An overview of university education in South Africa and the founding of the University of Natal
3.3. The Natal University College
3.3.4. Extension of university classes to Durban
status it retained until it received its own charter in 1948. Brookes states that this new status was “a distinct improvement”205 since it meant that students were examined by their own teachers together with external examiners on syllabi which the said teachers had assisted in drawing up. No longer did they have to “spot questions” for external examinations which would be marked by strangers. One person representing the Council and one the Senate of every constituent college sat on the Council of the University of South Africa. Thus professors of the constituent colleges were able to exercise some measure of control over the University’s work.
themselves opposed to the idea, alleging that there was no need for a university in the town; it was “a luxury catering only for sons and daughters of the wealthy and leisured class.”207 Rees criticises the Durban public of the time for missing out on a “unique opportunity,” as he explains:
In retrospect, it is evident that the people of Durban were presented with a
unique opportunity in 1918 of securing for the town its own University College for Technology and Science. This would have been the logical outcome of the
pioneering work of the Technical College since 1907. Had the War Memorial proposal of Dr. Campbell and his associates been accepted, and the necessary funds raised, which Durban could well have afforded, then university
development there would have proceeded locally in accordance with an historical background which was unrelated to that of Pietermaritzburg, where a University College conforming to the traditional academic pattern had emerged.208
This was a setback for Campbell and the other members of the Technical College Council but they did not give up. In the meantime, the Natal University College authorities had come to realize that they needed to “tap the wealth of Natal business and industry”209 if the future of the College was to be assured. The province’s commercial activity was largely concentrated in Durban and, as the University authorities shrewdly realised, the Durban Technical College had a prior claim. A fund-raising scheme in competition with the Technical College would probably fail. The Minister of Education, F.S. Malan, had also indicated that the South African Government would not permit the establishment of a seventh constituent college of the University of South Africa in Durban. Thus, in August 1920 the first meeting was held between representatives of the Technical College in Durban and the Natal University College in Pietermaritzburg, chaired by the tenacious Campbell. It took some time and considerable persuasion before agreement was finally reached in 1922 and approval could be sought from the University of South Africa for university courses in Commerce and Engineering to be taught at the Technical College in Durban. Money raised for university education would be under the control of the Natal University College Council. Accordingly, classes in Electrical and Mechanical
Engineering and Commerce opened in 1923 with just 16 students.
In April 1923 Campbell announced that a donor had been found who was willing to donate £50,000 for the purposes of erecting a building for University purposes in Durban, once the Durban Town Council had made a suitable site available. The donor
207 Rees, The Natal Technical College, 1907-1957, p. 113.
208 Ibid.
209 Ibid., p. 130.
was Thomas B. Davis who owned a stevedoring firm (Brock & Company) operating on the East African coast between Durban and Mombasa. The new institution was to bear the name of the donor’s son, Howard Davis, who had been killed in one of the bloody battles on the River Somme in 1917. Interestingly, Brookes points out that this generous gift “finally made University dualism inevitable … The Senate and Council in
Pietermaritzburg were faced with the fact that, while they had few funds apart from Government subsidies, Durban had a private endowment.”210 It should be mentioned here that a Government Commission, chaired by Mr J.G van der Horst to consider the relationship between universities and technical colleges, had unequivocally condemned university classes in Durban.211 Notes Brookes:
The forces working for them [that is, university classes in Durban] were too strong to accept this drastic conclusion, but the Report meant that the break with the Technical College must be complete. The final cutting of the knot was the work of Bews.212
Following protracted negotiations, the Durban Town Council was eventually persuaded to allocate a 50-acre site in the Stellawood bush for the University. Designed by William Hurst, work on the building began in 1929 and Howard College was officially opened by the Earl of Clarendon on 1st August 1931. B.M. Narbeth, first principal of the Natal Technical College, captured the spirit of the moment:
The events of the coming week will mark a definite stage in the achievement of the aims which Dr Campbell and his co-workers had in view. The Technical College has given birth to a University College and is about to hand over to the Natal University College authorities this daughter institution with a student body of over 200 undergraduates, a staff of highly qualified professors and lecturers, a magnificent campus of 50 acres, the gift of the Durban Corporation, a beautiful and capacious building, the Howard College, the gift of Mr T.B. Davis, which is completely furnished and partially equipped by Mr A.H. Smith and other generous donors, and a steadily growing endowment fund, raised by the University Development Committee.213
In this same year most full-time classes were moved from the Technical College to the new building. Part-time courses in the Commerce Faculty continued to be offered at the Technical College until 1936, when the new Commerce Building, later renamed the Oldham Building and popularly referred to as “City Building”, was erected in Warwick Avenue to cater for these students.
210 Brookes, A history of the University of Natal, p. 30
211 Ibid., p. 31
212 Ibid., p. 30. r J.W. Bews was the first Principal of the Natal University College.
213 Narbeth, From a very small beginning, [p. 2].
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