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3 Pathfinding in Southern Africa, 1908–45 FORMAL AFRICAN SCOUTING in the Union of SouthAfrica began at Grace Dieu Diocesan College in the early s. Located roughly eighteen miles from Pietersburg in the northernTransvaal, the Anglican school trained African teachers. Informal European Scout troops in South Africa predated the official establishment of the movement in Britain in  by several years. As Baden-Powell’s fame spread, mission educators like CanonW .A. Palmer, Grace Dieu’s principal, recognized that Scouting could also be a useful extracurricular activity in African schools. In  , Palmer asked the newly formedTransvaal Scout Council for permission to start anAfrican troop at the college. The Transvaal Scouters were determined to reserve Scouting for white boys and instead offered to help Palmer create a separate “native ” scout-type movement. Palmer declined on the grounds that the universalism and brotherhood embodied in the Fourth Scout Law were the most valuable aspects of the movement. He saw Scouting as a “civilizing” tool that would prepare his African students for their place in South African society by teaching responsibility and service while promoting mutual understanding between Africans and Europeans. Palmer therefore repetitioned theTransvaal council in , after S. P. Woodfield, a veteran Scoutmaster from Britain, joined his staff.1 The Transvaal Scout establishment was resistant but grudgingly allowed liberal proponents ofAfrican Scouting to create the Pathfinders, an African organization that used the aims and methods of the movement without enjoying official recognition as Scouts. Palmer and his liberal al72 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. lies accepted the Pathfinders because they hoped to use the principles of adapted education to create a distinctly African movement that would gradually transformAfricans into “civilized” men.Although they wanted their students to have official Scout status, they worried that formal Scouting was too European to be relevant to African circumstances.The Pathfinders’ sponsors hoped their adapted Scout hybrid would reduce the contradictions in African schooling and limit African political activism , intergenerational tension, and juvenile delinquency by teaching African youth self-discipline, loyalty, and interracial “understanding.” The st Pietersburg Pathfinders came into being at Grace Dieu in September .The company was popular, but it quickly became apparent that students at the college had their own ideas of what it meant to be a Scout.The hypocrisy of institutionalizing racial discrimination in a purportedly universalistic movement undermined the conformist ideology of the new organization. The Grace Dieu Pathfinders aspired to be full Scouts because they wanted to demonstrate that they were as capable, sophisticated , and prepared as European boys. The minutes of the Grace Dieu troop show thatWoodfield had to constantly explain why the Pathfinders could not wear the same uniforms as the Union’s European Scouts.The Grace Dieu students’ concern over their uniform reflected their attempts to make Pathfinding an elite movement. A complete uniform was not a prerequisite for membership, but it conveyed considerable status at the school. Pathfinders had to pay the fairly considerable dues of one shilling per term, but there were always more applicants than the troop could accommodate. Patrol Leader Isaac (troop minutes never mention Africans by their last names) told Canon Woodfield that most students believed that the Pathfinders were exempt from Grace Dieu’s strict disciplinary codes.2 The Grace Dieu archives are frustratingly vague on the exact motives of the first Pathfinders, but it is clear that the students saw Scouting as a means of breaching the color bar. Adapted education was an empty promise because it was pointless to prepare Africans to be progressive farmers or simple tradesmen when legalized segregation limited their access to land and gainful employment. African frustration with this educational hypocrisy drove the independent school movement and sparked widespread student strikes in African schools by the s. Pathfinding floundered over these contradictions. Politically conscious Africans rejected Palmer’s arrangement with the Scout authorities and invoked the Fourth Scout Law to demand equal status in the official Scout movement and, by extension, South African society.They rejected Pathfinding in Southern Africa,1908–45 73 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. the European Pathfinder leadership’s adulteration of Scouting and exploited the South African Scout authorities...

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