Trafalgar high: The chance giver to black and coloured students.
By: Mmbi Thompho
Trafalgar High School motto sign by the entrance. Photo by: Mmbi Thompho
About 1911, education was limited for black and coloured learners, they were not allowed to take their education further when they are done with primary education. Fortunately enough; if not lucky the pupils who were around cape town got Samaritans who fought for their right to education till Trafalgar High School was built for them to enroll.
Those Samaritans are Abdullah Abdurrahman, the president of the African Political Organisation, and Harold Cressy, the first Coloured person to obtain a BA degree at the University of Cape Town. The city council was forced to give permission, and Cressy was appointed as Trafalgar’s first Principal. The school started a roll with 60 learners and five teachers. Now the staff number is about 30 and close to 700 learners. The school is for both genders but in the first year, girls outnumbered boys.
The school was established in Cape Town District 6 in 1912, for non-white pupils. By 1982, over 60,000 people had been violently removed and moved to the Cape Flats after District Six was declared a white group area in the 1970s. There was strong opposition to closing the school to accommodate white students. Despite having to travel from the Cape Flats, political repression, and other obstacles, the schools continued to operate as a result. The school took a leading role in protesting against apartheid.
On the 22nd of January 2022, the school turned 110 years old, it is still standing and doing well. It was the first school to give higher education to nonwhite pupils from the cape peninsula and surrounding as well as from other provinces and Namibia. Trafalgar continued to be the only school which gives nonwhite pupils free education for 14 years around Cape Town. Livingstone High opened in Claremont in 1926. Athlone High followed in 1946, South Peninsula in 1950 and Harold Cressy and Alexander Sinton a year later.
Trafalgar High School profile.
Trafalgar High School with teachers’ cars parked outside the fence. Photo by: Mmbi Thompho
TrafalgarHigh School is in the heart of District 6 in Cape Town. It is situated a few minutes away from Cape Town CBD, at 35 Kuyper Street, Zonnebloem, Cape Town 7925. The school is at the back of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
It is next to many well-known buildings; its pupils can be easily inspired to study harder because they can witness what education can do.
The school is a few metres away from the foot of the majestic Table Mountain. The school enjoys its heritage to be the first school for nonwhite pupils in South Africa.
The school is well known all over the world for its political-cultural historical nature, the first school for non-white pupils. Trafalgar High School’s motto Per Angusta Ad Augusta is a Latin phrase meaning from difficulty to success.
It is a school of both gender and teachers love and respect pupils’ feelings, it is believed that when you are on school premises you must speak English or Afrikaans. It is believed that all pupils are equal, and they get the same education with equal treatment.
The school Emis number is 103313335, the school is a section 21 school meaning it is
allocated finances by the department and responsible for ordering stationery,
paying for water and lights accounts, and undertaking its maintenance under
ABCDE functions and classified under quintile 5. This simply means that
Trafalgar is a school fee-paying school.
Principal and teachers
The first principal of Trafalgar High School was Harold Cressy, he was appointed in 1912 when the school open official. Cressy showed up in school in 1913, he did a
very good job according to the articles I read about him. To show that he was
very inspiring, there is a school in Cape Town, Roeland Street, South Africa
named after him.
After Cressy and the other 11 principals, there was Nadeem Hendricks, who was accused of accepting money in return for allowing large quantities of building rubble
to be dumped at the high school in 2016. He was accused of leasing a portion of
the school property to the company so that high levels of demolition waste
could be disposed of during construction opposite the school. Further, he was
paid R160 000.
Nevertheless, Hendricks was the image of the community, people used to look up to him, he was very inspiring, according to people who knew him and how he led the school, they said he did a very good job, the problem started when people start to
accuse him. In 2017 Hendricks resigned.
When the school was 106 years old, it received a new principal, for the first time in
all the years, it was open the principal is a female. The name of Trafalgar's
first female principal is Salwa Southgate. At the beginning of 2018, Salwa was
the acting head of the school, she officially became the head of the school in
October of that year. Salwa was also the Deputy Principal at Trafalgar for
years.
Salwa was Trafalgar’s pupil and when she is done with her tertiary education, she started teaching at Trafalgar, indeed she loves Trafalgar and Trafalgar loves her too.
Now after 33 years, Salwa is the one who is running the school.
Teachers at Trafalgar understand that it is their responsibility to make sure that
pupils are being taught and understand all basic values towards their education
and assurance as well to parents about the best interest of their kids.
TrafalgarHigh School during Covid
We all know that 2020 was the year that our country started to experience the issue of
Covid-19, although we were hearing it from other countries in 2019. It was not
easy at all. There were many restrictions set by the leaders of the country.
One of those restrictions is that students and pupils must study from home.
Many teachers were failing to adopt the style of teaching online, pupils were also
lost at that time because they are used to being taught in class, face-to-face,
but during the year 2020 it was impossible in South Africa, but Trafalgar high
school was one of the schools that have done a good job, even though there were
many restrictions on how teachers deliver the skills to pupils.
It was a class of 2020 of Trafalgar High School that managed to obtain a 94% pass rate
which was higher than the 84.8% obtained by the class of the 2019 National Senior Certificate Examination. Pupils who wrote the exam in 2020 were 117 from 145 in 2019. This shows that the school worked very hard to obtain that percentage, the staff members didn’t see Covid-19 as an obstacle, but as a motivator that has motivated them to do well for their pupils.
Reviewsof the parents and former learners
One ofthe parents Phil Niekerk said “My son attends there. Good quality education and teachers that go the extra mile to educate learners.”
Former learner Muhammad Manuel said “I attended this school and had experienced good and bad times. The educators are good, and the school is overall large with several different subjects to choose from. There is a principal’s office and a large playground for learners to play there.
Applicationfor admission at Trafalgar
Applicationsare done online, at admissions@westerncape.gov.za. Because Trafalgar is a school fee-paying school, if you finalize your accounts around February, you do get a discount. 2022 school fees were R6400, there was an increase of 5% compared to 2021
school fees. If you have more than one learner, you can also get a discount.