what was once the main route to Queenstown,
known as the Queen’s Road.
It’s in a far better state than Fort Armstrong.
Buildings such as the stables have walls and
a roof and are used to shelter stock during
winter snows. The old officers’ quarters still
boast doors and windows to keep the draughts
away from the large fireplaces in each room
of this mountain sanctuary.
Intrigued, I wanted to know more about
the Maqoma Route and found some answers
in the Fort Beaufort Historical Museum. The
route covers dozens of sites in the Eastern
Cape’s Amathole region that tell the tale of the
100-year struggle for land on the old Eastern
Cape frontier, where the Xhosa fiercely resisted
colonial forces, and Christian missionaries
preached the word of God.
It’s one of a number of routes named after
Xhosa chiefs that were launched with fanfare
a number of years ago, but are now neglected
due to lack of municipal resources. Littered
with the remains of British forts, this route
is also a place of graves of defiant warriors
and scholars, and the more lasting legacy
of the Christian missionaries educational
institutions where the seeds of our modern
democracy were planted.
Chief Jongumsobomvu Maqoma was
the eldest son of King Ngqika and fought in
three of the Frontier Wars, also known as the
‘wars of land dispossession’. The eighth, from
1850 to 1853, was the longest war fought
between the British military machine and any
indigenous peoples of Africa, including the
Zulus on the better-known KwaZulu-Natal
Battlefields Route.
Maqoma is regarded by military historians
as a bold and a daring leader, a brilliant strategist
and a master tactician in the field of war. His
guerrilla tactics of ambush and hit-and-run
rendered the British cannons ineffective.
“Maqoma and his half-brother Sandile
were the last of the warrior chiefs resisting
colonialism on the Eastern Cape frontier,”
Trevor Webster, a member of the Fort Beaufort
Museum board, told me. “After them, it was the
mission-educated elite who led the struggle.”
We were standing on the campus of
Healdtown, the mission station outside Fort
Beaufort renowned for educating generations
of African leaders. “My mother taught Nelson
Mandela and Robert Sobukwe Latin and English
in that classroom over there, and my father
taught science in the block opposite,” said
Trevor, who grew up at the Methodist mission.Sadly, the dining room is now just a shell,
the foundation stone half buried in rubble and
leaves. This is where, in his Long Walk to
Freedom autobiography, our first democratically
elected president recalls the lasting impression
made when a visiting imbongi (praise singer)
urged the students to not forget their indigenous
values and traditions. “The students received
a liberal education here,” said Trevor.
However, a government project to renovate
the campus is under way and the Eagle building
now stands proud. “On a Sunday, the band used
to march up the pepper-tree avenue to fetch
the girls for assembly on the parade ground,”
explained Trevor. “They walked so proudly,
all dressed in white. The principals would stand
in front of the Eagle Tower with the chaplain and
sing the old national anthem as well as Nkosi
Sikelele iAfrika. This is the heart of Healdtown.”
Lovedale College was its counterpart
in Alice. Opened in 1841, the historicTOP: Trevor Webster mourns the state of the dining hall at Healdtown where our first democratically elected
president breakfasted daily on dry toast and sugar water as a 19-year-old student. LEFT: The Eagle Building was
the heart of Healdtown. At its peak, 1 500 students in the primary and high schools and training college would
assemble in front of it. BELOW: The Methodist Church was the spiritual home of students at the prestigious
Healdtown School and Training College, and many went on to become prominent leaders, from first black
newspaper founder John Tengo Jabavu, of Imvo Zabantsundu fame, to Matthew Goniwe, one of the Cradock
Four assassinated by an apartheid hit squad in 1985.