [40] Petty problems certainly affected Government-Mission relations, but as the words of one of the better-known Christian missionaries who served in the South show, there was a general sense of working toward a common goal: .. as the Uganda Mission stopped the spread of Islam among the Baganda, so the Southern Sudan Mission aided by the 'Southern Policy' of the Sudan Government, are stopping Muslim penetration from sweeping round the less impressionable Nilotes and embracing tribes such as the Moru and Azande. [41] At least some of them felt it was a concerted action they were engaged in, not one at odds with governmental concerns. These problems of poaching and trespass seemed, in the view of SPS officials in Khartoum, to be growing to difficult proportions. They felt there was virtual breakdown of the Sphere System. Contributing to this breakdown were the financial stringencies under which both Government and the Missions were placed. The Government reduced its Inspectorate while the C.M.S. and Presbyterians both reduced their staff and became more dependent on government subsidies. The only gainers during the depth of the Depression |
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were the Verona Fathers who were there for the duration anyway and were not dependent on government subsidy to the same extent as their competitors. The consequence was uncontrolled and opportunistic expansion into both the Open and C.M.S. Spheres by the Verona Fathers. The murmur of complaint against these violations grew in volume until the Governor-General was forced to act. After an extended visit to the South, Sir Stewart Symes described the problems encountered in a letter to the British Minister Plenipotentiary in Cairo. The "sphere system" has worked fairly satisfactorily hitherto, especially in connexion with educational organization, and justified its original inception as a useful political expedient in a virgin mission field among primitive natives. But the boundaries of the several spheres were decided quite arbitrarily, and in many places do not conform with any tribal or sociological barriers.... At several points, missionary bodies and especially Roman Catholics, in relation to their zeal and resources in personnel, have now carried forward their evangelistic mission... to the utmost limits of their respective spheres; and at these points of confluence difficult and invidious questions of denominational precedence and procedure have come forward and require to be resolved. [42] Sir Stewart was apprehensive of outbreaks of sectarianism both between the converts and the missionaries themselves. "Bodysnatching" had been and would remain a problem until the expansion of the missionaries thirty years later. After retirement he expanded on this problem by describing the steps he contemplated would be necessary to arrest the spread of the Roman Catholics and thereby limit the prospects of disorder: |
Under the system of mission "spheres" local populations came generally, if not exclusively, under the influence of a single denomination .... They had proved a convenient political expedient, but the original boundaries were settled arbitrarily and did not always conform with tribal or other natural divisions. This mattered less in the early stages of missionary enterprise, but as the several denominational missions - especially the Roman Catholics - in relation to their zeal and resources, pressed forward their activities to the limits of their respective spheres, questions of precedence and procedure caused friction at many points.... Ecclesiastical divisions in Christendom are one of many aspects of our Western civilization which are perplexing to native Africans. [43] As the size of Government subsidies increased and the problems grew more complex, the Governor-General finally imposed order on the situation. The missionaries were not unconscious of the fact that concern for quality and economy were on the rise and were revising their methods and re-evaluating their goals accordingly. There was little turnover in mission personnel during the Depression and neither the size nor the attitudes of the missionary community changed substantially until just at the outbreak of World War II. The unwillingness to subordinate evangelization to education combined with the lack of professionally trained teachers resulted in a variety of teaching methods. Throughout the period covered there were two conflicting opinions within the educational system as to whom should be taught and whom converted. The Non-Government Schools Ordinance of |
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1927 specified that if a child's parents objected to the Bible study segment of the curriculum then that child could be excused but allowed to attend the remaining classes. [44] This must have been honored more in the breach than in the practice as the following quotations from government documents attest: The important point is this:--if the missions insist that they will only teach those natives who conform to religious practice and moral rules laid down by the missions, if in effect the natives can only get education at the expense of their customs: they will not take it. Nor in my opinion is it the government policy that their customs (provided they are not offensive to normal morality) should be interfered with; on the contrary the government is doing its utmost to strengthen the customary law as a means of administration and is therefore sympathetically disposed to tribal customs as the basis of tribal organization. [45] The refusal to provide education unless it was accompanied by religious instruction remained a major disagreement between government and missionaries throughout the 1928-1946 period and beyond. It was an especially difficult problem in the Roman Catholic sphere of influence. The Williams Report raised a related problem in its discussion of the need for teacher training. The overall control of staffing the schools remained in the hands of the missions during the period of growth discussed earlier. They were reluctant to lose their grip on the character and spirit of the classroom atmosphere and resisted the pressure to increase their native staff or to give them any real responsibility. Since the Inspectors were usually able to make only one or two visits a year and their reports to |
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Khartoum were often ignored, this resistance was effective. [46] In his report, Williams indicated that he felt the native teachers were much more effective than the missionaries in the delivery of educational services. He went on to suggest that more value for the government money expended in subsidies would be realized if missionaries were to train native teachers to replace themselves. Williams felt that the reluctance of the missions to enlarge their native staffs reflected their continued commitment to evangelism over education. [47] The plucking of brands from the burning is their (the Roman Catholics) only real preoccupation. Once the soul has been saved and another number chalked up, there is little apparent interest in the physical and mental welfare of the individual pupil. The boys issuing from their schools display a somewhat cowed and downtrodden demeanor. [48] The emphasis on conversion over education was not a problem with the other mission societies while it seemed to grow progressively worse with the Roman Catholics. During his inspection tour of the South in 1937, Sir Christopher Cox remarked that the Verona Fathers seemed to be more of a threat than support for the Southern Policy. He felt that their emphasis on subordination of all to the Papal hierarchy and the blunt authoritarian techniques of instruction in their classrooms were counter to the government's aim of creating an educated and competent Southern leadership. [49] As was noted earlier, a general loss of control had occurred in the years leading up to Cox's appointment. In 1938 there were 14 cases of the Roman Catholic missionaries taking children to their schools either |
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without parental consent or against the parents' wishes. This provoked the following comments from the offended District Commissioner: Interference with parental control, the back-bone of most central African society, in a district such as this appears most undesirable and liable to cause rave discontent (emphasis in the original , father Mazzoldi (head of the mission under discussion) pointed out that one of the aims of the mission was to break down pagan marriages; this however, can hardly be put into practice in an area where there are less than 100 Christians of either denomination amongst a population of some 40 to 50,000 people. [50] The introduction of the Mill Hill Fathers as partial replacements for the Italians does not seem to have improved the Roman Catholic methods. In a letter from their Head to the Director of Education, we find that . . . . Religious Propaganda is the primary reason for our being here, yet we recognize the necessity of our coupling missionary work with the work of secular education. Yet is should be understood that this latter is in reality a "sideline" which we are quite willing to follow for the good of the tribe in general. This we are willing to do, without even laying down the rule, that the following of Religious Instruction be a condition sine qua non, with regard to secular education. [51] Aside from this chronic problem with the methods of the Roman Catholics there was little else of note in this category. The Presbyterians approached their District Commissioner toward the end of World War II to inquire about the possibility of employing American Negroes as missionaries at their stations. The lack of serious concern for the educational effort in the South is brought out in his response. The humanitarian concerns of the |
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Southern Policy, the continual skirmishing between the missions and the government for the souls and minds of the Southerners were not at all important to the second-ranking government educational officer in the region, the Assistant Director of Education (South). In his words: I emphasized the necessity of very careful selection. They must be absolutely first rate men of high educational and academic qualifications; revivalists should be avoided. I also suggested that the mission should try to recruit 100% Negroes and not chocolate colored coons who will only be mistaken for rather swarthy Americans. [52] In addition to the problems of finance, boundaries, qualifications and methods, a more fundamental difficulty continued to affect mission teaching and their relations with the government. Even though the missions accepted the terms of government ordinances and the Southern Policy, they never gave up their primary commitment to evangelical dreams. From the beginning of their activity in Africa, the C.M.S. had hoped to establish a chain of mission stations from the Cape to Cairo as the spiritual complement to Cecil Rhodes' colonial scheme. [53] While this never became a stated goal of the C.M.S., it is clear from their activities that evangelization remained their first objective. The early SPS political officers in the South, still under the "Victorian hangover" of mission and duty, would have been sympathetic to this goal, but they would be replaced as time moved on. In 1921 the Civil Secretary was advised by the Roman Catholics in Wau that "we are decided to make all efforts in order that Bahr-al-Ghazal Province may be as soon as possible a Christian country." [54] |
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As MacMichael's Southern Policy went into effect it seems that the missions interpreted the goals of the government as being virtually identical with their own. The C.M.S. writes: It became a fixed part of the British Administration's policy to use the missions to provide... Education. And it was with the warm support of the missions that the Administration precluded, as far as possible, any infiltration of Arabic influences and customs from the North. [55] This was not an isolated assumption but rather seems to have been a general understanding of the missions during the beginning of the Southern Policy period. In 1930 the Verona Fathers stated: His excellency Monsignor Hinsley (from the Prefect Apostolic in Nairobi) referred to the intention of the Government of arresting the Muslim penetration of the South. Naturally this line is a program of prudence, so as not to create a situation for a resurgence of fanaticism. [56] The Americans also saw the goals of the Government as being similar to those of the missions. It is significant that our educational policy and that of the government are the same. Decided steps were taken at this conference (Mission-Government conference in Juba) to prevent education of the people from detribalizing them and thus unfitting them to live among their own people, one of the greatest dangers of our school system. [57] The government of the 1920s may have given the impression that there was a common Christian purpose for the mission monopoly on education in the South, but by the mid-1930s a much more secular tone characterized government correspondence on the mission schools. This can be explained as a combination of several factors already discussed. First, the older generation of the SPS was being |
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succeeded by younger men who had been shaped by the global events of the 1920s rather than the last years of the Victorian era. Second, the missions had suffered through the Depression, stagnating and becoming autonomous. Third, the government was more conscious of the emergence of Sudanese nationalism sparked by a renascent Egypt after the mid-1930s. Simply put, the missions assumed that the MacMichael spirit still predominated while the government felt it must get on with modernity and progress. In 1936 this dissonance was focused by the Williams Report. It analyzes the missions' shortcomings in terms of their goals versus the government's. Character and honesty cannot be inculcated purely by religion, which amongst the unsophisticated must appeal primarily to the emotions ... and does not call for the acquisition of the habit of thought. The native may be taught to read, mark and learn the Scriptures. but he cannot inwardly digest them and their doctrine if he is not also taught the power of logical thought and expression. He must learn to think if he is to progress and become a practicing as well as merely a professing Christian. Intellectual attainment should not be regarded as of very secondary importance. [58] Goals were growing apart. The government was new interested in the native qua citizen rather than native qua Christian. The missions resisted the limitation on evangelization and only practiced minimum compliance. After the passage of Archdeacon Shaw from the scene, it seemed that the government might have an easier time of persuading the missions to adjust their priorities. This was not to be. The coming of War had two negative effects |
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chose to all "education." The tune changed, though, as the War's effect began to fade and a revived and expanded Inspectorate assessed educational conditions in the South. The tone of the correspondence becomes sharply critical: To my direct question, 'are you as a mission really interested in education?' he replied 'No, we are evangelists.' Education had its place in their work but he would be right in saying that the average missionary looked upon an hour spent in school teaching a subject other than scripture was an hour wasted. With regard to noncooperation with other missions their trouble was that theirs was a non-denominational mission and that many of their supporters would withdraw their financial assistance if they knew that the S.I.M. was having truck with anyone else . . . . 1 suggested that if this was the attitude with regard to education the sooner they evacuated their schools the better. If government was in a position to take over all the S.I.M. schools, leaving the mission free to evangelise, with rights of entry to the schools, etc., what would be his reaction? He replied in his own vernacular 'it would be quite O.K. by me. [60]This was no casual conversation but a dialogue between the frustrated and angry Assistant Director of Education (South) and the head of the S.I.M. By 1945 the goals of the missions had diverged significantly from their perceived coincidence with those of the government in the early 19305. This was becoming apparent to the SPS on the scene in the South but, as far as one can tell from the official record, little of the SPS dissatisfaction with the lagging mission effort was ever communicated to the missions. As a consequence, the goals of the missionaries remained essentially what they had been: evangelization and, secondarily, as much (or little) education |
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as was required by the Government as the condition for their continued subsidy. A District Commissioner summed up the feelings of many of his colleagues this way: In Negroid Africa education must be confined to the few, but these few are going to obtain an immense power over their uneducated brethren; it is therefore obvious that careful selection is all important and this is not possible under present conditions. The goals of the missionaries remained unchanged. If they had to provide educational services to train government staff, they would. If they had to conform (or appear to conform) to government regulations, they would. If government subsidies were tied to a specific curriculum, they would adopt it. But, when their efforts and goals are evaluated, either by the insights pro vided by their interview responses and notes, or by the comments and criticisms from the SPS, it becomes apparent that they consistent ly refused to sacrifice the evangelical goal for the educational tasks. In the words of one of the Inspectors of Education: ..the schools maintained a sense of division.... There were no intended goals. They were simply acting emotionally....The missionaries never once brought up the question of slavery with me. [62] His superior, the Assistant Director of Education (South), had long contacts with the mission community and reinforces the observation above. In his words: |
Generally one was conscious that they (missions) were actively combatting Islam and Arabic .... I would bet that there was a good deal of propaganda on the days of slavery in the schools ... they (missions) didn't know the North and feared it.... There was too much emphasis on Christian humility and Roman Catholic hierarchy. The Verona Fathers kept their people too much under their thumb. [63] From the above it seems safe to say that the refusal of the missions to shift from evangelism to education was known to the Government. By the end of World War II, the tittle shifting that had been done was criticized and there seems to have been the beginnings of a conscious missionary move away from education as the following suggests: The development of missionary work in the Muslim Sudan has been rather opportunist in character... side by side with mission institutions parallel government institututions have arisen. Consequently mission institutions have had to be well run, with adequate staff and proper equipment; and missionaries, harassed by many duties, have been left with little time to devote to their own training and direct work .... These institutions continue, through the quality of mission personnel and native staff trained in Christian ways of service, to hold a unique position in the eyes of the populace, and offer a standard and exercise a means of service unsatisfied by the corresponding government institutions. This absorption in institutional work, however, had led to Christian social service and education becoming too much an end in itself, and evangelistic work has been almost a by-product. It has become so, on the one hand, because of its conditioning by Government policy and, on the other, because of the frustration and malaise felt by the missionary as a result of the apparent ineffectiveness of the direct approach, assisted by the pragmatist emphasis of Protestant missions. This was the state of deadlock reached at the beginning of the war . . . war conditions forced missionaries to reconsider their place in a country |
where the government is going ahead in a policy of social welfare and education . . . . That led to a realization that the whole of missionary policy must be re-orientated in the light of the primary aim of Christian missions--the establishment of the visible Church. [64] In interviews with Sudanese respondents the question was raised as to whether missionary goals may have created artificial lines of division within the national boundaries which further complicated the delicate and difficult tasks of bringing North and South toward competence and, ultimately, independence. The civil war was a North-South confrontation; could the government backed spread of Christianity and exclusion of Islam been a primary or subordinate cause? Beshir and others would like to think that without British administration and Christian education there would have been no problems in the achievement of integration after independence. The words of a member of one of the most famous and politically active Sudanese families give a sense of this criticism: Sub-Saharan Africa was seen as a tabula rasa to Christianize. The idea was that the more Western the thinking the less chance there was for slavery. The prevailing ideology favored evangelism, English, and Christianity. The use of mission schools as part of Southern Policy was merely an up-to-date device to artificially check Islam and Arabic...the missions preserved the memory of the days of slavery... there was a conscious effort to create, maintain, and deepen the differences created by the Condominium Government ... the graduates lacked serious qualifications, they had no principles, their Christianity outweighed their political sense. [65] A mission-educated southern Sudanese who was later active in education and politics provides a contrasting point of view: |
In the early stages education was geared to understanding Christianity. Later they engaged in education for preparation for life. They must not have been there only for evangelism due to the foundation of several intermediate schools. They never taught hatred for the North as Beshir and others have written-the only policy they encouraged was 'no Arabic' ... they treated Islam as a threat to Christianity. Some went out of their way to emphasize the threat of Islam ..the missions taught no more about slavery than was in village memories, there was still living evidence (in the villages) of slavery. [66] Although the missions were small in number, spread thin, underfinanced, overworked, and in disagreeement with government policy objectives, they did have an influence on the political and social development of the South. Many critics of the Southern Policy and the missions describe a situation in which missiongovernment collusion completely altered the course of southern development. How many missionaries were teaching how many Southerners in how many schools resulting in how many adequately trained native staff who could replace and resist northerners and their influence while leading the South toward a time when they could "stand on their own two feet" vis a vis the North? These questions stand . at the core of the problem which is central to this chapter. One begins to appreciate the limited scope of the missions' undertaking when Lillian Sanderson points out that it was not until 1933 that the first educational conference for dealing with the problems of all three Southern provinces was organized. She discusses the potential impact of this system, then in the process of organization in the following quotation: |
A liberal education would inevitably produce a different type of Southerner who would in his turn set up a chain of reactions to bring further changes. The government felt that with Southern Sudan conditions even a modest provision of education would initiate revolutionary changes. [67] Did these "revolutionary changes" take place? Most of the evidence from those on or near the scene tends to argue that the "liberal education" under discussion by Mrs. Sanderson had little, if any, of the predicted consequences. In his memoirs, Sir James Robertson mentions the sacrifice and devotion of the missionaries in glowing terms but dismisses the results of their efforts as "they could not hope to make any real impression on the vast field requiring attention."68 The effort does appear to have borne some fruit during the 1930s and 1940s for we see that "in 1935, with two ex ceptions, the whole of the clerical and accounting staff of the Bahr al-Ghazal area will be found from local bovs recruited from mission schools."69 That this was not a general condition through out the South can be deduced from a further lengthy entry in the same document. There was no slackening in the popular demand for education but its standard is still adversely affected by the failure as yet of the missions to produce adequately trained native teachers .... The standard of achievement reached by the locally recruited government employees does them great credit. [70] In assessing the effects of the mission effort, it is clear that they were confined to the government employee sector, an infintesimal part, of Southern society. As late as eight years after MacMichael's memorandum, the schools were not training enough graduates to reinforce and expand the educational system. The Roman Catholics sent a survey report of their educationa activities to Rome at about the same time. The conclusions are relevant to the discussion of mission impact and can be summarized In this way: English was not becoming the Southern lingua franca, the introduction of English either in the last two years of the elementary vernacular curriculum or at the beginning of the inter mediate curriculum was difficult and pedagogically unsound practic and Arabic might furnish the same medium of intercommunication in the South as had Swahili in East Africa. The missions were not having a significant linguistic effect on the South. [7l] One reason, among many, for the generally meager evidence of widespread, mission impoact on the language and fabric of tribal Southern society was the ambivalence implicit in the assumption of the task of delivering a "liberal education" to primitive tribespeople while continuing to devote a larger effort to their conversion. To succeed in both and also avoid the destabilization suggested in the quotation from Mrs. Sanderson supra was impossible. In 1941 a conference of government officials and mission personnel was con vened at Malakal to discuss the "Missions and Education Policy in Upper Nile Province." At this conference this ambivalence was a major topic of discussion. In a note to the Province Governor detailing the conference we read: It has been strongly contended from the government side that post-elementary vernacular education in the South should be limited. Some would have it limited to the needs of government and mission employment, on the grounds that "higher" education is bound to detribalize. The principle was recognised ...provided limitation was by agreeement with |
the mission. Others have advocated an even more drastic limit, seeing a conflict between the tribal ideals of education and government's demands for low-paid clerks. [72] The missions would never have an impact while operating under these limitations. Throughout the war years the criticisms levelled against the mission failure to have a significant effect grew in their harshness. A sense of hipocricy strikes the objective observer. Here we find government recommending severe restrictions on the missions' undertaking while condemning them for failing to have made more headway in the field. Those involved in political tasks were for limits, those in the Education Department for reform and expansion. If not hypocritical, this was certainly.i.nconsistent and confusing to the missions. In 1941 the ordination of the first two Sudanese Anglican deacons, Andrea Apaya and Daniel Deng, evoked favorable comment at the Province Headquarters for ...two such men ... should be of very great help to the administration in its task of educating both Chiefs and people to aim at higher ideals of personal, family and tribal life. The lamps may have been going out over Europe since August 4, 1914, but they are being lit in Central Africa. [73] The "lights" must have been successful Anglicization of former Southern tribesmen and therefore the product of detribalization, one of the sins condemned by other members of the government establishment. More evidence of an unconcerted approach to the implementation of Southern Policy and of a blurred understanding of how the missions were to carry out their share of that policy. |
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The less obvious point of the preceding quotation is focused by the one which follows: Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the working of Southern Policy is the failure to produce in ten years any Southern staff trained for executive work. That Southerners are fitted for such work may not be doubted under the premises. [74] That was in Equatoria Province. In Upper Nile the same point was made even more bluntly: In the Southern Sudan it was considered unwise to employ Northerners for this purpose (education) and it was clearly impossible to import Indians as in East Africa. The political situation has dictated that the human tools of government be forged from the primitive material available. For this purpose the education of the Nilotics was entrusted to mission schools subsidised by the Sudan Government. Among the Nuer two such "human tools" have been forged--one by the American Mission at Nasir and Loka (Dak Dei) and one by the concentrated efforts of a series of D.C.'s (Buth Diu). There are no other Nuer who have reached a standard of education and efficiency to make them the least use to carry out minor administrative duties. Thus in nearly half a century out of a population of 400,000 we have produced two educated Nuer who can be trusted with duties involving a small degree of responsibility. This must be a record unparalleled in the world. Behind these two Nuer are a few educated boys who have received an extremely poor elementary vernacular education and are nearly always useless to government or to their own people, and in most cases with a moral outlook worse than the worst type of detribalised Nilotic. A very substantial porportion fill the prisons of the Province. [75] The quotation certainly sums up the frustrations which must have been widespread within Upper Nile toward the missions. In defense of the missions one must temper the preceding with the |
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facts of a lack of government support for any substantial under taking and in fact, demands that the education system limit it self to government and mission needs. It is true though that the mission impact was so negligible in Upper Nile that, after almost 20 years of Southern Policy, even those needs had not been met. The government continued to expect results which the missions were not prepared to produce. Finally, in Bahr al-Ghazal Province it seems the missions were making a mark and the mark was that which had been explicit in the Southern Policy memorandum. Ironically, the D.C who wrote the following remarks must have been ignorant of the terms of that secret memorandum. For, according to him, Some means must be devised to combat the insidious. anti-North and anti-Islam influence of some Christian missions in the South. Regrettable instances have occurred where this has been startling ly brought home to Northern officials serving South. [76] It would appear that there was no way the missionaries could have satisfied all their government counterparts. The missionary influence on the South was minimal. Neither the missions nor the government were firmly committed to a comprehensive and professionally staffed operation. The following statistical information gives some concrete dimensions to the scope and influence of the effort. Before 1932 there was not sufficient concern with the problem of absorbing the product of the mission schools to warrant reporting this information In the Education Report. After 1932 there are |
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enough figures to present a fairly complete picture, although not an easily quantifiable one. What follows is a chronological narrative cataloguing the primary pursuits of those who left school. This is followed by a table showing gross student totals by year. Taken together, they give a complete picture of the scope of impact this system was having on Southern society. In 1932 all the Normal School graduates were being absorbed as teachers by the elementary vernacular and bush schools. From the remarks earlier in this section, we know that Normal School production remained far behind the system's demands. In this year a second Normal School was opened. [77] In 1933. the depths of the Depression as far as austerity and retrenchment in the South were concerned, most of the elementary vernacular students went no further. Two-thirds of the total went back to their villages: of the remaining one-third, a fifth were absorbed by the government and other employment; two-fifths found work with the missions; the remaining two-fifths went on to intermediate school. [78] In other words, roughly 14 out of 100 passed on to intermediate school. As for the intermediate classes, there was "less demand for intermediate school boys for employment by government than was once anticipated while there are few, if any, openings for them in commerce or industry." [79] The government was not employing graduates, the missions were charged under Southern Policy with training boys for government, and the Inspectors were lamenting the inability of the missions to produce a useful educated Southern citizen. In 1934 the Report is generally critical, |
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noting that fully half of those who did enter intermediate school left before finishing. [80] In 1935 these remarks are supported by an analysis of where the students were being absorbed after leaving school. Of the elementary vernacular enrollment, 1085 left either after completing the curriculum or simply dropping out, 162 went on to intermediate school, 108 found employment with a mission, 58 were hired by the government, 11 found private employment and the remaining 746 went back to their villages. In the intermediate school figures there is little improvement: of 95 leaving school, 23 were employed by the government, 18 by the missions, the remaining 54 went back to their villages. [81] Rather than continue the dry accounting, it can be said that the gap between education and employment widened in the late 1930s with seventy-five percent of the elementary vernacular students returning to their villages and most of the rest either going on to intermediate or into mission employ. As for the intermediate leavers, their picture improved somewhat with less than fifty percent returning home and the remainder either going into government or mission work. [82] The government did realize some gains and, in 1937, the Governor-General noted that in Equatoria Province, educated Southern Government employees were retiring to their tribes and, in some cases, taking over as chiefs. This was significant as the Chiefs' Courts were one of the primary instruments of indirect rule during that period. [83] Some progress was being made but slowly. The population |
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of the southern provinces had never been enumerated but is generally estimated to have been between two and three million during this time. [84] The annual output of the schools numbered just over one thousand a year. The total school population, the most charitably large figure which can be presented, is illustrated in the following table.
*(no figures during the war as enemy might benefit) Assuming a rough figure of 120,000 total for the missing years, the total enrollment in all schools for all years is somewhere in the neighborhood of 225,000. In fact, the more realistic figure would be that from 1928 to 1946, roughly 260,000 Southerners came into some contact with some type of formal education while about 55,000 of these actually got as far as either elementary or secondary school. This, out of a population of between two and three million. As has been illustrated elsewhere, the mission community charged with producing the education never numbered over 300; over the years they may have been supplemented by 800-900 normal |
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school graduates. The point seems obvious: Mrs. Sanderson's fears of "revolutionary changes" are not supported by the statistics. What impact the schools did have on those few who passed through them is important in considering whether the missions were causal factors in the failure of national integration. George Janson-Smith, the last non-Sudanese Assistant Director of Education (South), administered a questionnaire to some mission educated Southerners upon their.leaving school for government employment in the South in 1955. The main thrust of the questions was the perception the respondents had of change among their tribes as a result of their contacts with the missionaries, the British, Northern Sudanese, English and Arabic, money, and some other novel aspects of the outside world brought in during the Southern Policy. The following remarks were all in response to the questions regarding missions and languages. By the introduction of religion many of my people. have embraced Christianity and thus they started to realize that they were in darkness: so they gradually started to ignore these supermen, and the influence of these witchdoctors are decreasing immensely .... As these staff and missionaries are all white men my people respected them and had adopted nothing worth mentioning in their habits or customs besides religion .... The missionaries were more interested to make them Christians, and only very few of my people had intermediate education. However, half a loaf is better than no loaf.... People realized the goodness of education quite recently, but in the past it was a hateful thing to them because it robbed their children from fulfilling their home business.... |
And disadvantage those who were only given little education and were turned out to find it difficult to go back and live in the village and as a result they became malingerers in the town doing nothing and some of them proved to be a danger to the public....The minute percentage so educated was reluctantly dragged or persuaded to school by the missionaries without any help from the government. [86] How did the missionaries perceive the nature and extent of their impact on the South? The Roman Catholics do not seem to have considered the problem, or if they did, they left no record in their archives. Both the C.M.S. and the Presbyterians addressed themselves to the question, the Presbyterians in some very candid and revealing remarks. One C.M.S. missionary felt that: In spite of much propaganda, we have failed to get as many school boys as we should like.... The Nuers here have no experience of education and no desire for it.... One suspects that the boys sent in are those considered useless for anything eise. [87] As evangelists the missionaries had a substantial influence on tens of thousands of southern Sudanese during the 1928-1946 period. The missions were full of good people who had agreed to a govern ment assignment which they did not understand and which conflicted with their purposes. As educators they had some influence on a few thousand Southerners, mostly during the second half of the period. A lukewarm commitment, a vaguely defined task, and haphazard control further limited their educational influence. A community of less than 300 missionaries teaching a few thousand children from a population of two to three million could not have launched too many threats to the national integration of the Sudan. |
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Most of these children never went past the first six years and then returned to their tribes to forget most of that to which they had been exposed. The accusations of Beshir and others lose some of their sting when set in this context.
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