Trafalgar High School (Cape Town)
| Trafalgar High School | |
|---|---|
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| Address | |
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Birchington Road, District Six Cape Town South Africa |
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| Coordinates | 33°56′00″S 18°25′41″E / 33.93333°S 18.42806°ECoordinates: 33°56′00″S 18°25′41″E / 33.93333°S 18.42806°E |
| Information | |
| Motto | Per Angusta Ad Augusta ("Through Difficulty To Success") |
| Established | 1912 |
| Founder | Abdullah Abdurahman |
| Status | Open |
| Principal | Nadeem Hendricks |
| Website | trafalgarhigh |
Trafalgar High School is a secondary school in District Six of Cape Town in South Africa. It was the first school built in Cape Town for coloured and black students. The school took a leading role in protesting against apartheid policies. It celebrated its centenary in 2012 and is still running.
Trafalgar High School was supported as a direct result of a damning criticism of the Cape School Board in the newspaper of the African Political Organization (APO) in August 1911. Investigations found that the board had created no benefit at all for students who were non-white. The board was lobbied by Abdullah Abdurahman of the APO. As a result, this school gained Harold Cressy as head teacher in 1912. Cressy was the first coloured person to gain a Bachelor of Arts degree in South Africa, and the nearby Harold Cressy High School is now named after him. The school was initially known as the Trafalgar Second Class Public School, and had five teachers and 60 students. The school was co-educational and in the first year girls were just in the majority.
Cressy was able to report a year later, in 1913, that a girl at the school had been the first coloured female student to pass the "School Higher". The girl was Abdullah Abdurahman's daughter, Rosie Waradea Abdurahman. The APO report on this success praised the girl, the principal and the school, but it gave no credit to the school board as the school was still poorly supplied.
Cressy had frequently been unhealthy and early in March 1916 he got pneumonia. By this time the school had a new site and a new building was being constructed after the school board donated £3,000. Cressy had established the school and an association for teachers, but he died that August.
South African politics affected the school's teaching staff. In 1957 Benjamin Kies who taught at the school was banned from teaching for life because he was leading the Teachers League of South Africa. He had to also stand down as editor of the leagues Educational Journal and that role was taken over by Helen Kies who was an alumnus of this school. In 1964 Sedick Isaacs who was the mathematics and physics teacher at the school was sentenced to twelve years in Robben Island for sabotage. He was given an extended sentence in 1969 for operating a radio and making a master key to the cells.
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