THE HISTORY OF JABAVU SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL
This day secondary school was established as a private school in July 1951, by the then University College of Fort Hare to provide secondary education facilities to Bantu pupils who came from the primary schools in the vicinity of Fort Hare after passing Std IV. Whilst engaged in their practice teaching these students prepared pupils for the Junior Cer
tificate Examinations of the Cape Education Department. Classes were first conducted in one of the spare classrooms in Livingstone Hall. Professor C.P. Dent, who was then principal of Fort Hare, became the manager of the newly established secondary school. He was assisted by an advisory committee. In that same year a new site for the school was acquired on the eastern boundary of the Fort Hare grounds near the road to Hogsback. On the new site buildings costing R 1328.54 were erected and opened on 1.12.52. These buildings were then hired out at a rental of R 935. 99 per year by Fort Hare to the Cape Provincial Administration. The rent was to be paid to Prof. The first principal of this new secondary school, which was called Jabavu Senior Secondary School, after Prof D.D.T Jabavu, was Mr G.S. Bundy, M.A., and Bed. His assistant teacher was Mrs. Mokoena, B.A. The Cape Education Department paid the full salaries of these teachers. After the take over by the Department of Bantu Education, the buildings of Jabavu S.S.S were rented to the Department of Native Affairs by Fort Hare. In 1961, however, the Department of Bantu Education notified Fort Hare of its intention to move this secondary school to Amabhele location. At Amabhele this secondary school, which all along was factory school, would become a community school. For some time Fort Hare this move through letters and memoranda. The reasons advanced for this opposition were that the school was serving an important function of providing adequate practical teacher-training facilities for the large group of students who were taking the university education Diploma course. The school, therefore, was as an important to the Education Department of Fort Hare as were the laboratories of the same College to its Science Departments. Moreover, this school was serving the pupils living to the west of Alice who could not attend J.C classes at the Lovedale High School. After giving this matter careful second consideration the department of Bantu Education allowed Jabavu S.S.S to stay where it was and to carry on with its work as before. It was only in 1968, in September, when the Government of the Republic of South Africa gave self-government to the Ciskeian citizens that this school became a community school.
