The Native School that caused all the Trouble : A Histoty of the Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa :

A history of the Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa.

In the late 1950s the theological seminaries for black students of the Anglican, Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian Churches were told by the South African government that they would have to move, because they were all in "white" areas. These churches therefore bought land next to the black University College of Fort Hare, and built their colleges on that land -- St Peter's College (Anglican), Adams College (Congregationalist), John Wesley College (Methodist) and St Columba's College (Presbyterian). There was a central library, and there were joint seminary activities.

The seminary opened on the new site in 1963, but ten years later was forced to move again, when the government expropriated the seminary, ostensibly to expand the university, but in reality because the seminary students were undermining the government attempts to indoctrinate the students of Fort Hare.

There began a period of wandering. The seminary found temporary homes in Umtata and Pietermaritzburg, and eventually acquired new land at Imbali, near Pietermaritzburg. The buildings were designed to be less federal and more unitary, and the seminary had a more integrated programme, but the ecumenical seminary was not so pupular with the denominations that sponsored it, and student numbers dropped until the seminary was no longer viable. It was closed in 1992, thirty years after its foundation, and the denominations reverted to training their students separately again. The seminary buildiungs were vandalised, and eventually demolished.

This book describes the history of the seminary, and tries to analyse the reasons for its closure.