Education in Exile

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SOMAFCO, the ANC school in Tanzania, 1978 to 1992 This book re-lives the exile experience of many South Africans from 1978 to 1992 at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (SOMAFCO). Much is known about the youth who fled South Africa to join Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Less is known about the many who left the country to receive education and vocational training and to be part of a unique, self-reliant community at the ANC settlements of Mazimbu and Dakawa, near Morogoro in Tanzania. This latter group of mainly young people were equally freedom fighters, dedicated to preparing themselves for service to the struggle and for reconstruction and development in a free nation. At SOMAFCO were gathered young people and their teachers, who had been obliged to flee a country whose regime had attempted to miseducate its youth and then turned viciously on them when they resisted. In the difficult conditions of exile this remarkable school sustained and developed an education based on principles of equal opportunity, non-discrimination and the dignity and unity of mental and manual labour. SOMAFCO was a beacon of hope. South Africans from all backgrounds, and solidarity workers from many parts of the world, showed at Mazimbu and Dakawa what a new educational system might be and what new ways of thinking about teaching and learning could achieve.

List of figures and photographs
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction

1. Education and the struggle for freedom
2. Origins and early years of SOMAFCO
3. Teachers, administrators and students
4. The Charlotte Maxeke Children’s Centre
5. The primary school
6. The secondary school
7. Curriculum and pedagogy at SOMAFCO
8. The social life of students
9. South Africans and Tanzanians
10. Women at SOMAFCO
11. Dakawa Development Centre
12. Funding SOMAFCO
13. The end of SOMAFCO
14. SOMAFCO in retrospect

Notes
References and sources
Index

Dr Sean Morrow is a chief research specialist in the Democracy and Governance Research Programme. Before joining the HSRC, he was an associate Professor of History at Fort Hare University and the Director of the Govan Mbeki Research Resource Centre, where he worked on research capacity development. Dr Morrow, originally a high school teacher, has taught and researched in education and history departments in several Southern African Universities and in Ireland.

Brown Maaba is a research manager at the Steve Biko Foundation and a research associate at the University of Fort Hare.

Loyiso Pulumani is the Oral History Co-ordinator at the ANC archives unit.