Ecumenical education and social change: the case of the Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa.

Denis, Philippe

The Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa, also known as Fedsem, an inter-denominational and non-racial seminary in apartheid South Africa, opened--in Alice, Eastern Cape, in 1963--in direct response to an impulse of the ecumenical movement. A recent book brings to the attention of the public the history of this remarkable institution, which defied the apartheid laws for three decades, pioneered new ways of doing theology, and trained several generations of Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist ministers in an ecumenical spirit. (1) Ill-conceived restructuring plans, financial problems, poor leadership and personal conflicts put an abrupt end to the project in 1993 as the country was transitioning to democracy. By then, the seminary had relocated to Imbali, in the province of Natal. It had suffered, until the end, from the effects of apartheid and political violence in the region. In the mid-1990s, the seminary building was vandalized and erased, brick by brick, from the ground.

Fedsem is now history. But its legacy remains. By and large, theological education has become denominational again in the four Protestant churches that constituted the seminary, but the ecumenical ethos which used to prevail at Fedsem still influences theological curricula and ministerial attitudes. In this paper we shall review the history of the Theological Federal Seminary, with special attention to its ecumenical character and its interaction with the ecumenical movement.

Ecumenical Involvement in the Establishment of the Seminary

Several developments prepared the way for the formation of the Fedsem in 1963. One of them was the experimentation of ecumenical theological education under various forms in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the years following its opening in 1841, Lovedale Institution in the Eastern Cape trained generations of evangelists, teachers and pastors on an interdenominational basis. (2) In the 1910s the American Board Mission and the United Free Church of Scotland jointly ran a Union Seminary in Mpolweni in Natal. (3) Between 1916 and 1959 Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist candidates for the ministry were trained at the South African Native College of Fort Hare (renamed University College of Fort Hare in 1952) with the disposal of two dedicated hostels, Wesley Hostel and Iona House. (4) Between 1957 and 1962 Anglicans and Congregationalists jointly ran a theological school in a building belonging to the Society of the Sacred Heart in Modderpoort in the Orange Free State. (5)

The main reason for restructuring South African theological education was the dismantling of mission-based theological education by the apartheid government in the late 1950s. One by one all major theological schools--Lovedale (Presbyterian), Healdtown (Methodist), Tiger Kloof (Congregationalist), Rosettenville (Anglican) and Fort Hare (Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregationalist)--had to close to satisfy the requirements of the Group Areas Act and other apartheid-era legislations. Fedsem was established for pragmatic reasons. To the representatives of the churches affected by the new government policies, joining hands in matters of theological education made sense. It was in this spirit that they agreed, at the conclusion of a process initiated by the Congregational Church in 1957, to open a multidenominational seminary on land belonging to the Church of Scotland South Africa Mission Council in Alice that, legally, was not part of white South Africa.

Saying that the establishment of Fedsem was politically expedient does not remove the fact that the ecumenical movement played a leading role in the foundation of the seminary. In the participating churches, ecumenical relationships had steadily developed since the formation of the General Missionary Conference of South Africa in 1904 and the meeting of the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910. Delegates of the Christian Council of South Africa, a body created in 1936, took part in the conference of the International Missionary (IMC) Council in Tambaram two years later. It was at this conference that the idea of an ecumenical ministerial formation was discussed in earnest for the first time. Tambaram took a resolute stand in favour of ecumenical theological education. "It is our firm conviction," the report said, "that in almost every case theological training should not be attempted except on a co-operative basis, with a number of churches participating." (6)

One of the outcomes of the Tambaram conference was the decision to investigate the state of theological education in Asia and Africa. After five years of preparation, Norman Goodall and Eric Nielsen, two secretaries of the IMC, came to South Africa in September and October 1953 to study the conditions in theological education in the country. They visited different theological centres, including Fort Hare, and made recommendations in a report entitled Survey of the Training of the Ministry in Africa. They found that the standards of theological education had to be improved and that to achieve this goal Fort Hare had to be recognized as the centre for theological education in southern Africa. The theological colleges at Adams in Natal and Morija in Basutoland would be relegated to the status of in-service institutions, while able students would be sent to Fort Hare. Despite occasional contacts between heads of theological institutions, among Anglicans in particular, Goodall and Nielsen found that most theological colleges existed in isolation:

 We were surprised to discover how slight is the contact between the
 theological colleges of the different areas and churches. Some
 college principals, even, were unaware of the existence of certain
 other colleges. Few theological teachers have ever met their
 colleagues in other institutions; rarely does there seem to have
 been a thorough and widely representative discussion of common
 problems, methods of work, literature resources and needs. (7)

As mentioned earlier, the idea of an inter-denominational seminary was mooted for the first time at a meeting called by the Congregational Church in April 1957. The project was resuscitated two years later at the initiative of the ecumenical movement. In March 1959, Charles Ranson, the director of the IMC's Theological Education Fund, visited South Africa to make a survey of theological education among black students. (8) At the end of his stay, he met representatives of the member bodies of the Christian Council of South Africa and presented them with the four possibilities which he thought were open to the churches with regard to the training of black ordinands: racially constituted colleges; the status quo; a united scheme for advanced students only; and a united seminary. The participants expressed their preference for the fourth option, which was, as they described it, "to seek a radical realignment of theological institutions which would bring a number of existing institutions into union on a federal basis on a common site." (9)

On 6 May 1959 a committee of ten members met to work out a detailed plan which would be submitted to the churches. It was on this basis that accredited representatives of seven church bodies--the American Board Mission Council in South Africa, the Bantu Presbyterian Church of South Africa, the Church of Scotland South Africa Mission, the Congregational Union of South Africa, the London Missionary Society, the Methodist Church of South Africa, the Presbyterian Church of South Africa--and an observer for two other churches--the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society and the Swiss Mission in South Africa--were elected by their churches to constitute the Federal Seminary Committee. This body met eight times, from January 1960 to the beginning of 1961, under the auspices of the Christian Council of South Africa. Members of ecumenical organizations such as Lesslie Newbigin, the IMC secretary; D.G.S. Mtimkulu, the secretary of the All Africa Church Conference; and Milton Martin, the acting secretary of the Christian Council of South Africa provided invaluable assistance during the discussions. (10)

Difficult Beginnings

There can be no doubt that the seminary's founders had an ecumenical vision, but it was fraught with ambiguities, a fact which would lead to confusion and tension in subsequent years. The foundational documents expressed the founders' "desire for unity," but at the same time they were careful to maintain the participating churches' theological distinctiveness. Each college was to have its own space, with a central building for lectures and other joint activities. As Simon Gqubule, an early witness, explained, "some churches were not ready [for a united structure]. We decided to hamba kable." (11) The new seminary would be federal, with four separate colleges: St Peter's (Anglican), John Wesley (Methodist), St Columba's (Presbyterian) and Adams United (Congregational). Institutional unity was not the order of the day. At most the participating churches were hoping that with time and the experience of working together, the churches would become closer to each other and slowly develop some form of structural unity. This goal was partly fulfilled in 1968 with the creation of the Church Unity Commission, a structure created to facilitate ecumenical cooperation in South Africa. It was a "combination of faith and realism," stated a report commissioned by the Seminary Council twenty years later to discuss how to introduce a united seminary structure, that led the founders to choose a federal structure for the seminary. (12)

During its 30-year history, the relations between the constituent churches, if imbued with cordiality, were not devoid of tensions. The first challenge occurred when the representatives of the interested participating churches met in 1960 to discuss the relationship of the future seminary with the nearby University of Fort Hare. The Methodists and Presbyterians, who had longstanding connections with this university and gave great importance to the academic status of the awards granted by the seminary, wanted to link the new institution to Fort Hare. For the Congregationalist and the Anglicans, any link with a "Bantu" university that provided higher education on an ethnic basis--Fort Hare had been designated by the government as a Xhosa university --was unacceptable. For them, a certificate recognized by the seminary was sufficient. They were prepared to ordain ministers without a degree. (13)

During his visit to South Africa at the end of 1960, Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, the IMC secretary, noted how deeply the participating churches were divided on the issue of the seminary's autonomy. It was he, in the end, who broke the deadlock. As a representative of the IMC, a body that had invested so much in the seminary, he was keen to find a solution to the crisis. His suggestion was that the participating churches should focus on what they could agree upon, that the seminary should be established as a completely autonomous institution which would ultimately grant its own degree, and that in the meantime some latitude should be given to the churches that had made arrangements with Fort Hare. (14) This proposal catered to the Methodists' and Presbyterians' immediate concern--getting their students through to the end of their studies--and at the same time it reaffirmed the principle that the seminary should be totally independent from the Bantu education system.

The problem resurfaced in 1963, the first year of activity of the seminary. It had been agreed that Fedsem would offer three courses leading to a certificate, a diploma, and a degree, respectively. On the first course, which would be awarded by the seminary, and on the second, which would be awarded by the Joint Board for the Diploma in Theology, an inter-denominational body serving theological colleges throughout South Africa, there was agreement. More controversial was the third course. Given the difficulty of obtaining accreditation in other universities for the course taught at Fedsem, the Methodists and Presbyterians were of the opinion that the students who wanted a university degree should take the Fort Hare BA with some seminary courses while residing at the seminary. This proposal was met with fierce opposition by the two other churches. Edgar Brookes, the former principal of Adams College and a member of the Anglican Church, asked how a degree awarded "for work done in the tribal colleges" would ever be recognized by the outside world. (15) "The seminary," the principal of St Peter's College added, "will from the beginning have accepted an inferior position in the academic world, a position from which it is unlikely to recover." (16)

The seminary nearly broke up on this issue, but, ultimately, a compromise was found. A home degree, the Associateship of the Federal Theological Seminary (AFTS), was established. With time, it managed to obtain a certain form of international recognition. The Methodist Church reluctantly agreed. In 1969 the Methodist Conference was still calling for an agreement with the University of Fort Hare. (17)

Building Up an Ecumenical Community in Times of Trials

At Fedsem students and staff developed a common sense of purpose through united worship and combined teaching. Common life was also achieved through sports and social activities and was enhanced by the presence of visiting lecturers, local and international, of all church traditions.

Each college had its own chapel, though that of St Peter's College could easily accommodate the entire seminary community and was used for this purpose from time to time. (18) A Worship Committee had been formed right from the beginning with representatives from each college. In March 1963 an order of services was agreed upon for use at the Sunday afternoon seminary services. These services were open to all students as well as students from the nearby Fort Hare University. They were held at 5 p.m. in one of the lecture rooms since there was no seminary church. (19) All members of the seminary community understood the importance of this form of united service.

Other opportunities for liturgical cooperation were the daily intercessory prayers at noon and the annual "Week of Prayer for Christian Unity." Out of this emerged the practice of visiting other colleges' services and of sharing weekday evening services. In 1969, this developed into united daily evening prayers. The problem, however, was that the Anglicans were required to follow their church's Order for Evening Prayer, so that if other forms were used they had to attend evensong on their own in addition to the seminary evening prayer. This led to the Anglican order of service becoming the norm. At times members of other colleges found this situation difficult to handle.

In November 1974 the white government brutally expropriated Fedsem from its original location because of its perceived involvement in radical politics. Particularly controversial was the support given by the seminary to the university students who criticized Fort Hate's alignment with the apartheid policies and the authoritarianism of its management style. In both groups of students, the ideals of black consciousness were nurtured. Steve Biko, the founder of the South African Student Association (SASO), was a regular visitor to the seminary. (20)

In February 1975 the seminary community moved to St Bede's College, an Anglican theological school in Umtata. A few months later, after an altercation with Kaiser Matanzima, the chief minister of the Transkei, it relocated to the Ecumenical Lay Centre in Edendale, on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg, where it remained for four years. Space was limited despite the fact that--apart from the conference hall, three houses, a double garage and a few offices--the seminary had unrestricted use of the centre. The black members of staff were scattered in Edendale, while their white, coloured, and Indian colleagues were housed in segregated areas of Pietermaritzburg.

In these difficult times, Fedsem not only survived but grew stronger. In the "cramped sort of refugee situation in the Lay Ecumenical Centre," as a lecturer described it, the seminary developed a greater sense of unity. There was "greater staff togetherness" than ever before. (21) By force, the denominational differences had to be put aside. Fedsem became a truly ecumenical community.

Highs and Lows of Seminary Life

With compensation money paid by the government for the expropriation of the seminary and funds from various donor agencies, some of them linked to the ecumenical movement, a new seminary was built in Imbali, Pietermaritzburg's new black township, in 1979. The preacher at the dedication service in August 1980 was no other than Lesslie Newbigin, the former secretary general of the IMC, who shared his experience as the bishop of a United Church in South India. (22)

In 1980 the teaching staff was composed of fifteen lecturers. This number remained stable until the unification of the seminary in 1991. With the exception of the registrar, the English tutor and the practical theology tutor, all staff members were employed by one of the three constituent colleges. When the seminary moved to Imbali, about half of the lecturers were black, including the three principals, Sigqibo Dwane, who was also the president of the seminary, Simon Gqubule and Bonganjalo Goba. This proportion did not change in the following years. The number of students varied throughout the years. In 1974, the year of expropriation, the enrolment was 114. It went down to 101 in 1975. By 1979, the last year at the Lay Ecumenical Centre, it was only 90. After the move to Imbali, it gradually rose to 123 in 1985. The seminary was now full to capacity. From then on the enrolment started to decline, slowly at first, then faster, until the seminary was forced to close: 121 in 1986; 105 in 1987; 100 in 1988; 102 in 1989; 93 in 1990; 80 in 1991; 71 in 1992; 60 in 1993. (23)

Each student belonged to a college--St Peter's College for the Anglicans, John Wesley College for the Methodists, and, following the merger of St Columba's College and Adams United College in 1977, Albert Luthuli College for the Presbyterians and Congregationalists. The colleges were responsible for their recruitment, their admission, their accommodation, their spiritual life and their pastoral placements. The majority of students were black Africans. Some were of mixed race or Indians. Only a small percentage of the student body was white. Women, mostly from the Methodist Church, only started to enroll in the late 1980s. They always remained a small group.

In many ways Fedsem was unique. People from different races and denominations lived, not without difficulties of course, a genuine form of common life. Deeply influenced by black consciousness and, in the mid-1980s, contextual theology, the teaching methods were critical and forward looking. As Tinyiko Maluleke, a student at Fedsem between 1982 and 1984 who later became the chairperson of the South African Council of Churches while teaching at the University of South Africa, stressed in an autobiographical article, the seminary taught him and his fellow students to think for themselves. Being a student at Fedsem was a "total experience":

 Purposefully constructed as an independent, alternative and
 counter-hegemonic educational model, in a country where Blacks were
 deliberately fed an especially inferior diet of education called
 "Bantu Education" and where Blacks had little access to
 institutions of higher learning, Fedsem was a total experience. At
 a time when Black and White separation was legally justified and
 studiously enforced by a ruthless regime, Fedsem opened its doors
 to Black and White and even to male and female. In this way, Fedsem
 was a small island of a multi-racial, multi-denominational and
 alternative community in a sea of a larger society where Black was
 Black and White was White--where Black was inferior and White was
 supreme. This reality about Fedsem was central to the "theological"
 education that one "received" there. Independent of government
 funding and political interference, Fedsem did not have to follow
 government syllabi and requirements; instead it became a site for
 pedagogic exploration and experimentation outside the confines of
 the rigid South African educational system. The leading pedagogical
 question at Fedsem was, "what do you think?" rather than "what do
 you remember?" Again and again, in all subjects, the young
 rebellious, radical and multi-racial team of lecturers, many of
 whom had been educated outside South Africa, confronted us with
 questions whose answers could not be found in any book--"what do
 you think"? In the context of the closed country that South Africa
 was and the closed educational system that was in place--this was a
 liberatingly subversive question. In my journey as an academic,
 pastor and human being, Fedsem will always be the place where I
 experienced the most liberating intellectual possibilities. (24)

Maluleke did not try to hide Fedsem's negative sides. There were many conflicts in the seminary, some of them never resolved. Fedsem was not a paradise. But these conflicts did not prevent the seminary from producing "a crop of young radical priests and theologians who went out to shake things up in both church and society." (25)

One the most contested terrains was liturgy. The fact is that under the influence of the Community of the Resurrection, which had provided staff to the seminary until the late 1970s, St Peter's College followed a high-church model of liturgy. Anglo-Catholicism reigned supreme with "genuflections and wearing robes, and incense, and candles, and high Mass, and the bells, and everything," as Rod Bulman, the registrar, put it. (26) Tinyiko Maluleke recalled how strange people who used "incense and things like that" and were "bowing every three minutes" seemed to him. (27) The wearing of vestments also caused problems. Anglican priests would not celebrate the eucharist without a stole--a practice which has now spread to the other Protestant churches, but was still reserved to the Anglicans in the early 1980s. The Anglican students were required to wear a cassock at morning and evening prayers. Some of them would keep it on for breakfast. It earned them the nickname of cassock brigade. Even the ringing of the chapel bell was cause for dissension. For some it was "a doleful reminder of specifically Anglican services in the Seminary, rather than a joyful call to worship for all." (28)

To resolve the tension caused by St Peter's perceived hegemonic tendencies, a "spiritual task force," chaired by Michael Nuttall, the Anglican bishop of Natal, was instituted. But ill feelings remained. Issues like the mutual recognition of ministry and the use of grapefruit juice in the eucharist provoked frictions. At a meeting of the student body in April 1984, the students exchanged insults and a physical assault nearly took place. (29) A compromise was found in the end. St Peter's College agreed to share the use of the chapel with the other colleges on an equal basis, while remaining the owner of the building. After 1985 a more positive atmosphere developed in the seminary. But the restoration of the peace came at a cost. Feeling that the integrity of Anglican training for ministry was affected, a number of Anglican bishops ceased to send their students to Fedsem. In 1987 out of the 115 students enrolled at the seminary only 19 were from St Peter's College, and out of those, 9 were in their third year. In other words, only 10 of these students had been sent to Fedsem during the period 1986-87. (30)

The Demise of Fedsem

In November 1986 the episcopal synod of the Anglican Church passed a resolution expressing "disquiet at the tensions existing at the Federal Thelogical Seminary" and noted "the reluctance of the Bishops to send candidates to St Peter's because of conditions prevailing at Fedsem which are not conducive to proper preparation of candidates for ordination and also because of the escalation of costs of training at Fedsem." (31) At the invitation of Desmond Tutu, the newly elected metropolitan bishop, a crisis meeting took place in early December at the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church in Johannesburg.

This gathering marked a turning point in the history of the seminary. Fedsem, the representatives of the four constituent churches solemnly declared, would be "resuscitated," and to foster the spirit of ecumenism a new structure, unitary instead of federal, would be put in place. The decision, made some time earlier to appoint a full-time president, was implemented, and the new incumbent, Joe Wing, the recently retired secretary general of the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa, spent the following three years attempting to effect the transition from a seminary made of three autonomous colleges to a multidenominational institution. He was the perfect man for the job. "Mr Unity," as he was affectionately called, had impeccable ecumenical credentials. He was highly respected in all churches, including the Anglican Church. During his three years as president, in a climate dominated by social protest and political violence, he steered the seminary on the path of unity. He was seconded in this task by Rod Bulman, the registrar. (32)

The respite, however, was of short duration. Despite all these efforts, the number of students remained low. Few Anglican bishops reversed their decision not to send students to Fedsem. United or not, the seminary did not have enough students to be financially viable. A fundraising drive was initiated in 1990, but by the time Wing retired, at the beginning of the following year, the financial prospects of the seminary remained bleak. A second weakness was the lack of a well thought-through succession plan. Wing held the seminary together through his unifying personality, his contacts with the churches and his mediation skills. But he could not remain the president forever. His departure left a big void. He died not long afterwards of cancer.

In retrospect the unification of the seminary can be described as a "false good idea." Instead of bringing together the members of the four--or rather three, because the Presbyterians and Congregationalist were already sharing the same structure--colleges, the new structure exacerbated the tensions between the churches. As it happened, after Wing's departure all key positions in the seminary were held by Methodists. The new president was Khoza Mgojo, past chairperson of the Natal West District and, on two occasions, president of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. The registrar, after Rod Bulman's resignation in July 1991, was another Methodist, Sol Jacob, a former chairperson of the Seminary Council. The dean of studies, Mannie Jacob, and the president of the Seminary's Finance Committee, Colin Woolacott, after the sudden death of Gerald Walker, an Anglican layman, were also Methodists. (33) The only non-Methodist in a position of leadership was the chairperson of the Seminary Council, Matthew Makhaye, an Anglican bishop, but he had neither the will nor the capacity to stand up to his Methodist colleagues.

This quasi-monopoly of power produced resentment among staff and students. Heather Garner, a strong-willed Anglican lay woman with a clear vision for the seminary, confronted the president and the registrar on various occasions, but they succeeded in marginalizing her and in the end she left the institution. In fairness to the Methodist Church it must be said that throughout this period it demonstrated, as much if not more than the other churches, its commitment to ecumenism. It bore the financial responsibility of the seminary and continued to send students to Fedsem until the end. As Stanley Mogoba, presiding bishop of the Methodist Church at the time, said in an interview, they "kept Fedsem going when others did not financially." (34)

On the surface of things, the decision to close the seminary was made on financial grounds. The reality was more complicated. (35) If Fedsem had implemented the survival plan put in place during Joseph Wing's presidency, the running costs of the seminary would have been reduced and a more attractive study programme would have been presented to the churches, increasing the chances of retaining a sufficient student body. Two key opportunities were missed that year in the aftermath of Sol Jacob's appointment as registrar. The first consisted of establishing a closer relationship with the University of Natal, with a view to offering a shared degree in the seminary and replacing the Joint Board diploma with a new Cluster diploma. If this reform had been efficiently carried through, with a reduced staff and a smaller budget, the seminary would have been able to remain an important provider of theological education in South Africa. (36) The second opportunity consisted of obtaining funds, through a well focused fundraising campaign, for the expansion of the Practical Theology Programme and the establishment of a Theological Education Programme for Women that would have brought a minimum of thirty students over three years to the seminary. The funds that Heather Garner, the practical theology tutor, raised--or was about to raise--for Fedsem far exceeded the amount of money that the seminary needed to pursue its activities. (37)

Unfortunately, power struggles within the seminary and lack of support on the side of the constituent churches resulted in these two major opportunities being missed. Gender was an important factor in the crisis. If Heather Garner, the seminary's most successful fundraiser, had not been a woman, her role in the life of the institution would arguably have gained more acceptance on the part of management and Council.

The problem was the lack of leadership both inside and outside the seminary. To ensure the survival of the seminary, the authorities--at the level of the Council, of the seminary management and of the academic staff- should have seized all available opportunities to transform the seminary into an institution adapted to the needs of the churches and of the Christian community at large in the new political dispensation. A new form of ecumenical institution had to be invented. By focusing on procedural issues and insisting on control, the all-powerful Finance Committee failed to nurture the initiatives that would have secured the future of the seminary in the long term. The disastrous management of the security crisis in March 1992, and the ensuing student boycott caused the situation to deteriorate even further. (38) The Council--where all the constituent churches were represented--lacked the conflict resolution skills needed to resolve the dispute.

Conclusion

In 1992 Mgojo, Jacob, and several other lecturers resigned. Fedsem continued for another year with a new president, Chris Mzoneli, and a reduced staff. But even so, given the continuous decrease in the number of students, the seminary could not survive. In August 1993, despite the opposition of the black churches, the Seminary Council resolved to close the institution at the end of the year. An agreement was made with the Department of Education and Training to use the building as an extension of the nearby Indumiso College of Education, but the plan fell through because of the presence of squatters on the site. In 1995, the local residents started to dismantle the seminary building, and soon nothing was left of it. In 1998, after years of wrangling with the newly created Department of Land Affairs to obtain compensation for the erection of a building on public land, the four constituent churches shared the funds they had received from the government, and the Seminary Council was dissolved. (39)

This is how Fedsem ended. The memories of this unique institution are ambivalent. Fedsem is an object of pride for those who studied and lived there, but it is also a sore point for them because of the unhappy circumstances of its closure. The seminary's main achievement was to have trained generations of ecumenically oriented, socially aware, and critically minded priests and ministers. This is what distinguished it from many institutions of a similar nature. The inter-denominational character of the seminary may have been born accidentally, with no firm intention to develop a new form of theological education, but the fact is that students and staff initiated, on a day-to-day basis, a novel way of living and being trained together. It was the haphazard and unclaimed practice of non-racialism and ecumenism in seminary life rather than a new vision for church development that made Fedsem remarkable.

DOI: 10.1111/erev.12039

(1) Philippe Denis and Graham Duncan, The Native School That Caused All the Trouble: A History of the Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2011), epilogue by Tinyiko Maluleke, http:// www.clusterpublications.co.za.

(2) H.W. Shepherd, Lovedale: South Africa, 1824-1955 (Lovedale: Lovedale Press, 1971), 14-15; Graham Duncan, Lovedale: Coercive Agency (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2003), 104-106.

(3) Ibid., 18.

(4) On the South African Native College, see Alexander Kerr, Fort Hare, 1915-48: The Evolution of an African College (London: C. Hurst and Co--Pietermaritzburg, Shuter and Shooter, 1968); Donovan Williams, A History of the University College of Fort Hare, South Africa, the 1950s: The Waiting Years (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001).

(5) Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 20.

(6) International Missionary Council, The World Mission of the Church: Findings and Recommendations of the Meeting of the International Missionary Council (London: IMC, 1938), 83.

(7) Goodall and Nielsen, Survey, 55.

(8) On Ranson's visit, see Roger Cameron, "Some Political, Ecumenical and Theological Aspects of the History of the Federal Theological Seminary: 1963-1975" (Masters diss., University of Cape Town, 1984), 11-12; Simon Gqubule, Trials of a Pilgrim Church: A Memoir (Alice: University of Fort Hare Press, 2010), 9. The IMC's Theological Fund had been set up in 1957 with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation with a capital of four million US dollars to fund the training of clergy in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

(9) University of Fort Hare, Federal Theological Seminary, Box 35, AUTS 1959-1960, "Memorandum on proposed federation of theological institutions at present training non-white students, The Christian Council of South Africa," 3 July 1959. Copy in Cameron, "Some Political" 161-64, here 161.

(10) Cameron, "Some Political" 12-13.

(11) Simon Gqubule, interview conducted by Philippe Denis on 27 December 2006 in Uitenhage, quoted in Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 50.

(12) William Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand, AB2414: First report of the Russell Commission, 2.

(13) Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 53-55.

(14) Cameron, "Some Political," 20.

(15) William Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand: AC 623, 35.14, Fedsem: Memorandum from Dr Edgar Brookes, 10 November 1963.

(16) Ibid.: Aelred Stubbs, Memorandum to the Committee to investigate degree courses, 6 December 1963.

(17) Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 69.

(18) Gqubule, interview conducted by Philippe Denis on 27 December 2006 in Uitenhage, quoted in Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 73.

(19) Cameron, "Some Political," 36.

(20) See Philippe Denis, "Seminary Networks and Black Consciousness in South Africa in the 1970s," South African Historical Journal 62:1 (2010), 162-82.

(21) John Aitchison, interview conducted by Philippe Denis on 26 June 2005 in Pietermaritzburg, quoted in Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 142.

(22) Ibid., 243.

(23) Ibid., 144.

(24) Tinyiko Maluleke, "Theology in My Life," Reformed World 56:3 (September 2006), 302.

(25) Ibid.

(26) Rod Bulman, interview conducted by Mzolisi Makiwane on 20 May 2002 in Pietermaritzburg, quoted in Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 199.

(27) Tinyiko Maluleke, interview conducted by Philippe Denis on 19 August 2003 in Pretoria, quoted in Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 199.

(28) Archives of the Anglican Diocese of Natal, Pietermaritzburg: Fedsem, 2.10.28: Report of the Task Force on the Spiritual Life of the Federal Theological Seminary, 22 August 1983.

(29) Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 206.

(30) Ibid., 220.

(31) Archives of the Anglican Diocese of Natal, Pietermaritzburg: Fedsem 2.4, quoted in Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 220-21.

(32) On Joe Wing's tenure as president of Fedsem, see Philippe Denis, "Joe Wing and the Theological Federal Seminary (1988-1991)," in Spirit Undaunted: The Life and Legagy of Joe Wing, ed. Steve de Gruchy and Desmond van der Water (Pietermaritzburg, Cluster Publications, 2005), 171-79.

(33) On these appointments, see Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 234-35.

(34) Stanley Mogoba, interview conducted by Philippe Denis in Phokwane on 23 October 2007.

(35) The circumstances of Fedsem's closure are discussed in Philippe Denis, "Unfinished Business: The Painful Closure of the Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa," Missionalia 37:1 (April 2009), 5-19.

(36) On the plan of a shared degree with the University of Natal, see Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 245-50.

(37) Ibid., 237-44. In January 1990 Joe Wing had sent to the SACC Victims of Apartheid desk a funding proposal for a R552,390 four-year pastoral placements programme. The European Economic Community (EEC) was to jointly fund the project. A six-month advance of R85,000 was made in July 1991, but the project never came to fruition because of the strains between Heather Garner and the seminary's management and her subsequent resignation. Other funds were about to be released for another programme focusing on women's theological education.

(38) After a spate of attacks on the seminary, the students, whose numbers had been reduced a few months before for financial reasons, demanded additional security guards. All students, with the exception of the Methodists, went on strike, with the support of some of the lecturers. The strike lasted three months. See Denis and Duncan, The Native School, 250-57.

(39) Ibid., 267-71.

Philippe Denis is Professor of History of Christianity at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.