BACK TO SCHOOL 2008!!

We will be hosting an education awareness campaign about the value of education, the problems and challenges of education within our community. We're calling it BACK TO SCHOOL.
26 JANUARY 2008 - KWA-JEKI INTERSECTION, FINGO... Free your mind black!

Welcome to the Fingo Village Blog

For our History 3 project this term we were commissioned to set up a blog documenting the history of one of the oldest and most significant townships in South Africa. What follows is our manifesto for the Fingo Village Blog.

Public History in General:

Baines argues that “public memory is a body of beliefs and ideas about the past that help a public or society understand both its past, present, and by implication, its future[1]”. This is what we hope to achieve with the Fingo Village Blog project. We want to record the history of Fingo Village and its people. In documenting this rich and diverse history of a culture we hope to make their history more accessible, as it is a crucial part of their identity.

Vision:

The Fingo Village Blog’s vision is to be an outstanding public history project that promotes an understanding of the history of Fingo Village and its people. In pursuit of this we are committed to being fair, honest and producing and documenting balanced material. We want to promote historical consciousness without endangering Fingo Village’s historical and cultural resources.

Mission:

In pursuit of the vision we will aim to adhere to the ‘big four’ criterion of public history. The skills balance between ethics, appeal, research and relevance. We want to strive towards theorising memory about Fingo Village and create a project that contributes to an ongoing debate about memory and how it is presented and understood. In this quest we will accordingly:

Facilitate an understanding of history as an inescapable part of the broader political and socio-economic processes of our time[2].

Work with groups and individuals to affirm their identity within Fingo Village because “historians should take care not to simplify and underestimate the need for a history which reinserts black people into the heart of the national narrative[3]”.

Odendaal writes about the nature of history in an article titled ‘Heritage and the arrival of post-colonial history in South Africa[4]’. Included in the Fingo Village Blog project’s mission is some of the concerns which Odendaal highlights that good public history projects should focus on. Therefore our vision will be achieved by representing the past through a clear narrative, explanation and analysis. A focus on the importance of the power of economic interests over time, how it contributes to change, as well as continuity. The blog will also emphasise the importance of cultivating empathy with various experiences and perspectives of the past.

We will seek to go beyond the conventional perspectives. We will not limit ourselves in terms of the resources used to document the history of Fingo Village and its people. We hope to highlight how ordinary people feel about the history of Fingo Village. We hope to include photographs of Fingo Village and the people interviewed for the project on the blog. This will make the blog visually more appealing and give readers a better idea of what Fingo Village looks like. The blog will look at the history of Fingo Village but it will also include information about what is happening there today. We will look at how its history has contributed to bringing it to where it is today. We will examine the plans that Makana Municipality and the Heritage Council has for the future development of Fingo Village.

The project will be done in way that ensures that it is sustainable. We want to do it in such a way that member of the Fingo community, or anyone else who has an interest in the village and its people, can contribute to the blog or make comments about the content. This is a public history project that aims to meet the needs of the community, to give a voice, to the previously marginalized. Throughout the project will adhere to the requirements and desires of the client. We will try to meet these needs to the best of our ability but we intend bringing some of our own creativity, originality and initiative to the project as well.

[1] Baines, G. ‘The Politics of Public History in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, p. 2.
[2] Odendaal, A. ‘”Heritage” and the arrival of post-colonial history in South Africa’, p. 20.
[3] Ibid., p. 24.
[4] Ibid., p. 12.

- Posted by Delia de Villiers

Project Design Report

It is important to view the making of a public history project as a process. It is not something that can be done without planning and regular evaluation. We, the producers of this blog, therefore thought that it might be interesting to include the report submitted to our supervisor on 18 May 2007 on the intended project design. The full report can be found below.

The Fingo Village Blog will be hosted on a free internet blogging site. The URL is http://www.blogger.com. The blog was very easy to set because it has various user-friendly tools to assist one in setting up a diary of this nature. A diary is essentially what a blog is but we are using it in a slightly different way. A blog allows for visitors to the site to make comments that will then appear on the blog. This feature of a blog assist us in our mission to make the blog something that is interactive and something that ordinary members of the community can participate in.

The design of the blog was chosen from a number of template options that are given to the user. We opted for a more elegant looking design. The reason for this is that is that way we hope that people will take the blog and the content, and other material found on it, quite seriously. By serious we do not mean academic, but rather that they will find honest, fair, balanced and well-researched historical discourse on the blog. The great thing about a blog is that there is no limit to the amount of space that can be used. While there is a limit to the amount of information that one can see on the computer screen, the blog automatically stores older information as new content is uploaded. The blog also allows for the inclusion of photographs or other graphics. Another resourceful feature is that one can insert links to other interesting or useful webpages. We intend making use of this as we see it as a way to entice and motivate people into learning more about this specific aspect of South African public history.

Every member of the group is able to upload content onto the blog on their own time. This is made possible by sharing the username and password that secures the blog. This is another useful feature because it means that the group is not forced to meet every time somebody wants to add something to the blog. The initial setting up required full group participation but now we will probably meet once or twice more to ensure that the overall tone and style of the blog is what we set out to do.

The blog allows for the users to include a profile about themselves. We filled in the profile part, describing how we are young historians at Rhodes University that are doing a public history project, that above everything else, will give something back to the community.

The general plan for implementation is easy because the groundwork has been done. Everybody had a part of the history of Fingo Village to investigate and write about and this will all be posted on the blog under various headings. The, very ambitious, plan is to have it all done and good to go by Saturday 19 May 2007 which is three days before the presentation of the project to our peers and lecturer. The presentation that will be done for the class will most likely be rehearsed the night before the presentation.

A ‘hook’ is always necessary to draw people into a project and to encourage them to participate in the experience. We are going to hand out little flyers that say very little apart from, ‘have you checked out this blog?’ and the web address. We think this is the most effective way of encouraging people to log onto the internet and view the blog because it makes them curious. If too much information is supplied about what is on the blog people might decide that they are not interested before even viewing it. Other hooks to be used will be striking and interesting headlines that draw people into the content. Photographs will also serve as a ‘hook’ as the visual medium serves to entice people in a different way than mere text does.

The costs involved in this project are minimal. The only costs that we have are the printing costs of the flyers and the petrol that was used to drive to Fingo Village to speak to members of the community.

As previously mentioned, a whole variety of sources will be employed. They range from peer-reviewed academic articles to interviews with people. Since it is a public history project, rather than a piece of academic work we thought to necessary to draw from a wide variety of knowledge to ensure that the content of the blog does not become stale or too theoretical. The other reason is to ensure that the blog becomes ‘the voice of the community’ in a sense. This is an all-inclusive history project, as in line with the democratic ideals of our country, and so no possible source will be discriminated against.

Freedom and Fire

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)

Unearthing the Past: The Fingo Village Graves

“I don’t think living on top of your great grandfather’s grave [is wrong], if he knows you have no place to live. I wouldn’t mind my son here, living on top of me if he has no other place to live. Because I would know, I would understand spiritually.”[1]

Thembelani Fene, Resident of Fingo

In recent history, Fingo Village has been forced to address an issue of traditional, practical and spiritual importance. While building the foundations for the new Ndancama community hall in 1998, human remains ranging in levels of decomposition were discovered. The problem did not cease and only proved to continue with time, as, since then, other development projects have unearthed more bones. The question raised by these events separates the Fingo community. On one side, traditionalists believe that the remains of the ancestors are to be preserved; on the other side, a strong sentiment is to continue development as the livelihood and quality of life for the living takes a much stronger importance than the resting place of the dead. In this article, a brief history of the graves and township will be examined, and both sides of the current division will be addressed.

Problems concerning Fingo Village’s housing originate well before the last fifteen years. Choices made by white land managers for Grahamstown’s townships during the period of 1900 until 1969 had the effect of mass overpopulation of existing housing and shortage of land for housing development. As an example, during the 1920’s and 1930’s the black population doubled from 5,361 in 1921 to 9,131 in 1936, but the housing council did very little to accommodate the growth. To complicate this, due to Grahamstown’s central location and lax influx control laws, migration from the surrounding farming areas created an abundance of additional persons seeking shelter, and the majority of these immigrants chose to settle in Ndancama. With continuing overpopulation, the housing council did nothing to alleviate the situation, believing that this would send the message that permanent residence by Africans in Grahamstown was not a valid choice. Ignoring African residents did not send the desired message, and growth was not stemmed.[2]

Overpopulation continued to worsen and, under the Group Areas Act of 1950, Fingo Village was proposed to be relocated to Committee’s Drift, 50 kilometers outside of Grahamstown. Members of the black community achieved successfully resisted this move, and of historical significance, the township stands exactly where it was created during the earliest stages of Grahamstown. While the township successfully resisted the move, other problems soon began. Bulging on every side, Fingo desperately needed new land to create houses. In 1969 the decision was made to de-proclaim the “Old Fingo Cemetery” for use of settlement. In 1972 sixty five housing plots were now made available for purchase at 50 cents each. Families immediately saw a way to achieve improved living conditions and jumped on the offer. Settlements were erected and hundreds of people relocated to the Old Cemetery.[3]

For human rights and living conditions this was a god send, people now were able to gain breathing room and more suitable housing; for heritage and historical significance, this was a major problem. The cemetery has been labeled as Fingo Village’s first officially designated cemetery, although evidence is inconclusive as the exact original date. Judgment lines cannot be drawn, as the cemetery was not in good condition. During the time of the cemetery’s de-proclamation the graves and surrounding area were in complete disrepair. Evidence shows that since the 1950’s, perimeter fencing and graves were overgrown and dilapidated. Because of the condition, the graves served as a gathering place for youth rather than a location to honor past relatives. Only a small number of graves remained in good condition, many others were obscured by overgrowth and trees. The graves that remained protected were of Rhodes Lobengula, a grandson of the Ndbele king, and his wife Rosamond Lobengula, as no building was allowed on their plots. Along these lines, due to its condition and other factors, the cemetery became obsolete by the early 1940’s. Most visiting to the grave sites by families ceased in the subsequent thirty-year period. Although of heritage significance, in practical use the graves were mere memorials instead of active sites to engage the memory of past loved ones.[4]

Residents flocked to the new area, not only for a chance to escape over-crowding but also for a chance to escape rental fees and a desire to be property-owners. Corrugated iron shacks were soon erected, and residents began a new life there. The life this area offered was not easy. During the initial construction and leveling skulls and bones emerged from the earth. In addition, infrastructure was non-existent, making sanitation, crime, and water dire problems. Due to narrow alleyways and housing density, crime was a huge problem. A resident during that time, Nonzwakazi Mbhunge, describes the crime conditions:

“…because people lived [in congested circumstances]…things were wrong…there was fighting…people stealing…people being chased by the police ran into Ndancama because of the narrow alley ways…sometimes they’d climb on top of the house…things like that…but we got used to it until we have grown up now.”[5]

Despite all of these hardships, life continued in Fingo, and not until recent years has debate emerged about the historical significance about the grave site. In 1999 with the establishment of SAHRA (the South African Heritage Resource Agency) under the National Heritage Resources Act No. 25 of 1999, the graves were reinserted into public controversy. The act, seeking to address areas of historical significance that were overlooked during the Apartheid era, declared the graves, due to their age, just as important to preserve as the 1820 Settler Cemetery. With the help from SAHRA, during the process of the construction of the community center, which began before the establishment of SAHRA, in 1998, meetings were held to discuss courses of action. Should building be halted? Should relocation for the preservation of graves begin? The meetings decided that the relocation of residents to protect the graves was unnecessary, and declared that all remains should be given to the Albany Museum for historical preservation. [6]

Currently the vast majority of the community supports this decision. Quality of living and developing the Fingo Village community is believed to be more important than Heritage management. Reservations still exist, as is apparent from an interview with Joyce Mbonde, a resident: “I cannot, with the full knowledge that you are buried in this place just live and be relaxed on top of you. That’s not nice… It is not nice to live on top of a grave, it feels uncomfortable.”[7] While far from being resolved, an understanding is established that incorporates the needs of the Fingo residents.

---

[1] Mkhize, N. "Bones of Contention: Contestations Over Human Remains in the
Eastern Cape", MA Thesis, Rhodes University, 2007, p. 17.

Clark, H. "The History and Power of Grahamstown's Fingo Village Skeletons", Dispatch Online, retrieved online at http://www.blogger.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.dispatch.co.za/1998/04/editorials/HISTORY.htm

[2] Ibid, p 19-24.

[3] Ibid, 26 27.

[4] Ibid, 31 32.

[5] Ibid, 37.

[6] SAHRA at http://www.sahra.org.za/intro.htm

Mkhize, N, p. 42.

[7] Ibid, p.47.

Future for Fingo?..............

View at night of the last remaining Silvertown House, still lived in today.


I will begin with a whistle stop introduction on the history of Fingo....you probably dont realise it but Fingo Village is a really important Township. It is the oldest Township in Grahamstown and title of the land was given to the amaFengu people in return for their services and bravery in fighting the British during the battles with the amaXhosa between 1846-1853.

The amaFengu who at this point were refugees were given title to 320 plots in 1858.They quickly established a community and built churches, schools and houses. They were well respected and liked by the rest of the community and adopted Christianity. Many became shopkeepers.Many did not actually live in their houses but rented them out and lived off the proceeds.

This way of life continued relatively undisturbed until the 1950's when the Group Areas Act was passed and racial zoning came into play. Many residents complained bitterly at this re-zoning and there are many original letters from local residents in the Cory Library. There is more of this story to follow in the passage regarding the history of the "Fingo Graves"

In the 1960's and 1970's people who ventured into town from the farms were forced to build squatter camps on an area known as Dead Horse Kloof, so called because it was where the carcasses of donkeys and horses were dumped. In 1977 the East Cape Administration moved these people into 58 zinc and corrugated houses on the edge of Fingo called Silvertown or Shiny Town, it was intended as an emergency camp but there is still one house there today in 2007. The photo featured above shows the type of property that people were forced to live in..

I have taken an oral history from a previous resident of Silvertown and it paints a depressing picture of what life was like living in these apalling conditions:

"When I was small girl I moved with my Grandmother, Aunts, my mother and 5 brothers and sisters to Fingo from Mission. We had to move because there were 12 of us living under one roof. We were moved to Silvertown. It was a horrible place. All the houses were made of Zinc. In the summer it was really hot as the walls and the roof was also made from Zinc but we always had to keep the door shut so sometimes it was hard to breathe. We had two small windows which were made of plastic. In the winter when it rained the floor got very wet as we had no concrete, they had no proper floor.We had no water and no toilets and no electricity. It had two rooms for all of us. Crime was very bad.You did not know if you would wake up the next day alive when you went to bed at night. There were gangs and fights every Saturday night. I hated it" ( N.MaXoma. resident of Silvertown.1972)


However, there is hope for the residents of Fingo. A new proposal has been put forward that will aim to transform Fingo and the surrounding area. This proposal will include a tourism directive that will include play areas for children as well as rugby and soccer pitches, tennis courts, arts centre, footpaths, gardens, coffee shops, stadium and a training centre for Diviners .This project is currently in the early stages but it is hoped it will begin shortly, certainly in time for all the tourists that will flock to South Africa for the 20010 World Cup. It is hoped that this project will bring much needed jobs and money into this beleagured area. They certainly deserve to be helped and hopefully this project will place Fingo and all its history firmly on the map.(1) However whether or not it is right to spend approximately 30mRand on this type of project when there are still residents living in Fingo and surrounding areas with no flushing toilets or hot water remains a subject for discussion. We would really like to know your views...Should 30m Rand be spent on recreational pursuits and tourism or could it be put to better use elsewhere in Fingo? please submit to this blog and leave your views!.................................

( 1) Makana Municipality.Sub Comitte Meeting.21.11.06)
(Vukani Greenbelt Intiative 2006)