HEALDTOWN INSTITUTION, Alice, Eastern Cape.
The arms may be blazoned:
Arms: Gules, an eagle swooping or, within a border or.
Motto: Alis velut aquilarum surgent.
It is not known whether the arms have been registered, but considering the institution’s history, it seems most likely that if they were registered, it would have been under the Protection of Names, Uniforms and Badges Act, 1935.
About the college:
The name Healdtown is most strongly associated with a Methodist mission station 11 km north-east of Fort Beaufort, 13 km north-west of Alice and slightly north of the main road linking the two towns. The University of Fort Hare lies to the east of Alice. Healdtown, Alice and the university all fell into Ciskei during the years of its so-called independence.
The mission was founded in 1853 by the Rev John Ayliff for the Mfengu (or Fingo) people (for information on this ethnic group, see Ciskei and Transkei). Ayliff established the mission on the site of the earlier station of the London Missionary Society, founded in 1844 by the Rev Henry Calderwood and named Birklands.
In 1855 Sir George Grey established a school of industries there (providing £3 000 in imperial funds for the purpose), and in 1867 a training institution for teachers and theological students was founded with the help of James Heald of Manchester, treasurer of the Wesleyan Missionary Society. The station was named for Heald following generous financial contributions from him.
The Standard Encyclopædia of Southern Africa, which provides much of the information above, then states almost laconically: “Under the Bantu Education Act of 1953 these schools were transferred to the State.”
In this way it understates a massive act of State-sponsored theft by which a functioning education system under the control of a variety of churches was placed in the hands of a highly politicised structure intended to demean and minimalise the position and role of “non-white” people in South Africa.
The intention of the Bantu Education system, controlled at the time by Bantu Education Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, was to ensure that, in the words of the Book of Joshua (grossly misapplied from its original context, which referred to the deceitful Gibeonite people), black people in South Africa would forever be “hewers of wood and drawers of water”.[1]
Dr Verwoerd became Prime Minister in 1958, and was assassinated in the House of Assembly in Parliament’s Cape Town buildings in 1966. [2]
Afrikaanse blasoen:
Die wapen mag in Afrikaans so geblasoeneer word:
Wapen: In rooi, ’n goue arend wat op sy prooi neerskiet, die geheel binne ’n skildsoom van goud.
Leuse: Alis velut aquilarum surgent.
