Headmaster On Progress In Tanzania

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30980, 9 February 1966, Page 16

Headmaster On Progress In Tanzania

Tanzania had made steady progress in all fields since independence was granted in 1961, and the picture of the country as a trouble spot was far from true; there was great stability, said the Rev. G. H. Clark, headmaster of the Tanzanian college, yesterday.

Mr Clark, who comes from Christchurch, where he was educated at Christchurch Boys’ High School and graduated at Canterbury University, has been home on furlough visiting his mother. He has been a teacher in Tanzania since 1958. He will return there with his wife and three children on Friday. “People talk of Africa as a troubled country. Of course it is not a country, it is a continent,” he said. “Then you hear criticism of the one-party system, but it is working very well and it is not a dictatorship at all.” There had been a general election recently, when there was universal franchise, Mr Clark said. Each electorate had two candidates put up by the party and voters chose the man they thought the better qualified to represent them in the Government. Larger matters of policy did not come into it, for in spite of the great progress made in education, the bulk of the population was not sufficiently educated to understand them. European Elected In one almost 100 per cent African electorate, a European, Mr D. Bryceson, who had been Minister of Health in the previous Government, was re-elected with an overwhelming majority—one of the largest in the country—over his African opponent, Mr Clark continued. He was now Minister of Agriculture. Tanzania and Kenya were setting a good example in multi-racialism. People were respected for the job they were doing, not for the colour of their skin, and there had been no colour bar in

reverse, as some people had expected, said Mr Clark. Illustrating the progress of education, he said there were three times as many candidates for the school certificate last year as there were in 1961, the year of independence. More than three times as many students were at university, and a new university had been opened at the capital, Dar-es-Salaam. Mr Clark was appointed in 1962 as headmaster of Livingstone College at Kigoma on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. The secondary school for boys was begun by the Anglican Church, but was now financed by the Tanzanian Government. The roll of 280 boys, all boarders, was drawn from those who had had eight years at primary school, Mr Clark said. After four years the boys sat the Cambridge school certificate examination, which required seven, eight or nine subjects. All the teaching was in English, and although it was the boys’ third language—their own tribal language came first, then the national language of Swahili—they were proficient in it. There was a “fairly tough” selection for secondary education, Mr Clark said. About 50 per cent of ail children went to primary school and 15 per cent of all went on to secondary education. His college was one of 60 secondary schools in the country. Before independence there had been only about half that number. There were four Africans on the teaching staff, three New Zealanders, one of whom was Mr D. Close, formerly a teacher at Shirley Boys’ High School, three Australians and an American.

As more Africans became qualified they would join the teaching staff, Mr Clark said. The first graduates from the Dar-es-Salaam University would come out in 1967. More teachers would be needed, because under the country’s plans the size of the school would increase by 50 per cent by 1970. “But the increase apart, one of the most important parts of our job is to train Africans to take over,” he

said. “We have to work ourselves out of a job.” Church Progress The Anglican Church had made great progress in the country, and again Africans were helping the expansion, Mr Clark said. Kigoma was a part of the diocese of Central Tanganyika, but in the last 10 years the growth of the church had been so rapid, with one new church being opened every week ,on average, that it had been necessary to divide the diocese twice. The first division was in 1961 when the diocese of Victoria Nyanza was created under Bishop Wiggins, who came from Christchurch. Last year another split resulted in a new diocese of Morogoro where there was a Tanzanian, Bishop Gresford Chitemo. This year the western area would be divided to form a new diocese, and it was almost certain that an African would be the bishop. Similar growth had been experienced by the Lutheran and Moravian churches. Mr Clark is an Anglican minister and occasionally relieves in a parish in an emergency, and as well as being headmaster of the college is also the chaplain. Open To All His school is undenominational. One of the Government’s laws is that no-one shall be refused admission to a public school on the ground of race or religion. His college has Roman Catholic and Moslem boys among its pupils. When boys left school there was no difficulty in placing them in employment, he said. Most went into jobs in the Government service, but there were also opportunities in private enterprise. In a country that was still mainly agricultural, the Government was encouraging foreign investment and new factories were springing up. This development was part of the planned future of the country. The first three-year plan had ended, and the Government had now embarked on the first of three five-year plans. Under these the aims were to increase the average wage about two and a half times, become self-sufficient in manpower by 1980 and raise the life expectancy, now about 35 to 40, to 50 years.