The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
RACIAL discrimination was the cornerstone of the colonial project in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) from the outset. This was so in all social spheres, education included. The missionaries of the London Missionary Society (LMS) were no exception. They had children of school-going age, most of them born in areas of the missionaries’ operations such as Inyathi and Hope Fountain Mission stations.
It was never the intention of these early missionaries to send their own children to the very schools that they set up. They were setting up schools for the natives. Their racial ideology was no different from that of the colonial administrators and officials. Even the Reverend William George Brown who busied himself setting up schools in Nkayi did not ever envision his daughters attending the same schools.
So, initially his two daughters Kathleen and Peggy were taught by some lady who lived not far from Inyathi Mission. The Browns camped in the open in the first days at Nkayi. It was only later that Johan Colenbrander, a close friend of Cecil John Rhodes, who opened up the first trading store at Nkayi, offered his house-cum-trading store to the Browns. Colenbrander had lived on the premises. Colenbrander had another house in Bulawayo not far from the Grey Prison (Bulawayo Remand Prison). The house was built between 1893 and 1896.
Kathleen was reminded of her mother’s role in trying to improve the welfare of native women in Nkayi. She taught them how to make scones and cakes on a frying pan. Kathleen had also been reminded of how her parents had taken sugar and salt as gifts to Queen Lozikeyi at Nkosikazi as a way of currying favours with the powerful Queen.
Various diseases afflicted the residents of Nkayi. Kathleen was soon down with dysentery. A runner was sent to Prince Tshakalisa’s village about three miles south of the Shangani River. The Reverend Bowen Rees had got to the royal Prince’s residence and knew its location. Another runner was dispatched to Inyathi Mission to inform Major Martin the resident doctor. Kathleen’s condition demanded that the family return to Inyathi Mission where medical attention could be availed to the distraught Kathleen.
The two little girls had to receive formal education, though not alongside the natives. A white lady living not far from Inyathi Mission was first to impart some rudimentary education to the impressionable little white girls, Kathleen and Peggy. It was then time to proceed to schools that offered primary education. These were to be found in Bulawayo. That was at the time when there were no primary, let alone secondary schools for black children in Bulawayo. Both primary and secondary schools had been established for both white boys and white girls.
The Brown girls proceeded to Eveline Junior School. They could not attend Eveline Junior School from Inyathi, so the two were put up at a boarding facility at the corner of Five Street opposite Queen Mary. At the ages of eleven the two were put up at Northwood House which was some kind of go-between for the juniors and the seniors. It was then time for secondary education. Though the colony of Southern Rhodesia did offer secondary education for white pupils, it was common then for some of them to go to England for secondary education.
Indeed, both Kathleen and Peggy were shipped out to England for their secondary education. They were sent to attend Wolthamstow in Seveno, Kent. They commenced secondary education in 1929. In 1934 Kathleen was back in Southern Rhodesia, leaving behind her younger sister Peggy to do one more year. Kathleen was ready to do some professional training. Her idea was to return to England to undertake nurse training. That was not to be. In her dad’s house there lived one Jowitt, the Director of Native Education. Jowitt had queried the wisdom of her waiting till she attained the age of nineteen years of age in order for her to qualify for nurse training in England.
He advised that a nursing certificate obtained in Southern Rhodesia was internationally recognised. She could, armed with such a qualification, get employment anywhere in the world. “Do write an application letter to the Chief Matron in Salisbury (now Harare) and get it to me. I will take it to her.” Indeed, Jowitt took the application letter to the Chief Matron and Kathleen was given a choice between two dates: in December or April.
Kathleen proceeded to do a four-year course in nurse training at the Old Memorial Hospital. This was another of the racially-segregated medical institutions in Bulawayo. There were separate sections for the different races. Later in the 1950s Mpilo Central Hospital was built as a facility for the blacks. The whites were accommodated at the United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH).
Kathleen, determined to obtain higher qualifications, proceeded to South Africa where she did special training in theatre nursing at the Edington Hospital in Durban.
She went together with Audrey who did a course in maternity. While there, World War II broke out. Kathleen and her friend Audrey applied to join the army. Unfortunately, her friend was a smoker and suffered chest problems.
Kathleen, successful in her application, was put on a boat and posted to Baragwanath Hospital which was then under construction. “It was a beautiful hospital for blacks,” she muses. She was there for a year doing medical nursing. Several British soldiers were being sent home to England at the time. These were soldiers that were not fit for duty having picked up some injuries in the battlefields.
After Baragwanath it was time to move to Italy. For half the journey they were being chased by a German submarine. Their route by sea took them along the East African coast to the Suez Canal. In Egypt they were posted to the desert where, after some weeks with nothing to do, they were posted to Number 5 just outside Cairo. They later proceeded to Bary in Italy. During their second night there, there was a mighty explosion at night. It was an attack by the Germans.
A year later she left for South Africa via Cairo, a journey that lasted six weeks. She offered not to take her demobilisation pay but instead continued to offer nursing services to the soldiers for a further nine years. After that stint she demobilised and returned to Southern Rhodesia where, on 15 March 1947, she got married to a Mr Hawkins who was in the police force.
Kathleen remembers that their wedding took place at the Palace Hotel in Bulawayo and that her wedding gown had 50 buttons. The newlyweds proceeded to the Windsor Hotel in Cape Town for their honeymoon. They finally settled on a farm at Nyamandlovu just outside Bulawayo. The couple was blessed with two children, David John and Jennifer. Later in her life Kathleen went to live in the Suburbs in Bulawayo (Heyman Road) from where she left to join son David and his wife in Harare’s Greendale suburb prior to being flown out to Coventry where we interviewed her on two different occasions.
“Now I am 98 years old. I am still here,” she says with unassuming confidence. How many more years she will hold on is anyone’s guess. All we know is that she has told her own story and that of her parents.
