A place of black solidarity and educational excellence
Unity High School has been in existence for 26 years, and it continues to live up to the ideals under which it was founded, writes Jo-Mangaliso Mdhlela
The name Unity High School was conceived to reflect the desire to strive for black solidarity at the height of the political Struggle and transition to democracy in the 1990s. Then, the country was transitioning from the darkness of apartheid’s political debauchery, to a new era of hope, represented by the release from political incarceration of Nelson Mandela.
The name of the school in Daveyton, Benoni, east of Johannesburg, has deeprooted political undertones. It seeks to bring about unity in a fractured society – to weld together different black political identities, and to foster the spirit of coexistence.
At the beginning its existence, the school admitted a band of older students, some in their early to late 30s, drawn from a group of returning exiles, who seriously yearned for education.
There were also young mothers who, years earlier, had given birth to babies, and now wanted to acquire a matric qualification. They would not be excluded, nor were those who failed the “age limit” threshold test.
On his release, Mandela made a clarion call that all young women and men who did not have adequate education, including the exiles, must return to school because the new SA needed their skills and knowledge.
The school, though based in the black township of Daveyton, employed teachers from all races and admitted pupils from all racial groups. This was all in the name of living up to Mandela’s ideal. The idea was the brainchild of Wandile James Makhubu, a young teacher at the time. “When Mandela, on his release, made the call for all to go back to school, many heeded it, but the problem was that there were few high schools to accommodate the swelling numbers,” he said.
“The Madiba call was music to the ears of the unemployed teachers, some of whom joined me to teach in my school.”
Makhubu sought to reflect the Madiba ideal in his new project.
Today, at 60, Makhubu regrets that “the ideal of Nelson Mandela is undermined by racial bigots”.
Starting off as a 27-year-old maths teacher at Daveyton’s Mabuya High School in 1985, Makhubu was not a run-of-the mill teacher whose teaching was limited to the classroom. He was an ANC activist concerned about what was happening in the country’s political sphere.
He is a product of political activism fanned by the Soweto youth uprising of 1976. He wanted more for his people than the crumbs from the apartheid master’s table. Today, 26 years since Unity High School was established in 1992, Makhubu is now firmly entrenched in educational circles not only as the successful headmaster of this well-performing school, but as its founding father. Makhubu is a visionary, and is more forward-looking.
He is driven by the desire to prove that unity is possible among the people of different colours and cultures, and this would manifest in the project he had embarked on.
“If you can imagine how it all looked like when our project of Unity High School started, we had no school. I am a maths teacher at Mabuya School, and paid by the department, but here I also double up as founding principal of this school,” Makhubu said.
In 1992, he left Mabuya High to focus on his new role as the principal of Unity. His split loyalty had to end; his double loyalties would compromise his project of establishing something “bigger than himself”, for the common good of all the people.
He recalls how he had to contend with some of the illdisciplined pupils in his “new school” – in a makeshift school building of Victor Ndlazilwana Hall, and later at the adjoining derelict laboratory facility of Davey High School. He confesses that some of the pupils were nothing but “comrade-tsotsis” or “com-tsotsis”, others had limited basic elementary education, nothing beyond Grade 2, “yet they wanted to be in matric”. “But even com-tsotsis still harboured a dream to acquire education. In formal school they would be rejected, but in my new project of building unity, I had to think out of the box. We wanted to build society even as there were manifestations of imperfection.” In their first matric attempt as Unity High in 1992, entering the students under HB Nyathi High School, the school’s pass rate was 44%. “This was not good enough, but it was a start,” he said. Makhubu’s philosophy is rooted in the gospel. As a Christian, he argues it is easy to divide people into good and bad groupings, friends and enemies, without realising what the consequences of such attitudes might be, often resulting in intolerance, tensions and even the escalation of violence. Makhubu’s project is bearing fruit as it is borne out, time and time again, by the good results the school produces. The school is rated one of the topperforming schools in Gauteng, with a more than 90% matric pass rate.
Unity High School was first known as Kagiso-Unity High between 1992 and 1995. “But it was not all smoothsailing. When I was appointed to head the school, some responded by invoking violence because they wanted another teacher to replace me. But the violence was quelled by the community and my pupils who were ready to protect me,” Makhubu said.
He says he and his family had to leave Daveyton and relocate to Crystal Park, outside of Benoni, “because my life was under threat”. Makhubu says corporal punishment was outlawed in 1996, yet there are teachers who continue to inflict it on pupils. “This is unacceptable. Violence begets violence. But more importantly, the violence is a reflection of what is happening in society.”
He advises teachers to find creative ways of relating to pupils and of resolving difficulties with them. Makhubu holds a BSc degree in mathematics and education from the University of the North, and a master’s degree from Northern Illinois University in Chicago in the US.
He is married to Ellen and they have three children Mpumi, 30, Khayalethu, 25, and Wandisile, 20.
‘‘ Madiba’s call was music to the ears of unemployed teachers