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Unwritten History: African Work in the YMCA of South Africa
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2014
Extract
In mid-1995, walking out of the door of my house, I received a telephone call. On the other end of the line was a distinct, well-spoken, but clearly faraway male voice. The man introduced himself, saying:
My name is Vusi Kaunda, calling from Johannesburg, South Africa. I recently read an article you wrote about the YMCA, referring to events that took place some 75 years ago. I have been working for the South African YMCA for 10 years and I never knew anything about all this. Where did you get your information?
Conditions did not permit us to take this conversation to its logical conclusion. I was on the way to conduct a history class; we had clearly connected at an inconvenient time. But that verbal exchange has stayed on my mind ever since. It demonstrated the power of the written word to connect people separated by thousands of miles, yet discover that they have a common purpose. Ours is to tell the story of the African voice in a new inclusive historiography of South Africa's Young Men's Christian Association.
My discovery of the YMCA of South Africa came as a result of researching the life of Max Yergan, an African-American YMCA Secretary who, representing the “jim crow” “Colored Work” Department of a segregated North American YMCA, entered the Union of South Africa after considerable opposition, on the second day of January 1922. This was Yergan's third overseas posting and second African assignment, the first being in Kenya, and then Tanganyika during the East Africa campaign of World War I. He had joined the YMCA as a Shaw University sophomore in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1911, rapidly rising in its ranks to become a national figure in their Black “Y” network. Yergan became the third “non-white” YMCA Traveling Secretary in South Africa and the first to attempt to do so on a full-time basis, succeeding J. K. Bokwe and D. D. T. Jabavu.
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References
1 This text, Crossing The Water, is discussed in http://www.founders.howard.edu/reference/bob_edgar_site/
2 Interview, Shakes Tshabalala, Orlando, Soweto, Johannesburg [Gauteng] 4 July 2000.
3 Sesotho documents generated on a prior search were made available by Stephen Gill, director, Morija Museum and Archives, Lesotho. Gill to author 2/26/03; 4/23/03 and 5/31/03. Extracts of these 1923 and 1925 articles appear in Anthony, David, “Max Yergan Encounters South Africa: Theological Perspectives on Race,” Journal of Religion in Africa 34(2004), 235–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Complete translations will appear in D. Anthony, ed., African Affairs: A Max Yergan Reader (work in progress). Original reportage was undertaken by such giants of modern Sesotho ver¬nacular literature as Z. D. Mangoela and L.M. Moletsane in Leselinyana ea Lesotho, T.M. Leanya, translator. The inauguration of ‘Y’ formation in historic Basutoland is discussed in Craig J. Hincks, Quest for Peace: A History of the Churches in Lesotho (forthcoming) drawing upon earlier Leselinyana issues of 1908, 1909, and 1910. These concern trips from South Africa made by Oswin B. Bull.
4 British-born YMCA secretary Bull (1882-1971), posted to Cape Town in 1906, first saw Basutoland before World War I. It made quite a salutary impression on him. In 1927, after 20 years of South African ‘Y’ service, he became principal of Lerotholi Training College, still a highly-regarded Lesotho technical school.
5 Rand Young Men's Journal (Johannesburg) (1 October 1903-April 1908)Google Scholar; Men of the Fields (Kimberley) (1 March-3 May 1909)Google Scholar; The Vanguard (Johannesburg) (1921)Google Scholar; Manhood: Organ of the Cape Town YMCA (Cape Town) (1921- ns (Johannesburg) 1946–1949)Google Scholar; Unitas (Stellenbosch) (1916–1930)Google Scholar; Universitas (Stellenbosh) (1-10 April 1920–1930)Google Scholar; and Omnes Unum (Stellenbosch) (1-15(8); 1931-Nov/Dec/1945)Google Scholar. The predecessor of these SCA publications, while named differently, ran concurrently and are often considered synonymous and Interchangeable, exchanged articles, was bilingual and (Afrikaans/English) and was called The Christian Student (1898-1930). I have not examined this title nor anything later than 1940.
6 Manhood 1:8 (March 1921), 153Google Scholar.
7 For representative examples of this see Gow, J., “Settling the Native Question,” Manhood 3:9(January 1923), 209–13Google Scholar and 3:10(February 1923), 229-33.
8 “Native Institutional Work,” Manhood 4:7 (November 1923), 133–35Google Scholar. Earlier the journal reported on a South African Council of YMCAs Conference held in Johannesburg on 1-2 October 1923 during which the question of “Institutional Work Among Natives in Urban Areas,” was addressed. The conference proceedings were summarized in meeting minute form in issue 4:6(October 1923), 107-09, 113-14. Two months earlier, the Dutch Reformed Church convened a Johannesburg conference of “Native leaders. Representatives of great Missionary Societies, Native welfare societies, and others.” Manhood also had reported that “The conference passed a resolution urging…the desirability of establishing Institutional work among native ‘boys’ working in urban areas of the country,” numbering about one million. Easton, W. E., “The First Bantu Association,” Manhood 6:2(June 1925), 20–21Google Scholar. Most YMCA members were Afrikaners.
9 Bull, O.B., South African Outlook (March 1924)Google Scholar, as cited in Cotton, Walter Aidan, The Race Problem in South Africa (London, 1926), 115–16Google Scholar. Having run South Africa's SCA before the war, Bull returned after the war to head the YMCA.
10 D. Anthony, “Toward A History of ‘Black Work’ in the South African YMCA.”