God will look after us

In the winter of 1933, Edward Roux, a member of the Communist Party of South Africa, arrived in Alice on a donkey, with his new wife, Winifred. The two pitched a tent on Sandile's Kop, a hill overlooking the Fort Hare campus, and at a series of outdoor meetings, shared the teachings of communism with students. They discussed organised religion, handing out literature that attacked Christianity. The couple recalled the students relating ‘their life in college and how they were disciplined and treated as schoolboys’. In turn, the Rouxs ‘told them of the movement and of Indlela Yenkululeko’ (The Road to Freedom), a recently launched monthly magazine. Wycliffe Tsotsi says that the magazine made the students aware of the extent of political strife in the country and Roux writes that it enjoyed a ‘fair circulation’ among the students at Fort Hare.

While the students listened eagerly to Roux, the authorities felt his teachings ran contrary to those of the college. Alexander Kerr, the school's first principal, was ‘squarely against the college becoming a political agency … [He] wanted the Fort Hare authorities to control, channel and domesticate African aspirations.’ Tsotsi says: ‘The authorities were not interested in us involving ourselves in politics. Any sign of activity by the students which was independent of the authority was crashed down.’ Sipo Makalima (1936–1940) describes early Fort Hare as a ‘very conservative place’, and says that despite what may have been the best of intentions on the part of the missionaries who ran Fort Hare in its early years, it was not an ‘open university’. He adds: