Dan Qeqe: the activist who
In this excerpt from a people’s history of the Eastern and triumphs of a man who insisted on upgrading
Dan Qeqe’s role in upgrading schools to matric level in the New Brighton and KwaZakhele townships: eqe took the mantle from Molefe, and at first they put their trust in the advisory board to commit to the educational upliftment of the black child in New Brighton. They were, however, bitterly disappointed. When their repeated requests were not heeded, both Qeqe and Molefe felt stifled. A marked difference in modus operandi between Molefe and Qeqe was Molefe’s rigid insistence on centralising church structures when it came to raising funds for this exercise. Nozuko Pikoli, who witnessed Molefe’s work, recalled, ‘You see, Molefe … used to galvanise funds, especially from the church.’
Qeqe’s aim was to upgrade Cowan and KwaZakhele secondary schools into high schools, and to achieve this he broke ranks with Molefe’s tradition. This was not due to any radical ideological shift, but because of the local state’s refusal to assist in the schools’ upgrading project, and the incapability of the parents to commit to funding. Other challenges communicated to Qeqe were apparently structural. Mpumelelo ‘Sbhidla’ Majola remembered that ‘there was some regulation that in the townships one could not build a double-storey building. They said that the land in the township was not suitable for that. So, this is one of the things that led Cowan to not be upgraded into a high school.’
By the mid- to late 1970s, Qeqe and his associates on the advisory board had grown discouraged by the half-measures and illwilled attempts of the Cape Midlands Bantu Affairs Administration Board to commit to this project. In 1975, they openly chided the local state, pointing out that the education of African children in the Port Elizabeth townships was ‘badly planned’. They ‘expressed concern at the slow rate of progress being made by the Cape Midlands Bantu Affairs Administration Board in building more
Qschools and additional classrooms and they were also deeply concerned at the sudden change of policy in allocating new school buildings’. In 1973, Qeqe and Molefe condemned the less-than-adequate improvements made to a township school. Referring to the new building that had been added to Mzontsundu Junior Secondary School at KwaZakhele, Qeqe objected to the construction of cement floors, saying, ‘We don’t want this new school with cement floors because it will destroy the lives of our children.’
Molefe further pointed out that he and his colleagues on the advisory board were disappointed at finding out that the new school building would only have 10 classrooms. No provision had been made for a principal’s office, a science room or a homecraft room. The local state’s response, received via a letter from the Department of Community Development, informed them that ‘the loan authority had precluded the building of specialist classrooms at the school’.
Qeqe criticised the report given by the chairman of the Education Committee of the advisory board and the officials of the Department of Education, claiming that they had not delivered on what they had promised: the building of
102 additional classrooms before January 1976. Qeqe was ‘deeply disturbed’ to learn from McNamee, the former New Brighton superintendent, that only one higher-primary school with 16 additional classrooms was scheduled to be built. Also, he was concerned that six classrooms for Loyiso Secondary School and four for Inqubela Higher Primary School in New Brighton were to be added before school opened the following year in 1976.
Qeqe had come to the realisation that the local state did not intend to upgrade the two secondary schools to high schools. Realising the futility of relying on the local state and the New Brighton community, Qeqe dug into his own pocket, donating R2,000 to the project, and requested that parents donate a similar amount. He also reached out to a few black businessmen, such as Mr Jonas and Mr Khabani, and Cowan Secondary School’s principal, Frank Thonjeni. Mpumelelo ‘Sbhidla’ Majola recalled that Qeqe and the people he recruited to the project ‘upgraded the school by force, very much against the wishes of the whites’.
Teenage Mkhuseli Jack, when he moved to Port Elizabeth in 1975 and was looking for a school, found himself in an overflow intake of 300 to 400 pupils. This overflow, which was meant to be accommodated at Cowan, took their classes outdoors, in the absence of classrooms. Jack recalled:
And Dan Qeqe, at the time, I noted him coming into the school … Nineteen seventy-five [1975], coming into Cowan High School with his pick-up bakkie or a bakkie, a truck. And he was busy, you know, transporting, cutting cement, bricks and wood, and so on. And he was busy extending two classes, so that they could accommodate the overflow of Cowan. We were new, this group I’m talking about. So, but then, he was wearing shorts, and came there himself [and] work and push and so on. This was really impressive.
Sloti pointed out that Qeqe worked relentlessly, back and forth, his modus operandi to ensure that he upgraded Cowan and KwaZakhele secondary schools more or less at