Tiger Kloof
Sandy Grant | Wednesday September 23, 2015 16:50
It was previously the girl’s dining room. Amongst the guests of honour at this lovely occasion will be Archbishop Desmond Tutu, ex President Masire, Gaositwe Chiepe and Archie Mogwe. Ex Tigers from this country of pre-1953 vintage will be welcome to attend this event as will those of the post 1995 era. They will also be welcome to join the current Director of the Institute, Mark Boobbyer when, early next month, he undertakes an ‘awareness raising’ walk to Vryburg from either Lobatse or Gaborone.
I admit to surprise at learning that there have been students from here, who have attended the Institute in recent years. When it was re-opened in 1995 it was as a South African state school serving the needs of South African students. It was therefore necessary for David Matthews, the first Principal after its re-opening, to confirm that he was not taking the place of a South African student when admitting one of my sons. My impression then was that he must have been the last student to attend from this country. Now I gather that I have been quite wrong.
Hopefully those parents who have had their children at the re-created Tiger Kloof have enjoyed it as much as myself. It was always a thrill to go there, to admire those beautiful old buildings, to marvel at Matthews’ inter-action with his students and, obviously, to get a sniff of the past, which always becomes more understandable when visiting the places involved. But also prompts new questions. Had Willoughby followed Khama to Serowe when he abandoned Old Palapye,and established his new Institute there, van Rensburg, 60 years later, might have had to settle for Palapye! But because they had trodden on each other’s toes, it was not to be.
When the LMS, opted for a new base in South Africa in 1904 and not for somewhere else in its domains, it closed off its options in the Protectorate should another move, one day, become, necessary. Indeed, Willoughby’s Tiger Kloof was to have only a relatively short life. When disaster struck in 1953 with the passing of the Bantu Education Act, the LMS was unable to transfer its assets at Tiger Kloof to a similar school in the Protectorate, had it ever thought about establishing one there.
When the decision was taken by the LMS to close the Institute it was as if it had cashed in all its historic assets and no longer had a home in any of the great tribal capitals with which it had been so long associated.
Instead, it returned via the back door to settle in a new home, Moeding, in Otse, which, like Tiger Kloof, was little more than a minor halt along the railway line and similarly distant from the tribal communities it had, historically, endeavoured to serve.