The original buildings that made up the Native Secondary School are nowhere on this blog. We were unable to locate archived images of the school. At Nathaniel Nyaluza Public Secondary School today, the oldest buildings date to the mid-1980s when the school was rebuilt after it was destroyed by fire during a student protest.
Students at Nyaluza found themselves at the centre of resistance to apartheid in Grahamstown during the late seventies and eighties. The Fingo high school was particularly affected by student boycotts. Some Nyaluza students were leaders in COSAS, and many more began, in this period, to be politically active.
A timeline of Student Action at Nathaniel Nyaluza Public Secondary School, and other high schools in the Grahamstown township:
1975
Nyaluza students staged a sit-in, refusing to sit their mid-year exams.
Only sixteen students sat for their Matriculation exams.
1977
Nyaluza students participated in marches against Bantu Education.
1980
Students from Ntsika and Nyaluza secondary schools initiated a boycott, which was ended at Mary Waters High School in May.
Government-appointed "Peacemakers" engaged in open aggression with the students.
1984
Students from Ntsika drafted a list of demands; including elected SRCs, curriculum reform and an end to corporal punishment in schools.
New boycotts were called, in honour of Steve Biko, and in response to the issue of police brutality.
Nyaluza students participated in a 500-strong, student led march from Joza to Fingo.
Attendance at Grahamstown schools dropped below 30%.
1985
The government declared a State of Emergency in Grahamstown in July.
Fingo village became subject to a curfew between 10pm and 4am.
Residents of the Grahamstown townships met, and lodged a list of 33 demands to the Government - four of these issues were centred on education.
(all of the information contained in the timeline was drawn from the first two chapters of Ryota Nishino's Honours thesis:
Ryota Nishino, 'The Dynamics of School Protests: Grahamstown School Boycotts c.1984-1987' Submitted to the History Department, Rhodes University, South Africa, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of a BA (Hons) degree in History, Rhodes University, 1999)
